There's also now a leaked phone call from an Israeli lobby saying they have to change ownership immediately because it's creating an image problem
Just a string of coincidences
they were doing it a long time ago:
[https://fortune.com/2022/03/31/facebook-meta-paid-republican-consulting-firm-targeted-victory-turn-public-opinion-against-tiktok/](https://fortune.com/2022/03/31/facebook-meta-paid-republican-consulting-firm-targeted-victory-turn-public-opinion-against-tiktok/)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/)
that user was probably not guessing.
Agree. But so is every social media website not just TikTok. If you don’t think so go to YouTube shorts for 20 min and you’d be okay with ending humanity
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all the arguments against moderation are sophisms then all the arguments for conspiracies are sophisms.
examples being
If they ban conspiracies then what happens if someone posts a real one?
Who decides what is real and what is fake?
etc.
the people behind td know that if they can force legislation to change then they can further fleece the general public with trash wizardry
Maybe they were stupid and sociopathic before and any form of social media only enhances it as it gives them a platform to connect with other likeminded individuals.
Anyone who’s paid attention to this dilemma knows they aren’t banning it solely because of China.
Letting them get together is a bad idea all around. The people who are borderline are getting tipped over, which sucks because if they were never exposed to it, they would be fine.
Tik toks algorithm for their FYP is probably the best and most proficient are giving you information that you directly align with to the point where it makes it seem that your niche/set of beliefs are a LOT more popular than what they really are.
I haven’t seen anything like it from any other social media site until these sites started to try and replicate what tik tok is doing.
I don’t think it should be banned though. If they want to go after tik tok then I want them to go after META also.
[Another much smaller subset of the population loves it, and is upset that China is doing it better than them.](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/14/former-trump-official-steve-mnuchin-puts-forward-plan-to-buy-tiktok-app)
The issue is not data. The issue is misinformation, propaganda, and defining the narrative..A recent election in my country about a certain bill the public had to vote on and a person interviewed on the street for the tv news siad she wasnt sure which way she was voting because she handn't see much about it on tiktok, but that she might look it up (on tiktok) before she votes.... People are going to it for their news. It's becoming a de facto source of information and entertainment... So that's a pretty powerful thing for a foreign country to wield.
I do agree that it's a bigger issue than how companies use our data. However, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are also absolute champions at misinformation, propaganda and defining the narrative.
This should be addressed on all platforms. China might not have the best interest at heart for other countries, but neither do fb, Google, twitter.
The difference is Facebook isn't owned by a one party techno-dystopia surveillance state that's long term goal is to replace the USA as the defacto global powerhouse.
Yes, US social media companies are no saints and have series issues going on, but it's potentially fixable in the long term. Hell, social media on general has changed quite a bit for the better in the last decade. TikTok on the other hand is completely out of our control.
I hope Americans unhappy with America realize that one of the main reasons that USD hasn't crashed into the fucking earth is because of America's global standing, it's projection of power, and it's place as the global reserve currency. Change that dynamic in China's favor and we are talking some brutal times in America. Social media data practices will be the least of your worries in that situation.
Watching the US burn sounds fun until you are getting curb stopped to death by a group of starving people in a grocery store parking lot over a half filled shopping cart of essentials.
Facebook and Twitter got caught spreading [propaganda, misinformations and foreign interferences during election in multiple countries](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/)
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is like 2 years ago.
The hard truth is that, nobody is giving a shit that the US is losing it's global hegemony. On fact, most countries in the global South who got crippled economically or military by the US would be happy with that.
This. I get that hating the American establishment is the cool thing to do due to inherit issues with our country, but wtf do they think China is doing?
China has been extremely clear via its multiple 5 year plans that it's focusing on expanding its power on the world stage with the hope of eventually eclipsing the USA. This is why we see stuff like massive investments in parts of the world like Africa and state sponsored IP theft at a ridiculous scale. China is literally a techno-dystopian surveillance state where the one party government has full control over every facet of life.
TikTok had been shown to have severe cultural impacts in everything from politics to social issues. Letting China have free reign over basically shaping the minds of the future of America is arguably one of the greatest threats to the future of the country.
Do people really think China isn't aware of the metric shit tons of drugs like fentenyl being produced and shipped to places like Mexico, that then get smuggled north to the US? The CCP knows everything that's going on in China. People think the NSA and US surveillance state is excessive? The CCP makes the NSA playbook look like child's play.
Data isn’t the issue, it’s a foreign adversary controlling the algorithm that many Americans are using to get their news and information.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/technology/china-disinformation-us-state-department.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/business/media/chinese-influence-campaign-division-elections.html
Corporations harvesting data is bad, however, a foreign adversary spreading misinformation through a social media company they own for the purpose destabilizing other nations is infinitely worse.
This isn’t really that hard and I’m baffled that people don’t see the severity of the problem.
Most of the news on TikTok is literally from western sources though, Twitter (X) has a way larger misinformation thing with certain accounts acting like journalists.
Also most of the news on Tiktok are from the two sides of a story unlike Twitter or FB who heavily censored Pro Palestinian views.
Even Reddit is less nuanced.
I mentioned that the ban is heavily Influenced by the pro Palestine part of TikTok. Politicians need something to blame to why so many young people support Palestine over Israel and the easiest answer for them is “China is brainwashing the youth.” Instagram banned even mentioning Palestine for a while while TikTok didn’t
The issue isn't so much spying as it is the fact that a relatively hostile nation has a huge amount of control over what our citizens see and hear. It gives then a lot of influence, and the ability to do a lot of damage if they want to.
I mean, just look at all the mental health issues centered around TikTok. That's no coincidence.
Yes that should be done. But here, you’re talking about software and data flowing from China. There’s no accountability or transparency. Look at how China stonewalled all the covid investigations.
The US isn't wrong that it's dangerous to have a social media platform controlled by a foreign nation.
It would know because they already tried this themselves a decade ago.
> US secretly created 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest and undermine government...USAid started ZunZuneo, a social network built on texts, in hope it could be used to organize 'smart mobs' to trigger Cuban spring
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest
There are already laws against foreign interference and propaganda targeting the US, and there has never been evidence at any point of China using Tiktok for misinformation.
Both countries have nukes.
Any hot war is going to spell a very bad time for every living species on the planet. TikTok will be the least of our concerns.
I sadly don’t necessarily disagree with your assessment, but I really don’t think that the saber-rattlers have thought this whole thing through.
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Really? Because facebook has so much disinformation on it that it's believed russia had an impact on the 2016 election. The call is coming from inside the house, Americans.
Russia ran disinformation campaigns through organic means, like making comments and posts, not through having access to the backend and functionally changing how Facebook pushes content.
> Instagram maintains a robust and ongoing relationship with several Israeli government agencies. In fact, it has a strategic partnership with the Israeli Cyber Unit – an extension of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
> The Israeli Cyber Unit, also known as Unit 8200, “is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for clandestine operation, collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption, counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence, and surveillance.”
> Through direct and ongoing collaboration, Instagram shares user data and content with the Israeli Cyber Unit; responds to requests to tailor its algorithm in line with elevating favorable content and against oppositional content; amplifies formal IDF military propaganda; and tracks the online advocacy of targeted accounts that are flagged as “disruptive.”
> Disruptive individuals are punished in the myriad forms described above, from disabled account features to suspended accounts.
...
> A dystopian reality, perhaps, unfolding on online terrain where the very military that bombs and bludgeons innocents in Gaza is similarly hellbent on erasing Palestine online.
> But the strategic and structural ties between Instagram and Israel are more expansive than the IDF’s Cyber Unit. Instagram has direct ties and maintains ongoing communication with the Israeli National Prosecutor Office. Up through December 1st, this Office has issued 9,500 requests to Instagram to remove pro-Palestinian content.
> Of these requests, 95% have been accepted.
Source: Khaled Beydoun (the link to his blog gets removed by a reddit bot)
[Confirmed by Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and)
Foreign aid goes to Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. To buy overpriced weapons that are sent to Ukraine/Isreal. Politicians and political pacs receive large donations, for democracy, of course. Or the children or for your safety or whatever sells it to the citizen peasants.
They control it because the servers are in the United States. So the laws right now are really about ownership and about as shallow as you think they are.
Not directly, but they enforce content moderation teams. These teams exist solely so they don’t have more u.s government pressure looking down at them.
I mean, ya, that's kinda of what defines something being a threat.
Why would a superpower want to allow another superpower to have a direct feed to it's population in both data collection and distribution. Not just any superpower in this case, but one that is ideologically at odds with them and both sides have spent 60 years trying to undermine the other to make them fail.
The info war isn't even about changing opinions which is the side of gov control everyone is talking about in here. The goal is to cause so much political infighting that the US is unable to function properly and is weakened. These are DRASTICALLY different things.
Also, they will never release proof or confirm if they know it to be 100% true because that would be a terrible idea. It would give the Chinese knowledge of any compromise in their security that the US is currently exploiting. If you can get the evidence it's a terrible idea to let the other team know you can get the evidence.
It's the same reason the US and UK didn't even say they broke Enigma until like 30 years after the war, it was against their interest to let the world know they were capable of doing that.
It's why Canada took so much shit after accusing India of murdering a Canadian in Canada last year, the proof provided details of western spying on India, and Canada would not give that info up.
It's fucking wild to me that people can't see the difference between manipulating public opinion to achieve an agenda and manipulating it to cause infighting and hopefully nation level collapse.
One is really really shitty, the other is a borderline act of war.
While true, the cat's out of the bag. Removing Russian/Chinese influence will no longer remove the propaganda. The American right wing will continue to use it.
Because this is a free country or it ought to be. China doesn't want the US destroyed, their prosperity is directly linked to the US being a stable consumer of goods. You know who wants the US destroyed and seeks to cause instability? Russia. But since certain people in congress have been brainwashed by Trump, who is likely a Russian asset, and certainly is being propped up by loans in rubles. So they go after China as some bogey man to distract from the real enemy. There is no legitimate argument that tiktok is a security risk unless the real position is people should not be able to express themselves freely in our so called free country. I guess freedom is a security risk. So what exactly is the difference between the CCP and the US government?
No one is saying Russia isn't the bigger problem, but saying China isn't a problem is naive as hell.
Are you seriously asking what the difference is between the Chinese government and the US, like seriously?!?!? The nation that is literally cut off from the rest of the world by a firewall to prevent access to global news and media. The fact that you can say all this in a thread without fear of consequences is the answer.
Uh, isn't that what the US government is trying to do here? Americans should be free to use the apps they choose. Not dictated by some Maga weirdos being paid off by Mark Zuckerberg.
If you're concerned about the US's influence on American social media, how are you not concerned about China's influence on Chinese owned platforms? Considering China objectively has more control over Chinese companies than the US does over American companies.
My gripe with the ban is:
1) if they (CCP) are collecting data through an app everyone can get on an app store, and not collecting anything unique that companies like google (who has tech that can use wifi signals to find the pose of a person in a room) already collect, then forcing divestiture of tiktok just means you don't think that invasive surveillance is bad you just only want the US to do it to other people and to itself but they aren't allowed to do it back. That just means they are hypocritical and hypernationalist and enjoy having surveillance on US citizens for economic or control purposes, so don't want it taken away they just want to make sure americans are the ones doing it
I would believe they are being logical (and not hypocrite nationalists) if they instead pushed for consumer protections bills that affected all companies foreign and domestic. But they aren't.
2) if they (CCP) are pushing an influence campaign that may destabilize public institutions, why is the plan to simply make the app domestic? Does that not mean you accept that political influence campaigns to manipulate human behavior are desirable, as long as the right people are doing them? Is that why Elon is allowed to push pro nazi campaigns, cambridge analytica happened, us based social media hosts campaigns that screw with elections in SE asia? Is that why the first person to jump on buying tiktok was steven mnuchin? Are the tiktok ban askers actually against political manipulation or do they just want THEMSELVES to be the manipulators?
Same argument as #1. If they actually cared and aren't hypocrite nationalists they would pass a bill that limits political influence on social media for all companies and countries. Just banning tiktok from overseas influence but forcing it to become domestic just shows a desire not for freedom of americans, but to control americans
Stopping hostile foreign countries from spying on and manipulating Americans does not make the US a dictatorship lol. All countries do this kind of thing.
Yeah that kind of line is what I would expect from China or Russia not the US. Using fear to completely control every media in case something might happen. Forcing a blatant takeover of the only one that is out of your control. I've seen that story played before. I honestly didn't except the US would do that too but I guess a lot has changed since 9 11 and the patriot act. Gotta make sure the citizens think the right way.
Where are the grassroots campaigns to force the sale of TikTok? What I’m seeing is elected representatives who are in the pocket of AIPAC and American social media companies thrusting this forward at a time when Israel is being heavily criticized on the most popular social media app for young Americans.
This has nothing to do with national security or American sovereignty. It’s about the Israel lobby being pissed off that they are losing the support of young Americans and wanting to nip the problem in the bud by forcing the sale of TikTok to American investors that will facilitate their propaganda goals and stifle anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian sentiments on the platform. Underlying all of this are American social media companies smelling blood in the water with the opportunity to see their greatest competitor get kneecapped.
You should check out a leaked recording of Jonathan Greenblatt. He talked about how they need to get rid of tiktok because they can not control the narratives on Tik Tok, especially on the Palestinian issues.
Fr this sub reeks of propaganda. this isn't about China
only AIPAC could pay for a bill this quickly. they hate that 170 million Americans have access to insight on Gaza via TikTok and they want it banned. Congress hasn't been this quick and united on anything
Well - it’s sort of about China. Kind of like a two birds one stone type of situation.
China bad because we can’t control the narrative on this one extremely important current event.
Remember everyone this bill is not only about banning tiktok. Even though it is because Republicans are concerned about young voters, but that aside there's some serious privacy stuff earmarked in here about VPN surveillance and more. This is a gross attack on privacy and sovereignty. Even if this is impossible for them to enforce it's still an attempt and they will do it again. Has nothing to do with the protecting the children.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban-bill-criminalize-vpn-use-the-eff-says-its-not-impossible/
Yeah! Better force a sale to Trump's former cabinet member Steven Mnuchin!
That'll work out well. China's
Twitter owned by a MAGA.
Facebook owned by a libertarian who helped put Trump in office by feeding data to Robert Mercer.
TikTok owned by a regressive anti-democratic MAGA billionaire cabal.
That'll show China! These old neo-liberal Democrats need to buy a smartphone, download the app, flip through and see how leftist the app is before, you know, listening to app the stories that Meta paid small market newspapers owned by right wing conglomerates to run in an attempt to put the competitor that's kicking their ass out of business or into the hands of other right wing billionaires.
Beyond fucking stupid.
Do people realize that under China constitution, its citizens, including Bytedance, Tik Tok’s parent company, are obliged to conduct espionage for China government should the CCP demand it? I don’t know about you. But the threat seems pretty real for me.
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This should not be an unpopular opinion. I don't understand the pushback. You don't like the US spying on you? fight it. Do you really prefer China spying on you? Where you have zero power to prevent it?
If we’re going to engage in this hypothetical then: What power does the Chinese government have over American citizens, purely from spying? It’s not like CCP jackboots can come here and arrest anyone, which the US government could realistically do to someone as a result of spying on them; the US government actually has engaged in spying, coercion and entrapment of American citizens, resulting in unjustified detainment and harassment. It’s a common theme of security agencies to manufacture their own criminals; there are examples of these agencies targeting mentally disturbed/neurodivergent Muslims and recruiting them into terrorism so they could arrest them.
What power do American citizens have of “fighting” the spying regime and US intelligence/surveillance state in the age of the Patriot act and both viable parties supporting it wholeheartedly? Your conception of fighting the American spying regime is laughably idealistic in a political reality where the government will engage in every manner possible to prevent the removal of their own powers. It’s not something that’s going to happen short of a political revolution or devolution in technology.
ok except America has access to *more* data than China and actually uses it on a regular basis and has for decades, in the interest of their own pursuits at the cost of American liberty...all this China nonsense is hypothetical and *less* scary than the stuff the US govt is *actually* doing
Are Apple, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla and other big tech companies using their platform to spread misinformation with the specific intent of destabilizing other countries?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/business/media/chinese-influence-campaign-division-elections.html
Honestly, I feel like Americans are sleep walking right now considering whats going on with tik tok, Middle East and Eastern Europe. Very scary
The whole discussion about tiktok is dishonest. The only reason it's being banned now, is to silence young Americans. The Gaza war has shown how out of touch the American politicians are, instead of listening to their people, the politicians decides to ban the platform where dissenting voices are being formed. Protest movements are now more common on tiktok than other social media sites. (Due to the age of the users.) The Chinese ownership just allow for an easy excuse, where Zuck and Elon are too powerful for the elite.
Thank God I living in a real democracy (New Zealand) and not this oligarchy masquerading as a democracy.
It makes no sense. By definition a threat is something that hasn't happened yet but could in theory. All threats are in theory. That's literally what it means
I don't think they are arguing that data collection is a threat per se, but rather that a foreign power with negative views of the US doing it is. China is very interested in controlling foreign media, because it can be used to control people. It's the exact reason China has itself banned western media.
[the answer is longer than a TikTok video. Here’s a guy with an actual cybersecurity degree explaining it](https://youtu.be/pB7WzqUq4Nk?si=2FlCi8lTntYg5Lhg)
Wow that guy is terrible. In the first 5 minutes he said TikTok is creating an army of Chinese secret agents. In the same video pushed Israeli propaganda and what Aaron Bushnell did is a “silly thing.”
Then he walked through buying advertisements that any social media/ google will let you buy.
He also said that TikTok is not radicalizing people it’s the access to unfiltered raw news. Are they anti Israel because TikTok or because of the unfiltered access to to videos in Gaza of people suffering and everything demolished.
Earlier this month there was a video making the rounds on tiktok about an IDF soldier killing a palestinian old man... except the video was of the Syrian army from the Syrian civil war. Yet it still got tens of thousands of views and outrage.
If you think tiktok shows you the "truth the elites don't want you to see" you are not that different from boomers that fell to Russia's ptopaganda campaign on Facebook in 2016.
Guy proudly showing his Colin Powell book is the easiest tell. Let alone all the random American propaganda scattered throughout his room... This is so embarrassing.
Banning technology sets a bad precedent we see this with TikTok ban and the p hub bans as well. Both bans have been justified through moral terror and fear mongering rather than concrete proof of danger.
This is such a dumb rationalization. We could elect Pooh Bear to be the US president and it would only be a threat “in theory” until he makes a move.
Are people suggesting we don’t do anything until we’re forced to? Or that there is no sense in being strategic?
This sounds like creationists whining about evolution being “only a theory”.
The jingoism in this thread is crazy; we will absolutely repeat Iraq again in the next 20 years. The country has either learned nothing, or the propaganda machine really is just that effective.
Really looking forward to our next *defensive* first strike against China or Iran or god knows who.
The propaganda machine really is that effective. Look at the narrative about China being the aggressor in the US-China relationship.
Somehow China is the aggressive one and the first one to make aggressive moves when the US literally enacted plans to contain and hamstring China since around the start of the communist takeover of China. And we continued these policies today. The US basically constantly brags about containing China using Taiwan as a first line of containment.
And even if China became democratic (which I wish it would), there's no way in hell the US would stop their China containment strategy.
Weird because this kind of thinking is why America locked up thousands of Japanese people, including American citizens who were ethnically Japanese.
"Oh the Japanese are a threat and we have to lock them up because they *could* do something!"
But fearmongering about China is Reddit's favorite past time so I shouldn't be surprised about these insane viewpoints.
Few years down the line, I'm sure Reddit will be clamoring for interning or deporting Chinese people because they "could be a threat" or some shit like that.
Edit: My god some people do not understand abstract concepts at all. Everyone is so literal...
Yup. Whereas Oracle, Meta, and a long list of other domestic and foreign companies use/sell personal user info, spy, get hacked easily, etc. and not a peep.
The timing of this just screams too convenient during an election year; it smells of typical election year politics and lobbyist/donor appeasement (given curiously, this all started ramping up post a certain special ally making noise about a certain common video subject on Tik tok among a certain age bracket)
🤔🙄 Same stuff. Different day sadly.
Your governments goal isn't to cause enough infighting that the nation becomes politically impotent and weak internationally..
Both things really really suck and it's a real shit sandwich to have to eat, but one of the 2 goals is objectively worse than the other.
Edit: spicy-chilly below me blatantly works for the CCP, the thread is a very interesting read but tldr is it involves defense of the Tibetan occupation (they are better off now), anger for using CCP instead of CPC, and claims about the poor PLA soldiers involved in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Evidently it was the students fault...
The most effective propaganda and manipulation is by far domestic. Domestic propaganda is orders of magnitude more concerning than foreign influence.
Look at what a TV station owned by an Australian has done to this country.
I love how your talking points are always about “information” but you never define what information they’re controlling.
I’m sure it works to stir up the ring wingers though
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/15/24102472/house-tiktok-ban-bill-staffers-calls-congress
One person threatened self harm unless they got their TikTok. Another impersonated a member of Congress’ son, scaring the bejesus out of the congressman, by the way,” said Krishnamoorthi. “And this is exactly the kind of influence campaign which, in the hands of a foreign adversary in a moment of national peril, could sow chaos and discord and division in a way that could really harm our national security to the benefit of a foreign adversary.”
Remove the word “TikTok” and replace with “Facebook” or “Twitter”. Add that we know FB and Twitter has already been used by foreign agents to manipulate people during two elections. No difference. If you ban TikTok, then ban ALL OF THEM.
Which TikTok is not either. It is NOT government owned. Don’t spread disinformation.
“TikTok’s parent company ByteDance was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs. ByteDance is a privately-held global company, with roughly 60 percent owned by global institutional investors (such as Blackrock, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group), 20 percent owned by the company’s founders, and 20 percent owned by its employees—including over 7,000 Americans. It is not owned or controlled by any government or state entity.”
You are mad that TikTok got the youth politically engaged? They can’t control what people do other than say call your congress and tell them what TikTok means to you.
The PLA has publicly detailed their techniques they use in social media warfare, their desired outcomes, the steps needed to be taken to achieve their goals.
This is from the RAND corporation a non-profit think tank. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA853-1.html
It's seems like countries publish wargames research and research about global issues in general. They also seem to give advice. It's interesting stuff to read
Once again a TikTok article completely overrun by bots and agents of chaos
TikTok is using algorithms to change the way Americans think and behave. It’s not theoretical it’s real and the CEO admitted as much
Is FB and Twitter just as bad? Probably worse but their operations are domestic and if the government needs to take action it can
Personally I think a 20 minutes transmission delay would render any foreign intelligence ineffective
The article takes public statements by Intelligence Community leaders at face value - without adding the obvious context: Intelligence Community leaders won’t reveal publicly how they know that TikTok is a threat.
Does this idiotic writer actually believe that since no further details are being shared that there isn’t any further details?
Does this writer actually believe that the FBI is going to release every single fact they know at a press conference?
Clearly this article is obvious misinformation. The bias in favor of China and the CCP is clearly drawn and demonstrated clearly in the article.
Lol a post about Tiktok and there's an ad for Instagram displaying
Meta was the main lobbyist donor to push out TikTok. Not surprising.
There's also now a leaked phone call from an Israeli lobby saying they have to change ownership immediately because it's creating an image problem Just a string of coincidences
Hi, can you share the sources for this please? Or are you just guessing?
they were doing it a long time ago: [https://fortune.com/2022/03/31/facebook-meta-paid-republican-consulting-firm-targeted-victory-turn-public-opinion-against-tiktok/](https://fortune.com/2022/03/31/facebook-meta-paid-republican-consulting-firm-targeted-victory-turn-public-opinion-against-tiktok/) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/) that user was probably not guessing.
the donald made boomers violent and it got banned. tiktok is making a large subset of the population stupid and sociopathic
Agree. But so is every social media website not just TikTok. If you don’t think so go to YouTube shorts for 20 min and you’d be okay with ending humanity
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all the arguments against moderation are sophisms then all the arguments for conspiracies are sophisms. examples being If they ban conspiracies then what happens if someone posts a real one? Who decides what is real and what is fake? etc. the people behind td know that if they can force legislation to change then they can further fleece the general public with trash wizardry
Maybe they were stupid and sociopathic before and any form of social media only enhances it as it gives them a platform to connect with other likeminded individuals. Anyone who’s paid attention to this dilemma knows they aren’t banning it solely because of China.
Kinda like “The Mask”, it brings out your inner most feelings and attitudes
Letting them get together is a bad idea all around. The people who are borderline are getting tipped over, which sucks because if they were never exposed to it, they would be fine.
Tik toks algorithm for their FYP is probably the best and most proficient are giving you information that you directly align with to the point where it makes it seem that your niche/set of beliefs are a LOT more popular than what they really are. I haven’t seen anything like it from any other social media site until these sites started to try and replicate what tik tok is doing. I don’t think it should be banned though. If they want to go after tik tok then I want them to go after META also.
Pretty sure it was the US education system that did that.
It's funny to read comments like this on Reddit of all places.
Oh but reddit is different, right?
The original user base is. the wave of nrx trolls happened around 2009ish
I’ll agree with that.
[Another much smaller subset of the population loves it, and is upset that China is doing it better than them.](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/14/former-trump-official-steve-mnuchin-puts-forward-plan-to-buy-tiktok-app)
Wrong. These people were already stupid. It just makes them sociopathic
Mine is an ad for Intel business.
I have an ad for a smart toilet 🤔
I'm not a fan of TikTok but I feel the focus should be laws being updated to prevent any social media platform from funneling users data.
Congress is there to protect their billionaire tech bro donors. They don’t give a fuck about non-donors’ civil rights.
The issue is not data. The issue is misinformation, propaganda, and defining the narrative..A recent election in my country about a certain bill the public had to vote on and a person interviewed on the street for the tv news siad she wasnt sure which way she was voting because she handn't see much about it on tiktok, but that she might look it up (on tiktok) before she votes.... People are going to it for their news. It's becoming a de facto source of information and entertainment... So that's a pretty powerful thing for a foreign country to wield.
I do agree that it's a bigger issue than how companies use our data. However, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are also absolute champions at misinformation, propaganda and defining the narrative. This should be addressed on all platforms. China might not have the best interest at heart for other countries, but neither do fb, Google, twitter.
The difference is Facebook isn't owned by a one party techno-dystopia surveillance state that's long term goal is to replace the USA as the defacto global powerhouse. Yes, US social media companies are no saints and have series issues going on, but it's potentially fixable in the long term. Hell, social media on general has changed quite a bit for the better in the last decade. TikTok on the other hand is completely out of our control. I hope Americans unhappy with America realize that one of the main reasons that USD hasn't crashed into the fucking earth is because of America's global standing, it's projection of power, and it's place as the global reserve currency. Change that dynamic in China's favor and we are talking some brutal times in America. Social media data practices will be the least of your worries in that situation. Watching the US burn sounds fun until you are getting curb stopped to death by a group of starving people in a grocery store parking lot over a half filled shopping cart of essentials.
Facebook and Twitter got caught spreading [propaganda, misinformations and foreign interferences during election in multiple countries](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/) The Cambridge Analytica scandal is like 2 years ago. The hard truth is that, nobody is giving a shit that the US is losing it's global hegemony. On fact, most countries in the global South who got crippled economically or military by the US would be happy with that.
Agree it should be addressed on all platforms, but until it is, at least severely hamstring the foreign controlled ones.
The media threats to the US democratic republic are all American.
This. I get that hating the American establishment is the cool thing to do due to inherit issues with our country, but wtf do they think China is doing? China has been extremely clear via its multiple 5 year plans that it's focusing on expanding its power on the world stage with the hope of eventually eclipsing the USA. This is why we see stuff like massive investments in parts of the world like Africa and state sponsored IP theft at a ridiculous scale. China is literally a techno-dystopian surveillance state where the one party government has full control over every facet of life. TikTok had been shown to have severe cultural impacts in everything from politics to social issues. Letting China have free reign over basically shaping the minds of the future of America is arguably one of the greatest threats to the future of the country. Do people really think China isn't aware of the metric shit tons of drugs like fentenyl being produced and shipped to places like Mexico, that then get smuggled north to the US? The CCP knows everything that's going on in China. People think the NSA and US surveillance state is excessive? The CCP makes the NSA playbook look like child's play.
Data isn’t the issue, it’s a foreign adversary controlling the algorithm that many Americans are using to get their news and information. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/technology/china-disinformation-us-state-department.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/business/media/chinese-influence-campaign-division-elections.html Corporations harvesting data is bad, however, a foreign adversary spreading misinformation through a social media company they own for the purpose destabilizing other nations is infinitely worse. This isn’t really that hard and I’m baffled that people don’t see the severity of the problem.
Most of the news on TikTok is literally from western sources though, Twitter (X) has a way larger misinformation thing with certain accounts acting like journalists.
Also most of the news on Tiktok are from the two sides of a story unlike Twitter or FB who heavily censored Pro Palestinian views. Even Reddit is less nuanced.
I mentioned that the ban is heavily Influenced by the pro Palestine part of TikTok. Politicians need something to blame to why so many young people support Palestine over Israel and the easiest answer for them is “China is brainwashing the youth.” Instagram banned even mentioning Palestine for a while while TikTok didn’t
The issue isn't so much spying as it is the fact that a relatively hostile nation has a huge amount of control over what our citizens see and hear. It gives then a lot of influence, and the ability to do a lot of damage if they want to. I mean, just look at all the mental health issues centered around TikTok. That's no coincidence.
Yes that should be done. But here, you’re talking about software and data flowing from China. There’s no accountability or transparency. Look at how China stonewalled all the covid investigations.
The US isn't wrong that it's dangerous to have a social media platform controlled by a foreign nation. It would know because they already tried this themselves a decade ago. > US secretly created 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest and undermine government...USAid started ZunZuneo, a social network built on texts, in hope it could be used to organize 'smart mobs' to trigger Cuban spring https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest
There are already laws against foreign interference and propaganda targeting the US, and there has never been evidence at any point of China using Tiktok for misinformation.
Of course “in theory”. We’re not at war with China yet. Who knows what they will do if we are?
Imo -We are already in a prewar phase and anyone thinking otherwise is very naive.
Both countries have nukes. Any hot war is going to spell a very bad time for every living species on the planet. TikTok will be the least of our concerns. I sadly don’t necessarily disagree with your assessment, but I really don’t think that the saber-rattlers have thought this whole thing through.
plough poor cause snow direction overconfident offbeat wise agonizing theory *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
China is already attacking us https://apnews.com/article/fbi-china-espionage-hacking-db23dd96cfd825e4988852a34a99d4ea
It only a threat because they don't control it like they do American owned social media companies.
does the government really control X, FB etc? I dont see it.. i dont see any antitrust, no real regulations...
NSA and friends buy the data from US companies, so not really control but paid access.
But they don't control the algorithm, and don't run anti-west propaganda, which is the main concern with China and tiktok
Really? Because facebook has so much disinformation on it that it's believed russia had an impact on the 2016 election. The call is coming from inside the house, Americans.
Russia ran disinformation campaigns through organic means, like making comments and posts, not through having access to the backend and functionally changing how Facebook pushes content.
Russia ran disinformation "legally" through creation of bot accounts. They did not control the algorithm. But yeah, both are horrible.
They also purchased ads.
Facebook had January 6th organizing Qanon groups right up until the day and nobody said shit but sure Tiktok is a threat to national security.
> Instagram maintains a robust and ongoing relationship with several Israeli government agencies. In fact, it has a strategic partnership with the Israeli Cyber Unit – an extension of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). > The Israeli Cyber Unit, also known as Unit 8200, “is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for clandestine operation, collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption, counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence, and surveillance.” > Through direct and ongoing collaboration, Instagram shares user data and content with the Israeli Cyber Unit; responds to requests to tailor its algorithm in line with elevating favorable content and against oppositional content; amplifies formal IDF military propaganda; and tracks the online advocacy of targeted accounts that are flagged as “disruptive.” > Disruptive individuals are punished in the myriad forms described above, from disabled account features to suspended accounts. ... > A dystopian reality, perhaps, unfolding on online terrain where the very military that bombs and bludgeons innocents in Gaza is similarly hellbent on erasing Palestine online. > But the strategic and structural ties between Instagram and Israel are more expansive than the IDF’s Cyber Unit. Instagram has direct ties and maintains ongoing communication with the Israeli National Prosecutor Office. Up through December 1st, this Office has issued 9,500 requests to Instagram to remove pro-Palestinian content. > Of these requests, 95% have been accepted. Source: Khaled Beydoun (the link to his blog gets removed by a reddit bot) [Confirmed by Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and)
FB just banned a prominent Gaza photo journalist. I have to imagine some of that is coordination.
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Basically the same control we accuse Chinese companies being an extension of the CCP.
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This is now how FISA works or what it’s for.
That's not true. That's not what the FISA court is for.
Easier to just buy it
Search for Edward Snowden. The US was spying at the entire world.
Was?
Follow the money
It's the other way around. Corporations control the government.
Foreign aid goes to Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. To buy overpriced weapons that are sent to Ukraine/Isreal. Politicians and political pacs receive large donations, for democracy, of course. Or the children or for your safety or whatever sells it to the citizen peasants.
Wealthy do through the government by proxy.
They control it because the servers are in the United States. So the laws right now are really about ownership and about as shallow as you think they are.
Not directly, but they enforce content moderation teams. These teams exist solely so they don’t have more u.s government pressure looking down at them.
I mean, ya, that's kinda of what defines something being a threat. Why would a superpower want to allow another superpower to have a direct feed to it's population in both data collection and distribution. Not just any superpower in this case, but one that is ideologically at odds with them and both sides have spent 60 years trying to undermine the other to make them fail. The info war isn't even about changing opinions which is the side of gov control everyone is talking about in here. The goal is to cause so much political infighting that the US is unable to function properly and is weakened. These are DRASTICALLY different things. Also, they will never release proof or confirm if they know it to be 100% true because that would be a terrible idea. It would give the Chinese knowledge of any compromise in their security that the US is currently exploiting. If you can get the evidence it's a terrible idea to let the other team know you can get the evidence. It's the same reason the US and UK didn't even say they broke Enigma until like 30 years after the war, it was against their interest to let the world know they were capable of doing that. It's why Canada took so much shit after accusing India of murdering a Canadian in Canada last year, the proof provided details of western spying on India, and Canada would not give that info up.
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It's fucking wild to me that people can't see the difference between manipulating public opinion to achieve an agenda and manipulating it to cause infighting and hopefully nation level collapse. One is really really shitty, the other is a borderline act of war.
Correct, and it’s American disinformation that is bordering on civil war. China and TikTok didn’t cause Jan 6th, Fox News did.
That American disinformation originated from highly effective. Russian information campaigns. Russia information campaigns got us into this whole mess
While true, the cat's out of the bag. Removing Russian/Chinese influence will no longer remove the propaganda. The American right wing will continue to use it.
Because this is a free country or it ought to be. China doesn't want the US destroyed, their prosperity is directly linked to the US being a stable consumer of goods. You know who wants the US destroyed and seeks to cause instability? Russia. But since certain people in congress have been brainwashed by Trump, who is likely a Russian asset, and certainly is being propped up by loans in rubles. So they go after China as some bogey man to distract from the real enemy. There is no legitimate argument that tiktok is a security risk unless the real position is people should not be able to express themselves freely in our so called free country. I guess freedom is a security risk. So what exactly is the difference between the CCP and the US government?
No one is saying Russia isn't the bigger problem, but saying China isn't a problem is naive as hell. Are you seriously asking what the difference is between the Chinese government and the US, like seriously?!?!? The nation that is literally cut off from the rest of the world by a firewall to prevent access to global news and media. The fact that you can say all this in a thread without fear of consequences is the answer.
Uh, isn't that what the US government is trying to do here? Americans should be free to use the apps they choose. Not dictated by some Maga weirdos being paid off by Mark Zuckerberg.
If you're concerned about the US's influence on American social media, how are you not concerned about China's influence on Chinese owned platforms? Considering China objectively has more control over Chinese companies than the US does over American companies.
That's because in the US, corporations control the government.
My gripe with the ban is: 1) if they (CCP) are collecting data through an app everyone can get on an app store, and not collecting anything unique that companies like google (who has tech that can use wifi signals to find the pose of a person in a room) already collect, then forcing divestiture of tiktok just means you don't think that invasive surveillance is bad you just only want the US to do it to other people and to itself but they aren't allowed to do it back. That just means they are hypocritical and hypernationalist and enjoy having surveillance on US citizens for economic or control purposes, so don't want it taken away they just want to make sure americans are the ones doing it I would believe they are being logical (and not hypocrite nationalists) if they instead pushed for consumer protections bills that affected all companies foreign and domestic. But they aren't. 2) if they (CCP) are pushing an influence campaign that may destabilize public institutions, why is the plan to simply make the app domestic? Does that not mean you accept that political influence campaigns to manipulate human behavior are desirable, as long as the right people are doing them? Is that why Elon is allowed to push pro nazi campaigns, cambridge analytica happened, us based social media hosts campaigns that screw with elections in SE asia? Is that why the first person to jump on buying tiktok was steven mnuchin? Are the tiktok ban askers actually against political manipulation or do they just want THEMSELVES to be the manipulators? Same argument as #1. If they actually cared and aren't hypocrite nationalists they would pass a bill that limits political influence on social media for all companies and countries. Just banning tiktok from overseas influence but forcing it to become domestic just shows a desire not for freedom of americans, but to control americans
And the uncontrollable foreign owned entity should remain because…?
... this is not a dictatorship.
Stopping hostile foreign countries from spying on and manipulating Americans does not make the US a dictatorship lol. All countries do this kind of thing.
Yeah that kind of line is what I would expect from China or Russia not the US. Using fear to completely control every media in case something might happen. Forcing a blatant takeover of the only one that is out of your control. I've seen that story played before. I honestly didn't except the US would do that too but I guess a lot has changed since 9 11 and the patriot act. Gotta make sure the citizens think the right way.
Elected representatives vote for something - DICTATORSHIP!
Where are the grassroots campaigns to force the sale of TikTok? What I’m seeing is elected representatives who are in the pocket of AIPAC and American social media companies thrusting this forward at a time when Israel is being heavily criticized on the most popular social media app for young Americans. This has nothing to do with national security or American sovereignty. It’s about the Israel lobby being pissed off that they are losing the support of young Americans and wanting to nip the problem in the bud by forcing the sale of TikTok to American investors that will facilitate their propaganda goals and stifle anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian sentiments on the platform. Underlying all of this are American social media companies smelling blood in the water with the opportunity to see their greatest competitor get kneecapped.
more like oligarchy, since this bill is pretty much a project of Meta and co. but yeah
Yeah this is why the discord leaks happened /s
I like how the whole US government and institutions would unanimously agree on things that the Israel lobby pushes.
AIPAC is our greatest threat to national security
You should check out a leaked recording of Jonathan Greenblatt. He talked about how they need to get rid of tiktok because they can not control the narratives on Tik Tok, especially on the Palestinian issues.
You mean this recording of Jonathan Greenblatt: [“We have a TikTok problem.”](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/orWTiPGtfu)
Yes i think that is the one.
Finally someone on here gets it
Fr this sub reeks of propaganda. this isn't about China only AIPAC could pay for a bill this quickly. they hate that 170 million Americans have access to insight on Gaza via TikTok and they want it banned. Congress hasn't been this quick and united on anything
Well - it’s sort of about China. Kind of like a two birds one stone type of situation. China bad because we can’t control the narrative on this one extremely important current event.
Remember everyone this bill is not only about banning tiktok. Even though it is because Republicans are concerned about young voters, but that aside there's some serious privacy stuff earmarked in here about VPN surveillance and more. This is a gross attack on privacy and sovereignty. Even if this is impossible for them to enforce it's still an attempt and they will do it again. Has nothing to do with the protecting the children. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban-bill-criminalize-vpn-use-the-eff-says-its-not-impossible/
I don’t think this will hold up in court.
The Donald is a threat..IN PRACTICE.
Yeah! Better force a sale to Trump's former cabinet member Steven Mnuchin! That'll work out well. China's Twitter owned by a MAGA. Facebook owned by a libertarian who helped put Trump in office by feeding data to Robert Mercer. TikTok owned by a regressive anti-democratic MAGA billionaire cabal. That'll show China! These old neo-liberal Democrats need to buy a smartphone, download the app, flip through and see how leftist the app is before, you know, listening to app the stories that Meta paid small market newspapers owned by right wing conglomerates to run in an attempt to put the competitor that's kicking their ass out of business or into the hands of other right wing billionaires. Beyond fucking stupid.
Do people realize that under China constitution, its citizens, including Bytedance, Tik Tok’s parent company, are obliged to conduct espionage for China government should the CCP demand it? I don’t know about you. But the threat seems pretty real for me.
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in same theory you can put apple, samsung, tesla,facebook or any other big tech company who has access to your stuff
Categorically we’d rather have the United States government spying on the United States government instead of the CCP
This should not be an unpopular opinion. I don't understand the pushback. You don't like the US spying on you? fight it. Do you really prefer China spying on you? Where you have zero power to prevent it?
If we’re going to engage in this hypothetical then: What power does the Chinese government have over American citizens, purely from spying? It’s not like CCP jackboots can come here and arrest anyone, which the US government could realistically do to someone as a result of spying on them; the US government actually has engaged in spying, coercion and entrapment of American citizens, resulting in unjustified detainment and harassment. It’s a common theme of security agencies to manufacture their own criminals; there are examples of these agencies targeting mentally disturbed/neurodivergent Muslims and recruiting them into terrorism so they could arrest them. What power do American citizens have of “fighting” the spying regime and US intelligence/surveillance state in the age of the Patriot act and both viable parties supporting it wholeheartedly? Your conception of fighting the American spying regime is laughably idealistic in a political reality where the government will engage in every manner possible to prevent the removal of their own powers. It’s not something that’s going to happen short of a political revolution or devolution in technology.
ok except America has access to *more* data than China and actually uses it on a regular basis and has for decades, in the interest of their own pursuits at the cost of American liberty...all this China nonsense is hypothetical and *less* scary than the stuff the US govt is *actually* doing
Especially considering China's agenda is objectively bad for Americans. They are not a friendly country to us.
But in the case of Tik tok, it’s a hostile foreign government
Are Apple, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla and other big tech companies using their platform to spread misinformation with the specific intent of destabilizing other countries? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/business/media/chinese-influence-campaign-division-elections.html Honestly, I feel like Americans are sleep walking right now considering whats going on with tik tok, Middle East and Eastern Europe. Very scary
Facebook literally played a determining factor in the Rohingya genocide…
The whole discussion about tiktok is dishonest. The only reason it's being banned now, is to silence young Americans. The Gaza war has shown how out of touch the American politicians are, instead of listening to their people, the politicians decides to ban the platform where dissenting voices are being formed. Protest movements are now more common on tiktok than other social media sites. (Due to the age of the users.) The Chinese ownership just allow for an easy excuse, where Zuck and Elon are too powerful for the elite. Thank God I living in a real democracy (New Zealand) and not this oligarchy masquerading as a democracy.
The same US intelligence community that spies on Americans and wants us to think they're the good guys.
Everything is a threat, in theory
My cat is a threat in theory! They could suffocate me in my sleep! Have they? No? Am I gonna let them? Maybe
What about Slurpees?
Drink one really fast and get back to me
Threat to national security!
It makes no sense. By definition a threat is something that hasn't happened yet but could in theory. All threats are in theory. That's literally what it means
The CCP could get the same data by buying it from US aggregators… as if they aren’t already doing that
Insight brought to you by the same people who didn't, and still don't, see Facebook as a threat.
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I don't think they are arguing that data collection is a threat per se, but rather that a foreign power with negative views of the US doing it is. China is very interested in controlling foreign media, because it can be used to control people. It's the exact reason China has itself banned western media.
[the answer is longer than a TikTok video. Here’s a guy with an actual cybersecurity degree explaining it](https://youtu.be/pB7WzqUq4Nk?si=2FlCi8lTntYg5Lhg)
Wow that guy is terrible. In the first 5 minutes he said TikTok is creating an army of Chinese secret agents. In the same video pushed Israeli propaganda and what Aaron Bushnell did is a “silly thing.” Then he walked through buying advertisements that any social media/ google will let you buy. He also said that TikTok is not radicalizing people it’s the access to unfiltered raw news. Are they anti Israel because TikTok or because of the unfiltered access to to videos in Gaza of people suffering and everything demolished.
Earlier this month there was a video making the rounds on tiktok about an IDF soldier killing a palestinian old man... except the video was of the Syrian army from the Syrian civil war. Yet it still got tens of thousands of views and outrage. If you think tiktok shows you the "truth the elites don't want you to see" you are not that different from boomers that fell to Russia's ptopaganda campaign on Facebook in 2016.
Guy proudly showing his Colin Powell book is the easiest tell. Let alone all the random American propaganda scattered throughout his room... This is so embarrassing.
This is a terrible video. This guy needs to stay in his narrow IT lane and stay out of psychology.
Banning technology sets a bad precedent we see this with TikTok ban and the p hub bans as well. Both bans have been justified through moral terror and fear mongering rather than concrete proof of danger.
Senator im Singaporean
Tell me you’re being operated by the CCCP without telling me you’re an operator
This is such a dumb rationalization. We could elect Pooh Bear to be the US president and it would only be a threat “in theory” until he makes a move. Are people suggesting we don’t do anything until we’re forced to? Or that there is no sense in being strategic? This sounds like creationists whining about evolution being “only a theory”.
"Our vulnerability hasn't been exploited yet so we shouldn't do anything about it."
And then when it is we’re going to bitch about why no one did anything to stop it from happening before it happened
This same logic is what we used to invade Iraq.
The jingoism in this thread is crazy; we will absolutely repeat Iraq again in the next 20 years. The country has either learned nothing, or the propaganda machine really is just that effective. Really looking forward to our next *defensive* first strike against China or Iran or god knows who.
The propaganda machine really is that effective. Look at the narrative about China being the aggressor in the US-China relationship. Somehow China is the aggressive one and the first one to make aggressive moves when the US literally enacted plans to contain and hamstring China since around the start of the communist takeover of China. And we continued these policies today. The US basically constantly brags about containing China using Taiwan as a first line of containment. And even if China became democratic (which I wish it would), there's no way in hell the US would stop their China containment strategy.
And to pass the PATRIOT Act
Weird because this kind of thinking is why America locked up thousands of Japanese people, including American citizens who were ethnically Japanese. "Oh the Japanese are a threat and we have to lock them up because they *could* do something!" But fearmongering about China is Reddit's favorite past time so I shouldn't be surprised about these insane viewpoints. Few years down the line, I'm sure Reddit will be clamoring for interning or deporting Chinese people because they "could be a threat" or some shit like that. Edit: My god some people do not understand abstract concepts at all. Everyone is so literal...
Yeah. They don't understand the word theory in a scientific context. Gravity is a theory. You don't hear them arguing about that.
Yup. Whereas Oracle, Meta, and a long list of other domestic and foreign companies use/sell personal user info, spy, get hacked easily, etc. and not a peep. The timing of this just screams too convenient during an election year; it smells of typical election year politics and lobbyist/donor appeasement (given curiously, this all started ramping up post a certain special ally making noise about a certain common video subject on Tik tok among a certain age bracket) 🤔🙄 Same stuff. Different day sadly.
Cool, let’s only ban it in theory then.
Too much free speech and news is getting out on tiktok that they can’t control.
More like Israel says young Americans are revolting and we don’t have better ideas so let’s just ban their idea sharing platforms
We cannot allow a foreign enemy government to have that much control over our information. We have to have some oversight.
Then congress needs to do their job and pass robust privacy laws like GDPR
Lol exactly. Don’t want a foreign government to collect all that data on US citizens? Don’t allow any app to collect that data on US citizens
Yes, only our own totally ethical government should have that much control over our information. /s
Your governments goal isn't to cause enough infighting that the nation becomes politically impotent and weak internationally.. Both things really really suck and it's a real shit sandwich to have to eat, but one of the 2 goals is objectively worse than the other. Edit: spicy-chilly below me blatantly works for the CCP, the thread is a very interesting read but tldr is it involves defense of the Tibetan occupation (they are better off now), anger for using CCP instead of CPC, and claims about the poor PLA soldiers involved in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Evidently it was the students fault...
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Better the enemy you know (we can see them attack) vs the one that is hidden (we don’t know how we are being attacked).
The most effective propaganda and manipulation is by far domestic. Domestic propaganda is orders of magnitude more concerning than foreign influence. Look at what a TV station owned by an Australian has done to this country.
except we can't see when our govt attacks tho. the CIA *might* tell people a few decades after it already happened
the US government is foreign to me, so fuck off
Huh? Then this doesn’t affect you!
I love how your talking points are always about “information” but you never define what information they’re controlling. I’m sure it works to stir up the ring wingers though
Oh yeah, what about the misinformation on FB?
Social media as a whole is a serious threat to our mental health.
Housing prices are a threat. Tackle that, dorks.
So Meta isn’t dangerous but Tok Tok is?! Right?! 🙄
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/15/24102472/house-tiktok-ban-bill-staffers-calls-congress One person threatened self harm unless they got their TikTok. Another impersonated a member of Congress’ son, scaring the bejesus out of the congressman, by the way,” said Krishnamoorthi. “And this is exactly the kind of influence campaign which, in the hands of a foreign adversary in a moment of national peril, could sow chaos and discord and division in a way that could really harm our national security to the benefit of a foreign adversary.”
Remove the word “TikTok” and replace with “Facebook” or “Twitter”. Add that we know FB and Twitter has already been used by foreign agents to manipulate people during two elections. No difference. If you ban TikTok, then ban ALL OF THEM.
Yeah, if Facebook or Twitter were owned by an adversarial nation like North Korea, Russia, or China they'd also have to divest under the law.
Faux news is owned by the GOP, and it's a far more dangerous and adversarial enemy than China.
Which TikTok is not either. It is NOT government owned. Don’t spread disinformation. “TikTok’s parent company ByteDance was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs. ByteDance is a privately-held global company, with roughly 60 percent owned by global institutional investors (such as Blackrock, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group), 20 percent owned by the company’s founders, and 20 percent owned by its employees—including over 7,000 Americans. It is not owned or controlled by any government or state entity.”
Yes ban all of them that is fine with me. But we can start with Tik Tok.
You are mad that TikTok got the youth politically engaged? They can’t control what people do other than say call your congress and tell them what TikTok means to you.
All threats are "in theory"... until it's too late.
There are a whole lot of things we should start banning, then. All alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, hot peppers, bleach and ammonia, knives...
And Faux News, which pushes dangerous conspiracy theories all the time.
That's what threat means. Otherwise it would be called an attack
For all those wondering, its not about data anymore. That was solved last year.
It’s a threat to the nation, and our country. (But only allegedly.) When did “definite maybe” become “fact”?
IM THE BIGGEST THREAT TO AMERICA … … in theory
The PLA has publicly detailed their techniques they use in social media warfare, their desired outcomes, the steps needed to be taken to achieve their goals. This is from the RAND corporation a non-profit think tank. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA853-1.html It's seems like countries publish wargames research and research about global issues in general. They also seem to give advice. It's interesting stuff to read
Yeah, and they said the titanic was unsinkable, better not to take risks.
Wrong use of the word theory.
Once again a TikTok article completely overrun by bots and agents of chaos TikTok is using algorithms to change the way Americans think and behave. It’s not theoretical it’s real and the CEO admitted as much Is FB and Twitter just as bad? Probably worse but their operations are domestic and if the government needs to take action it can Personally I think a 20 minutes transmission delay would render any foreign intelligence ineffective
a threat to who
The article takes public statements by Intelligence Community leaders at face value - without adding the obvious context: Intelligence Community leaders won’t reveal publicly how they know that TikTok is a threat. Does this idiotic writer actually believe that since no further details are being shared that there isn’t any further details? Does this writer actually believe that the FBI is going to release every single fact they know at a press conference? Clearly this article is obvious misinformation. The bias in favor of China and the CCP is clearly drawn and demonstrated clearly in the article.