It's because money money money, nomnomnom
I mean, if that’s the question you want answered…
X uses a native browser controller when you open a link, so the app can’t see what you do in there.
Whereas TikTok uses a managed webview… which they have been caught injecting keyloggers into.
Back in the olden days, we called this a cross-site scripting attack.
Seems like meta were trying something similar with thier replacing all links in Facebook messenger with thier fbrpc://facebook/nativethirdparty?app_id Links, but seems like they gave up on it because it was all broken.
Yup. They’re all dangerous monsters.
IMO, it doesn’t even matter who’s worse, cuz they’re all bad enough they should all be subject to aggressive regulation with the goal of establishing safe interop off-ramps for people to stop using the services or at least use more trustworthy clients.
In my estimation, TikTok is worse, but that’s not even what the ban is about. It’s because China is spying instead of the US. That’s not a reason to defend TikTok though, or to oppose the government’s decision — cuz they were accidentally right, for the wrong reason.
He's not Chinese.
Or so he says.
No, he's just a beneficiary of apartheid. Even Patrick Bateman knew we needed to end that.
This was never about national security. It’s about money. Most of congress owns Meta stock and meta lobbied the fuck out of trying to get the app banned. It’s extremely annoying that people buy this crap about national security.
Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something? 85% of these fuckwads agreed that banning this app is more important than literally anything else. Stopping school shooting, fixing our economy, providing affordable healthcare or housing, are all not important.
Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something?
Patriot Act and other government spying laws of course.
The govt isn't getting money from it?
I suspect its being banned because of people using it in public without headphones or earbuds. I was submitted to that experience for an hour+ in a waiting room one time and now I fully supported the ban to prevent it from ever happening again.
I wish you were right, but you're not.
Did you tell them to turn off the fucking speaker?
Have you met people? They are unpredictable. You might get shot just for asking somebody politely to turn off their speaker.
In fact, I was once on a bus where somebody got stabbed because they asked some guy to stop playing music through his boombox (yes, I'm old).
Tiktok aren't giving Trump loads of money
That's not relevant to the argument about how they could be dangerous for national security.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The CEO has a prominent seat at Trump's inauguration.
Yep. Which means TikTok gave Thumper a load of dough and TikTok will be allowed to continue operating here. Zuck is probably not happy since he'd also given him a load of dough to get rid of TikTok.
pops corn
A fatal mistake for companies who want to do business in the US
It's the Democrats pushing the TikTok ban, Trump loves TikTok.
He wanted to ban it until he thought it helped him with the youth. So no. You are incorrect.
Except when he wanted it banned during his first term and up until very, very recently when he flip flopped to loving it.
Trump started this whole thing.
Serious answer: because it's owned by a US citizen and is operated and HQ'd in the US, so the the US government has effectively full control over it and can monitor it.
That's not a lot better from an end user privacy and security point. But is wayyyyyyyyyy better from a national security standpoint.
Same reason China wants it.
The US government has no more control over X than regulations permit. They have the exact same amount of control over TikTok operations inside the US.
I find it funny that if TikTok was sold to an American it wouldn't be a security risk anymore.
that was literally the whole fucking point.
is it me or did Lemmy fill up with the most oblivious users all of a sudden?
The point of forcing ownership to be American was to force TikTok to be sold to Musk or one of the other massive data harvesting jack offs.
Which is a ridiculous premise.
They would then be under US jurisdiction, that's the issue with TikTok, the US can't for them to comply with any laws, current or future.
Bullshit. Any country has jurisdiction over companies operating inside it's borders. If what you say is true then we couldn't even ban TikTok.
No, the issue with Tik Tok is that the government can’t control it like it does Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There is nothing in China that can harm you as much as the American Government. No intention, no action, no belief will ever hurt you as much as America has.
Exactly. I find it hilarious how some of these people conclude that China ONLY gets our data because of TikTok, when our own government and on soil companies sell and shares our data as long as the other (China even lmao) buy it from them. No issues as long as they get money, but if they don’t get the money, it’s “national security” risk.
They are all problematic. My disagreement with the removal of TikTok is that it should not stop with TikTok. Meta's apps are an absolute nightmare. Google, Xitter, Amazon, etc., they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
Data brokering needs to be made illegal or VERY tightly regulated.
they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
The problem with TikTok isn't data collection, though. The stated concern of the US government is that TikTok may be used to inflict foreign influence (ie, Woke Mind Virus Communism).
That is, incidentally, why the flood of users to RedNote has been so funny. TikTok's got a bunch of edgy western Zoomers doing "Did You Know Capitalism Is Bad Sometimes?" infographics in between dances. RedNote is just straight up "China Is The Best Country In The World" nature channel style hagiography.
The US pushed millions of Americans out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.
Of note, there is no evidence the government concern is founded.
Yes, the ban of TikTok has been more about lip service than actual protections for Americans.
The real solution is passing a comprehensive law that fines/bans any app/platform that is opaque about its influence from governments and its data sharing with governments. But who in Congress today has any appetite for real solutions!
I had written about this to my reps and their response was a non response - TikTok bad.
They are both security risks. The difference is the SA oligarch has already successfully infiltrated our national security and installed himself in a position of power so we can't do anything about it anymore.
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it's people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
This is a game any bad state actor with a huge wad of cash can play thanks to Citizen's United.
Because tiktok data goes to China, and China is a competitor/geopolitical adversary to the USA. If tiktok was russian, it would be the same story. Besides, tiktok has been proven to be by far the worst data miner you can download from an app store.
Not just a data miner, it has some crazy capabilities that are malicious even by the standards of social media phone apps, which were already explicitly malicious. If I remember right, it can download custom code to augment its capabilities per-target, and has encryption to attempt to thwart any attempt to analyze it, which are both pretty unusual amounts of effort to spend from the POV of "we just want to gather your advertising data and listen to your microphone all the time" which are pretty standard things.
Ok, so Bytedance does exactly what Microsoft, Google and Apple do. Got it.
All 3 can and do run arbitrary code on their platforms. All three share your data with third parties. All three encrypt stuff in their codebase and especially google tries it's hardest to break networking standards just to obfuscate what their code is doing.
That’s just AB testing, downloading over https, and having DRM. Every app on your phone does this, but it sure sounds scary when framed that way.
Every video game you have does the same thing too.
You’re doing the same thing Republicans do when they go into great detail about food ingredients to make salt sound scarier than it is.
Edit: You better also remove this foreign controlled app, targetted at children, that can download new code outside of the app store updates
China buys a ton of data from Zuck and Musk and a lot of other people.
The reason it’s being banned is for cutting out the middle man.
If they actually cared about our data going to geopolitical rivals they’d pass comprehensive privacy protections regardless of where the company is headquartered.
And the PRC have been caught repeatedly running influence campaigns over social media platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamouflage
China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along, nothing to see.
Its such a bullshit argument. Don't be the pot blaming the kettle.
We should ban ALL socials. All. Everything becomes an echochamber after 1-2 years filled with bots, algorithms and Ai. Nothing is trustworthy anymore.
Source?
Sea lions?
Messenger is worse by far. This is a verifiable fact just from the permissions requested. The Dunning Kruger in this thread is comical.
Money.
Where the money is going.
Hey now. China's not short on money. This is the other big problem with America.
If Elon Musk was a black South African with a social media company interfering in our elections and sabotaging our national interests here and abroad, I assure you that it would also be in the crosshairs of a ban.
China is an authoritarian government that is able to take direct control of any Chinese company. Like, explicitly. More or less all Chinese companies should be treated with suspicion.
Musk is a shithead but not, to our knowledge, an agent of a foreign hostile government. Turning twitter into a place that promotes hate speech is legally protected free speech, although specific statements that provoke violence may not be protected. Contrary to popular belief, there are many exceptions to free speech.
Yeah, Musk seems much more interested in enriching himself than working for any government. It's in our biology to want more more more. His thing is wealth. He wants more more more wealth. Probably all he cares about is becoming the world's first trillionaire.
Musk is a shithead but not, to our knowledge, an agent of a foreign hostile government.
Correct. On Monday, he's going to be an agent to a domestic hostile government.
Almost all Lemmy users who happen to be in the US have been blessed so far with a government that generally is okay-ish, has some justice built in, and leaves them alone as long as they're not doing anything wrong. I think that might be about to change, and they're about to experience a China-style "you really have to be careful not to cross the powerful people" system instead.
What do you think the American government does if/when they nationalize a business?
Yoo shut yer mouf, ya hear!
Jokes aside. Yeah, I've got no answer.
Edit: I do love the middle finger people are giving by hopping off TikTok (basically being shut down for being a Chinese company) and running to redd (a Chinese company) hahahahahha
Then getting banned from RedNote for posting pro-LGBT stuff and the like lol
Yeah... that's a good point lol
Comparing the two isn't useful. They are both bad and should be either shutdown or regulated.
They are all a security risk
Serious question: do you consider it worse to be tracked and profiled by a foreign government or your own?
I actually consider it way worse when my domestic country is doing it. What is a foreign country gonna do with the information on me? Very little. What can the domestic do? Quite a lot.
Goes to show how little
most peoplelaw enforcement have a fundamental understanding of the US Constitution given how popular your comment is across social media.
That South African oligarch is a US citizen though and it hasn't been shown that he works in the interest of South Africa and South Africa isn't on the list of event countries.
Would you also want to prevent all naturalized citizens from owning a business?
If they are trying to influence the govt to benefit themselves, I'm against anyone owning a business.
The cynical answer is that the people who run the government like the South African because he helped them win elections.
No.
No one can explain.Simple. The South African has a vested interest in keeping the US extant so that he can rule it. The CCP does not share that same interest.
Lol. Capitalists don't think beyond quarterly profits, they'll strip out the wiring and doom the country and the planet for a quick buck.
TIL I have something in common with the CCP.
Come on, this is easy. He's white, that's obviously why.
Facebook has been abusing our data to undermine elections and stoke genocide for longer than tiktok has existed. No US government officials are calling for a FB ban either.
It's supposed to be rich white guys undermining our democracy and national security.
oh this one is easy.
we can deport the rich guy anytime we want and seize his platforms.
our options are limited when dealing with a company that's based in China that is also actively interfering with elections and sabotaging national interests here and abroad.
so, they took out the immediate threat.
I'm really curious what you thought this added to the conversation.
Interesting to see "technofeudal" entering liberal discourse
Because white.
because they might interfere with the elections. oh wait...
I guess if words don’t mean anything the Elon Musk is whatever you declare him to be
They know how much control they can assert of the population through controlling social media. They're not about to allow anyone else to use that, if they can help it. Also, it'll dilute their messaging, even if it wasn't as problematic as something like tiktok.
It makes sense the second you stop presuming any good faith.
It's true that both are security risks, and that Tiktok is even worse in general, however other proprietary social networks are also BAD and the proprietary algorithms behind them can all be used for massive user manipulation (control what they see, when they see it, and what they don't see, combined with tons of personal and psychological data about each user). That said, another factor that might be overlooked is that it also depends on how easy a target something is. An app by a foreign government that could be used to manipulate citizens is a much easier target for "banning". There's probably much less legal obstacles in the way in this case, and less resistance against it.
It's more of a financial security concern from the aligarchy POV.
The problem with tiktok, x, or even red note is that the government ends up with an alternative to their narrative. They can't have any of that.
A good example is Israel/Palestine genocide. They lost the narrative war, people woke up. It's very difficult to put them back to sleep.
A lot easier to just ban the platform. Security is just an excuse/tool to do so.
It has nothing to do with security. It has everything to do with controlling speech and maintaining management of public narratives. This became an urgent issue for the oligarchy when they lost control of Israel genocide discourse. This is what fascist states do. They are just getting started.
Because Zuckerberg spent a lot of money bribing Congress into this opinion. And everyone in Congress owns Facebook stock, so TikTok is a security threat to their portfolio balance.
Edit: Another provable fact being downvoted by people who read too much Tom Clancy and don't understand how vulnerable all apps are.
bc china
One's run by a white guy .... the other is Asian
When it comes to choices in North America ... it always goes to the white guy
If we were in a commercial passenger jet at 30,000 feet and the pilot and co pilot suddenly died and the crew had to choose who should fly the plane .... they'd think twice about the 300 Asian passengers and instead choose the only white guy in first class.
