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148

US government says TikTok poses threat to national security (www.dw.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Responding to a lawsuit from video-sharing platform TikTok, the US Justice Department argued that China could order the company to manipulate TikTok's algorithm and expand Beijing's "malign influence."

The US Justice Department defended a law that aims to either ban TikTok or force it to divest its assets in the US after the social media company filed a lawsuit against the legislation.

Under the law, the social media platform will have to find a non-Chinese buyer or face a ban in the US by January 19, 2025.

The Chinese-based TikTok is challenging the law before a US appeals court.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 months ago (2 children)

X is owned by a South African and middle easterners, and is actively doing the things they fear TikTok May do today. Where is the outrage and laws banning X?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I know what you're saying, and I agree that X is extremely problematic.

I think the difference is that X is owned by private individuals, whereas they're saying here that TikTok is under the control of the Chinese state. I wonder if there are different rules at play for estate actors?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

OR...and hear me out, two things might be bad at the same time.

Hell, maybe ALL of the things. Maybe too much information is being shared and traded.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

OR...and hear me out, two things might be bad at the same time.

Isn't that what I said?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Middle easterners?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Saudis financed Muskrat's takeover

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Why stop at just tiktok? All social media and hyper-targeted advertising poses the same threat and can be misused just as easily. It's almost as if, and this is shocking I know, advertising and online privacy should be very strictly regulated as a national security concern.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Lobbying funds. $20M annually from Meta alone.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000033563

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Fun fact: Tiktok's main competition are all owned by entities that spy just as much and are beholden to SEVERAL oppressive regimes rather than just one.

Two of them have even been instrumental in foreign actors successfully influencing the results of US elections, unlike Tiktok.

Then again, they're based in the US and supply politicians with more legal bribes, so they're exempt from even the most basic accountability.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

And for all mankind too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Man... the red scare really did a number on the American psyche...

This comment section better remember that you can't even order from McDonalds anymore without creating an account online. Hell, as of a few weeks ago I can't even update apps on my personally purchased smart TV without creating a fucking account and letting them link my email to data they already have from Experian (all US companies btw). Tiktok is just a fucking scapegoat so y'all wont push for actual privacy protection laws.

If Tiktok gets sold to a US company nothing will change about their practices the CCP will just buy the data from a 3rd party vendor owned by a US LLC.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 3 months ago (4 children)

What is really going on here? Fear of conpetition? How will divestment ensure data is still not shared?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fuck the CCP is what's going on here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Not sure I understand. Trying to have a sincere discussion.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You don't give an authoritarian government with a freedom index of 9 access to international user data.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

They can already buy it. They are already getting it! Look at ALL of the latest televisions on the market - they require you to accept user agreements to basically suck the life out of you. They listen, report what you watch, how long you watch it, when you change channels, it is really unbelievable. And cars are doing it too! How fast you drive, what you are saying. All of the Google and Apple Home Pods, Amazon’s Alexa products. It is a joke. Except it is not! I think it is a competition for information between big companies backed by big governments.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And we can reject it. Fuck the CCP (1st), but also fuck Google, Amazon, Apple next.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

You're talking past the other guys point. We all agree that the CCP sucks, but just going after tiktok doesn't solve the problem when they can just buy user data from a broker. You need to go after all surveillance adtech if you want to keep entities like the CCP from buying that data anyway.

Tiktok isn't special here, just about every online advertiser will run whatever campaign you want as long as you pay their prices so you have to go after all of them to resolve the issue. Tiktok has CPC ties, yes, but they're just the tip of the iceberg if you're serious about the national security risk of adtech.

Edit: if you really want to go after manipulation of public sentiment you'll also need to mandate disclosure and auditing of social media feed and advertising algorithms to a regulatory agency with extremely heavy fines (say X million $/day) for violators. That's about the only way you can actually stop the sort of behavior the CCP is engaging in on tiktok.

Adtech itself is an entirely bigger ball of wax, if you want to reduce adtech's social influence you're going to have to take ownership of private user data out of the hands of advertisers and give it back to people themselves.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I agree. But first thing first

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago

You really think people are going to come back and talk about the privacy problem of US companies without this stuff in the news? People need to push for this now, otherwise they're going to fall back into the rut of the status quo. This should raise eyebrows that they're finally doing something about one company when it's US companies that brought us a shit stain like Trump into the presidency.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

A chinese owned company, by chinese law, is the CCP’s bitch. An american owned company, by contrast, at least has the chance to refuse government requests, not that they always do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I thought Snowden already made it pretty obvious that US companies don't. Basically the only thing you can do as a US company is try to obfuscate your data with encryption so not even you can read it. That's why some VPN companies advertise about not keeping laws, so they have nothing to turn over when the feds come a-knocking.

The other problem is that you don't even need official government power to get data from US companies. A lot of these companies will sell their data on you to make a quick buck, anyway.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Unless they get subpoenad by a district court and the C suite is willing to go to jail for not disclosing it.

Also the US govt already has asked for built-in backdoors to iPhones and the like. They even have highly complex de-anonymization algorithms for data that almost every American with a credit card is giving to their "private" bank so we can have FICO credit scores and venmo.

The private ownership isn't doing shit for our data protections.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Frankly, it doesn't ensure it, there is no way to fully guarantee data will not be shared. Just makes it harder.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is it really such a stretch to say a Chinese owned company managing the feeds of the most active social platform would use that platform to sow division and hatred in the US?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Isn’t that already happening by American companies? Data is being sold for pennies to the highest and lowest bidders, which are probably not all domestic interests.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"Whatabout US companies"

US companies have seen similar criticism, antitrust suits, and billions in fines.

It is true that US tech companies have horrendous practices when it comes to data privacy and security, and that the US needs better federal regulation similar to GDPR to protect the consumer. This must be corrected.

It's also true that the location of the parent company of a social media platform does not protect that platform from bad actors and adversarial abuse. See: Facebook in 2016

However, there is a big difference between selling bits of redacted data to ad companies, and providing raw database access to a foreign adversary with malicious intent.

Add to that the fact that kids/teens use tiktok more than any other platform, and their habits are exposed without their knowledge or consent.

The possibilities are endless, but to name a few concerns:

The CCP is using this app as a social engineering experiment to attempt to influence public opinion in the next generation of Americans.
Imagine how much easier it will be to influence the next generation of US politicians who have no privacy whatsoever, and whose thought patterns are well documented.

The EU has already fined them for their negligent privacy practices: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/15/tech/tiktok-fine-europe-children/index.html

It's not enough. I don't think a ban is the right solution, but the problem is clear.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Imagine how much easier it will be to influence the next generation of US politicians who have no privacy whatsoever, and whose thought patterns are well documented.

We're already dealing with the aftermath of this with US Corps evidenced by the destruction of unions and workers rights if you replace "privacy" with "education." Why is privacy important

One of the biggest lies I see is this foreign adversary being a bigger threat than the endless local adversaries (capitalists) that are actually destroying this country. The Chinese didn't destroy the healthcare industry, nor rail, energy, telecommunications, airline, financial industries. They have not suppressed the regulating of the internet, religion in politics, nor have they aided to the degrading of education, social security, disability support, or our laws against bribing politicians.

US companies have seen similar criticism, antitrust suits, and billions in fines.

Nah, they haven't, otherwise we'd have laws (regulations) around them that would prevent them from, say, in the tech industry, distributing our data.

…there is a big difference between selling bits of redacted data to ad companies, and providing raw database access to a foreign adversary with malicious intent.

We know of techniques to pull out excess data from claimed "anonymized" datasets. Can you prove this data is redacted more effectively than that? Can you prove that they are only selling to ad companies? Can you prove it's more malicious intent?

The answer is no, because we already avoided regulating this industry due to internal malicious actors.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 months ago

Hey. Keep your facts and logic out of my emotional baggage.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It’s a small amount of protectionism.

I don’t think it’s foreign ownership or hostile intent. The data and influence angle is shaky - any company, including those accountable to hostile foreign governments can buy data. And that data can be put to use running influence campaigns with our without official platform support on pretty much any platform.

But TikTok isn’t beholden to the U.S. They don’t have to adhere to the same sorta of content moderation policies, and they don’t necessarily have to have the same values. If I may be conspiratorial, I think that other social media platforms tweak their algorithms in ways that keep U.S. regulators happy
To me, it’s telling that the U.S. made threats about it until the Gaza war, and that much of the U.S. opposition to it has been engendered through TikTok. It seems once that became apparent, the U.S. set to make good on its threats to shut TikTok down.

I’m not a big TikTok booster, but I sort of think they’re on the receiving end of injustice here - ironically, for being free in the content they show (U.S.) users.