[HN Gopher] TikTok Parent ByteDance Sees Losses Swell in Push fo...
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TikTok Parent ByteDance Sees Losses Swell in Push for Growth
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-10-06 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| [deleted]
| npalli wrote:
| _TikTok's emergence "was just something that was unimaginable,"
| Snap Inc. SNAP 1.65%^ Chief Executive Evan Spiegel said last
| month, as part of an announcement that his company would be
| slashing jobs. "No startup could afford to invest billions and
| billions and billions of dollars in user acquisition like that
| around the world."_
|
| _The report shows a company rapidly increasing its revenues,
| accumulating a massive war chest of cash and other investments,
| but with net results weighed down by tens of billions of dollars
| in unrealized market losses on convertible securities. Largely
| because of the accounting treatment of those securities,
| ByteDance's net loss widened by more than 87% to $84.9 billion in
| 2021, according to the report._
|
| _Despite the rising expenses, ByteDance has managed to increase
| its cash and cash equivalents, which sat at $42.6 billion at the
| end of March, up from $34.1 billion at the end of 2021. Its total
| assets were at $74 billion in March, up from $64.3 billion in
| December._
|
| Capitalism with Chinese characteristics.
| nkingsy wrote:
| What are unrealized market losses on convertible securities?
|
| $84.9 billion net loss?
|
| I'm so confused.
| Leary wrote:
| If reports of $300 billion valuations are true, this is an
| undervalued company considering it's still growing at 54%.
| paxys wrote:
| Growth has to convert into profit at some point. Not sure how
| you can call $300B undervalued when Meta has a market cap of
| $375B right now and makes $40B a year.
| encoderer wrote:
| You have to apply the China factor.
|
| Shareholders can't truly own the companies, can't control the
| boards, can't predict the future regulatory environment.
|
| It doesn't make these companies _worthless_ but it is a real
| markdown.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| This is a bunch of non-sense. ByteDance has a number of US
| investors and an international board. Their ideal exit
| strategy for TikTok is to have it spun off and IPOed on US
| exchanges.
| encoderer wrote:
| Chinese stocks do not IPO like that. They create a special
| shell company that is entitled to the profits of the
| company, and they ipo that shell.
| pb7 wrote:
| At the end of the day, ByteDance can't do anything that
| clashes with the wishes of the CCP and that is a risk. If
| it were to attempt to IPO on US exchanges, it would be
| subject to even more scrutiny.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, what happens to US investment if the CCP steps and
| and takes over? Why would the CCP refund US investment?
| Investments come with risk and investing in Chinese
| companies have this extra bit of risk. The investors can
| cry about it, but they _should_ have known it as a
| possible outcome for that investment.
| kersplody wrote:
| BYTE is a Chinese company: it is co-managed by the CCP by
| definition and the CCP can and has been able to override
| the company leadership at anytime it sees fit. Investors
| knew about this risk from day one and knew that any
| invested capital would be under effective CCP management.
| In practice, the CCP has an interest in the growth of the
| company, however state priorities, like intelligence
| gathering have precedence.
|
| No one/company should have any expectation of privacy or
| security when doing business with any company operating
| in China, Hong Kong, or Macau.
| AntonyGarand wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ZXgH3
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| It's not supposed to make money, it's a spy tool subsidized by a
| foreign adversary...
| rvz wrote:
| Yes. It is exactly that. [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
|
| I thought Facebook was worse, but looking at TikTok, it takes
| the most invasive spyware crown.
|
| At this point if the solution is to outlaw all invasive
| tracking for all companies, the first thing to do is like how
| Facebook got a multi-billion dollar fine by the FTC, TikTok
| (and repeat offenders) must be fined in the _tens of billions_
| , if they want to continue operating in the US and to stop them
| from violating user privacy by their invasive data collection.
|
| [0] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-
| wa...
|
| [1]
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
|
| [2] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/26/tiktok-dodges-questions-
| ab...
|
| [3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-
| pe...
|
| [4] https://twitter.com/crobertsbmw/status/1427102606753550337
|
| [5] https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-
| wha...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > I thought Facebook was worse, but looking at TikTok, it
| takes the most invasive spyware crown.
|
| I think that Facebook is worse, not because of the trackers
| but because of the very nature of the network. TikTok is
| mostly one-way. There are content creators and consumers, the
| latter vastly outnumber the former, also, creators often post
| content that is staged in some way, they don't really show
| their "real self". Facebook is a "true" social network, it is
| more symmetrical and intimate and people produce as much as
| they consume. TikTok is about showing off to the world,
| Facebook has that too, but it also a platform where friends
| can do stuff in "private".
|
| Facebook doesn't even need spyware. People willingly put
| their entire life online, and for the few who are not on
| Facebook, their friends who are post enough about them for
| Facebook to create an accurate shadow profile. TikTok spies
| on you, but Facebook makes every user a spy working for them.
| nextstep wrote:
| Can you explain how this is a spy tool and how Youtube,
| Instagram, Facebook, etc. are not? I haven't really used
| TikTok. How does it collect data beyond the videos I've
| watched?
| pb7 wrote:
| One is controlled by an authoritarian government, the others
| are private (publicly traded) corporations in a democratic
| country.
| angio wrote:
| But they took part in illegal surveillance programmes in
| the past.
| pb7 wrote:
| >illegal
|
| Exactly. What's illegal here is perfectly fine in China.
| Let's not equate the two.
|
| US government may get data from US companies but at least
| it takes a warrant. Chinese government straight up owns
| the servers.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Yeah the Church Committee in the 70s really reformed the
| "intelligence community." They learned their lesson and
| never violated peoples civil rights ever again. And
| there's so much oversight now!
| MaxPock wrote:
| pb7 wrote:
| 8 years old, referencing the same unlawful behavior
| mentioned earlier.
| monocasa wrote:
| Did anyone have any consequences for the illegal
| behavior, including perjuring themselves before Congress
| regarding the matter?
|
| Then why would they stop after it was declared illegal?
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| satao wrote:
| as someone living outside the US I can tell you that to us
| you're all the same.
| exolymph wrote:
| you're entitled to your opinion, but for those of us
| living _inside_ the US, they are not at all the same
| pb7 wrote:
| That's your personal opinion. You don't speak for the
| ~7.7B people not in the US.
| anm89 wrote:
| As is your opinion that it isn't
| pb7 wrote:
| I didn't claim to speak for billions of people.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US."
|
| vs
|
| "You don't speak for me"
|
| One of those comments is speaking for a lot more people
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Where did you get "you don't speak for me"?
|
| It's "I can tell you that to us you're all the same" vs
| "You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US."
|
| One person is trying to speak for 7.7B and the other is
| advising against that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Where did you get "you don't speak for me"?
|
| It was an example of how to state unambiguously who
| was/was not being spoken for to contrast with the other
| statement. Maybe because I put it in quotes led you to
| think I was quoting someone, but it looked odd without to
| me.
| djanlermats2020 wrote:
| No it isn't, both are correct statements of fact.
| anm89 wrote:
| you are making the same implicit claim and arguing
| insignificant semantics.
| neither_color wrote:
| When the police start knocking on my door inviting me to
| have tea because of something I posted on twitter I'll
| take your comment seriously(https://chinadigitaltimes.net
| /2021/10/translation-spilling-t...).
|
| Our free speech and privacy protections are not only
| stronger than China's, they're arguably stronger than
| Europe's too. There are some trade offs of course since
| Europe has GDPR and the right to be forgotten.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-
| intern...
|
| https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-
| peo...
|
| The reason China's situation is worse is because
| Europeans and Americans can and do protest this. It is
| not normalized and accepted. If you feel that America
| goes too far in how it exports its perceived brand of
| authoritarian, you should know that China is just getting
| started:
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/3/report-
| detai...
| cheriot wrote:
| Ironically, there's laws restricting US Gov access to
| data in the US, but no such restrictions on hacking
| foreign networks.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Chinese domestic companies are legally _obligated_ to provide
| a direct data pipeline from their databases to the Ministry
| of State Security. It 's a real law that exists. Basically
| imagine what the NSA implemented with the PRISM program
| revealed by Snowden but formally codified into law and with
| active participation/engineering efforts required by the
| corporations.
| afiori wrote:
| Is it particularly different from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act ?
| waffleiron wrote:
| The main difference is that HN is mainly visited by
| American users, not affected by CLOUD act.
| afiori wrote:
| The CLOUD Act affects all US companies.
| alphabetting wrote:
| Yes
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tikt
| ok-...
| walrus01 wrote:
| It's more like being perpetually subject to a National
| Security Letter (NSL) warrant issued by a US FISA court,
| a fairly rare occurrence and specifically targeted, but
| for blanket database replication and as the widespread
| legal default for every company in China.
| woooooo wrote:
| For what it's worth, non-american citizens on non-american
| soil have no legal protection against the same. And big ad
| monopolies are not in the business of pissing off the
| security state.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I don't see how, for instance, with a Austrian customer
| of a Belgian data center operator, the Belgian data
| center operator does not have a legal obligation to form
| a secure database pipeline connection and replicate
| everything directly into the NSA.
|
| Obviously whatever signals intelligence gathering method
| or data copying the NSA might be doing in Western Europe
| could very well exist, but it's not a defined requirement
| for that theoretical Belgian ISP.
| woooooo wrote:
| Correct, a Belgian isp would have vastly fewer reasons to
| comply with polite requests from CIA/NSA than a US-based
| FAANG.
| lossolo wrote:
| They are working on a deal with US, all data for US
| citizens will be kept in US[1].
|
| And some info about it from them directly:
|
| "As we recently shared with members of Congress, we are
| working toward a new system in which access to U.S. user
| data by anyone outside of USDS will be limited by, and
| subject to, robust data access protocols with monitoring
| and oversight mechanisms by Oracle."[2]
|
| 1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/09/tiktok-can-
| keep-...
|
| 2. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/our-approach-to-
| keeping-us...
|
| EDIT: downvotes for sharing latest additional data from
| official sources about the topic without any private
| opinions? This trend is dangerous for healthy discussion.
| walrus01 wrote:
| doesn't mean their office and staff in china don't
| remotely have access to the data or the ability to
| replicate it.
| lossolo wrote:
| I think it's addressed in sources I've linked, there is a
| whole section describing who have access to data of US
| citizens. Additionally I don't think US administration
| will just let them do it (share whatever they want with
| China), if a deal will be made then US citizens will
| control who is and how that data is accessed outside US
| through Oracle, otherwise they would just be banned as
| national security threat.
| user_named wrote:
| They're exactly the same.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It seems to use the same bag of tricks Facebook/LinkedIn/etc.
| use to track things you do "off-app": tracking code in share
| widgets, injecting JS into the in-app browser, tracking
| cookies[1].
|
| If ByteDance ever releases an Onavo style VPN app, people are
| going to lose their minds.
|
| [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-data-privacy
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Is this also true for highly-funded, money-losing SV startups
| focusing on growth. Why or why not?
| the_optimist wrote:
| It is an espionage organization because it is controlled by
| an adversarial group which collects and stores detailed
| individual data. The CIA, NSA, and Google hold the same
| character.
| [deleted]
| dnissley wrote:
| The answer is simple: In the US it's a scandal if the
| government has open access without a warrant to private
| citizen data held by companies. In China that's just
| considered business as usual.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think this is a common response. But even though the
| Snowden revelations were a "scandal", nothing bad really
| happened to the perpetrators. And the FISA court that
| rubber-stamped the data collection is still operating and
| still rubber-stamping government surveillance. So, how is
| it _not_ business as usual in the US? Consider also how law
| enforcement now has warrantless access to individuals '
| location data thanks to data brokers and pervasive location
| tracking in apps[1].
|
| I would really like to see people in North America demand
| better from their leaders instead of patting ourselves on
| the back about how at least we're better than China.
|
| [1] https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2022/09/tool-gives-
| polic...
| dnissley wrote:
| > _even though the Snowden revelations were a "scandal",
| nothing bad really happened to the perpetrators_
|
| This is true, and bad, but consider another difference in
| this situation:
|
| In the US, companies were able to respond to this
| revelation by shoring up their security practices, and
| people exercised their right to openly criticize the
| government. This is not possible in China.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| Well, I don't agree with OP, but the Chinese government is
| way more involved with its companies than the US is. Here,
| ostensibly, there's a court and legal process - versus China,
| where the government has all data by default.
|
| So, any Chinese tech company is de facto going to have all of
| its data accessible by the Chinese government, by default.
| user_named wrote:
| It's interesting to see you make these claims when you know
| nothing about the workings of the legal system in China.
| indemnity wrote:
| What legal system?
|
| The legal system in China is whatever the party wants it
| to be.
| tehjoker wrote:
| it's funny you raise that point right after the abortion
| decision here
| parker_mountain wrote:
| > know nothing about the workings of the legal system in
| China
|
| Hello, I'm an appsec engineer working on product privacy
| for a large multinational company. I have a pretty
| accurate, battle tested, mental model about data privacy
| w/r/t international verticals. I have worked with our
| China vertical and also worked on key escrow separation
| models. You might even be able to figure out which
| company, based on the above.
|
| It's interesting to see you make these claims about me
| when you know nothing about me.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| By Chinese law all data must be made accessible to the
| government. Of course, it's also an authoritarian state
| where the government isn't hamstrung by the legal system
| in any way.
| ravenstine wrote:
| No one said they _aren 't_. Yet there's always someone in
| _any_ given thread about a Chinese app jumping to its defense
| saying "but Silicon Valley."
|
| So should no one speak out against concentration camps,
| cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today
| because the same things have happened historically in the
| United States? China being an adversary should have nothing
| to do with it? If we can't point out such a problem with an
| app, then the road we're going down is we can't say anything
| else about China either.
| vkou wrote:
| > Yet there's always someone in any given thread about a
| Chinese app jumping to its defense saying "but Silicon
| Valley."
|
| The reason there's always someone starting a subthread
| about it is because Silicon Valley and the United States
| _has_ , _had_ , and _will continue to have_ all the same
| incentives and problems for international users. [1]
|
| It's not a very _interesting_ conversation, because it adds
| nothing that hasn 't been said a million times, but neither
| does another lap around the 'China bad' rhetorical track.
|
| [1] And also domestic users, but they have some means of
| recourse for it.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think all of these apps behave deplorably. But these
| kinds of comments try to imply that TikTok is uniquely
| dangerous when it's just more of the same. The solutions
| offered also often target TikTok specifically - like
| banning TikTok in the US, or placing some kind of
| restrictions on how TikTok can operate.
|
| Why is the solution not to make broad data collection
| illegal?
|
| Edit:
|
| > So should no one speak out against concentration camps,
| cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today
| because the same things have happened historically in the
| United States?
|
| Not at all - those things are genuinely awful, but one key
| difference is that Facebook, Google, and others are still
| siphoning up people's data _today_. This isn 't something
| that happened in the past. I think the comparison is quite
| valid.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > But these kinds of comments try to imply that TikTok is
| uniquely dangerous when it's just more of the same.
|
| It comes down to what you believe is the lesser of two
| evil systems of governance. I will not hesitate to
| criticize the United States, NATO, the central banks, or
| the IMF, and I have many problems with them; I would
| still prefer to live under their system as opposed to the
| kind of world that China proposes. I live in the United
| States, and to an extent I want the United States to
| remain stable. Why should I not be concerned that an
| adversary in both policy and philosophy gets to have as
| much influence as TikTok over the minds of millions of
| Americans?
|
| The only way I could see viewing US tech and China tech
| as equal is if one has no connection to the soil on which
| they stand, or perhaps if they live outside those two
| systems. I don't live outside of those systems. I live in
| the United States. I don't think the future proposed by
| the United States or any of its tech companies is as bad
| as what China proposes to bring to the world.
|
| > one key difference is that Facebook, Google, and others
| are still siphoning up people's data today.
|
| Again, that is a point that no one is disputing. And why
| emphasize _today_? As far as I am aware, TikTok doesn 't
| _plan_ to mine data. It already does. Regardless, I can
| 't see how it's defensible to allow an adversary that
| much influence over our psychology. It's one thing for us
| to essentially cause our own problems, but it's another
| to invite problems from nations that would be thrilled
| for the United States to either be under its complete
| control or not exist at all.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Based on published information, Tiktok is behaving
| significantly worse than any other major player in this
| market.
|
| Just one example: There are no reports of Meta (etc)
| logging my keystrokes and data OUTSIDE of what I enter
| into the app/website.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33049774
| hello_friendos wrote:
| rchaud wrote:
| What published information? The link you posted is from
| Consumer Reports which says nothing of the sort.
| masterof0 wrote:
| I don't like companies which business model is spying on
| people , regardless who their master is. To answer your
| question(if you really want an answer) , is, hypocrisy,
| many people have a problem with Alice pointing out that Bob
| did X thing, when Alice in the first place have also done
| said X thing. Not justifying anything, or anyone
| whatsoever, just telling raven how some people might think.
| themitigating wrote:
| Alice and bob are people who committed those things. A
| citizen in the US has nothing to do with ww2 Japanese
| internment camps, slavery, etc so it's not hypocrisy to
| point out what another country is doing.
| masterof0 wrote:
| If your country do those things, some people might feel
| is hypocritical, because a citizen of {evil_country} have
| nothing to do with {crimes}. Just because Alice's country
| did it long ago, doesn't mean Alice have the higher moral
| ground over Bob. Again, just pointing out what it is.
| Don't care, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat,etc can dissappear
| tomorrow, and I wouldn't notice.
|
| Edit: Typo
| rchaud wrote:
| Speak out all you like.It didn't affect Apple one iota when
| their factories in China were known for working people to
| their deaths to churn out more iPhones for the ravenous
| consumer.
|
| It won't do a damn thing to reduce TikTok's growth either.
| Nothing will until TT becomes replaced by the next thing.
| cheriot wrote:
| I recently download apps to a new iPhone and every App Store
| search result had a TikTok ad above the app I had searched for by
| name. That can't be cheap!
| W-Stool wrote:
| Lose a buck on every sale and make it up with volume ...
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