[HN Gopher] TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Dat...
___________________________________________________________________
TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit
Alleges
Author : consumer451
Score : 379 points
Date : 2023-05-13 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| consumer451 wrote:
| https://archive.is/ap3on
| drno123 wrote:
| And US has a whole agency (NSA) dedicated to getting access to
| foreign data.
| SSLy wrote:
| Anyone has working link? BI 404's if you don't live in USA.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| https://archive.is/ap3on
|
| archive.today either has it and/or will allow you to
| immediately request it
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Half of the comments in this thread sound like they were written
| by CCP propaganda chatbots. A dead giveaway is the failure to
| address the topic at hand and immediately deflect to "but the USA
| does XYZ too!" No one is disputing such a claim, but that's also
| not what we're talking about here.
| slim wrote:
| I know this feeling. It probably just means that you live in
| different reality than half the people commenting here. Maybe
| half the people commenting here are not americans ? It's still
| interesting and on subject, because social networks are
| probably what is causing this divide, because bubbles are
| isolated by design
| kranke155 wrote:
| No, chat bots are a huge problem so are botfarms and sock
| puppets supported by huge bot farms.
|
| They are everywhere and they are degrading content
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| [flagged]
| COGlory wrote:
| Be that as it may....
|
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling,
| brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion
| and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email
| hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ipnon wrote:
| [flagged]
| woooooo wrote:
| I'm not Chinese, hi.
|
| The US is collecting vastly more data from our social media
| companies and using it to launch drone strikes that
| actually kill people. Nobody is outraged by this, it's
| "normal".
|
| Why should I be more outraged at this story?
| threeseed wrote:
| Nobody is asking you to choose which story to be more
| outraged about.
|
| Just that you really should stick to the topic at hand.
|
| Otherwise why not bring up that car accidents are a much
| bigger problem than social media.
| axxto wrote:
| "Condemning the actions of a foreign government" and
| "condemning similar actions by your own government" seem
| a little more related and on-topic than "social media and
| car crashes".
|
| And in my own personal opinion, that's especially true if
| those questionable actions by your own government
| overshadow any other similar effort both in scope, size
| and funding by several orders of magnitude when compared
| to the rest of the world.
|
| This obsession with shills is unhealthy. I'm glad there's
| a rule against it.
|
| I'm not Chinese either, and I find it quite sad that you
| have to state that in here sometimes just to be taken
| seriously, or else be called a shill.
| kelipso wrote:
| Lol. Dump all the US instances into the memory hole. Only bring
| it up when China does it. When you bring up how US does it too,
| it's "whataboutism".
|
| Have to say it's a great strategy for maintaining a narrative.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > Dump all the US instances into the memory hole
|
| Yes, it's called focusing on a particular subject, the topic
| at hand.
|
| Do you go into Snowden threads and complain that people are
| dumping the routine monitoring of their populace by the
| Chinese in the memory hole?
| bostonwalker wrote:
| Would China allow US to spy on hundreds of millions of its
| citizens everyday? Answer: no, reference the Great Firewall.
| goolz wrote:
| You don't actually believe that is what it is for right?
| This is sarcasm? I can not tell...
| pessimizer wrote:
| The Great Firewall is to prevent Chinese people from
| speaking freely or reading unapproved things. It is not to
| protect Chinese people.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Based off your past comments, you have some pretty strong
| feelings about both China and the USA which might lead one to
| think you're not really approaching this discussion in good
| faith.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| And you are preemptively accusing without proof against users
| who are simply voicing their opinions like everyone is allowed
| to do here. Why are you attempting to act like an arbiter of
| legitimacy when you are clearly not one?
| bostonwalker wrote:
| For reference: this specific fallacy being invoked by the CCP
| astroturfers is called "whataboutism".
| tpmx wrote:
| When faced with undeniable criticism: I believe China/CCP
| learned this "defense" tactic from the Soviet Union, who if,
| not inventing it, at the very least brought it to new
| standardized levels.
| gs17 wrote:
| One example from the Soviets:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| It's strange that old expressions like "the US is throwing
| stones from a glass house" or "the US is like a pot calling
| the kettle black" have existed for a long enough time to be
| idioms, but the term for decrying such expressions
| "whataboutism" is relatively much newer and more of a
| political term than a language idiom.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Well, being aware of and actively combating propaganda is a
| fairly recent social development.
| adultSwim wrote:
| I would point out that these claims have not been proven.
| Animats wrote:
| Of course the party committee can access data. That's how China
| works under Xi.[1][2] Party committees had less presence in
| private companies post-Mao and pre-2003, but now they're back.
| Most larger non-state owned companies now have one, so the party
| can keep an eye on the private sector from the inside. They have
| roughly board-level authority.
|
| Nominally, the party committee represents the party members who
| work for the company. But they're not chosen by the employees;
| they're appointed by higher levels of the party.
|
| [1] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-
| th...
|
| [2] https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-
| committ...
| jsdeveloper wrote:
| Will you install a secuirty camera in your daughters room,
| specifically when the the camera comes from country with most
| leaked cam footage!(where various reports argue that State is
| involved in such leaks)
| bdcravens wrote:
| Yes, it's not like their Macbook Pro was assembled in the same
| country ....
| 1101010010 wrote:
| Are there even IP cameras manufactured domestically to even
| choose? I have some inside my home (pointed at exterior doors;
| not inside bedrooms which seems borderline creepy and/or
| sadistic), but they're not connected to public networks and
| thus I don't consider them a risk.
| Kadin wrote:
| Not at consumer price levels, no.
|
| There are companies that make security hardware here in the
| US, but the market is mostly very high-end government and
| military customers. And TBH mostly they are still using
| Chinese components, just assembling stuff here in the US and
| marking the price up enough that they can justify calling it
| 'made in USA' by virtue of the value-add. Sometimes the
| software is coded or at least audited, though.
|
| You can avoid the worst Chinese-made hardware if you look for
| "NDAA compliant" rather than US domestic manufacture. NDAA
| compliance means that a product isn't made by a number of
| prohibited Chinese suppliers who are known to be very
| thoroughly compromised (as opposed to the average level of
| compromise that you should assume most companies in China
| have... but China is a big place, so that difference isn't
| nothing).
|
| Axis and Bosch both have NDAA-compliant product lines.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I would never put a camera in my kids' rooms. We've learned to
| prioritize our security on measured (not bullhorned) risk
| factors.
| tremere wrote:
| I'm starting to become fatigued by all this TikTok news. Either
| ban the app or don't. Causing anxiety over TikTok without any
| action is the worst of both worlds.
| jasmer wrote:
| Don't ban it, just force the sale of US/European or non-Chinese
| division to an outside party and that's that.
|
| There's actually not that much economic downside. Having TT
| merged with Bytedance is not a big economic bonus.
|
| I can't believe that this was not done ages ago.
|
| There is hardly a loser here - it's just a 'required fork' of a
| business, everyone will be fine.
|
| We do this all the time with 'important' things, for a social
| media app, nothing will skip a beat, the kids can keep their
| funny songs.
| consumer451 wrote:
| It's an interesting problem to solve though.
|
| For one thing, there are lots of US investors who will lose
| money. Should they be made whole?
| Kadin wrote:
| Not an interesting question at all, IMO. The government is
| not required to protect you or make you whole, if you invest
| in an enterprise that the government later decides to
| prohibit, or makes illegal, or decides to regulate in some
| other manner.
|
| I mean, think that through for a second: if the government
| had to compensate everyone for the negative impact of
| legislation, it would be almost impossible to pass laws. If
| my town says I can't burn tires in my back yard, do they need
| to pay me to shut down my tire-burning operation? What if I
| don't even have a tire-burning operation, but I _could_ have
| started one, except now I 'm prohibited from doing so... did
| they impair the value of my property by prohibiting a
| potential use? What about all the other things I could have
| done with my property, absent any pesky zoning restrictions,
| Clean Water Act rules, or just centuries of common law
| precedent? Do they have to pay me for the impairment of each
| of them, each time a law is passed that eliminates a
| hypothetical option?
|
| No, of course not, because that would paralyze government and
| be ridiculous.
|
| The government has no responsibility to make anyone whole if
| they decide someone's business model is counter to the public
| good and make it illegal. It's on my investors to take into
| account the risk of legislation that might impact the
| business and factor that into their investment decisions and
| subsequent valuation of the business. If they do that poorly,
| or fail to recognize a legal risk, that's on them.
|
| This is literally why sovereign immunity is a thing.
| slushh wrote:
| How about foreign investors? [1]
|
| >Critics also state that treaties are written so that any
| legislation causing lost profits is by definition a treaty
| violation, rendering the argument null that only treaty
| violations are subject to ISDS.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor%E2%80%93state_di
| spute...
| jorts wrote:
| They should not. They should have known the risk in advance.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That's not an interesting question. No, no they should not.
| And that would be true even if there were US investors. Just
| like we don't compensate AirBnB shareholders when cities
| outlaw short term rentals.
|
| But, there are no non-Chinese investors in Bytedance. There
| are US investors in Hong Kong (?) companies that have
| exposure to Bytedance and move 1:1 with Bytedance, but
| explicitly included in their risk analysis is that government
| action may zero out that 1:1 nature at any time by political
| action.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > That's not an interesting question.
|
| It is very interesting to me to see if the US government is
| capable of putting the average citizen's welfare above that
| of heavy hitting investors. It would be a welcome change if
| they did.
|
| > ByteDance is financially backed by Kohlberg Kravis
| Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic,
| and Hillhouse Capital Group.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
| pessimizer wrote:
| What relationship could banning TikTok possibly have to
| the average citizen's welfare?
| 1101010010 wrote:
| > I'm starting to become fatigued
|
| > Causing anxiety
|
| The news is literally designed to do that to you. Stop
| consuming so much of it for your own mental well-being, and
| that of everyone else you interact with.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| So rather than exposing the cost/benefits of an app, you just
| want the government to make a decision about what methods of
| communication are available to everyone? And instead of making
| a thorough case why a particular method has to be banned for
| good reasons tangential to the content, you want them to make
| that choice and announce it?
|
| I think banning very invasive social media until it minimizes
| tracking is a reasonable option, but that's something that
| should be done by passing laws and public debate.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Better they openly do that than this constant covert
| hysterical press releasing to whip up public support for it.
| go_prodev wrote:
| Banning TikTok until it minimizes tracking pushes the blame
| onto TikTok (unfairly IMHO). Apps all have the same
| Android/iOS permissions to work with, so if there's really a
| problem, the Govt should consult with OS vendors on
| tightening controls across the board.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It benefits TikTok competitors.
| sneak wrote:
| The type of banning of apps you propose is state-sponsored
| censorship. This is done in China as a routine matter, such as
| with protest or VPN apps.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| They couldn't use it as a distraction if they did that.
| grugagag wrote:
| Im more curious what tiktok data amouts to and how it could be
| used by CCP. I've heard of bans of Tiktok use by politicians and
| army bases and such. Without sensitive location data to some
| specific users but solely the young sharing memes, I wounder how
| CCP could use that data... Not a Tiktok user myself, if anyone
| could illuminate me on this it's be great. For example does
| tiktok have direct messages from users to users that could be
| spied on? My naive assumption is that Tiktok is a meme sharing
| platform and timesink
| Haga wrote:
| [dead]
| mint2 wrote:
| The ccp pays visits to relatives who still reside in China -
| and sometimes those abroad - for behaviors of people who've
| emigrated out of China. Tiktok gives them easy insight on whose
| relatives need a visit.
|
| Second, it's easy to find secrets on important people or
| politicians through their online habits - it's pretty easy to
| see how that can be used for influence.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Most simple is to control algorithms pushing whatever agenda
| China wants America youth focused on.
| cush wrote:
| Location data is the least interesting thing they're
| harvesting. Modern targeting models are able to understand the
| most intimate personality traits of their users, and manipulate
| users based on those traits. They're capable of weaponizong
| user's unique levels of skepticism, political leaning,
| depression, or dysmorphia, weaponizing them against entire
| cultures and society
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It is a kompromat generator to blackmail the next Teixeira.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| The fact that many Westerners are still unsure about this and
| not aware that they're in the middle of an unconventional war1
| is fascinating. Xi does not care about memes of course. The app
| itself is the backdoor, Bytedance (which has the Communist
| Party right inside the company, like other Mainland
| corporations) controls what the users see. And what they're
| shown is completely different from Douyin, there is a reason
| Chinese residents aren't even permitted to download TikTok -
| the foreign propaganda version. No one will be able to tell you
| their strategy for certain but it's not hard to guess when you
| look at the content that gets boosted. It's like Twitter on
| steroids, it's designed to cause division and radicalize the
| users. The data harvesting is an added bonus and with more data
| they can be better manipulated.
|
| Btw on a meta level this doesn't matter when the CCP has
| completely walled 1.4 billion people in. Every single American
| social media app is banned, the vast majority of foreign news
| sites is censored. It should not even be a question what the
| app is about, the regime is as obvious an enemy to free society
| as it gets and before they open up as was promised in the past
| in exchange for economic investment, no Chinese internet
| company should be permitted operating anywhere.
|
| While the Chinese internet is so tightly controlled and the US
| & co are attacked in Chinese state media on a daily basis,
| foreign countries let them move in this Trojan horse. There's a
| book called _Unrestricted Warfare_ where the authors describe
| just this sort of weakness of the US to political /information
| warfare 20 years ago. It turns out they were spot on.
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_warfares
| mountainwalker wrote:
| in my rudimentary understanding, the knowledge would be useful
| more in an aggregate nature. finding effective ways to target
| include/exclude propaganda and gathering real-time data around
| memes/info sharing topics that relate to whatever information
| campaigns they are currently running. lies seem to spread
| faster than the truth, and very few places are as actively in
| use as tiktok.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Imagine that a state actor would seek to flip a foreign
| National to their cause. You can do so with either a carrot or
| a stick or both. The carrot can be fancy dinners, free
| vacations, or access to what they want. The carrot can be
| threat of exposure of deep secrets, etc. Now imagine that there
| is an app that has the AMAZING ability to figure out EXACTLY
| what you like and don't like. You haven't used TikTok yourself
| so you don't know it firsthand but this app is uncanny in its
| ability to feed you stuff that only you would find fascinating
| that you didn't even know about yourself. In the wrong hands it
| can give incredible amounts of information on an individual's
| interests at a level of detail that was previously impossible
| crmd wrote:
| And the 66% of US teens on TikTok are 66% of the next
| generation of US senators, presidents, cabinet members,
| military chiefs, etc. Imagine the competitive advantage of
| having a deep psychological profile for each of these
| personas of your geopolitical adversary.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Is American turnover in Congress actually that fast enough
| for this to happen? We have more people over 40 than
| younger people and the influx of youth is being floated by
| an immigration policy that favors middle- and upper-class,
| basically the brain drain, of the rest of the world (read:
| people interested in business-friendly policy, etc), and
| older people, say, everyone 40 - 60, will have even greater
| life expectancy, so those who are in power may be in power
| when current teens are adults, just as Nancy Pelosi has
| been a Congresswoman my entire life and a good chunk of my
| mother's.
| slushh wrote:
| >And the 66% of US teens on TikTok are 100% of the next
| generation of US senators,
|
| FTFY
|
| That's the threat.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| And remember that political games do not have to be won in
| a generation, simply knowing the direction your opponent is
| going and bending them towards your preference is
| sufficient to be worthwhile.
|
| Simply over subscribe the generations on antiwork and the
| cons (as opposed to pros) of (Democracy, America, Freedom,
| Modern thought, etc. whatever are the targets) and you can
| bend a generational trend.
|
| Humans aren't particularly good at seeing evidence and
| realizing they're only seeing part of the whole picture.
| godelski wrote:
| > Im more curious what tiktok data amouts to and how it could
| be used by CCP
|
| Let's pretend I hire two people: The first is a private
| detective, the other is an entertainer.
|
| The private detective is able to follow you around and watch
| everything you do. They know when you eat, when you sleep, and
| even when you poop. They know who you talk to and for how long.
| They know everything that interests you and bores you, down to
| the microsecond (knowing what makes you pause). The PI gets to
| know you pretty well and honestly, probably better than many
| close friends.
|
| The entertainer is your main source of entertainment. They
| offer a wide variety of things and they're highly addictive and
| prevent you from being bored. Since they are a major part of
| your day, they are a major influence of the information that
| you consume. Be this in comedy, politics, academic information,
| or whatever. That all depends on what interests you that day.
|
| Now I've hired these two people and am able to direct them. The
| PI are my eyes and ears, the entertainer are my hands. If I
| want to make the most profit off of you I can make deals with
| McDonalds and get the entertainer to influence you that way
| (maybe do comedy bits about burgers) and the PI can track how
| interested and influential the entertainer is. Allowing us to
| refine our techniques on a personal level. On the other hand,
| if I am interested in politics I can do the same. I know what
| makes you afraid. I know what makes you sad. I know what makes
| you angry. I know what makes you feel good.
|
| Now we're just looking at you, a single person here. But I have
| a billion PIs and entertainers. I know all your friends, family
| members, and even your crushes. I know how close all these
| bonds are because I'm doing to them what I am doing to you.
| Consider this and then tell me that I don't have influence over
| you. I am a significant part of your environment. You may have
| free will, but you are also a product of your environment.
|
| > My naive assumption is that Tiktok is a meme sharing platform
| and timesink
|
| And that's why I have influence over you. The less important
| you think it is, the more influence I have since your guard is
| down. Same way comedians crack people up.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The memes you share are a representative of you...
|
| Lets say you're sharing a bunch of memes about being a private
| in the army. What is the likelihood you are actually a private
| in the army? Can tiktok use that to propagandize you in any
| way? For example, by sending you a lot of what I would consider
| far right propaganda that the US military is weak because it
| believes in 'wokeness', could this cause you to be less
| effective in the military?
| netsharc wrote:
| Also it's a place with many subjects for psychological
| experiments. What propaganda is best to fool someone like
| you? Or someone like person A, person B? And if "Program P"
| works best to convert people to whatever, hey hey, you still
| have the captive audience, just apply that program
|
| Probably Cambridge Analytica has the best information on how
| such programming works. Or, Google/YouTube with their "What
| goes viral" algorithms.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think it's about knowing what people are interested in and
| having an algorithm that can control what people see and to try
| to nudge them to be more/less interested in certain things.
|
| Eugene Wei's article [0] helped me see how TikTok uses more of
| an interest graph, whereas many of the other platforms use more
| social graphs. By this, I think he means that TikTok cares much
| more about knowing what people are interested in than knowing
| to whom they're connected.
|
| > But what if there was a way to build an interest graph for
| you without you having to follow anyone? What if you could skip
| the long and painstaking intermediate step of assembling a
| social graph and just jump directly to the interest graph? And
| what if that could be done really quickly and cheaply at scale,
| across millions of users? And what if the algorithm that pulled
| this off could also adjust to your evolving tastes in near
| real-time, without you having to actively tune it?
|
| I think the fear is that the algorithm can be tweaked to nudge
| people towards things that the platform, or in this case, the
| CCP, want them to want.
|
| For example, if I see you watching videos about the book 1984,
| and I want you to be less interested in things that promote
| fear of a totalitarian government, and I also know that you
| feel really afraid of your home getting robbed, I can have the
| algorithm show you more videos about homes getting robbed so
| that you boost your feelings of fear of neighbors and therefore
| you may even want to have a stronger government to protect you
| from your neighbors.
|
| [0]: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-
| sorti...
| bboygravity wrote:
| can control what people see and to try to nudge them to be
| more/less interested in certain things.
|
| You mean like mainstream media has done for decades?
| hiatus wrote:
| Is mainstream media designing a user-specific content feed
| that is adjusted to your specific preferences? Your
| argument sounds similar to the one used against arguments
| of an encroaching police state: sure it has been done
| before but not at this scale or with this level of
| sophistication.
| 1_1xdev1 wrote:
| Sure, but it's much more effective when the messaging is
| targeted to an individual (or, small cohort of similar
| individuals) based on their interests (known, at a granular
| level, because of what they watch for how long etc)
|
| Mass media isn't individualized in the same way
| bioemerl wrote:
| It's a massive platform for propaganda and mass data collection
| entirely without the ability for us to regulate it in an
| effective way without entry cutting it out of China's control
| mistersquid wrote:
| > Without sensitive location data to some specific users but
| solely the young sharing memes, I wounder how CCP could use
| that data...
|
| Speculation about how adversaries might advantageously use data
| is meaningless unless coupled with policy that allows access to
| such data only with binding agreements about how that data can
| be used.
|
| As a general principle, I believe adversaries should not have
| blanket access to data of US citizens.
|
| My belief, however, is meaningless when US powers-that-be to
| date show little interest in regulating data policy with
| respect to any business, foreign or domestic.
| Kadin wrote:
| Yes, there is a private/direct messaging feature in TikTok that
| should of course be considered accessible to ByteDance, and by
| extension the Chinese government.
|
| However, that is not the only valuable information.
|
| The user behavioral profiles (which users have viewed what
| videos when, what do they engage with, what do they re-share to
| others) are valuable, particularly if you can de-anonymize them
| against account registration data. Also, the social graph of a
| big service like TT is a goldmine.
|
| Both types of information are useful whether you're doing
| traditional espionage, targeted influence operations, or mass-
| influence/propaganda.
|
| For traditional espionage, knowing what sort of content someone
| watches could give you direct insight into non-public aspects
| of their life that could be leveraged. (I.e. mental or physical
| illness, sexual interests, relationship problems, fringe
| political leanings, etc. etc.) There's a fair amount of not-
| exactly-porn but porn-adjacent stuff (and lots of
| health/wellness/lifestyle content) on TT that could give you
| leverage or at least ideas on how to approach someone if you
| wanted to convince them to pass information to you, provide
| access to something, etc.
|
| The real value is in targeted influence ops, though. Find
| someone you want to influence, or a small subset of the
| population you want to influence, and drill down to figure out
| who their 'thought leaders' / opinion-setters are within their
| social circle. Figure out what kind of media engages them. Go
| after them indirectly via their friends/colleagues/family. TT
| is demographically limited right now, so you're probably not
| changing many Senators' votes directly, but you might be able
| to get their kids, their kids' friends, their junior staffers,
| etc. thinking a particular way. Done the right way, the actual
| influence target might never even need to be messaged-to
| directly. They'd get the full social-media 'Inception'
| treatment and probably think they came up with their opinion
| organically or by being in touch with the culture.
|
| And then of course for mass-messaging/propaganda, you use the
| information in aggregate just like any big advertising company
| does, but for political ends, and without having to engage an
| actual advertising company that's going to create a tangible
| trail.
| jsdeveloper wrote:
| I will just tweak algorithm to show you more videos supporting
| a particular ideology which favors my motives. The rest your
| brain will do it yourself!
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| Spread outrage, controversy and doubt.
|
| Have a neutral mutually beneficial idea? Let's contextualize it
| as a divisive political issue that is championed by the
| political leader you hate the most.
| rvz wrote:
| Oh dear. I won't be surprised to see this being true since TikTok
| is just a worse version of Facebook/Instagram who has already
| admitted and shown evidence of them violating the privacy of its
| users [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], and its defenders are just running
| out of excuses faster than a running tap at this point.
|
| Before anyone says _' All social media companies do this'_, If
| large social networks like Facebook have been fined in the
| billions of dollars for such repeated privacy violations, then
| given the size of TikTok, you might as well agree that for TikTok
| to continue to operate in the US, it must to pay a multi-billion
| dollar fine for such repeat offenses and abuses of its user's
| privacy simply on the grounds of the size of the many users on
| the platform.
|
| [0]
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
|
| [1] https://www.scmagazine.com/news/privacy/uk-
| tiktok-16m-fine-c...
|
| [2] https://fortune.com/2022/12/22/tiktok-data-privacy-
| blunder-c...
|
| [3] https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans
|
| [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65126056
|
| [5] https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/05/08/tiktok-lgbtq/
| crmd wrote:
| In the old days, parents had an unwritten responsibility to steer
| their kids away from neighborhood kids who are a bad influence.
| Their kids aren't running around in the neighborhood any more;
| the bad influences are social media algorithms.
| jchook wrote:
| TikTok is allegedly staffed with dozens of ex-FBI, CIA, and US
| State Department officials who moderate content[1].
|
| Somehow PRISM and the closed-doors FISA court hearings, Lavabit,
| etc seem to be collectively memory-holed by USians. Nowadays
| their anxiety about state surveillance is reserved for the "CCP".
|
| 1. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-
| ru...
| j-bos wrote:
| When did USian become a thing? Or rather, what's the
| etymological path into common use?
| adultSwim wrote:
| A big push for it comes from the fact that many peoples,
| spread across two continents, identify as American. Our
| continents are the Americas.
| detaro wrote:
| Fairly sure that's an online communication thing. Wider
| geographic reach of messages + it works a lot better written
| than spoken, and it's been used at least since the early
| 2000s?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > ...seem to be collectively memory-holed by USians
|
| Because we dare have a thread where we talk about CCP
| surveillance?
|
| How can we possibly memory hole anything when people like you
| are constantly reminding us of these off-topic issues?
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > In the summer of 2021, he went straight from his top State
| Department job to become product policy manager for trust and
| safety at TikTok, a position that, on paper, he appears
| completely unqualified for. Earlier this year, Cardona left the
| company.
|
| Fascinating stuff in here. Wouldn't it be funny if the
| situation was any of these:
|
| - TikTok is some revolving-door communications center for off-
| the-record relations between USG and PRC
|
| - Your TikTok device is a node in a cluster that's being used
| for info-wars against some extraterrestrial threat as PRC and
| USG combine forces
|
| - Nah, USG just uses TikTok as a way to backdoor PRC
| djkoolaide wrote:
| The thing is, this is a pretty standard playbook for many
| intelligence-turned-civilian types. They become "consultants"
| for basically every industry. Not defending it, but it's not
| really unique to TikTok.
| lazyeye wrote:
| The article is about TikTok.
| 1101010010 wrote:
| Social media access to user data (whether foreign or domestic) is
| bad, but it is a distraction from the real evil: behavioral
| management at scale. When you can target specific demographics
| and control what they see 8-10 hours of the day, you can change
| what they think, say, do, and most importantly, how they vote.
| People are literally being programmed (euphemistically,
| "conditioned") by the specific triggers and stimuli with almost
| surgical precision, and completely unbeknownst to them. This is
| uncomfortable to recognize and discuss, so the conversation is
| sadly reduced to "China/AI is bad/evil" to further foment hate
| and division.
| wslh wrote:
| I wonder if full homomorphic encryption plus ZKP are the way to
| go and if time will prove it in this decade.
| capableweb wrote:
| > When you can target specific demographics
|
| > control what they see
|
| > People are literally being programmed [...] by the specific
| triggers
|
| I hate marketing/PR as much as the next person, but have become
| part of daily life. How do we get rid of it? Outlaw the
| practice of trying to influence people by marketing?
|
| Edit: Rereading your comment I realize you're talking about
| something else, but I guess the same applies nonetheless.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| >How do we get rid of it?
|
| Start by not letting it get its hooks in children and young
| adults.
| millzlane wrote:
| I feel like a large push from the AD council would be
| appropriate. (Not sure what the exact message would be) It
| feels like some of the largest industries rely on the masses
| being easily programmable. TV, Radio, Billboard, basically
| advertisements. Most are designed to make you give them your
| money.
|
| It's easy to spot and ignore when you realize it's happening.
| ipv6ipv4 wrote:
| > How do we get rid of it?
|
| Put down your phone.
| karmajunkie wrote:
| You get points for pithy snark, but given that the problem
| predates smartphones, this isn't likely to solve it.
| jstarfish wrote:
| No, it really is that simple.
|
| Never before has a foreign entity been able to deliver
| personalized content at the individual level. Not at this
| scale. The only way a device could get any more embedded
| would be through rectal insertion.
|
| Not every problem _can_ be solved. Sometimes the best we
| can do is mitigate.
|
| [Smart]phones are spyware in every pocket...by design.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| That solves "your" problem.
|
| It doesn't solve the problems for your democracy.
|
| We want to limit the ability of the wealthy and foreign
| nations to control the mob.
|
| We want the mob to be well adjusted, well educated,
| happy, and kind.
| burglins wrote:
| The "mob" is uneducated, stupid and prone to
| manipulation. The "mob" attacked Poland from the east in
| the XX century.
|
| We have to start treating the mob as individuals. Putting
| down the phone is tantamount to having a grasp on
| reality.
| baq wrote:
| The smartphone enables extreme personalization of the
| bamboozle. Maybe not that simple but would go a long way.
| [deleted]
| matmann2001 wrote:
| Not sure you can eliminate it, but you can certainly reduce
| the impact and scale by fighting anti-competitive behavior .
| A major reason this sort of mass manipulation is so lucrative
| and effective is because you only have operate on a couple of
| platforms to reach a majority of eyeballs.
| godelski wrote:
| How do we get rid of it?
|
| Can you get rid of it? No. Doing so would result in the loss
| of many important rights and have unintended consequences.
| Not even China can get rid of this. BUT that doesn't mean you
| can't put regulations and limitations on them.
|
| As one example, we may want to make laws that ensure that ads
| are easily recognizable as ads. I'm referencing Native
| Advertising. I want to use an example from the NYT[0] that is
| marked, to give an example of how nefarious this can actually
| be. The article itself only mentions the show once, in the
| middle, and mostly discusses women's lives in prison. It
| would not be surprising to believe that this is not an ad but
| actually a news story. It is both, but that's why it is
| nefarious. Is this ad easily recognizable? Even with the
| notice?
|
| We can talk about dark patterns (native advertising might be
| one), and prevent many of them. Not allowing for bait and
| switches. Ensuring that options are easily conveyed. I don't
| think it matters which side of the political spectrum you're
| on or many of your philosophical ideals, but tricking people
| into buying things they don't want or need is not ethical. We
| live in a specialized world and one person can't be an expert
| in everything. If the game is supercomputers and teams of
| psychologists and lawyers against individuals then I think we
| all know this is an unfair game. We have to talk about how to
| level this playing field if we want to preserve individual
| freedoms and safety.
|
| So I know this doesn't really answer your question, and the
| truth is that I don't have a good answer. I think the topic
| itself is surprisingly complicated and we need to think
| carefully about it. The path we're going down clearly isn't
| acceptable to most people. But overreacting will also be
| similarly bad. We need to have a tough social conversation
| and figure out what we want together. We have to learn, a
| lot, because this is nuanced. We have to be open to being
| wrong, with a focus on learning and improving rather than
| asserting our positions (because they are all wrong in some
| form or another). Which that might be the hardest thing of
| all, but if we can do this then we can solve a lot more
| problems. Maybe this is the great filter?
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/netflix/women-inmates-
| separ...
| bippihippi1 wrote:
| So distinguish between, you're seeing this content because
| a company paid us to show it to users like you, and because
| users like you watch similar things. what if someone pays
| to have similar users be shown things that give a certain
| impression? the advertiser didn't create the content or
| even choose what content, is it an ad?
|
| how would you enforce that? without open sourcing it you'd
| have no way of knowing why a thing was recommended. giving
| access only to the government is not possible.
| karmajunkie wrote:
| While i think these are ideas worth considering, what I
| think is the answer is perhaps staring us in the face: put
| regulatory limits on the amount and kind of data that apps
| and websites can collect.
|
| The real problem with tiktok is not the CCP; it seems
| likely in my mind that our own government has equally
| nefarious techniques at play in other countries, and I
| think its unfair to single out a single company over this
| or any other behavior that is otherwise legal.
|
| So cut them off at the knees--make the behavior of tiktok
| _illegal_ , for them and for any other of the thousands of
| companies doing basically the same thing. Pointedly i mean
| the extra-application data collection, cross-checking with
| third-party data miners (which _should_ be illegal
| already), and the sorts of things we 've just become
| accustomed to being par for the course.
| godelski wrote:
| > put regulatory limits on the amount and kind of data
| that apps and websites can collect.
|
| Yeah, I would be in full support of this. I think there's
| a double edged sword that people are playing with and
| don't see the other edge. Any data that you use to
| control your population can also be used by an adversary
| for the same purpose. The same is true about encryption.
| We have two competing forces in our own government. Blue
| team and red teams. But we know red team gets a lot more
| money and is a lot flashier. Focusing all on red team is
| fun and exciting but makes you a glass cannon.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| You would have to make it illegal to show different
| content to different users. Get rid of "the algorithm"
| and every website becomes a simple catalog of content.
|
| I also think if you do any moderation of content, you
| lose your "common carrier" status and become a publisher,
| responsible for any content you publish.
| smokelegend wrote:
| Thought experiment,
|
| Anyone every consider making a social media site/app like
| fb, tiktok, insta, twitter, where the user can control
| the algo, and or have sum input of the algo, in so much
| that the user can "control" what they see, still have ads
| [company gets paid] but the user can control those ads to
| a certain degree...[sort of like brave browser][but for
| social media]
|
| Just wondering, not saying data collection is good, but
| perhaps, if it were more transparent and interactive,
| people would be more accepting to using and capitalizing
| on their own data. Value for value, the user gets to
| decide what data to share, and the company gets to push
| ads based on known algorithm unique to each user's
| approved data metrics... perhaps this already exists???
|
| Is this a pipedream? Or a yes, yes, "if you build it,
| they will come" life changing moment? I need to know, it
| is important I change my outfit if it's the latter,
| athletic shorts and a tshirt, (in my opinion) don't
| convene much confidence when shopping around for angel
| investors... ;)
| whitemary wrote:
| > _Outlaw the practice of trying to influence people by
| marketing?_
|
| If and when that is an option, yes definitely. What are we
| waiting for? And how is this even up for discussion?
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Correct. The other issue is to not develop pro-CCP rhetoric out
| of this false dichotomy too. It's all just varying degrees of
| social pollution created by some propagandists.
| quadcore wrote:
| It may be new to the extend it's hyper centralized indeed.
| paulcole wrote:
| If you're an adult watching TikTok 8-10 hours a day that's on
| you to fix. When I was at my "peak", I was watching 2-3 hours a
| day and that felt like a lot.
|
| If a kid is watching TikTok 8-10 hours a day, that's on the
| parents to fix.
|
| This is like the hot dog man meme. "Who's responsible for
| this?" Ultimately you are in control of your eyeballs and your
| time. Stop watching!
|
| Or not. TikTok is awesome. Watch it 8-10 hours a day if you
| want.
| hiatus wrote:
| > Ultimately you are in control of your eyeballs and your
| time. Stop watching!
|
| There are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars
| whose sole job is to get you locked into a feedback loop in
| these apps. We are engineering addiction.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| Why would TikTok or FaceBook not engineer addiction? It
| generates more money for them. If they don't engineer
| addiction, another company will emerge and engineer
| addiction.
|
| I think this type of problem has to be solved by the
| government.
| hiatus wrote:
| My point was, my parent was in a sense blaming the victim
| for not peeling their eyes away from the screen when
| literally millions of dollars of thought and effort went
| into making sure that they don't.
|
| I agree that in the absence of direct negative
| consequences it seems unlikely we will see a change in
| the status quo.
| paulcole wrote:
| No, to be clear I wasn't "in a sense" blaming the victim.
| I'm directly blaming anyone who hates their relationship
| with TikTok and leaves the app on their phone and
| continues to watch it.
| Joeri wrote:
| Should all addictive products be allowed? When does such
| a product deserve being regulated or outlawed?
| jstarfish wrote:
| You regulate or outlaw products when they negatively
| impact self or public health or safety.
|
| There's a brief scene on Bojack Horseman involving a
| commercial for some chicken product. In it, a kid yells
| at his parents "I don't want to go to school, I want
| Chicken-4-Dayz!"
|
| Some kids are badly-behaved. They get a lot of validation
| and reinforcement of their behavior from these platforms,
| especially since any disciplinary misstep by a parent
| invites CPS visits. But we should ask why products like
| "Chicken-4-Dayz" influence children to reject _their own
| actual needs_ and tone that shit down.
|
| I hear a lot of stories from teachers about teenage boys
| coming to school exhausted beyond functioning. Child
| labor abuses from working extra shifts at the factory?
| No. They're up all night all week playing Call of Duty.
|
| When people opt to consume a product instead of doing the
| things they need to do to survive past their consumption,
| it's addiction. All controlled substances have this
| trait. Given an infinite supply of amphetamines, most
| people will dehydrate or starve to death.
| paulcole wrote:
| Reminds me of the famous saying,
|
| > I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
| whitemary wrote:
| The addiction is a side effect of a society built on
| exploitation. In other words, capitalism is literally the
| problem.
| hiatus wrote:
| Does addiction exist in non-capitalist countries? Could
| you expand because I'm not sure if I understood the point
| you're making.
| UberFly wrote:
| It's also OK to go after the shady character spending all its
| effort manipulating and spying. I get lots of things do their
| best to do this, but this is the CCP in your living room.
| There should be a line somewhere.
| paulcole wrote:
| OK but if you don't want the shady character in your living
| room, don't let them in. Don't complain when somebody else
| doesn't close the door you left wide open.
| throwaway4575 wrote:
| If your democracy can be thwarted by free speech from a bad
| actor, then your democracy is shit.
| useEffect wrote:
| Highly recommend reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism on
| this topic
| makach wrote:
| how does this differ from newspapers, books and the spoken
| word?
| wolpoli wrote:
| For newspapers, it was relatively easy to see and compare the
| content of the different papers side by side.
|
| I am not sure how I would jump out of my social media news
| bubble.
| millzlane wrote:
| You have to actively seek it out, or be told about it. Rather
| than it being presented in your face the moment you wake up
| out of bed. Referring to folks so addicted it's the first
| thing they grab, see all the notifications, and are back at
| it by morning time.
| smeej wrote:
| Newspapers aren't nearly as effective at keeping attention
| indefinitely/at every opportunity, nor at controlling what
| you read next.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Fox news seems to have done a pretty good job of this in
| the US
| vosper wrote:
| Fox News isn't a newspaper
| robocat wrote:
| Presumably most viewers have chosen that echo chamber, so
| it really isn't the same to compare it.
|
| Also Fox News has only a few million viewers each night
| e.g. "Fox News Channel coasted to an easy win in prime
| time Monday night, delivering an average total audience
| of 2.351 million viewers".
| akudha wrote:
| Reach, cost and effectiveness. Newspapers can't follow you
| around like social networking sites do. A handful of
| Twitter/FB accounts can do an amount of damage that
| newspapers can only dream of.
|
| None of which is to say newspapers are great. After all,
| Murdoch honed his skills in print media first. Just that they
| are nowhere near as effective as online
| RobotToaster wrote:
| A newspaper owner, William Randolph Hearst, once _started a
| war_ with Spain.
| akudha wrote:
| Yes I know, that's why I mentioned Murdoch. He honed his
| villainy in print, before moving to TV and internet.
| kortilla wrote:
| Newspapers don't modify what I see in the next 60 seconds
| based on my response to the previous paragraph.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It doesn't. "Propaganda" is a western word for any argument
| coming from the eastern enemies of the state, and
| "Brainwashing" is a western word for being convinced by them.
|
| The way we control behavior is by depriving people of
| unfiltered information, not showing them cat videos and
| remembering if they liked them.
| laratied wrote:
| [dead]
| jknoepfler wrote:
| The modern sense of the word "propaganda" emerged during
| the first World War to describe information deliberately
| disseminated to influence political opinion. I'm pretty
| sure that's still what people mean when they use the word.
|
| Usage then and now also conveys a sense of purposeful
| distortion or fabrication.
| bostik wrote:
| Not everywhere, which is a good thing.
|
| A year ago I saw (and thoroughly enjoyed) an exhibition of
| 80's arts posters in Spain. What struck me were the
| description labels, and especially the terminology used.
| Where the English part described something as
| "advertising", the Spanish descriptions unashamedly used
| the word "propaganda".
|
| Let's not fool ourselves. The mechanisms of advertising
| have been lifted, adapted and further weaponised from war-
| time propaganda, or as we'd call them these days, influence
| operations.
| narag wrote:
| _...the Spanish descriptions unashamedly used the word
| "propaganda"_
|
| That's not what you think. At the time it was common to
| use that word instead of _publicidad_ to mean
| advertising. From Latin propaganda just means it 's made
| to be propagated, similar to addenda, Amanda or Miranda.
|
| Now it's limited to politics in Spanish too. People
| working with ads didn't like the connotations of the
| term, understandably :)
| sigg3 wrote:
| They don't directly tickle the reward center of the brain
| like social media does, cf. e.g. "Brain anatomy alterations
| associated with Social Networking Site (SNS) addiction" [0].
|
| This is by design, btw, cf. e.g. "Digital Madness: How Social
| Media Is Driving Our Mental Health Crisis--and How to Restore
| Our Sanity " [1]; not itself a primary source but it seems to
| be well received.
|
| My point being, it's like cigarettes with a message. The
| message being divisive in all likelihood, in order to
| override rationality with emotion and increase engagement.
| [2]
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5362930/
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Madness-Driving-Crisis-
| Restor...
|
| [2] How social media shapes polarization: https://drive.googl
| e.com/file/d/1cHDXsRpzZ84svIv5L-7tfnOvJ-p...
| electrondood wrote:
| This is exactly what Russia did in the 2016 U.S. presidential
| campaign. The Trump campaign gave voter polling data to
| Konstatin Kilimnik. Russia then proceeded to exploit Facebook
| to target swing voters, and Trump won because of 80k voters
| across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That is one of thousands of reasons, yes.
| throwaway038519 wrote:
| Regarding your comment about behavioral management at scale.
| Carl Sagan once said: "If we've been bamboozled long enough, we
| tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer
| interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured
| us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves,
| that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over
| you, you almost never get it back."
|
| It would be interesting to know if this were true in that case.
| lazystar wrote:
| In other words, cognitive dissonance.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
| klabb3 wrote:
| This is pretty much Plato's cave. But yeah, it seems to be
| absolutely true.
| syndacks wrote:
| Not sure Plato's cave applies here.
| whitemary wrote:
| Your understanding of the meaning of Plato's cave is
| questionable.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| FOX news and CNN don't change what people think/how they vote?
| Garvi wrote:
| When you hear something outrageous on FOX or CNN, you yell
| "bullshit" at the TV. When you read the same thing on
| Facebook and see 20 of your friends positively interacting
| with the news story and showing their approval, you remain
| quiet at best, join the lunacy at worst. What you don't see
| is the three shadowbanned accounts explaining why it's
| lunacy.
| mkhpalm wrote:
| There is a famous psychological experiment done by Solomon
| Asch (Asch Conformity) that demonstrates this behavior.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| If the last decade has taught us anything, it is that a lot
| of people will not "yell bullshit at the TV".
| jstarfish wrote:
| Most people will read a room and refrain from sharing
| politically-unpopular opinions that invite public and
| private retribution from a deranged mob.
|
| Silence is not implied agreement. What the internet
| masses say is popular and what people actually vote for
| are two very different things.
| echelon wrote:
| How much traction could a lawsuit against Reddit, Twitter,
| etc. have against the practice of banning or shadowbanning?
|
| If a user could show good faith participation, could they
| claim they've been prohibited from exercising freedom of
| expression in a public forum?
|
| Suppose someone was banned from a subreddit for their
| particular hobby or, worse, city or region. This might be
| the single biggest forum for that person to address their
| neighbors and peers, and banning could prohibit their
| ability to find work, housing, opportunities, etc.
|
| Moderators often ban users on a whim. Sometimes they ban
| users for merely commenting on other items or subreddits
| that they deem "wrong", and this practice is often
| automated.
|
| If you can't sue Reddit, could you sue the moderators?
| mplewis wrote:
| Are you talking about the First Amendment?
| echelon wrote:
| Yes. How close are these platforms to being de facto
| public squares?
|
| If you're banned from /r/sanfrancisco etc., what do you
| do? Your voice and ability to participate in the
| community has been blinded and muffled.
|
| Reddit and Twitter are bigger than Reddit and Twitter. If
| you're banned, you have less of an ability to participate
| in modern life. Events, jobs, commentary, and more are
| gone. There is no alternative, because platforms Hoover
| up as much as they possibly can.
|
| Ideally these platforms would be protocols, but in the
| meantime the common carriers that operate them should be
| held to preserving accessibility.
|
| Moderation isn't easy. It should probably be an order of
| magnitude more expensive than it already is so that
| safeguards against "personhood erasure" can be put in
| place.
|
| You don't want racists, trolls, and bigots spouting hate
| speech, but you also need to keep the lines open for when
| these individuals are behaving. Because the pendulum
| swings and sometimes you find yourself on the other side
| of the censorship zeitgeist.
|
| Perfectly salient thoughts and people can be memory
| holed. And that's not just a possibility - it's happening
| right now.
| notacoward wrote:
| One of many reasons why shadowbanning is bad and outdated
| practice.
| brainphreeze wrote:
| They're all doing it. Big tech, social media, left/right.
| whitemary wrote:
| There is no left in the US
| xienze wrote:
| _rolling eyes emoji_
|
| Yes, as has been pointed out countless times, the US left
| would be considered further right than the Nazi party to
| all you enlightened Europeans. We know, we get it.
| Doesn't change the fact that there is something called
| left wing politics in the US, and it's considerably
| different from right wing politics in the US.
| DirkH wrote:
| Whataboutism
| noptd wrote:
| As if that's relevant or excuses this behavior.
| warning26 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that FOX and CNN are good things? If it's
| possible, I'd say we should ban anything working in this way.
| alehlopeh wrote:
| Yeah totally possible. We're deciding this right here on
| this thread.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| But they're domestic companies whose staff members, all the
| way up to the owners and CEOs, are not under threat of
| disappearance by the totalitarian regime of a hostile
| state...
| hotpotamus wrote:
| > If Fox News had a DNA test, it would trace its origins to
| the Nixon administration. In 1970, political consultant Roger
| Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a
| new TV network that would circumvent existing media and
| provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People
| are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television
| you just sit -- watch -- listen. The thinking is done for
| you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters
| needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a
| brutal, vicious attack on the opposition."
|
| https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| FOX and CNN are at least held to a higher standard. We need
| to apply those same standards to the internet.
|
| If they tell an outrageous lie on CNN they can be sued.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is literally just the anti-China "brainwashing" propaganda
| warmed up for a new paranoid generation. I used to collect John
| Birch and anti-communist publications from the 50s for their
| histrionic historical value, but now I'm thinking I should
| start reprinting them and changing the dates. Both Democrats
| and Republicans would eat it up.
|
| edit: somehow Cambridge Analytica's bullshit marketing material
| combined with _The Manchurian Candidate_ in the boomer mind.
|
| -----
|
| edit: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-
| brainwashi...
|
| > "The basic problem that brainwashing is designed to address
| is the question 'why would anybody become a Communist?'" says
| Timothy Melley, professor of English at Miami University and
| author of The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National
| Security State. "[Brainwashing] is a story that we tell to
| explain something we can't otherwise explain."
|
| > The term had multiple definitions that changed depending on
| who used it. For Hunter--who turned out to be an agent in the
| CIA's propaganda wing--it was a mystical, Oriental practice
| that couldn't be understood or anticipated by the West, Melley
| says. But for scientists who actually studied the American POWs
| once they returned from Korea, brainwashing was altogether less
| mysterious than the readily apparent outcome: The men had been
| tortured.
|
| > [...]
|
| > Meanwhile, the American public was still wrapped up in
| fantasies of hypnotic brainwashing, in part due to the research
| of pop psychologists like Joost Meerloo and William Sargant.
| Unlike Lifton and the other researchers hired by the military,
| these two men portrayed themselves as public intellectuals and
| drew parallels between brainwashing and tactics used by both
| American marketers and Communist propagandists. Meerloo
| believes that "totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany and the
| Soviet Union or Communist China were in the past, and continue
| to be, quite successful in their thought-control programs...
| [and] the more recently available techniques of influence and
| thought control are more securely based on scientific fact,
| more potent and more subtle," writes psychoanalyst Edgar Schein
| in a 1959 review of Meerloo's book, The Rape of the Mind: The
| Psychology of Thought Control--Menticide and Brainwashing.
| slim wrote:
| Furthermore you can target specific persons : heads of states,
| gov personnel, parliament representatives,... and their
| families, friends. You can get them "conditioned", you can
| drive them to commit errors for the purpose of black mailing
| them, etc...
| codedokode wrote:
| This is not something new. History shows that when the
| government controls the media, it can control people's opinions
| and beliefs. The only difference is that now the control over
| TikTok users' minds is not in the hands of US Government and
| that's why they are unhappy.
| brandall10 wrote:
| The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis is a great doc on how
| this took shape in the early 20th century; its primary focus
| was the double nephew of Sigmund Freud who invented public
| relations and was a powerful political consultant for many US
| administrations.
|
| One of his main areas of research was using media as a tool
| for crowd control... he had a somewhat noble viewpoint about
| it, believing that large crowds by nature devolved into
| anarchy: "Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the
| modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends
| and help to bring order out of chaos".
| bequanna wrote:
| Of course they did!
|
| The CCP requires a back door like this for all businesses
| operating in China.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I know there's a legitimate, serious discussion to be had here,
| but anecdotally all of my TikTok stream is cooking and memes.
|
| I'm pretty sure that's based on my viewing habits, because I love
| cooking and memes, but it does make these serious claims humorous
| at times.
| kunalgupta wrote:
| All i get is the meme of Biden and Trump making beats, I don't
| hate it though
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Yu is a former engineering lead for ByteDance in the US who
| worked at the company between 2017 and 2018.
|
| This seems like an outrage bait lawsuit. The facts in the case
| are five years out of date, ByteDance has been through the
| wringer in the ensuing years and there's no evidence that this
| backdoor exists in the current app.
| lazyeye wrote:
| There's a ton of evidence that the TikTok app is used for
| tracking and to assume the CCP doesnt have access to a huge
| trove of personal data from its primary geo-strategic
| competitor is ridiculouly naive.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The lawsuit isn't about tracking users. Pretty much every
| social media app tracks users, that's how surveillance
| capitalism works.
|
| The lawsuit is also not about whether China has access to US
| citizens' information. And even if it was, why should I, as a
| US citizen, worry about that? They can't put me in jail or
| fire me. If you're an American, you should be worried about
| what the US government knows about you.
|
| Anyways, the lawsuit is about an alleged backdoor. I can't
| see how the plaintiff could know what present day code
| they're running, and I can't see why they waited so long to
| report it.
| mullingitover wrote:
| The lawsuit isn't really even about backdoors or tracking,
| it's for wrongful termination. When I say it's outrage
| bait, I mean it's making explosive allegations that
| ByteDance would really prefer not to deal with right now.
| It feels like a legal move calculated to pressure the
| company into a quiet and generous settlement.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| It's a former employee trying to extract a settlement from a
| company that is currently vulnerable these sorts of
| accusations.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| I would be extremely surprised if a state-actor like China
| couldn't access most US company data at will. If you can invest
| several billions and have thousands of people working to create a
| breach, no company is safe, not even AWS or Microsoft.
|
| In this case, that's even way easier, the company is Chinese, the
| CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something unexpected?
|
| I'm much more concerned by the laziness of most western
| governments in understanding if this was a threat or not.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > the laziness of most western governments in understanding if
| this was a threat or not
|
| I think USA recognized the threat very early on. It's been a
| hot-button topic for several years. Remember when the Trump
| administration tried to force a sale of ByteDance's USA
| operations to Microsoft? And even now the apps and services are
| blocked on US government devices and networks. And even at a
| lot of public universities. The concern is there. I don't think
| it's laziness.
| badrabbit wrote:
| It doesn't even have to be a state actor but it isn't as simple
| as "at will" a compromise requires effort and resources and
| discovery would be attributed back to the actor. Willful access
| has none of that problem.
| Kadin wrote:
| The Chinese government, like the US government or any other
| large national government, is not monolithic.
|
| Having information available for easy perusal via a commercial
| channel (which is potentially not even illegal) is very
| different from having information accessible via use of
| national-asset intelligence capabilities. Information which can
| only be obtained the second way is almost certainly going to
| receive different treatment than the first.
|
| There is value in making information more difficult (and more
| illegal, and less socially and politically acceptable) to
| access, even if that control is not 100% effective or if there
| are still ways of getting around it.
|
| Increasing the friction involved in accessing personal
| information is an imperfect win, but a win nonetheless.
|
| For most users of commercial software, your system _is_
| penetrable and should be considered insecure against a nation-
| state level attacker willing to spend a 0-day on getting in.
| But that doesn 't mean you should just leave everything hanging
| out in the open where any doofus can get to it, or voluntarily
| hand your information over to an unfriendly government's
| partner corporation. At least make them _work_ for it.
| nova22033 wrote:
| _The Chinese government, like the US government or any other
| large national government, is not monolithic._
|
| In what meaningful way does one part of the Chinese
| government differ from another part of the Chinese
| government? Isn't Xi basically the supreme leader for life
| now?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Isn't that something that would be better to look up than
| to make up?
| orbz wrote:
| Even assuming he is the supreme leader, he can't be
| everywhere, know everything and oversee all aspects of the
| regime.
|
| Every sufficiently large organization, such as a
| government, has delegated areas of responsibility to
| various sub organizations. Those scopes will have varying
| overlap with other sub organizations, where it will result
| in political battles. It is more like competing
| microservices than monolith.
| peyton wrote:
| Nah they a couple different factions. Shanghai is different
| from Beijing for example.
| quandrum wrote:
| Xi is head of state as president, but not head of
| government (like King of England).
|
| Li Qiang is head of government as premier and is chief
| executive of the Chinese government.
|
| If you ask a Chinese citizen what their biggest problem is,
| many of them would say too much federalism. Individual
| provinces have more individual authority than even US
| States and most controversial policies (1 child, social
| credit, lockdowns) you hear about are provincial and not
| federal policies.
| muglug wrote:
| > If you ask a Chinese citizen what their biggest problem
| is, many of them would say too much federalism.
|
| Presumably that's because protesting against the central
| government endangers not just your own livelihood but
| also the livelihoods of your relatives. Much safer to
| criticise the region next door.
| whitemary wrote:
| > _Presumably_
|
| I for one appreciate the self-awareness
| janalsncm wrote:
| This logic doesn't pass the smell test. It's not any less
| illegal to protest your regional government than the
| central Chinese government.
| roywiggins wrote:
| There was (is?) a whole thing where local governments
| would kidnap people trying to petition the central
| government to crack down on some local government
| wrongdoing.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/world/asia/chinese-
| petiti...
| muglug wrote:
| Yeah, but it's easier to complain about a _different_
| region 's government.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| > If you ask a Chinese citizen what their biggest problem
| is, many of them would say too much federalism
|
| That's also what Xi would say.
| EntrePrescott wrote:
| > Xi is head of state as president, but not head of
| government (like King of England).
|
| Uhm: the king of England (which incidentally happens to
| be king of quite a number of other territories that have
| yet to fully emancipate themselves from monarchy) is NOT
| the head of government in any of the the territories he
| is king of, but merely the head of state... which in
| constitutional monarchies is a rather formal show pomp
| role with very little political power. Conversely, the
| head of government in the UK with actual executive power
| is the Prime Minister, not the king.
| berjin wrote:
| Even if the tech is secure there are still thousands of foreign
| employees working in those companies. It's not uncommon for
| people to be sympathisers of their homeland. And it's not
| symmetrical since very few westerners work for Alibaba, Huawei
| etc.
| samstave wrote:
| Imagine the worms put on phones of employees of various tech
| companies - specifically datacenter employees in various
| commerical and government agencies - recall the STRAVA scandal
| which revealed secret military bases...
|
| The TikTok angle is like stuxnet for that type of corporate/gov
| espionage....
|
| Its ludicris how poorly the USG has handled this.
|
| But then again, you have so many people in congress with dual
| citizenship (which should be illegal and a capital crime IMO)
|
| but then look at the spouses of lawmakers, their investments,
| their citizenship, their network ranking over the time their
| spouce was in congress, and their kids...
|
| FFS we are still arguing over Biden's ties to money laundering
| in Ukraine and China, but we dont talk about the GOAT of
| grifters ; Mitch McConnell?
|
| the CCP has more backdoors into the USG than they do with just
| TikTok ... and lets not even talk about Israel's backdoors
| which are actually a front-door-fire-hose.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you want dual citizens to be ineligible for congress then
| just do that, it doesn't have to be a crime...
| samstave wrote:
| [flagged]
| Kadin wrote:
| The US government is and has always been reactive, not
| proactive.
|
| About the most forward-thinking the US gets is writing the
| occasional contingency plan. Everything else is done in haste
| once a serious problem becomes plainly obvious to everyone,
| and people (deep-pocketed ones especially) start screaming to
| their elected representatives to _fucking do something about
| it_. Then and only then do the gears start to turn.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > the CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something
| unexpected
|
| Oh it is completely expected.
|
| People have been warning about TikTok for years, and yet those
| people get called crazy.
|
| The US should have taken action against them years ago.
|
| We can still fix the issue now though, by creating a targeted
| law against them.
| Kadin wrote:
| > We can still fix the issue now though, by creating a
| targeted law against them.
|
| That's not a great idea, since it will invite a lawsuit on
| the (potentially valid) grounds that it's a de facto bill of
| attainder. Which the US has traditionally taken a dim view on
| for very good reasons.
|
| Better would be if it prompted a more general law about
| foreign ownership of corporations which have access to large
| amounts of information on US persons, regardless of how it is
| obtained or who they are.
|
| As a US citizen, I don't want any government that I don't
| have input into -- even the relatively indirect and less-
| than-satisfying input of casting one vote among millions --
| compiling a dossier on me, and I expect my government to do
| what it can to make that at least _somewhat_ difficult. (And
| yes, I am aware there is no way to stop it completely. If the
| Chinese government wants to task its intelligence service to
| compile a dossier on me, there 's nothing much that can be
| done about it. But let's at least try to raise the bar on the
| difficulty and effort involved. The more difficult and
| expensive, the more illegal, and the more internationally
| frowned-upon the task becomes, the harder it is to do at
| scale to millions or billions of people at once.)
| stale2002 wrote:
| > a more general law about foreign ownership of
| corporations
|
| Sure make it targeted against large scale companies owned
| by china, or "owned by countries on this specific
| government list, which happens to only include china and a
| few of our other enemies, like Russia".
|
| Same thing, and we are more than able to get away with it,
| even though it is basically just targeted at TikTok.
| lazyeye wrote:
| I dont know why it has to be complicated.
|
| Just block all apps from countries that already block all
| yours.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Didn't that seem to be the purpose of tiktok to begin with?
| burnished wrote:
| I think their repeat public position was that the CCP could not
| have law access and did not have access. I don't think anyone
| believed it, but still
| Haga wrote:
| [dead]
| pydry wrote:
| I would have been unsurprised if the US government hadn't
| already forced them to host with Oracle a year or two ago
| supposedly to prevent exactly this from happening.
|
| Is Larry Ellison a Chinese spy? He would probably have to
| either be complicit or criminally negligent to allow this to
| happen given he was given the contract _precisely_ for this
| reason.
|
| I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about
| American chips being hacked that turned out to be entirely
| fabricated.
|
| And US insistence that "dumb" 5g aerials already vetted by
| national security agencies had to be banned (along with kit
| that was absolutely a legitimate risk) because they could
| potentially possibly harbor listening devices maybe.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| > I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about
| American chips being hacked that turned out to be entirely
| fabricated.
|
| Bloomberg, not WSJ.
| Kadin wrote:
| Forcing ByteDance to host the data in the US, on Oracle's
| servers or anyone else's, doesn't mean a lot if there are a
| bunch of people in China with the login to those servers. Who
| has access to the data and the various administrative
| controls over it are more important than where it physically
| resides.
|
| ByteDance has claimed that their US operations were
| administratively firewalled from their Chinese ones, and then
| it's been repeatedly shown not to be the case. At this point
| they have lost all credibility about their ability to
| 'firewall' or internally control access to user data,
| probably because they (or certain parts of the company) don't
| really want to.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about
| American chips being hacked
|
| Unless there is hard proof of anything I always assume news
| like these is the usual suspects warmongering.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Hosting with oracle doesn't change a thing. Just because the
| data would be on US servers don't stop the data from being
| accessible from outside of the region.
|
| And is it really that hard to imagine a world where a hostile
| and ambitious nation would seek to leverage a technology
| platform to listen to sensitive conversations? The US has
| done it in the past and you better believe China will be
| doing it too.
| pydry wrote:
| >Hosting with oracle doesn't change a thing
|
| So when the US government made a song and dance 18 months
| ago about why it was absolutely _critical_ that it be done
| to protect against _exactly_ this threat you think they
| were lying or staggeringly incompetent?
|
| And this time they're totally not?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I thought it was a pretty dumb measure.
|
| What do you mean "this time"? I just see a personal
| lawsuit?
|
| But if the government _did_ say the chinese government
| still has access, I don 't think there would be much
| reason to disbelieve them. If the government claims there
| is a problem, and then a (possibly halfassed) attempt to
| fix it happens, and then the government claims the
| problem still exists... there is some credibility lost on
| the "fixing" front but the "problem exists" front is
| likely still credible. Especially if the different parts
| of that saga are coming from different parts of the
| government.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| It's better than not hosting the data in friendly or
| neutral turf, but you're trusting a U.S. company (Oracle)
| to somehow some way mitigate Chinese surveillance and
| algorithmic manipulation.
|
| Erecting an industrial complex dedicated to a poorly-
| defined and probably impossible anti-China mission on a
| Chinese-controlled platform, run by entities that
| salivate at Chinese $$$, doesn't seem like the best idea.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _I would have been unsurprised if the US government hadn 't
| already forced them to host with Oracle a year or two ago
| supposedly to prevent exactly this from happening._
|
| The allegations are from 2017-18 when the guy was fired. The
| migration of user data was last year, but it is not like they
| are disconnected from China
|
| _I 'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about
| American chips being hacked that turned out to be entirely
| fabricated._
|
| It was a 2018 Bloomberg story. Bloomberg still refuses to
| admit they were wrong, and doubled down in 2021. That no
| "tiny chips" have turned up yet should be near definitive
| proof that story was bogus.
| lazyeye wrote:
| The article is talking about the Chinese govt.
| oblak wrote:
| Has anyone noticed that at least 99% of any "news", forum posts,
| etc. containing "CCP" are pure regurgitated political garbage? It
| cannot be just bots and psy ops. Real people do this sort of
| thing, too. Quite impressive how an entire population has been
| whipped into parroting this crap while pointing the finger. It
| wish it was funny but it isn't.
| awestroke wrote:
| In what way is this article "political garbage"? Did you even
| read it?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > how an entire population has been whipped into parroting this
| crap
|
| It's not organic. Fairly apolitical people are being tricked
| into passively supporting it by the media illusion that it's an
| overwhelming consensus.
| ok123456 wrote:
| [flagged]
| baby wrote:
| Well, it's probably because they don't call themselves CCP or
| CPC but Zhong Guo Gong Chan Dang
| ok123456 wrote:
| Yes in Chinese. CPC is their preferred initialism in
| English.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Even if they didn't have an _official_ backdoor, they would have
| many backdoors by just placing people on staff (getting them
| hired in the normal way.) You can 't stop state intelligence
| agencies from getting into any domestic data that they want, even
| with law (which they can just ignore.) Social media is full of
| 'ex-'state intelligence operatives, and objections to that
| situation are made out to be bizarre, or even _banned from
| discussion on these same social networks._
|
| As far as I can tell, what we're supposed to think is that
| managing a social network, or any communications service, is
| within the same field as covert intelligence and surveillance, so
| of course that would be the hiring pool.
|
| Non-Chinese have little to fear from Chinese government
| monitoring of their activity on TikTok. Chinese people know their
| government (which _openly_ censors, rather than laundering their
| censorship through covert means like the Five Eyes), and know how
| to act to keep safe.
| blululu wrote:
| People have plenty to fear from state surveillance regardless
| of their nationality. The Indian Army had their troop movements
| monitored by the PLA via TikTok data during a recent conflict,
| so please don't pretend that this is merely an abstract fear.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If the Indian Army, in the midst of secret movements, is
| accessing social networks through their phones, everybody
| knows where they are and they are incompetent. Please don't
| pretend the problems of a military force playing on social
| networks are in any way related to normal people's problems.
| Ban TikTok from nuclear submarines, too, but I don't know why
| you would allow any other social network service on there
| either. I could be running it myself and sending all of your
| information to the Chinese government.
| bsder wrote:
| > Non-Chinese have little to fear from Chinese government
| monitoring of their activity on TikTok. Chinese people know
| their government (which openly censors, rather than laundering
| their censorship through covert means like the Five Eyes), and
| know how to act to keep safe.
|
| This is so laughable that I don't even know where to start.
|
| How many Chinese individuals got busted for "corruption"
| because the Chinese Communist Party told people down the line
| to "do something" and conspicuous social media posters were
| easy targets? How many Chinese got busted for posting something
| that happened to contradict the party narrative about Covid?
|
| Even if a Chinese citizen understands how to act right now in
| the moment (and I don't even concede that), when Dear Leader
| decides to change the standards you can easily wind up on the
| wrong side of "proper and correct" with a nice big trail to
| justify shutting off your social credit.
|
| Surveillance is bad and evil and a threat. Period. It doesn't
| matter which government is doing it.
| sigy wrote:
| This should surpise no one.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Who uses TikTok for sensitive information? Government access to
| TikTok user data is of limited additional value compared to
| whatever TikTok sells to large advertisers and analytics
| partners.
| partiallypro wrote:
| When you couple this with the fact that China had secret police
| stations in the US trying to capture Chinese dissidents, you
| could use such data to track those people to kidnap them,
| regardless of if the information was sensitive on the app or
| not.
| xtian wrote:
| > China had secret police stations in the US trying to
| capture Chinese dissidents
|
| What's the evidence for this?
| partiallypro wrote:
| The recent busts in multiple countries, including one
| prominent one in New York City?
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-
| police-s...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-
| arrests-2-on-c...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65537553.amp
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-police-service-
| cente...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/explainer-
| chin...
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/beijing-s-long-
| ar...
| xtian wrote:
| I know there are about a billion articles in Western
| media claiming this, but what's the actual evidence?
| skdk wrote:
| Uh the FBI arrested people, evidence will come out in
| trials. What's the point of your comment?
| l3mure wrote:
| The FBI has arrested a lot of people under anti-China
| initiatives in the past few years, and most of the cases
| have been quietly dropped.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| How are any of those cases meaningfully similar to the
| cases about China's US neo-police units?
| l3mure wrote:
| > U.S. Asks to Drop Case Accusing N.Y.P.D. Officer of
| Spying for China
|
| > The charges against Officer Angwang came amid growing
| concern on the part of law enforcement authorities in the
| United States and other Western countries about Beijing's
| efforts to monitor Chinese nationals abroad, including
| dissidents.
|
| > Prosecutors cited recorded phone calls in charging
| Officer Angwang and said he had reported regularly to two
| Chinese consular officials in New York on the activities
| of ethnic Tibetans. One of the officials was responsible
| for "neutralizing sources of potential opposition to the
| policies and authority" opposed to the Chinese
| government's policies and authority, court filings said.
|
| > But Mr. Carman, Officer Angwang's lawyer, argued that
| the conversations described by prosecutors as "nefarious"
| were actually "pedestrian" efforts by his client to
| maintain good relations with Chinese officials so that he
| could obtain a visa to visit his parents in China and to
| introduce them to his daughter.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/nyregion/nypd-officer-
| chi...
| threeseed wrote:
| You know that it isn't just the FBI.
|
| It's multiple countries that have had issues with them
| e.g. Australia, Canada, Ireland.
|
| And I personally know of students here in Australia who
| have been targeted by the Chinese consulate for
| participating in pro-Taiwan and pro-HK protests. So the
| idea that they wouldn't apply this technique to people of
| all ages isn't far-fetched.
| xtian wrote:
| Is this the threshold of credulity now for extraordinary
| claims? The authorities arrested people so they must have
| done something wrong? This way of thinking seems fraught
| historically.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This is like saying "When you couple 30 seconds of girls
| dancing with assault rifles, it could kill you."
|
| China policing emigres in the US is way out of bounds and I
| dare you to find anyone who thinks otherwise. Whereas posting
| on _any_ social media and expecting that post to not be seen
| by foreign adversaries is... what?
| penjelly wrote:
| us military uses tiktok for fun from what ive seen.
| https://www.tiktok.com/search?q=military&t=1683997954279
|
| i know these probably just look like "fun videos" and most are
| likely of no consequence, but my guess is _some_ of the
| military footage submitted on there is recent and potentially
| not in the interest of US national defense.
| Zigurd wrote:
| That's what goes into an honest appraisal of an attack
| surface: What's the value of gaining that data?
| penjelly wrote:
| the value of china gaining that info is immeasurable.
| specifically, what im saying we are underestimating the
| amount and value of the data even this one example provides
| to china. That was just one search
| Zigurd wrote:
| "immeasurable"
| penjelly wrote:
| okay for example. weapon/equipment types, base locations,
| squad sizes, army morale, etc.. Does that not make sense?
| You can glean a lot from those videos. I cant possibly
| name every one
| philippejara wrote:
| those videos are public regardless of who is the owner
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can name a single event where it made a difference.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It's widely known likely 99.9% chance they have access, but just
| the us law system needs good proof.
| amelius wrote:
| Meanwhile, the CCP can just open their huge wallets and pay US-
| based data-brokers for all the private information of US citizens
| that they ever dreamed of ...
| bioemerl wrote:
| Please don't use the fact that there are other imperfections in
| the system to prevent this one from getting fixed.
| amelius wrote:
| You mean please don't fix this gigantic gaping hole, so that
| this much smaller hole gets fixed first and people forget
| about the bigger problem?
| nabakin wrote:
| I think they are bringing awareness to an additional issue
| rather than dismissing this one
| bioemerl wrote:
| They might be trying, but the end result will be a petty
| destruction of progress. "In order to make any change you
| must fix my much larger and harder to solve issue" will
| ensure that nothing ever gets done.
|
| In the face of just how serious this risk is, this sort of
| stance is self destructive and nearly malicious.
| laratied wrote:
| [dead]
| nabakin wrote:
| Why can't you believe both are issues and be in support
| of the resolution of both?
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's also a copout that liberals spent a few years
| repeating in Spanish for some reason. TikTok is not at
| all a problem. The fact that all of your data is already
| on sale, cheaply, publicly, and legally, is.
| nabakin wrote:
| You say it's a copout and then you don't explain why. I
| can believe US data through TikTok is at risk due to CCP
| origins _and_ I can believe our data is on sale in
| general. I can also believe that both are an issue.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Given the serious risk, we should fix the bigger loophole
| where foreign or national bodies can use our data.
|
| "In the face of just how serious this risk is, this sort
| of stance is self destructive and nearly malicious."
| Unfortunately, such narrow views will not help us go
| anywhere. This is the best way to kill any thought
| process.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| I mean, what's the surprise here?
| xtian wrote:
| > "Mr. Yu observed a culture of lawlessness within the company,"
| the suit says. "This ByteDance culture focused on growth at all
| costs. The attitude was to violate the law first, continue to
| grow, and pay fines later."
|
| Damn these dirty communists! That's not how we do business in
| Silicon Valley!
| [deleted]
| CSMastermind wrote:
| This seems sloppy. If I were to build an app that was popular in
| say Cuba or something I wouldn't leave myself technical gateways
| to access the data and manipulate things directly. That would
| leave a clear paper trail and open me up to some innocent
| engineer stumbling across what's happening.
|
| Rather I would embed trusted people into the company at low to
| mid-level positions of power, like software engineers, content
| moderators, etc. where they could quietly use their influence on
| shape things in ways that are favorable to my goals. I would do
| this with every company I could get them hired at not just the
| one making my app.
|
| If I really had a need to exert undue influence I would use a
| side-channel to communicate instructions to people at the company
| (potentially even the leadership) and rely on them to carry out
| the orders. Remoting in and changing things myself seems silly.
| Kadin wrote:
| Sure, and that's probably happening _as well_.
|
| But it shows a level of not-giving-a-fuck if they're just
| leaving not-even-well-hidden "backdoors" in, so people in China
| can get access.
|
| It suggests to me that the software engineers writing this
| stuff don't really think of ByteDance US or the US version of
| TikTok as being any different from ByteDance China. Because of
| course they don't: I don't think ByteDance _itself_ , or its
| leadership, does. The whole idea of separating the company
| internally is a sham, and it's almost always a sham when
| companies claim to do internal firewalling or controls like
| that. (See also: pre-2008 financial companies that did both
| consulting and accounting/audit, and claimed they never talked
| across that line. _Of course they did!_ )
|
| TikTok is a shining example of both China being China (no real
| private/public sector separation, lying as standard practice,
| economic policy is just war by other means) and the US being
| the US (everything is for sale, everyone's loyalty can be
| rented, all laws are negotiable, workers / average people exist
| to be exploited rather than protected, if it's profitable it
| can't be _that_ wrong)... and we wonder why it 's a trainwreck
| for average users.
| paxys wrote:
| When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"? They assert
| full LEGAL right to all data from companies in their
| jurisdiction. Everyone who operates in China, domestic or
| foreign, knows the costs of doing business.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"?
|
| In the US we would refer to it as a responsibility, or a duty
| to protect.
| rglover wrote:
| The levels of naivety around this stuff in the aftermath of
| Assange and Snowden continue to astound me.
| lazyeye wrote:
| A quick scan indicates alot of the posts here seem to be CCP
| talking points in one form or another.
|
| If only we in the west were allowed to participate in Chinese
| forums the way advocates for China can in ours.
|
| I wonder...
|
| https://steemit.com/security/@tinfoilfedora/the-gentlemans-g...
| robocat wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html :
| Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling,
| brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion
| and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email
| hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
| blueflow wrote:
| So, basically just the China version of the US Cloud Act?
| anaganisk wrote:
| But it's the US, it's the bastion of democracy. Govt here
| doesn't put backdoors, doesn't sponsor crypto companies,
| doesn't target individuals and ship them to overseas camps to
| avoid torture laws. Wage fake wars. Doesn't use it's
| intelligence agencies to interfere with other countries. Oh!
| bostonsre wrote:
| For all our faults, we're not the ccp. Bashing America
| doesn't undo the horrors committed by the ccp. We're talking
| about an authoritarian regime that is currently committing
| genocide. Should we really just roll over and give them
| unfettered access to our markets while they are incredibly
| hostile to our companies and where we only get access by
| giving away ip?
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| The US imprisons its ethnic minorities in inhumane camps
| that frequently result in death at a rate 17x that of
| China, per capita.
|
| The countries are way more alike than you think. Calling
| for more state censorship in the US brings them even more
| into alignment.
| bequanna wrote:
| Do you actually believe this?
|
| It sounds like you are consuming far too much anti-
| American and pro-Chinese propaganda.
|
| The Chinese succeeding in their geopolitical goals is the
| suppression of the individual at scale. Extinguishing of
| the light.
|
| Collectivism looks good on paper but ultimately is high
| minded and has fatal flaws which resulted in horrible
| outcomes whenever tried. 100 million+ dead in the 20th
| century.
| ok123456 wrote:
| US incarceration and conviction rates based on race are
| commonly tabulated.
| bequanna wrote:
| The US generally imprisons only those people who commit
| serious crimes. There are likely some biases that result
| in imperfect application of the law. We're working on it.
|
| China imprisons and enslaves people simply for being
| members of the "wrong" ethnic group.
|
| Please explain how these are even close to the same
| thing.
| ok123456 wrote:
| China doesn't "enslave" people for being from the wrong
| ethnic group. These claims are a fiction of Adrian Zenz.
| The US actually "enslaves" people from the wrong ethnic
| group at Guantanamo.
| bequanna wrote:
| How many people are at Guantanamo?
|
| The answer is about 30 people vs. about a million
| innocent Uyghurs in Chinese internment camps.
|
| All of the things I mention are easily verifiable by
| credible sources while you are (for some reason)
| parroting CCP taking points. Hmm...
| tyjen wrote:
| I decided to see if your "death rate" claim was accurate;
| but, found conflicting evidence that the mortality rates
| in US prisons are generally lower than the general US
| population, "The mortality rate of state prisoners in
| 2018 (319 per 100,000) was lower than the mortality rate
| for the entire adult U.S. population (1,110/100,000) even
| when adjusted for age, race or ethnicity, and sex
| (419/100,000) [0]." Also, mortality rates for federal
| prisons are lower than state prisons [1].
|
| Could you point me to a reliable data source for Chinese
| prisoner mortality rates? A ~19/100,000 mortality rate
| would be an amazing achievement.
|
| [0]: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2021/aug/1/us-
| departmen...
| [1]:https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/msfp0119st.pdf
| mistermann wrote:
| > We're talking about an authoritarian regime that is
| currently committing genocide.
|
| Which country has a larger body count in the last few
| decades?
| [deleted]
| anaganisk wrote:
| So US being supportive of Israel is not being an accomplice
| in genocide?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| No. We agree on their right to exist. We don't support
| their apartheid. It's a policy failure to treat countries
| as monoliths.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| [flagged]
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| 1) My primary concern will always be tied to governments with the
| ability to arrest me.
|
| 2) Because our personal data is trivial for govs/corp/LEO to
| purchase, it isn't obvious how this risk budges the needle.
| reaperducer wrote:
| This is the original reporting that Business Insider rewrote:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/technology/tiktok-bytedan...
| jasmer wrote:
| It'd be extremely naive to assume that they didn't have a back
| door, didn't have the ability to 'direct' TikTok to do as they
| required for pretty much anything, and didn't use it to further
| whatever their agenda is.
|
| The inverse problem is to think of TT as directly an agent of the
| CCP, which it is not. TT is a company that wants to make money,
| that exists in a regime where there is no effective rule of law,
| meaning the regime can do pretty much as it pleases, when it
| please, and they do do that, particularly for censorship, content
| control etc.. But otherwise, the company is left to it's own
| devices.
|
| Much like if you use Google or FB, you can be assured that the US
| Gov. will leverage that within the normal constraints of the US,
| which is to say for local policing warrants and judges, and for
| narrow issues of national security, well, probably 'anything
| goes' with respect to non-US citizens, 'almost anything goes'
| with respect to US citizens, but that ultimately the scope of the
| more acute stuff will be narrow, and ultimately there will be
| leakers.
|
| Aka Snowden and Assange sadly get a different form of justice,
| but at least it's a kind of justice and it's in the public
| domain. You can speak out against Biden all day long but if you
| leak sensitive docs, that's probably a line that will get you in
| trouble.
|
| Finally, we need to start to account for corporate surveillance.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-13 23:00 UTC)