What's going on with TikTok getting banned?
What's going on with TikTok getting banned?
Not that it personally affects me- I'm not in USA and it's one of the platforms I dislike the most. But I can't find a concise explanation for why.
I've searched for news articles and those I found either don't address the reason behind the ban and talk about US politics, or are vague about it, saying it would collect user sensitive data.
I've also found lists of countries banning TikTok from government devices, okay I understand that, and some countries banning it completely because of cultural sensitivities, which I doubt is US' case.
Fair enough. What kind of user sensitive data would it be collecting? Isn't this what most social media apps do already? What makes TikTok stand out in this regard?
It basically boils down to the USA not wanting China to be the ones collecting all that data. Which is a bit tenuous. The owner of TikTok is ByteDance, ByteDance is registered in the Caymans, with global headquarters in LA and Singapore. The current CEO is a Chinese national, but lives in Singapore. TikTok does collect quite a lot of data, but the FB app collects at least as much. It's a bit of Sinophobia.
My personal pet theory is the US alphabet boys have a deal with all the other social media giants for first pick of data they mine, and TikTok didn't want to play ball.This is just what I've kinda thought, it's by no means absolute fact, and I look forward to hearing what other people think/know about it.
My personal pet theory is the US alphabet boys have a deal with all the other social media giants for first pick of data they mine, and TikTok didn't want to play ball.
The NSA had a plan to implement a wide spectrum data capture on US citizens ... which it cancelled right around the same time Facebook got a large angel investment.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/04/investigative-reports/the-military-origins-of-facebook/
You are nearly certainly correct that TikTok did not want play the same game as other US social media.
While data privacy is a concern, in my opinion the real fear motivating the government is the massive control China has, indirectly, through TikTok, over citizens' beliefs and culture.
As another comment pointed out, Facebook (and Cambridge Analytica) had an enormous role in Donald Trump getting elected. That is the kind of influence and power that shouldn't be in the hands of a foreign power (ironically, it's the kind of power the US has wielded for generations over many countries). And the US especially doesn't want China or Russia to have that power.
If China felt inclined, they very likely could push to have the algorithm modified to fit a particular agenda - say perhaps promoting a pro-China candidate - and most users would barely notice and slowly be drip fed posts that nudge them in a particular direction. People in power could start to lose that power at the behest of TikTok.
As many will likely point out, there's a good arm's distance between China and TikTok right now, as far as we know, but it's possible they are more involved than they let on (much like the NSA and Facebook) and could become more involved over time. It's a risk the government is unwilling to take.
A good example of what kinds of things can happen is when TikTok published a post to every US user with their congressperson's number, urging them to call them to protest the ban. I'm certain that scared the shit out of the US government and probably did more to force the ban down mid than anything else.
Could they? Oracle has access to their source code to please US lawmakers. Supposedly it's because they have access to US users data, but they can already buy that from US data brokers all over the place. I think it's more likely one of the theories below. They want to keep the monopoly to US rich interests and be able to push people towards algorithms they can control (for example, if the youths start to be against Israel).
IMHO you're kinda right. There's a trade war going on between the US and China, and data is damn valuable so it's just logical to prevent the enemy access to your own citizens' data, specially since we know how it's used to manipulate elections (Russia's been proven guilty of it for the 2016 US elections), but also Facebook was at least paid to do so.
Now I do agree with you in that the ban is probably due to the wrong reasons though. But it kinda doesn't matter to me.Yet I am not US citizen either, I'm an EU citizen, so my opinion on US politics ain't quite relevant. I just wished we would do the same here in Europe and more consequently. Both the US and China do have laws that require companies to hand over there user data to their respective country's agencies, which is technically illegal under GDPR for EU citizens' data (they shouldn't be able to leave the EU). So we should ban all social media that stores data on servers belonging to US or Chinese companies (leaving basically only fediverse instances on european servers).
Caymans LA Singapore. Singapore.
A few years ago, all of that was China and nothing else but China.
Maybe these "international" items are just deliberate actions to conceil the truth?
ByteDance is registered in the Caymans, with global headquarters in LA and Singapore
Literally the first sentence of ByteDance's wikipedia article says they're HQed in Beijing. Which means the CCP has unfettered access to the company's property and can strong-arm their leadership to do their bidding (as is standard for all Chinese businesses).
The data TikTok collects is extremely sensitive and is digital gold for things like training facial recognition models, which China totally does not use for bad things
But nice try, comrade bot
I literally did what everyone says you shouldn't, and looked at the first result on Google.
Also get fucked with the comrade bot shit. I don't have any issue with the Chinese as a people, their government is fucking dystopian.
I was going off what was obviously incomplete information, which I did try to make clear in my post. You think cause this is .ml account calling me a comrade bot is some kinda gotcha, but there's a pretty wide spectrum of people on this instance and you can take that shit and fucking shove it.
People from within China have access to extensive user data collected by TikTok and use that access to retrieve the data. TikTok basically contains spyware to circumvent system restrictions, so the collected data is very sensitive.
The US laws do not allow this data to leave the country.
TikTok does not restrict this foreign access for unknown reasons. (Suspected state actors involved.)
So it will probably be banned to stop the spying.
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ftc-investigation-china-data-e91e02db5c4f3f7d5836ecafedbf4714
Its illegal, but it most certainly does allow it. US companies also collect this data, and not all of their servers are US based.
In that case they are probably next to get prosecuted.
What kind of user sensitive data would it be collecting?
From texts and data accessible from your phone or browsing cookies, to straight up biometric data of all kinds that they can use to train their models on.
What makes TikTok stand out in this regard?
It's Chinese. If you think the US has bad data protection & privacy laws, it's practically in the negatives in China where you have an authoritarian mass surveillance state.
Those more specific issues aside, there's also a lot to say about the type of content it promotes on a social scientific level and what that does to specifically youths that are exposed to it. We see a lot of downright dangerous challenges, bad advice, lots of scientific or political disinformation, social pressure for online exposure, bullying, etc.
Its also important to note 'why not just ban that type of tracking? No sane citizen would prefer to be stalked'
Its a massive market for Facebook and much much easier to push propaganda with it, so no sane politician would do they - they just gotta be extra sneaky and make it a racist thing
it all comes down to money. USA felt like the owners of tiktok were preying and taking advantage of us citizens and they wanted a piece of the pie or gtfo. it's always money, only the attacking entity changes, and not that often.
It's performative posturing by politicians who want to look tough on China and/or have been (or are pretending to be) convinced by TikTok's competitors that they are a national security threat because they gather lots of data, just like every other app does.
If law makers really wanted to prevent the data being vacuumed up, they could pass meaningful privacy laws, but they own stock in companies that compete with TikTok and that also profit by vacuuming up everyone's data, so they pretend that it's just Chinese apps we have to worry about.
Except, since we have no privacy laws, if China wants to get the data, it's perfectly legal for them to buy it from data brokers. We could enact laws that make what they (and Facebook, and Google, and...and...) are doing is illegal, but data brokers make billions, and politicians enjoy enabling billionaires in their exploitation of the general public. So the ban doesn't stop China from bring able to get data on American citizens.
What the ban really does is (try to) force TikToks owners (Bytedance) to sell/divest to US companies that will enrich lawmakers and those lobbying the lawmakers.
Ars Technica has some good write-ups on the situation, and Techdirt has far more, and they don't pull punches. I suspect EFF has something written on the subject too.
My guess is that it leans more with the latter than the former. Tiktoks ascendancy is a challenge to the currently established capitalistic social media systems and it exfiltrates attention and AD revenue out of the country.
I personally believe that the campaign against tiktok is more an issue with rich people ensuring that they remain rich in the future then it is with any actual national security concern.
I don't use the app myself, this is just the vibe I have picked up from the various articles I have been exposed to about the entire debacle.
They either want to force tiktok to play by the rest of American companies rules or to take it out so that American companies can vacuum up the user space and AD revenue.
It's very Randian.
I personally believe that the campaign against tiktok is more an issue with rich people ensuring that they remain rich in the future then it is with any actual national security concern.
I agree, and the evidence is pretty clear about who started the panic, and who benefits from it. That said, it's clear that Tiktok does have security concerns. They've been caught spying on journalists. But that's a problem with what's legal in the US of A, not what one company does.
And Bytedance worked on multiple initiatives to make US regulators happy, like moving all data operations to Texas (IIRC, sleepy brain can't find the links this early) and other acquiescences that actually served security needs, but were inexplicably forgotten and abandoned by people in our end, not theirs.
They either want to force tiktok to play by the rest of American companies rules
They already do. Facebook and Google and Apple have all been complicit in genocide, oppression and domestic spying, but that benefits US law enforcement, who lobby against reforms that would prevent it. Those are the rules: hoover up the data and use it however the f#@k they want, selling access to all bidders.
or to take it out so that American companies can vacuum up the user space and AD revenue.
Exactly. Even at the cost of an entire generation of voters' goodwill. If "security" is the concern, why doesn't Congress care about repeated breaches like this?
But who are we kidding? If we cared about national security, would we permit a felon and proven fraud to be elected president? Would we be lying naked with bedfellows such as Saudi Arabia? And look at who is putting up the money to buy Tiktok.
It's very Randian.
Indeed. Government intervention in the economy, crony capitalism, and economic nationalism. A Randian trifecta.
What makes TikTok stand out in this regard?
the location of its base of operations is what makes it stand out.
it's been banned in my country since its very inception (one of a very few agreeable thing that our otherwise very regressive far right government has done).
and the HECK lot of data it REQUIRES to operate. Things that are just "Why do they need THAT?", tiktok is of course not the only one but its very aggressive on this.
Something about tictok and another app being able to recompile portions of code on the device itself so that detection was avoided , but also gave full access to a lot of the phone that permissions should not allow
I believe that's temu, I can't find info on tiktok doing that, atleast from the surface level search I did.
I will look for the tech podcast
Kind of a meta question. Is TikTok even worth it as a platform? Had a friend tell me they ditched FB and only use TK exclusively now. Overheard some people who were traveling say they only find restaurants to eat at based on TK. I’ve never used it before, so I have no clue how the interface even works, but I thought it was just random vertical videos?
Tik Tok
Ti To
TTMe, I'm going to start calling it Tito.
Maybe they mean Tik Kok, Bytedance' underground betting platform and masculine porn tube?
FB is overrun with fascist propaganda, so perhaps TK might be less of a brain rot.
Maybe Trumpeltier brought up the idea of the ban after they played a prank on him during his campaign in 2020