The parent company of TikTok is ByteDance which is a company based in China. But TikTok as a company isn’t based in China.
From its Wiki:
Its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is owned by founders and Chinese investors (20%), other global investors (60%), and employees (20%). TikTok Ltd owns four entities that are based respectively in the United States, Australia (which also runs the New Zealand business), United Kingdom (also owns subsidiaries in the European Union), and Singapore (owns operations in Southeast Asia and India).
TikTok says that since 2020, the US based CEO is responsible for making important decisions. However, multiple reports claim that there is little functional separation between TikTok and its Beijing-based executives and software developers. TikTok has been noted for downplaying its connection with ByteDance and for eschewing questions about its relationship with the Chinese government.
Not to be that guy but is there even any vertical video social media that currently provides what TikTok does as an exact competitor?
Youtube shorts is so horrendous I have it blocked via revanced.
This seems more like an excuse to get rid of competition than spyware allegations. It’s not like CISA has some big report on TikTok software dump. Everything they do is mirrored by Facebook down to the COPPA violations that congress doesn’t seem to care Zuck is abusing.
There is a huge lack of quality content compared to tiktok. And it’s algorithm is horrendous.
Despite spending months trying to get YouTube to NOT show me far right, conservative, police loving, religious, or bigoted content, I still see it every once in a while. I’ve reported content, downvoted, selected ‘I’m not interested’ and nothing works.
There was a video from a lawyer about a black woman telling her child it’s ok to take the entire Halloween candy bowl and if legally that’s stealing.
Almost every other comment was some form of “well what do you expect from those people” or “it’s always the one you expect the most” or just straight up slurs. So many racist ‘jokes’ and I spent an hour just reporting comments.
Another video of a person driving through protestors blocking the road. Controversial and frustrating, I understand. But almost every comment was “the protestors deserve it” or “I’d drive through them too” and some real sociopathic shit.
And almost all the ads are horrendous. Literally Joe Rogan brain supplements, trashy weight loss, sketchy ai read ‘science’ on what doctors don’t want to to know. I would rather hear about Raid Shadow Legends.
I’ve found a couple gems in the mix, actual content creators that are funny or interesting. But almost all of them are also on TikTok too so there’s no reason to torture myself scrolling through a post apocalyptic wasteland. And there are so many quality creators on TikTok that aren’t on YouTube.
I believe a big part of it is (from what I’ve heard) TikTok has the best creator fund for paying the people who make videos. So without an outright ban, there’s no reason for them to switch. Really, this would be an absolutely huge win for YouTube/Google. And as much as I distrust TikTok, it would be a loss for creators and viewers. At least imo
When contacted about those allegations by the BBC, TikTok provided the statement: “With regards to users being locked out of the app until they called, that is false. All users had two methods for dismissing the notifications.”
Probably the usual hidden grey button “dismiss” over greyish background, just as Google, Microsoft and some other do.
If it were true yeah. In reality they are just shitting themselves because people on TikTok are broadcasting the genocide funded by US tax dollars and literally using American made bombs
Common fucking sense. There’s no technical mechanism they could use to lock you out of the app until they confirmed you made a phone call. How did all these grandpa’s get here?
I don’t use tiktok. I have a Twitter account. Why is tiktok bad while a privately owned social media platform (twitter) that’s partially financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar not bad?
Well, it is slightly different. The reason TikTok poses a different type of problem with people’s addiction is the tailoring of the content.
All social media uses a basic port for people to come on and find others, but mainly create their own space. And even that was addictive and harmful to mental health. Not to mention proved a great way to manipulate people. But it also gave people a route to alter their interactions with the app—to a degree.
TikTok, on the other hand, tailors everything that happens when you open the app. You don’t get to follow people, change the flavor of content you’re seeing. You open the app, and the algorithm is all that dictates what you’re scrolling through.
I don’t know where I stand on this. I think all social media should die out. It’s killing discourse, it’s creating hate, it’s misinforming people like never before. It’s radicalizing people and generally making everyone stupider and less able to conceive of, let alone discuss nuance. And without nuance, we are truly fucking doomed. It’s far too easy to manipulate people with regular social media, and TikTok has turned all of those problems into an art form. It’s literally like a perfect little brainwashing machine. I’ve seen people use it on the train. They’re like…zombies.
On the other, it’s shocking to me to see a representative claim that having their constituents…call their offices and, yknow, participate in the process is portrayed as being “weaponized against America.”
It’s like a rock and a hard place. Firstly, TikTok is poisoning the minds of people. It’s like social media on steroids, and social media was already having a profoundly negative effect. On the other, it’s always dicey when taking things away from people “for the good of America.” Like…where was this attitude when instagram and Facebook were weaponized against the American people? Like, didn’t they prove it was used to sway elections here and in the UK? Why the uneven hand? Because they like demonizing foreigners and they protect white rich people weaponizing their wealth.
So yeah, maybe it’s the right move, but in context, it’s so blatantly favoritism shown to the evil fuckers causing harm for their own ends.
actually you do get to tailor your experience on tiktok. you can absolutely follow people. you even have the option to have the algorithm that’s tailored to your liked content (fyp) or specifically look at a feed of your followed accounts.
You said that tiktok tailors every bit of what happens on the app.
I have some news for you… so does youtube and every other social media platform out there.
people who don’t use tiktok seem to not really understand that 95% of the content on it is from youtube or shares creator spaces with youtube and other social media. my fyp and follows are mostly artists, musicians, funny people, animal videos and I even get some news as well.
tiktok is weirdly villanized by those that don’t even use the app.
I agree with you that social media is bad, but tiktok isn’t really the world ending propaganda machine it’s portrayed to be. I don’t know if I’d consider funny videos and anime edits to be “poisoning the minds of people”.
My problem is with the influence that a hostile foreign state actor has with TikTok.
Google is an independent company; I’m 99% certain their motivation is to make money and I’m confident their algorithms are tailored purely for engagement and profit. Whilst I’m sure they have some back room deals with US intelligence organisations I suspect that it’s a case of providing data vs providing influence (though I would not rule it out).
TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government. That’s not up for debate; if you have an entity in China it has to work that way. Imagine the damage they could do if they actively decided to increase, for example, messages of reunification with Taiwan in their algorithm by just 1% on a global scale. That frightens me and I’m not convinced it isn’t happening already on specific topics of concern to China’s foreign policy.
And that’s putting aside the amount of data that the Chinese are getting without even exerting any influence. They can likely discern worldwide sentiment on a range of topics and adjust political posture accordingly.
I’m not saying Google is perfect. I hate social media in general for the way it’s warping the zeitgeist. But I personally consider TikTok to be a huge threat to the world.
For example — last year they sent what a spy balloon over the USA in what a lot of experts believe was a test of US defence systems - weapons used to shoot down the balloon had never been used before outside of top secret test facilities. And that balloon was covered in high tech sensors and almost certainly broadcasting data in real time. There’s no plausible explanation for the incident other than to find out how the US would respond.
Why does China want to know how US defence systems work? A lot of people already think there’s a chance of war between the two super powers. That balloon incident didn’t help things.
And what went viral on TikTok? Claims that the balloon was a actually flying over Canada and never went near US soil. Claims that it was launched by kids in the USA. Where did those claims originate from? Nobody knows, but it seems pretty coincidental. These claims were spread on other social networks too - but they went viral on TikTok alone.
That’s not the only incident, it’s just one of the most recent one that involved TikTok. Others have been far more serious especially in busy international waters south of China.
If Twitter’s financial backing by Saudi Arabia/Qatar is ever a concern, I’m sure the US will act on that as well.
Later Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that the balloon not only did not transmit data back to China – it never collected any.
“We’re aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it was our – and it has been our – assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States,” Ryder said
To me, that’s the only complaint I have about this, that they’re singling out Tiktok.
But, im not against it because the US has always singled out “the biggest guy” to set a precedent, which then causes all tbe smaller social media platforms to get their shit together. From Microsoft, to Google, to Facebook.
I personally don’t really mind TikTok. But the algorithm is a bit too addictive. The short form 30 second content consumption format is slowly eroding our attention span.
I think they’re using “teaching” here in a way neither you nor I would. Because there’s no way they can put any lessons in front of the right students. That’s the algorithms decision. And those signs reek of astroturfing.
I follow mainly therapists and pet behaviorists on TikTok so my take is the teaching thrives through regular user engagement. I can imagine a teacher letting students know they have a page and getting their start that way, too. It has its risks but it’s really helped supplement my education.
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.
Can anyone get me up to speed what claims the bill gave to justify TikTok must be either sold or remove from app stores?
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.
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.
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.
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).
I don’t necessarily think forcing them to sell to another entity will fix the problems
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.
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’m not surprised at this when Americans refuse to ware a simple medical mask during COVID.
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.
Because the Chinese government has inordinate control over Chinese companies and is not a friendly government.
Friendly or not is subjective. I dislike it doesn’t means others are the same, nor I should force them to believe so.
They routinely use technology to control their own population and
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.
work closely with hackers in their country that attack US businesses and consumers.
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.
There absolutely should be serious legislation on data gathering and how large platforms manipulate public perception with their algorithms,
I totally agree but should be applied universally
but TikTok is a national security threat at a level the others are not explicitly because the Chinese government has control over it.
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.
Disclosure: I don’t use Facebook, Intagram, Twitter, nor TikTok
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:
“China has been interfering with every single presidential election in Taiwan since 1996, either through military exercises, economic coercion, or cognitive warfare, including disinformation or the spread of conspiracies”
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:
political content you’re exposed to selected by an algorithm that is opaque and constantly changing
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.
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”.
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.
I stay largely uninvolved with social media apps outside of this fediverse project, but why is it that bytedance must divest TikTok while meta is free to keep Facebook and Instagram? Aren’t the risks to mental health and security the same?
Meta isn’t heavily influenced by a government adversarial to that of the US, so the risks to US security are not the same.
The mental health risk looks pretty similar, though.
I remember two decades ago when the US was screaming about the “great firewall of China” and how they should open up their internet to companies like Google. What made the US change their mind since then?
I think in the US we’re basically going to end up doing, while not the exact same thing, something similar. Probably in the name of combating “disinformation.”
The irony of their efforts is that it only proved to show that they could easily begin influencing users which is the key argument being used against them.
I’m still not sure what my feelings on the subject are. I don’t use the app myself, but besides its connection to a company in China and, therefore, the Chinese government, it seems to do the same exact tracking and algorithm manipulating that every other social network does.
So their tracking goes way beyond what other companies do, and China uses that data for expressly political goals rather than simply selling ads to users.
The paper states that they studied the HTML form element interactions but “not the keystrokes or content.”
There’s a big difference. Both are more invasive than we would like, but grabbing everything you type while in the app’s browser is much worse than measuring a true or false “did this person submit their comment or did they give up and leave it unsubmitted.”
Tiktok is getting the content of the text, which could be sensitive info, and it grabs from every site you visit, not just the social platform itself.
But I think the main issue is using the data for allegedly targeting of protestors and Chinese political opponents, more than the depth of the data collection itself.
logging statuses that were typed out, but ultimately not posted.
That’s common practice across the web. For example in a lot of social networks (not Lemmy) if I were to close this reply box without clicking the “Reply” button, I’d simply be able to open it and my half written reply would be restored.
It’s not about gathering data on users, it’s about saving users from accidental deletion particularly on touch screens where it’s so easy to accidentally brush the wrong button.
Also I’d argue anything you intentionally type into a facebook status message box, is something you’re happy to share with facebook and everyone on your social network. There’s no expectation of privacy and we self sensor what we type into that box.
Logging key strokes is different, there’s no reason to record that anything you record (other than actually typing messages) is likely to be something the user intended to type somewhere else but didn’t realise which browser window had keyboard focus.
They would be picking up all kinds of things including passwords.
I definitely see issues with how it targets young people so aggressively and can have a huge negative impact on their mental health. China can essentially use it as a tool to lower the mental health of our youth and spread misinformation on purpose. The fact that the version available in China emphasizes educational content and limits usage per day shows that they know exactly what they are doing with the international versions.
Sounds like a backfire to me. Did you read the article? The lobbying was from TikTok to prevent the bill from passing, but it sounds like it just made the reps more committed to passing it.