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this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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AFAIU - but that is a veeeeeery "skimmed" take on the issue, so please check what I wrote before taking it at face value:
There were legitimate concerns about tiktok (hugely popular platform distributed as a "black box", with very concerning permissions and behaviours, and owned by a foreign actor - tiktok is "unavailable" domestically - that demonstrably uses technology in an extremely dystopian way on their own population), so there was quite a lot of public pressure to "do something about it", and of course politicians jumped on the opportunity to make a (very) broadly fitting legislation targeting it, coincidentally also having utterly damaging and immensely concerning side-effects for the end users privacy and sovereignty of all applications.
Following that, some of the people got (rightly) concerned about the legislation's effect on their rights and privacy, but the vast majority just saw that their digital crack cocaine was being attacked, and started whining with arguments of varying relevance. At the end of the day, though, a given platform is irrelevant. What is, is the abilities given to the users, and the possibilities that those create. But now, we have a deeply concerning platform, still being immensely popular and uncontrolled; a totally unfitting legislation with incredibly wild "side effects"; and a growing, misguided popular movement to "save tiktok" that will only make a legitimate attempt at mitigating it much harder. Yay.
Edit: after quite some digging, I found the bill here (PDF) - source.
Edit 2: to answer your question more directly:
The justification is "America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States".
Which is IMHO fair. It isn't like the CCP would let American corporations, let alone government controlled ones, run services in China, let alone psychiatrically alienate their citizens, instigate discord and radicalization, potentially manipulate the public opinion, have the capacity to covertly do psyops, and actively, aggressively collect any and all data.
The potential problem I see (and probably what concerns most of the privacy advocates out there) however, is that while the bill is aiming at tiktok in particular (fine), it also targets any "foreign adversary". Meaning that, AFAIU (but IANAL), all the US would have to do to completely and entirely nuke an app (or an entire federated platform!) in the US would be to declare any foreign entity (country, state, corporation, person, etc) their "adversary". Effectively giving them a single "button" to directly nuke any app and services they don't see fit. No matter how legitimate.
Thanks.
I also had a brief read on the bill you linked and some relavent articles. The bill only cite "national security" yet doesn't explain what "national security" it causes.
The Bloomberg article states a few reasons, but none satisfied me to justify a ban. For example, reason 1 points out that the algoritm of generating feed is advanced and intoxicating. So they should be punished for a well written and effective algorithms?
Yes, there are and were dumb to harmful contents found on TikTok. However, I think it should be a content moderation issue, not a national security issue. I heard people can find CSAM on Twitter and Discord, harmful and damaging it's, should it get banned too due to "national security" concerns? It just have a smell of unfair.
Just my two cents.
Disclosure: I don't use Facebook, Intagram, Twitter, nor TikTok. I do have a Discord account.
Because the Chinese government has inordinate control over Chinese companies and is not a friendly government. They routinely use technology to control their own population and work closely with hackers in their country that attack US businesses and consumers.
There absolutely should be serious legislation on data gathering and how large platforms manipulate public perception with their algorithms, but TikTok is a national security threat at a level the others are not explicitly because the Chinese government has control over it.
Friendly or not is subjective. I dislike it doesn't means others are the same, nor I should force them to believe so.
In US, instead of the government, companies use technology to influence/control their own users. Personalized adverts is one. Also other recommendation algorithms. Yes the scale and motives is different but is one better then the other? I don't think so.
The United States does have its cyber arm that conducts offensive operations, such as the Equation Group. Any country that does not have its own hacking team would be seriously remiss.
I totally agree but should be applied universally
I can agree that it is a matter of national security if it can affect elections "greatly", not because of other government have controls. However, the determination of "greatly" is hard to quantify. And even if quantifiable, it is not unique to TikTok as there are many platforms can influence elections, present and in the future. Are we going to ban every single platform that can affect elections "greatly"? This is a slippery slop opening for abuse.
All in all, I still hardly justify a bill just to target TikTok or other platforms that is controlled by a "foreign adversary". Law should treat every entity equal and without discrimination, based on some ideological differences or political preferences.
It's absolutely not subjective. China is an enemy of the US, and an extremely hostile one, just one large enough that the US is forced to deal with them.
The fact that the government is doing it absolutely is different than a government not taking enough steps to prevent it. The government has authority, and the government can take away your ability to limit the risk by not doing business with malicious companies. A totalitarian government is not in any way similar to big companies that do not have authority behaving badly.
The US absolutely does business with hackers. It does not directly facilitate shit like ransomware and other malicious businesses on US companies, which is the relevant part here, and the part that is a threat to national security.
The fact that an enemy state that routinely supports attacks on US businesses and end users controls a major network is a huge national security threat. There's a reason other governments are also banning their equipment from being used in critical infrastructure and also extremely uncomfortable with entities controlled by the Chinese government getting too big of a foothold. Everything their government does is a national security threat to any country in the west in all cases. TikTok should have been banned a long time ago. The fact that it's controlled by the Chinese government is more than enough.
China can be an enemy of the US, but that doesn't mean all US citizens view China as enemy. You can find a tons of creators on YouTube defending China's way to do things and be friend with which I found disgusting.
I would also believe US also does pre-plan malware to key infrastructures including power, communications, and health care in other potential adversaries, not limited to China. To them is also a matter of national security. It is just simply a cat and mouse game. For randomware though, I didn't heard much a Chinese group doing it, but more by Russia and North Korea.
The keyword here is "uncomfortable", but I highly doubt should this translate to a law. If one can make laws because feeling "uncomfortable" without concrete evidences, that US will become more authoritarian than its commitment on fairness and freedom.
Before banning TikTok, we need to assess what threat it poses, not because others say so. The majority of threats people claim of TikTok is "it is a spyware because Chinese government can view data when they wants", and "it can effect elections". For the first one, a federal level privacy and data collection bill is far more appropriate. This is long due already, and don't do GDPR's where companies can self claim compliant but requires an accredited independent auditor. Second one is more tricky. The root cause can be think as its algorithm being too effective. Maybe a rating system for algorithm like for game would work?
Again, law should be applied equally and without discrimination based on ideological differences or political preferences. Even it looks to be "national security", it must be assessed thoroughly with concrete evidences, rather some hypothetical claims.
They're not worried about CSAM. They worried about TikTok users being influenced during an election campaign.
And yes, it is a moderation issue. Specifically, the US doesn't want the current moderation team to be in charge of moderation.
To put it in perspective, about a quarter of the US population uses TikTok. And politics are a major discussion point with the political content you're exposed to selected by an algorithm that is opaque and constantly changing.
It absolutely can be used to change the result of an election. And China has meddled in elections in the past (not least of all their own elections... but also foreign ones:
It not uncommon to see misinformatuon to fabricated information appears on many SNS platforms including Facebook and Twitter. It is not unheard of Russia use social media to influence election too via popular platform that is US based. All SNS are subject to the same problem, but only TikTok have more active users thus more far reaching, ~~but again this is a content moderation problem, not the inherent fault of TikTok itself.~~ Whom should perform content moderation is a business decision. It should not be dictated by law, though they can make moderation standards that companies needs to comply. I think this is a bit unfair to just targeting TikTok only, and should be universal.
EDIT:
Isn't TikTok opened access to its algorithm for reviewing?
Actually it is not solely a content moderation problem. While some dumb and physically harmful content should be subject to moderation, speeches should be protected. Isn't American all about the word "Freedom"? It should be free to speak what they believe, right?
However, the recommendation algorithms might need some regulations that categorize content and have relevant display policies. For example, political content, user generated and advertisement, should be distributed equally for all views (i.e. a user will see content for all candidates for roughly same amount of time). The "addictive" thing shouldn't be regulated as that the point of the algorithm: maximize user engagement. However, there could be a rating system similar to game ratings that affect who at what age can use which platform. Otherwise, it should be free for one to addict to something, as long as it doesn't cause a physical harm to himself and others.
I have a question. How would it be moderated and by whom? In an age where the warthunder forums literally have a leak of classified info like monthly, and the US is increasingly losing the cyber security war because people can't do simple things like not plug random usb's they found on the side of the road into their work computers, I don't really understand why it's hard to believe tik tok is a threat to national security.
The permissions it asks for on your phone are kind of a red flag. Specifically access to the camera and microphone. Mostly because with it being controlled by the CCP (as most successful Chinese Businesses are), it is absolutely trivial for them to gather information "anonymously" about their users, de-anonymize it, and then target those users with anything and everything including pro CCP propaganda. That alone is reason enough for me to understand why federal employees aren't allowed to use tik tok on any federal device (work phones and computers for instance).
I don't necessarily think forcing them to sell to another entity will fix the problems with tik tok. I think this bill is intended to be a "solution" to placate people. Mostly because it doesn't seem like it's been written by people who understand the technology. But I also wouldn't say that tik tok is harmless or blameless.
Why does tik tok need to gather information about what banking apps I use? What healthcare apps I use? Why does it need my GPS location? Why can it collect this data without my consent? Why and how does it collect information on people even if they don't use tik tok? Have never used tik tok?
On top of that Tik Tok got caught spying on reporters with the intent to track down their sources. That's terrifying.
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2023/03/24/what-tiktok-knows-you-should-know-tiktok/
I'm not surprised at this when Americans refuse to ware a simple medical mask during COVID.
That would be easier to answer if we had a list of companies that can afford to buy it (that's a short list) and also willing to buy it (an even shorter list).
Sure - it obviously depends who buys it. Elon Musk, for example, would probably be a bad steward.
But what about Alphabet? That might not be so bad. As a fan of YouTube, I'd love to see the "shorts" feature killed off and all that content moved to a separate service where I can go the rest of my life without ever seeing a short repeating video.
Whoever buys it, it the US can force TikTok to be sold once, they can do it again if the buyer proves to also be problematic.
The invasion of privacy is bad regardless of who does it though. This bill isn't about protecting consumer privacy. It's about sticking it to the CCP. Alphabet should also be considered a company that needlessly invades the privacy of it's users and laws should be made to protect those users. Just because tik tok is worse doesn't mean any company doing this isn't bad.
I'll also say that YouTube shorts views pay more than tik tok views for established creators, by a significant margin. I would rather creators I enjoy get paid decently. Not that YouTube doesn't have a lot of problems and anti-creator policies of its own. But $.04 per 1K views is a lot worse than $18.00 per 1K views.
Declaring a foreign country to be adversarial to the U.S. is a huge deal, and I highly doubt they would do so just to ban an app. They would much sooner try to pass an unrelated “special case” legislation, and the success of such a bill would hinge on the persuasiveness of the justification.
I’m fine with the U.S. forcing the sale of TikTok for a different reason, though: internet companies operating in China must be majority-owned and -operated by a Chinese domestic entity, yet the same restriction is not imposed on Chinese investments in U.S. internet companies. Asymmetric markets like this cede a great deal of influence to China, and it just doesn’t sit right with me.
It can often be beneficial to both parties when two countries influence each other, but such influence must be bilateral.