They are both security risks. The difference is the SA oligarch has already successfully infiltrated our national security and installed himself in a position of power so we can't do anything about it anymore.
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it's people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
This is a game any bad state actor with a huge wad of cash can play thanks to Citizen's United.
Who ever claimed he created the technology? That makes no sense at all. And SpaceX got funding from NASA, just like a lot of other aerospace companies. In terms of value they delivered for that money, they're far ahead of the competition. Boeing got more money for Starliner than SpaceX got for Crew Dragon. And look how that turned out.
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
It is the only active one that he didn't buy into I think. I guess maybe the money pit boring company that doesn't do anything?
Paypal he bought into by merging X.com and got thrown out after
Tesla he bought into and ousted the founding members and paid and retconned gis heart out to call himself a founder. It is also where most of his wealth comes from from insane speculative overvaluation (look at market cap vs Toyota and then market share vs Toyota) that he can continuously borrow off of at essentially 0% interest or tax rate.
the boring company he did found, mostly as a scam to kill goverment mass transit projects (Chicago, San Jose trail link, hyperlopp) essentially winning competitions through good presentations and getting better projects involving mass transit to drop out or be rejected before canceling the project. Who would have thought, coming from a car company. The LA loop is the only thing they ever accomplished and is a nightmare unsafe hellhole of non-working self driving and traffic that is a huge enclosed fire tragedy waiting to happen
twitter he got forced to buy into after being a loudmouthed asshole idiot and turned it into a bot-riddled right will hellhole
musk bought into solar city and since bought it out by Tesla and it is riddles with problems
musk venture capitalist funded openAI but was against pretty much everything and almost got throws out. I guess if you consider having almost no impact or vision besides providing some money founding then I guess he founded that?
They are all problematic. My disagreement with the removal of TikTok is that it should not stop with TikTok. Meta's apps are an absolute nightmare. Google, Xitter, Amazon, etc., they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
Data brokering needs to be made illegal or VERY tightly regulated.
they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
The problem with TikTok isn't data collection, though. The stated concern of the US government is that TikTok may be used to inflict foreign influence (ie, Woke Mind Virus Communism).
That is, incidentally, why the flood of users to RedNote has been so funny. TikTok's got a bunch of edgy western Zoomers doing "Did You Know Capitalism Is Bad Sometimes?" infographics in between dances. RedNote is just straight up "China Is The Best Country In The World" nature channel style hagiography.
The US pushed millions of Americans out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.
Yes, the ban of TikTok has been more about lip service than actual protections for Americans.
The real solution is passing a comprehensive law that fines/bans any app/platform that is opaque about its influence from governments and its data sharing with governments. But who in Congress today has any appetite for real solutions!
I had written about this to my reps and their response was a non response - TikTok bad.
Seems like meta were trying something similar with thier replacing all links in Facebook messenger with thier fbrpc://facebook/nativethirdparty?app_id
Links, but seems like they gave up on it because it was all broken.
IMO, it doesn’t even matter who’s worse, cuz they’re all bad enough they should all be subject to aggressive regulation with the goal of establishing safe interop off-ramps for people to stop using the services or at least use more trustworthy clients.
In my estimation, TikTok is worse, but that’s not even what the ban is about. It’s because China is spying instead of the US. That’s not a reason to defend TikTok though, or to oppose the government’s decision — cuz they were accidentally right, for the wrong reason.
That's where I'm at. If in an alternate universe Congress did something like banning the distribution of harvested data, even just to foreign entities, and TikTok then refused to comply, then I'd be fully in support with them getting banned for it.
Here in the real world though, Congress apparently doesn't have the balls to pass blanket privacy rights like that, because you see, that'd catch some of the wrong fish. I think it says a lot about the state of modern social media that all they were willing to go after TikTok for was something as nebulous as "national security risk".
It is really difficult to write down good regulations. There are so many diverse issues with tech companies. For instance, data harvesting, misinformation, addiction (to short-form content), propaganda, anticompetitive practices, tax evasion etc etc. Ideally there would be some good-standard platform/tech company so we have some idea how to deal what to regulate towards. Otherwise it’s a really tough task.
Because tiktok data goes to China, and China is a competitor/geopolitical adversary to the USA. If tiktok was russian, it would be the same story.
Besides, tiktok has been proven to be by far the worst data miner you can download from an app store.
Not just a data miner, it has some crazy capabilities that are malicious even by the standards of social media phone apps, which were already explicitly malicious. If I remember right, it can download custom code to augment its capabilities per-target, and has encryption to attempt to thwart any attempt to analyze it, which are both pretty unusual amounts of effort to spend from the POV of "we just want to gather your advertising data and listen to your microphone all the time" which are pretty standard things.
Yeah it’s been over a decade since I’ve dealt with the Apple App Store. But at the time, when publishing an app, they did all of this review and analysis of your app and they did not allow downloading additional executable code IIRC. Though if you are clever enough, you can get around that.
"There's also a few snippets of code on the Android version that allows for the downloading of a remote zip file, unzipping it, and executing said binary."
Obviously, the app creator can write whatever code they want into the app. If they want to update it, including to run an AB test, they can do a new version.
The only reason for unzipping and executing random binaries on-demand, outside of the normal app update process, is if you want to specifically target one individual or a group of individuals and enable functionality specifically for them that is custom to those particular people. Maybe you just have specific needs for them that aren't served by the overall process, or maybe what you want to install is secret enough that you don't want security researchers getting their hands on it. That second one would be consistent with the obfuscation around even the stock behavior of the app.
I am obviously not talking about HTTPS when I say "encryption to thwart any attempt to analyze it."
Show me where in the Chrome or Firefox app there is code to download an executable -- not a versioned update to the app through the Play Store, but a random chunk of code -- and run it.
"All apps on iOS are obfuscated, so it's not important that TikTok on Android takes extra trouble to obfuscate itself in a very weird way which other Android apps generally don't do."
"All Windows apps work by downloading new binaries for themselves, because there's no package management, so it's not important that TikTok on Android takes extra trouble to bypass the package management and enable downloading custom per-user executables and running them."
"Some apps have vulnerabilities by accident, so it's not important that TikTok has a remote code execution vulnerability built in on purpose."
"Apps have a security model, which by the way can be jailbroken, so it's not important if something malicious happens within the app. Actually, forget what I said about jailbreaking."
You haven't actually addressed anything I said, just threw a whole bunch of words about related topics to make it sound like what I described about this particular topic is, within the scope of this topic, a normal thing. It's not.
There is a difference in the data gathered and where it goes. But just like the cheap
Source?
losers sealioning to invert the how-do-you-know question hoping people forget the pedigree of the information isn't the same, it's easy for people to both-sides data gathering too.
And I say that's fine. HAVE it so gathered data must go through a Clearinghouse or two (a gov entity eg SeaLandia or an org like fsf) so it's provably anonymous and then we carry on. To me, this is the result of the discussion we need to have around who gets to spy on you and how we choose that to get benefits at reduced exposure to risk.
Ok, so Bytedance does exactly what Microsoft, Google and Apple do. Got it.
All 3 can and do run arbitrary code on their platforms. All three share your data with third parties. All three encrypt stuff in their codebase and especially google tries it's hardest to break networking standards just to obfuscate what their code is doing.
China buys a ton of data from Zuck and Musk and a lot of other people.
The reason it’s being banned is for cutting out the middle man.
If they actually cared about our data going to geopolitical rivals they’d pass comprehensive privacy protections regardless of where the company is headquartered.
China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along
Nope.
Other gov spying on yanks: bad with no mitigation.
Yank companies spying on yanks: bad with mitigation option we just don't take today.
Both: PR and disinfo campaigns to convince illiterate that it's about more than surveillance, that it's a conspiracy or nothing to worry about at all (paging Dr Schroedinger).
Exactly. I find it hilarious how some of these people conclude that China ONLY gets our data because of TikTok, when our own government and on soil companies sell and shares our data as long as the other (China even lmao) buy it from them. No issues as long as they get money, but if they don’t get the money, it’s “national security” risk.
I know.. it’s the things I’ve been trying to drum on about every time someone’s says it’s a “security” risk. No one cares though, because “TikTok” bad. :/
Who exactly do you expect them to sue if a website has no physical presence inside the US borders and it disobeys US laws? 🤔
The only thing they can truly do against TikTok is prevent people from downloading the app through official means and having ISPs blocking the website. Outside of that it could 100% continue operating and scraping user data to send it to China.
And yeah if they're blocked in the app stores, and by ISPs you'd have to side load it onto your phone and tunnel out with a VPN. 170 million Americans aren't doing that. You'd be lucky to find 100,000 willing to do it.
And since even SCOTUS laughed at the espionage argument, we again need to bring up that China just buys the exact same data from Meta, Alphabet, and X. We aren't securing anything.
Three companies that could easily be regulated to prevent them from selling that data to China, but wasn't there political interference as well?
Anyway, they can just close their US office and then the US is shit out of luck unless they ban them (since that would be their only recourse at that point).
Sure. But they haven't closed their US Offices. They haven't done what X and Musk did with Brazil where they tried to just ignore the local government. TikTok clearly engaged with the system and has gotten a ban for purely political reasons.
No, the issue with Tik Tok is that the government can’t control it like it does Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There is nothing in China that can harm you as much as the American Government. No intention, no action, no belief will ever hurt you as much as America has.
TikTok/bytedance are controlled by a rival country. US based companies can, of course, help our rivals too but there's some degree of separation that makes it a bit harder to address/discover.
They aren't required to protect our privacy, they are required to give data to the government and lie about doing it. Tiktok can't be brought into that unless they are an american owned company.
Yep. Which means TikTok gave Thumper a load of dough and TikTok will be allowed to continue operating here. Zuck is probably not happy since he'd also given him a load of dough to get rid of TikTok.
It's the Democrats pushing the TikTok ban, Trump loves TikTok.
Edit: Trump originally was the big driver for banning TikTok yes, but since his election win saw a big swing in the younger vote that's being attributed to TikTok his stance has switched and I'll put money on the ban being dropped the instant he gets in.
Clearly that user has trouble keeping up with our multiple reality spacetime logic to forget stances Trump supposedly held concurrent with contradictory stances he supposedly holds currently as well as absurd stances he supposedly will hold in the infinite futures.
If I recall correctly, it's a lie being pushed that he won amongst the younger generation when he actually did not. I believe the last thing I read is that he lost the young vote by 11 points. So that's a lie that he's pushing for some reason or other.
It's not, there's no evidence that it is, and even if the Chinese were trying to get all of our data they could buy it for far less trouble and expense from any of the American data brokers happy to sell it. They don't need an app to obtain our data, they just need money.
The influence argument is similarly baseless. Cambridge Analytica demonstrated that existing American social media capabilities already permit foreign interference in American public opinion. TikTok is remarkably expensive to run, and the influence campaigns that they could run on Facebook would be much less expensive.
TikTok is competing with American social media companies. It's no better or worse than any other social media company, but because it's not based in the US it's labeled a national security risk. We're happy to let any company collect and sell personal information, so long as they're based in America.
Serious answer: because it's owned by a US citizen and is operated and HQ'd in the US, so the the US government has effectively full control over it and can monitor it.
That's not a lot better from an end user privacy and security point. But is wayyyyyyyyyy better from a national security standpoint.
Sweet summer nothing. Don't mistake billionaires as patriots for any cause other than their own. They don't care about the country and will only cooperate if forced or convenient. Which is the exact same level TikTok exists on.
Technically the two divisions of the law banning TikTok and any company which sends US Citizens data to an adversarial nation, both passed at the same time, say nothing of citizenship.
When the courts say TikTok has to divest from Chinese ownership, they don't mean heritage. They mean owners and operators who literally live and work exclusively in China.
He should absolutely have his citizenship revoked and be deported because we have it on record that he knew he falsely stayed for his personal benefit.
I will cut less well off immigrants slack for not following the complex and difficult process, especially if they immigrated for asylum, but Musk did it because he could get away with it and deserves to be punished for it.
Well, the TikTok lawyers kinda said the quiet part out loud during their SCOTUS brief:
Mr. Francisco contended that the government in a free country “has no valid interest in preventing foreign propaganda” and cannot constitutionally try to keep Americans from being “persuaded by Chinese misinformation.” That is targeting the content of speech, which the First Amendment does not permit, he said.
It's not a great look for your app when your argument before the Supreme Court is "yeah, we're a propaganda machine for a hostile foreign power, but free speech says you can't stop us. Neener neener."
See, "I'm not gonna smack you across the face, but I totally could if I wanted to and you can't do shit about it" might not be the best way to clear your reputation as a bully.
See, "Why aren't you going after other social networks. Specifically Facebook and X.....you know, the ones proved, since 2016, to lie and interfere with democracy? Is this gonna be wack a mole? Another chinese app its already trending you know..."
I don't use none of these. Facebook, xitter, tik-tok...I don't defend any of these.
But we KNOW Facebook was used to manipulate elections across the world. We know none of them give a dam about the truth.
I just want to ser Musk and Zuckerberg punished as the rest.
Its hard to take people down when they are responsible for making countless politicians and business people money, as well as assisting the government with their surveillance domestically and internationally.
The issue for common people regarding tiktok is more along the lines of foreign adversaries obtaining personal information of the users or using it to spy on the government. The idea that chinese propaganda would be in any way a threat is absurd and shouldn't even need to be defended in any way. "America bad" is hardly a hot take and they don't need to spread any lies to get that point across.
And how is it different than Dems calling Trump Hitler, regardless of how accurate it was? Should they also be tried for "propaganda"? And how about goverments claiming they're doing well, should they be tried for propaganda? How about the entire red scare propaganda? How about anti-arab propaganda? Putting someone on a trial for "propaganda" is a dangerous violation of free speech. If you can prove they've been lying, then at best they're at the same playing field as the government suing them, and in case of tiktok as far as I am aware there is no evidence that they were spreading any lies. It's just that they weren't censoring the genocide Israel commited in Gaza, unlike platforms aligned with USA, like Meta or Twitter. Which censorship was most definitely a propaganda, but instead of them it's tiktok that's being punished for not doing it? It's nonsense. Boosting negative commentary about foreign country is basic freedom of speech, and attempting to silence that feels very dictatorial. It's what China did with a lot of internet for spreading propaganda against them, don't you feel like removing Youtube access in China for making anti-chinese material available was bad for free speech? I wouldn't mind tiktok getting closed for spying on people, but it's obvious they don't want a precedent for that. Blocking propaganda? Bullshit.
As for me "being fine with" other peoples freedom of speech, I dislike what they had to say and I'd want them to be punished for lying, but I'd never advocate against them having option to speak. You end up living in a dictatorship by doing that. I'm not a free speech absolutist, by any stretch of imagination, but banning platforms for containing content casting bad light on you is going too far for me. Especially since there are much better reasons to do so.
The issue for common people regarding tiktok is more along the lines of foreign adversaries obtaining personal information of the users or using it to spy on the government
What's the difference between Facebook / Meta selling my data to whoever, vs. TikTok harvesting it themselves?
There is no difference, neither should be allowed to do that. Person I replied to claimed the issue is chinese propaganda instead of any actual security risks.
So in your view Fox News should be banned because they're propaganda machine for the right wing, calling out Dems for their faults and praising Reps for anything they did? Or because they're lying pieces of shit that helped manufacture a false narrative that eroded democracy and allowed fascists to get in power? Because, as far as I know, tiktok didn't do the later and it's the platform that got banned.
Oh yeah it's the latter. I'm not advocating for the tiktok ban at all, but I do think fox news is a malicious cancer.
In fact, because of fox news existence, I think foreign national propaganda engines are more important than ever. If the population is going to be manipulated for the gain of a few, at least have a lot of actors manipulating everyone so we have a chance of not letting one person control everyone.
I mean, yeah? Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press are inalienable rights, sure, but they're generally intended to extend to citizens. Not foreign governments.
There's a big difference between a Chinese citizen here on a green card going around saying they love China and a company running an active misinformation campaign on orders from their government.
It's no different than how the government tried to crack down on Russian election interference. Turns out, hostile nations running psyops campaigns is bad.
I agree that it's bad, and it should be forbidden... but with the whole US decisions that "corporations are people" and "money is speech", I think it's legally questionable.
I think a large part of why it was a 9-0 decision was that it's not speech to run a social media site. It's commerce, plain as day. Congress has the authority to regulate commerce full stop. The fact that China is using that platform to spread misinformation, and then claiming that stopping them from doing so is a 1A violation is just a red herring.
"Money is speech" just means rich people can donate all the money they want to a politician. Not that you can run an otherwise unlawful business because "money is speech and free speech is a thing!"
Just something to think about when it comes to the influence social media has on society
TikTok has already transformed how Americans communicate, influencing language and behavior in ways that may have broader implications. The Chinese government, known for using censorship and language control to maintain social order and suppress dissent, leverages euphemistic language as a tool for manipulating public opinion and silencing critical discourse.
Phrases like “unalive” for suicide or “grape” for rape dilute the meaning and impact of language, making it easier for powerful entities to control narratives and obscure uncomfortable truths. This process, known as “language laundering” or “semantic bleaching,” strips words of their emotional weight and original meaning, making it harder to address sensitive or urgent issues effectively.
This trend has extended beyond language to visuals, with people obscuring letters or censoring words in pictures and posts—using terms like “s**cide” or “r*pe.” While this may help users navigate algorithms designed to suppress certain keywords, it completely erodes the clarity and impact of critical conversations.
The normalization of this behavior on TikTok has permeated Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media platforms, spreading a culture of diluted language and indirect communication. These practices hinder meaningful discourse, desensitize users to serious issues, and ultimately make it more challenging to engage with sensitive topics in a direct and effective manner. Recognizing and resisting this shift is essential to preserving the integrity of public discussions and fostering authentic engagement.
It's mainly because words/phrases such as: murder, suicide, rape, human trafficking, forced prostitution, child sexual abuse, etc can get you banned on those platforms. Don't blame the people who work around, to discuss important but heavy subjects, blame the algorithms and report -happy users who for some weird reason, are opposed to these topics being discussed. Probably perpetrators or enablers imo not who knows?
You're attributing to TikTok what has been happening for years before even Vine came into existence and is actually a different issue: corporate-owned platforms cracking down on uses of those words as they're not "advertiser friendly" and don't "encourage a safe and fun space" or whatever. TikTok is in no way special here
It was already incredibly common to censor these words, grape for rape goes back at least 15 years to when WKUK were making their rounds. Unalive on sites like YouTube go back at least to 2018/2017 en masse if not earlier
This was never about national security. It’s about money. Most of congress owns Meta stock and meta lobbied the fuck out of trying to get the app banned. It’s extremely annoying that people buy this crap about national security.
Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something? 85% of these fuckwads agreed that banning this app is more important than literally anything else. Stopping school shooting, fixing our economy, providing affordable healthcare or housing, are all not important.
You seem to think that it is for sale, Byte Dance has repeatedly said they will not sell. I also belive the PRC passed a law that would outlaw exporting the algorithom to the new owner
Hey now. China's not short on money. This is the other big problem with America.
If Elon Musk was a black South African with a social media company interfering in our elections and sabotaging our national interests here and abroad, I assure you that it would also be in the crosshairs of a ban.
China is an authoritarian government that is able to take direct control of any Chinese company. Like, explicitly. More or less all Chinese companies should be treated with suspicion.
Musk is a shithead but not, to our knowledge, an agent of a foreign hostile government. Turning twitter into a place that promotes hate speech is legally protected free speech, although specific statements that provoke violence may not be protected. Contrary to popular belief, there are many exceptions to free speech.
Musk is a shithead but not, to our knowledge, an agent of a foreign hostile government.
Correct. On Monday, he's going to be an agent to a domestic hostile government.
Almost all Lemmy users who happen to be in the US have been blessed so far with a government that generally is okay-ish, has some justice built in, and leaves them alone as long as they're not doing anything wrong. I think that might be about to change, and they're about to experience a China-style "you really have to be careful not to cross the powerful people" system instead.
Yeah, Musk seems much more interested in enriching himself than working for any government. It's in our biology to want more more more. His thing is wealth. He wants more more more wealth. Probably all he cares about is becoming the world's first trillionaire.
I actually consider it way worse when my domestic country is doing it. What is a foreign country gonna do with the information on me? Very little. What can the domestic do? Quite a lot.
Goes to show how little most people law enforcement have a fundamental understanding of the US Constitution given how popular your comment is across social media.
America bad ooga booga. Really they both should be banned lol. Like yall slinging shit at each other when they both should be gone. Great use of energy Lemmy
I suspect its being banned because of people using it in public without headphones or earbuds. I was submitted to that experience for an hour+ in a waiting room one time and now I fully supported the ban to prevent it from ever happening again.
I think people are likely to be as violent in most countries, but usually they have to use knives or acid or something like that. For what it's worth, I would far rather be shot than have acid thrown on me.
But yeah. It's a realistic thing that you have to take into account that you could be shot if you anger somebody.
I don't know what to say. You shouldn't be that terrified for telling someone to knock it off. I've asked people to do this many times on the bus and here I am, stabbed free.
This is a boomer level of paranoia, and the logic is akin to "I once lived next door to a serial killer, so now I assume that all of my neighbors are serial killers".
There are many places where its best not to play with the odds. And that person you replied to literally had real life experience backing it up. Theres a type of American that cannot stand being told what to do or someone suggesting they are wrong.
There's a type of person who thinks that their "lived experience" trumps facts or logic. That's why you have people who justify their racism based on a few bad experiences they had with black people or something. I try not to get in arguments with those people, because it's a waste of time.
Thats taking the wrong lesson from things. Its completely appropriate for someone who witnessed a stabbing on public transport, to decide that talking to strangers on public transport is more dangerous than they would like. Its not racist or any -ist, its the basis for risk analysis.
You should also consider that public transport and who uses it can change immensely from one place to another. In my area, public transport is inherently risky, not to mention inconvenient, and people avoid it if at all possible.
We base our risk analysis on things that happen to us, and that's error-prone. Just because something happened to you, that doesn't make it a frequent occurrence. Again, just because your neighbor was a serial killer, that doesn't mean that you have to worry about living around serial killers for the rest of your life.
Come on, this is easy. He's white, that's obviously why.
Facebook has been abusing our data to undermine elections and stoke genocide for longer than tiktok has existed. No US government officials are calling for a FB ban either.
It's supposed to be rich white guys undermining our democracy and national security.
Because he paid for his influence while China is not. They are “stealing data” they have not paid for and are competing with the NSA/FBI/CIA without sharing.
Edit: I do love the middle finger people are giving by hopping off TikTok (basically being shut down for being a Chinese company) and running to redd (a Chinese company) hahahahahha
That South African oligarch is a US citizen though and it hasn't been shown that he works in the interest of South Africa and South Africa isn't on the list of enemy countries.
Would you also want to prevent all naturalized citizens from owning a business?
The government can't control the narrative with it. Specifically the tipping point when they decided to ban it was when they realized people were free to call the genocide in Gaza a genocide without the US being able to overwhelm the platform with pro-Israel propaganda.
Google uses it to run ads. Facebook sold it to one of the listed countries back in 2016-ish and as a result in 2019 recieved the largest FTC in history at $5Bn and also faced similar cases in other countries, meaning they lost more money than they made doing that specific sale by far.
The US Government doesnt buy data, but they do sometimes request it via court orders and warrants.
They know how much control they can assert of the population through controlling social media. They're not about to allow anyone else to use that, if they can help it. Also, it'll dilute their messaging, even if it wasn't as problematic as something like tiktok.
It makes sense the second you stop presuming any good faith.
It's true that both are security risks, and that Tiktok is even worse in general, however other proprietary social networks are also BAD and the proprietary algorithms behind them can all be used for massive user manipulation (control what they see, when they see it, and what they don't see, combined with tons of personal and psychological data about each user).
That said, another factor that might be overlooked is that it also depends on how easy a target something is. An app by a foreign government that could be used to manipulate citizens is a much easier target for "banning". There's probably much less legal obstacles in the way in this case, and less resistance against it.
It has nothing to do with security. It has everything to do with controlling speech and maintaining management of public narratives. This became an urgent issue for the oligarchy when they lost control of Israel genocide discourse. This is what fascist states do. They are just getting started.
When it comes to choices in North America ... it always goes to the white guy
If we were in a commercial passenger jet at 30,000 feet and the pilot and co pilot suddenly died and the crew had to choose who should fly the plane .... they'd think twice about the 300 Asian passengers and instead choose the only white guy in first class.
Because at least in America when a Billionaire buys a company they can kick the Feds out the were manipulating and suppressing information for 8 years.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is owned by the CCP. Why make it easy for foreign governments to spread agit-prop in your country If you don't have to?
There is only one set of facts. Good effort, instead of educating yourself, get someone else to do it. Instead of posting a nearly useless comment, go get yourself an education. I'll give you a head start, it's all in the algorithm.
There is only one ground truth, yes, but the set of facts that live in my head and the set of facts that live in yours will be different. This is called "theory of mind" and most humans develop it around age 4-8.
Good effort,
Thanks!
instead of educating yourself, get someone else to do it.
Work smarter, not harder
Instead of posting a nearly useless comment,
Cruel irony, using my own words against me
go get yourself an education
I did, but I'm not on the same wavelength as you, so I still have a ways to go :(
African-American usually refers to descendants of America's black slave trade. They are not Africans who moved to America. We don't call dutch born American emigrants Dutch-American. We call them Dutch. We don't call Chinese born American emigrants Chinese-American. We call them Chinese. Their nationality or continental heritage is usually how they are referred to. Calling Musk an African-American is by a long way, more racist than calling him unamerican.
They are both security risks. The difference is the SA oligarch has already successfully infiltrated our national security and installed himself in a position of power so we can't do anything about it anymore.
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it's people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
This is a game any bad state actor with a huge wad of cash can play thanks to Citizen's United.
I think you mean buy. Fund is probably the most generous word you could use, but that’s a fat stretch.
Musk created SpaceX, he didn't buy it.
He founded Space X, but he did not create the technology and do the R&D alone like Tony Stark. He got the funding though.
Who ever claimed he created the technology? That makes no sense at all. And SpaceX got funding from NASA, just like a lot of other aerospace companies. In terms of value they delivered for that money, they're far ahead of the competition. Boeing got more money for Starliner than SpaceX got for Crew Dragon. And look how that turned out.
The initial comment in this thread:
This is what was being responded to.
Original comment...
It is the only active one that he didn't buy into I think. I guess maybe the money pit boring company that doesn't do anything?
Paypal he bought into by merging X.com and got thrown out after
Tesla he bought into and ousted the founding members and paid and retconned gis heart out to call himself a founder. It is also where most of his wealth comes from from insane speculative overvaluation (look at market cap vs Toyota and then market share vs Toyota) that he can continuously borrow off of at essentially 0% interest or tax rate.
the boring company he did found, mostly as a scam to kill goverment mass transit projects (Chicago, San Jose trail link, hyperlopp) essentially winning competitions through good presentations and getting better projects involving mass transit to drop out or be rejected before canceling the project. Who would have thought, coming from a car company. The LA loop is the only thing they ever accomplished and is a nightmare unsafe hellhole of non-working self driving and traffic that is a huge enclosed fire tragedy waiting to happen
twitter he got forced to buy into after being a loudmouthed asshole idiot and turned it into a bot-riddled right will hellhole
musk bought into solar city and since bought it out by Tesla and it is riddles with problems
musk venture capitalist funded openAI but was against pretty much everything and almost got throws out. I guess if you consider having almost no impact or vision besides providing some money founding then I guess he founded that?
musk bought neuralink out from scientists, by pretending to not be elon musk, for pennies to expand on their ideas and make it mainstream. Stealing someone's name, work, and ideas under the pretense of being someone else doesn't seem like founding to me
But he pays to be named founder on Wikipedia for many of those lol
On the cabinet? He bought himself a shadow presidency.
They are all problematic. My disagreement with the removal of TikTok is that it should not stop with TikTok. Meta's apps are an absolute nightmare. Google, Xitter, Amazon, etc., they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
Data brokering needs to be made illegal or VERY tightly regulated.
The problem with TikTok isn't data collection, though. The stated concern of the US government is that TikTok may be used to inflict foreign influence (ie, Woke Mind Virus Communism).
That is, incidentally, why the flood of users to RedNote has been so funny. TikTok's got a bunch of edgy western Zoomers doing "Did You Know Capitalism Is Bad Sometimes?" infographics in between dances. RedNote is just straight up "China Is The Best Country In The World" nature channel style hagiography.
The US pushed millions of Americans out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.
I don't understand. Twitter was definitely used for that and Musk was "paying" to have people vote republican in Pennsylvania.
Meta paid like 800 million for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
So like, if they sold to a US company then they'd get wrist slapped too?
Those aren't foreign but also why a lot of those sites are blocked in china
Yes, the ban of TikTok has been more about lip service than actual protections for Americans.
The real solution is passing a comprehensive law that fines/bans any app/platform that is opaque about its influence from governments and its data sharing with governments. But who in Congress today has any appetite for real solutions!
I had written about this to my reps and their response was a non response - TikTok bad.
Fell for one of the classic blunders
sniff's glove
Ivermectin. I'd bet my life on it.
Of note, there is no evidence the government concern is founded.
I mean, if that’s the question you want answered…
X uses a native browser controller when you open a link, so the app can’t see what you do in there.
Whereas TikTok uses a managed webview… which they have been caught injecting keyloggers into.
Back in the olden days, we called this a cross-site scripting attack.
Seems like meta were trying something similar with thier replacing all links in Facebook messenger with thier fbrpc://facebook/nativethirdparty?app_id Links, but seems like they gave up on it because it was all broken.
Yup. They’re all dangerous monsters.
IMO, it doesn’t even matter who’s worse, cuz they’re all bad enough they should all be subject to aggressive regulation with the goal of establishing safe interop off-ramps for people to stop using the services or at least use more trustworthy clients.
In my estimation, TikTok is worse, but that’s not even what the ban is about. It’s because China is spying instead of the US. That’s not a reason to defend TikTok though, or to oppose the government’s decision — cuz they were accidentally right, for the wrong reason.
That's where I'm at. If in an alternate universe Congress did something like banning the distribution of harvested data, even just to foreign entities, and TikTok then refused to comply, then I'd be fully in support with them getting banned for it.
Here in the real world though, Congress apparently doesn't have the balls to pass blanket privacy rights like that, because you see, that'd catch some of the wrong fish. I think it says a lot about the state of modern social media that all they were willing to go after TikTok for was something as nebulous as "national security risk".
It is really difficult to write down good regulations. There are so many diverse issues with tech companies. For instance, data harvesting, misinformation, addiction (to short-form content), propaganda, anticompetitive practices, tax evasion etc etc. Ideally there would be some good-standard platform/tech company so we have some idea how to deal what to regulate towards. Otherwise it’s a really tough task.
Finally a reasonable answer that isnt propaganda or stupidity
Because tiktok data goes to China, and China is a competitor/geopolitical adversary to the USA. If tiktok was russian, it would be the same story. Besides, tiktok has been proven to be by far the worst data miner you can download from an app store.
Not just a data miner, it has some crazy capabilities that are malicious even by the standards of social media phone apps, which were already explicitly malicious. If I remember right, it can download custom code to augment its capabilities per-target, and has encryption to attempt to thwart any attempt to analyze it, which are both pretty unusual amounts of effort to spend from the POV of "we just want to gather your advertising data and listen to your microphone all the time" which are pretty standard things.
Yep, the thing is actual malware which for some reason gets a pass from Google/Apple.
That kinda makes Apple and Google malware too IMO, I should really switch to Graphene...
Yeah it’s been over a decade since I’ve dealt with the Apple App Store. But at the time, when publishing an app, they did all of this review and analysis of your app and they did not allow downloading additional executable code IIRC. Though if you are clever enough, you can get around that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/
"There's also a few snippets of code on the Android version that allows for the downloading of a remote zip file, unzipping it, and executing said binary."
Obviously, the app creator can write whatever code they want into the app. If they want to update it, including to run an AB test, they can do a new version.
The only reason for unzipping and executing random binaries on-demand, outside of the normal app update process, is if you want to specifically target one individual or a group of individuals and enable functionality specifically for them that is custom to those particular people. Maybe you just have specific needs for them that aren't served by the overall process, or maybe what you want to install is secret enough that you don't want security researchers getting their hands on it. That second one would be consistent with the obfuscation around even the stock behavior of the app.
I am obviously not talking about HTTPS when I say "encryption to thwart any attempt to analyze it."
Show me where in the Chrome or Firefox app there is code to download an executable -- not a versioned update to the app through the Play Store, but a random chunk of code -- and run it.
This is a pretty impressive amount of deflection.
"All apps on iOS are obfuscated, so it's not important that TikTok on Android takes extra trouble to obfuscate itself in a very weird way which other Android apps generally don't do."
"All Windows apps work by downloading new binaries for themselves, because there's no package management, so it's not important that TikTok on Android takes extra trouble to bypass the package management and enable downloading custom per-user executables and running them."
"Some apps have vulnerabilities by accident, so it's not important that TikTok has a remote code execution vulnerability built in on purpose."
"Apps have a security model, which by the way can be jailbroken, so it's not important if something malicious happens within the app. Actually, forget what I said about jailbreaking."
You haven't actually addressed anything I said, just threw a whole bunch of words about related topics to make it sound like what I described about this particular topic is, within the scope of this topic, a normal thing. It's not.
There is a difference in the data gathered and where it goes. But just like the cheap
losers sealioning to invert the how-do-you-know question hoping people forget the pedigree of the information isn't the same, it's easy for people to both-sides data gathering too.
And I say that's fine. HAVE it so gathered data must go through a Clearinghouse or two (a gov entity eg SeaLandia or an org like fsf) so it's provably anonymous and then we carry on. To me, this is the result of the discussion we need to have around who gets to spy on you and how we choose that to get benefits at reduced exposure to risk.
Just, it's not the same.
Ok, so Bytedance does exactly what Microsoft, Google and Apple do. Got it.
All 3 can and do run arbitrary code on their platforms. All three share your data with third parties. All three encrypt stuff in their codebase and especially google tries it's hardest to break networking standards just to obfuscate what their code is doing.
... And two of them can be sued by the DoJ and forced into revolving compliance evals .
... if we had a non-toothless DoJ; I get it. But the ability is there.
In a surprisingly Reddit-esque move, Lemmys best answer is buried below emotionally charged nonsense
China buys a ton of data from Zuck and Musk and a lot of other people.
The reason it’s being banned is for cutting out the middle man.
If they actually cared about our data going to geopolitical rivals they’d pass comprehensive privacy protections regardless of where the company is headquartered.
And the PRC have been caught repeatedly running influence campaigns over social media platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamouflage
China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along, nothing to see.
Its such a bullshit argument. Don't be the pot blaming the kettle.
We should ban ALL socials. All. Everything becomes an echochamber after 1-2 years filled with bots, algorithms and Ai. Nothing is trustworthy anymore.
Note that I am not disagreeing. Just pointing out that not being able to trust anything anymore is on-brand.
Nope.
Other gov spying on yanks: bad with no mitigation.
Yank companies spying on yanks: bad with mitigation option we just don't take today.
Both: PR and disinfo campaigns to convince illiterate that it's about more than surveillance, that it's a conspiracy or nothing to worry about at all (paging Dr Schroedinger).
Source?
Sea lions?
I find it funny that if TikTok was sold to an American it wouldn't be a security risk anymore.
Is it me or is everyone ELSE a moron except somehow for specifically ME
I don't know about the devil, but some doomsday prepper edgelord keeps popping up.
You remember blocking me? 😍
I don't think about you at all. Just happened upon a living stereotype and felt compelled to point it out.
Good luck with those neurosis and narcissism. So weird those traits only ever seem to affect the self proclaimed "best" IT stooges.
Reddit must be banning lots of people
They are, it's all bots now
Eh? You do realize most people on Lemmy are not on TikTok.
We're laughing at it all and enjoying the popcorn.
Yeah, they're on .ml and hexbear and lemmygrad.
The point of forcing ownership to be American was to force TikTok to be sold to Musk or one of the other massive data harvesting jack offs.
Which is a ridiculous premise.
Exactly. I find it hilarious how some of these people conclude that China ONLY gets our data because of TikTok, when our own government and on soil companies sell and shares our data as long as the other (China even lmao) buy it from them. No issues as long as they get money, but if they don’t get the money, it’s “national security” risk.
It's not the data they care about.
I know.. it’s the things I’ve been trying to drum on about every time someone’s says it’s a “security” risk. No one cares though, because “TikTok” bad. :/
They would then be under US jurisdiction, that's the issue with TikTok, the US can't for them to comply with any laws, current or future.
Bullshit. Any country has jurisdiction over companies operating inside it's borders. If what you say is true then we couldn't even ban TikTok.
Who exactly do you expect them to sue if a website has no physical presence inside the US borders and it disobeys US laws? 🤔
The only thing they can truly do against TikTok is prevent people from downloading the app through official means and having ISPs blocking the website. Outside of that it could 100% continue operating and scraping user data to send it to China.
TikTok does have US offices and employees though.
And yeah if they're blocked in the app stores, and by ISPs you'd have to side load it onto your phone and tunnel out with a VPN. 170 million Americans aren't doing that. You'd be lucky to find 100,000 willing to do it.
And since even SCOTUS laughed at the espionage argument, we again need to bring up that China just buys the exact same data from Meta, Alphabet, and X. We aren't securing anything.
Three companies that could easily be regulated to prevent them from selling that data to China, but wasn't there political interference as well?
Anyway, they can just close their US office and then the US is shit out of luck unless they ban them (since that would be their only recourse at that point).
Sure. But they haven't closed their US Offices. They haven't done what X and Musk did with Brazil where they tried to just ignore the local government. TikTok clearly engaged with the system and has gotten a ban for purely political reasons.
No, the issue with Tik Tok is that the government can’t control it like it does Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There is nothing in China that can harm you as much as the American Government. No intention, no action, no belief will ever hurt you as much as America has.
They can't control it because... It's not located in the USA! Good job, you understood what I said!
because then they'd be subject to all the bullshit the feds do and required to comply.
Like what? What are American companies required to do to protect your privacy that TikTok doesn’t do because they are a Chinese company?
TikTok is not being banned to protect anyone's privacy.
Fine, what national security obligations are US-based social media companies meeting that TikTok/ByteDance is not?
TikTok/bytedance are controlled by a rival country. US based companies can, of course, help our rivals too but there's some degree of separation that makes it a bit harder to address/discover.
The PATRIOT act.
It's not about what they aren't doing. It's something they are doing.
They aren't required to protect our privacy, they are required to give data to the government and lie about doing it. Tiktok can't be brought into that unless they are an american owned company.
As in implementing back doors and reporting to the NSA/CIA/FBI/CBP/BATF/ETC?
The Patriot Act would like a word.
Maybe both are bad?
"Facebook should be under incredibly strict regulation or killed outright" is also a position I'm fond of.
The Cambridge Analytica story explains how much I distrust Facebook.
Tiktok aren't giving Trump loads of money
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The CEO has a prominent seat at Trump's inauguration.
Yep. Which means TikTok gave Thumper a load of dough and TikTok will be allowed to continue operating here. Zuck is probably not happy since he'd also given him a load of dough to get rid of TikTok.
pops corn
A fatal mistake for companies who want to do business in the US
That's not relevant to the argument about how they could be dangerous for national security.
Trump made saving TikTok a campaign promise.
It's the Democrats pushing the TikTok ban, Trump loves TikTok.
Edit: Trump originally was the big driver for banning TikTok yes, but since his election win saw a big swing in the younger vote that's being attributed to TikTok his stance has switched and I'll put money on the ban being dropped the instant he gets in.
Except when he wanted it banned during his first term and up until very, very recently when he flip flopped to loving it.
So you're saying that he now currently loves it? That's what I said!
Trump started this whole thing.
He wanted to ban it until he thought it helped him with the youth. So no. You are incorrect.
Clearly that user has trouble keeping up with our multiple reality spacetime logic to forget stances Trump supposedly held concurrent with contradictory stances he supposedly holds currently as well as absurd stances he supposedly will hold in the infinite futures.
So he hated it, and now he loves it, but that means he must still hate it? Make your mind up
If I recall correctly, it's a lie being pushed that he won amongst the younger generation when he actually did not. I believe the last thing I read is that he lost the young vote by 11 points. So that's a lie that he's pushing for some reason or other.
Let's compromise on it being bipartisan.
It's not, there's no evidence that it is, and even if the Chinese were trying to get all of our data they could buy it for far less trouble and expense from any of the American data brokers happy to sell it. They don't need an app to obtain our data, they just need money.
The influence argument is similarly baseless. Cambridge Analytica demonstrated that existing American social media capabilities already permit foreign interference in American public opinion. TikTok is remarkably expensive to run, and the influence campaigns that they could run on Facebook would be much less expensive.
TikTok is competing with American social media companies. It's no better or worse than any other social media company, but because it's not based in the US it's labeled a national security risk. We're happy to let any company collect and sell personal information, so long as they're based in America.
Serious answer: because it's owned by a US citizen and is operated and HQ'd in the US, so the the US government has effectively full control over it and can monitor it.
That's not a lot better from an end user privacy and security point. But is wayyyyyyyyyy better from a national security standpoint.
The US government has no more control over X than regulations permit. They have the exact same amount of control over TikTok operations inside the US.
Cool, the point is tiktok is spyware that sends info the the parent company in China, where the US doesn't have control.
Where evidence?
Oh, sweet summer child...
Sweet summer nothing. Don't mistake billionaires as patriots for any cause other than their own. They don't care about the country and will only cooperate if forced or convenient. Which is the exact same level TikTok exists on.
Same reason China wants it.
lol
Technically the two divisions of the law banning TikTok and any company which sends US Citizens data to an adversarial nation, both passed at the same time, say nothing of citizenship.
When the courts say TikTok has to divest from Chinese ownership, they don't mean heritage. They mean owners and operators who literally live and work exclusively in China.
I thought Mister Musty didn't have US citizenship
Despite allegedly being an illegal immigrant himself, he does have citizenship now.
He became a US citizen in 2002
Should be an invalid citizenship, he falsely stayed in the us under a student visa while he did business, and didn't attend school
He should absolutely have his citizenship revoked and be deported because we have it on record that he knew he falsely stayed for his personal benefit.
I will cut less well off immigrants slack for not following the complex and difficult process, especially if they immigrated for asylum, but Musk did it because he could get away with it and deserves to be punished for it.
Why did you think that?
I just knew he wasn't when he was with PayPal and never really paid much attention since.
They are all a security risk
Well, the TikTok lawyers kinda said the quiet part out loud during their SCOTUS brief:
It's not a great look for your app when your argument before the Supreme Court is "yeah, we're a propaganda machine for a hostile foreign power, but free speech says you can't stop us. Neener neener."
See, "I'm not gonna smack you across the face, but I totally could if I wanted to and you can't do shit about it" might not be the best way to clear your reputation as a bully.
See, "Why aren't you going after other social networks. Specifically Facebook and X.....you know, the ones proved, since 2016, to lie and interfere with democracy? Is this gonna be wack a mole? Another chinese app its already trending you know..."
I don't use none of these. Facebook, xitter, tik-tok...I don't defend any of these.
But we KNOW Facebook was used to manipulate elections across the world. We know none of them give a dam about the truth.
I just want to ser Musk and Zuckerberg punished as the rest.
Unfortunately both of those people are american.
Rich Americans.
Its hard to take people down when they are responsible for making countless politicians and business people money, as well as assisting the government with their surveillance domestically and internationally.
The issue for common people regarding tiktok is more along the lines of foreign adversaries obtaining personal information of the users or using it to spy on the government. The idea that chinese propaganda would be in any way a threat is absurd and shouldn't even need to be defended in any way. "America bad" is hardly a hot take and they don't need to spread any lies to get that point across.
How is it any different than the Russian propaganda campaign to get Trump elected? Or was that something you were fine with as well?
When you let a foreign government run an active psyop campaign against your citizens, you're just begging for instability and chaos.
And how is it different than Dems calling Trump Hitler, regardless of how accurate it was? Should they also be tried for "propaganda"? And how about goverments claiming they're doing well, should they be tried for propaganda? How about the entire red scare propaganda? How about anti-arab propaganda? Putting someone on a trial for "propaganda" is a dangerous violation of free speech. If you can prove they've been lying, then at best they're at the same playing field as the government suing them, and in case of tiktok as far as I am aware there is no evidence that they were spreading any lies. It's just that they weren't censoring the genocide Israel commited in Gaza, unlike platforms aligned with USA, like Meta or Twitter. Which censorship was most definitely a propaganda, but instead of them it's tiktok that's being punished for not doing it? It's nonsense. Boosting negative commentary about foreign country is basic freedom of speech, and attempting to silence that feels very dictatorial. It's what China did with a lot of internet for spreading propaganda against them, don't you feel like removing Youtube access in China for making anti-chinese material available was bad for free speech? I wouldn't mind tiktok getting closed for spying on people, but it's obvious they don't want a precedent for that. Blocking propaganda? Bullshit.
As for me "being fine with" other peoples freedom of speech, I dislike what they had to say and I'd want them to be punished for lying, but I'd never advocate against them having option to speak. You end up living in a dictatorship by doing that. I'm not a free speech absolutist, by any stretch of imagination, but banning platforms for containing content casting bad light on you is going too far for me. Especially since there are much better reasons to do so.
What's the difference between Facebook / Meta selling my data to whoever, vs. TikTok harvesting it themselves?
There is no difference, neither should be allowed to do that. Person I replied to claimed the issue is chinese propaganda instead of any actual security risks.
I disagree. I think it's incredibly dangerous for a malevolent actor to control the media we consume and can erode the community from within.
Just look at fox news.
So in your view Fox News should be banned because they're propaganda machine for the right wing, calling out Dems for their faults and praising Reps for anything they did? Or because they're lying pieces of shit that helped manufacture a false narrative that eroded democracy and allowed fascists to get in power? Because, as far as I know, tiktok didn't do the later and it's the platform that got banned.
Oh yeah it's the latter. I'm not advocating for the tiktok ban at all, but I do think fox news is a malicious cancer.
In fact, because of fox news existence, I think foreign national propaganda engines are more important than ever. If the population is going to be manipulated for the gain of a few, at least have a lot of actors manipulating everyone so we have a chance of not letting one person control everyone.
They are assholes, sure... but are they wrong?
I mean, yeah? Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press are inalienable rights, sure, but they're generally intended to extend to citizens. Not foreign governments.
There's a big difference between a Chinese citizen here on a green card going around saying they love China and a company running an active misinformation campaign on orders from their government.
It's no different than how the government tried to crack down on Russian election interference. Turns out, hostile nations running psyops campaigns is bad.
I agree that it's bad, and it should be forbidden... but with the whole US decisions that "corporations are people" and "money is speech", I think it's legally questionable.
I might grant questionable, but not super.
I think a large part of why it was a 9-0 decision was that it's not speech to run a social media site. It's commerce, plain as day. Congress has the authority to regulate commerce full stop. The fact that China is using that platform to spread misinformation, and then claiming that stopping them from doing so is a 1A violation is just a red herring.
"Money is speech" just means rich people can donate all the money they want to a politician. Not that you can run an otherwise unlawful business because "money is speech and free speech is a thing!"
Just something to think about when it comes to the influence social media has on society
TikTok has already transformed how Americans communicate, influencing language and behavior in ways that may have broader implications. The Chinese government, known for using censorship and language control to maintain social order and suppress dissent, leverages euphemistic language as a tool for manipulating public opinion and silencing critical discourse.
Phrases like “unalive” for suicide or “grape” for rape dilute the meaning and impact of language, making it easier for powerful entities to control narratives and obscure uncomfortable truths. This process, known as “language laundering” or “semantic bleaching,” strips words of their emotional weight and original meaning, making it harder to address sensitive or urgent issues effectively.
This trend has extended beyond language to visuals, with people obscuring letters or censoring words in pictures and posts—using terms like “s**cide” or “r*pe.” While this may help users navigate algorithms designed to suppress certain keywords, it completely erodes the clarity and impact of critical conversations.
The normalization of this behavior on TikTok has permeated Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media platforms, spreading a culture of diluted language and indirect communication. These practices hinder meaningful discourse, desensitize users to serious issues, and ultimately make it more challenging to engage with sensitive topics in a direct and effective manner. Recognizing and resisting this shift is essential to preserving the integrity of public discussions and fostering authentic engagement.
It's mainly because words/phrases such as: murder, suicide, rape, human trafficking, forced prostitution, child sexual abuse, etc can get you banned on those platforms. Don't blame the people who work around, to discuss important but heavy subjects, blame the algorithms and report -happy users who for some weird reason, are opposed to these topics being discussed. Probably perpetrators or enablers imo not who knows?
You're attributing to TikTok what has been happening for years before even Vine came into existence and is actually a different issue: corporate-owned platforms cracking down on uses of those words as they're not "advertiser friendly" and don't "encourage a safe and fun space" or whatever. TikTok is in no way special here
It was already incredibly common to censor these words, grape for rape goes back at least 15 years to when WKUK were making their rounds. Unalive on sites like YouTube go back at least to 2018/2017 en masse if not earlier
This was never about national security. It’s about money. Most of congress owns Meta stock and meta lobbied the fuck out of trying to get the app banned. It’s extremely annoying that people buy this crap about national security.
Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something? 85% of these fuckwads agreed that banning this app is more important than literally anything else. Stopping school shooting, fixing our economy, providing affordable healthcare or housing, are all not important.
Patriot Act and other government spying laws of course.
Look, the problem isn't China getting your data.
The problem is they're not paying a US oligarch for it.
Because Musky has conned America into thinking he's a smart good American.
No.
No one can explain.
The cynical answer is that the people who run the government like the South African because he helped them win elections.
$5 says Elon or Meta buy TT and turn it into yet another GOP echo chamber.
You seem to think that it is for sale, Byte Dance has repeatedly said they will not sell. I also belive the PRC passed a law that would outlaw exporting the algorithom to the new owner
No need to buy anything when they already live rent-free on Lemmy.
Money.
Where the money is going.
Hey now. China's not short on money. This is the other big problem with America.
If Elon Musk was a black South African with a social media company interfering in our elections and sabotaging our national interests here and abroad, I assure you that it would also be in the crosshairs of a ban.
Easy, you have a very different idea of what the "nation" in "national security" and "national interests" is than they do.
It doesn't have to be our biggest problem for us to want to fix it. We can fix other problems as they come.
Also, server location. If TikTok reorganized in the USA it wouldn't be banned, they know that and still chose to go under.
Tiktok is owned by Oracle in the US and has servers in Virgina and California.
Lmao
China is an authoritarian government that is able to take direct control of any Chinese company. Like, explicitly. More or less all Chinese companies should be treated with suspicion.
Musk is a shithead but not, to our knowledge, an agent of a foreign hostile government. Turning twitter into a place that promotes hate speech is legally protected free speech, although specific statements that provoke violence may not be protected. Contrary to popular belief, there are many exceptions to free speech.
Correct. On Monday, he's going to be an agent to a domestic hostile government.
Almost all Lemmy users who happen to be in the US have been blessed so far with a government that generally is okay-ish, has some justice built in, and leaves them alone as long as they're not doing anything wrong. I think that might be about to change, and they're about to experience a China-style "you really have to be careful not to cross the powerful people" system instead.
Yeah, Musk seems much more interested in enriching himself than working for any government. It's in our biology to want more more more. His thing is wealth. He wants more more more wealth. Probably all he cares about is becoming the world's first trillionaire.
What do you think the American government does if/when they nationalize a business?
Can someone explain why the author is censored in this screenshot? Isn't it public already?
Copyright violations are fun
Simple. The South African has a vested interest in keeping the US extant so that he can rule it. The CCP does not share that same interest.
Lol. Capitalists don't think beyond quarterly profits, they'll strip out the wiring and doom the country and the planet for a quick buck.
TIL I have something in common with the CCP.
Serious question: do you consider it worse to be tracked and profiled by a foreign government or your own?
I actually consider it way worse when my domestic country is doing it. What is a foreign country gonna do with the information on me? Very little. What can the domestic do? Quite a lot.
Goes to show how little
most peoplelaw enforcement have a fundamental understanding of the US Constitution given how popular your comment is across social media.America bad ooga booga. Really they both should be banned lol. Like yall slinging shit at each other when they both should be gone. Great use of energy Lemmy
Comparing the two isn't useful. They are both bad and should be either shutdown or regulated.
I suspect its being banned because of people using it in public without headphones or earbuds. I was submitted to that experience for an hour+ in a waiting room one time and now I fully supported the ban to prevent it from ever happening again.
Did you tell them to turn off the fucking speaker?
Have you met people? They are unpredictable. You might get shot just for asking somebody politely to turn off their speaker.
In fact, I was once on a bus where somebody got stabbed because they asked some guy to stop playing music through his boombox (yes, I'm old).
Yeah....
I think people are likely to be as violent in most countries, but usually they have to use knives or acid or something like that. For what it's worth, I would far rather be shot than have acid thrown on me.
But yeah. It's a realistic thing that you have to take into account that you could be shot if you anger somebody.
I don't know what to say. You shouldn't be that terrified for telling someone to knock it off. I've asked people to do this many times on the bus and here I am, stabbed free.
no
This is a boomer level of paranoia, and the logic is akin to "I once lived next door to a serial killer, so now I assume that all of my neighbors are serial killers".
There are many places where its best not to play with the odds. And that person you replied to literally had real life experience backing it up. Theres a type of American that cannot stand being told what to do or someone suggesting they are wrong.
There's a type of person who thinks that their "lived experience" trumps facts or logic. That's why you have people who justify their racism based on a few bad experiences they had with black people or something. I try not to get in arguments with those people, because it's a waste of time.
Thats taking the wrong lesson from things. Its completely appropriate for someone who witnessed a stabbing on public transport, to decide that talking to strangers on public transport is more dangerous than they would like. Its not racist or any -ist, its the basis for risk analysis.
You should also consider that public transport and who uses it can change immensely from one place to another. In my area, public transport is inherently risky, not to mention inconvenient, and people avoid it if at all possible.
We base our risk analysis on things that happen to us, and that's error-prone. Just because something happened to you, that doesn't make it a frequent occurrence. Again, just because your neighbor was a serial killer, that doesn't mean that you have to worry about living around serial killers for the rest of your life.
I wish you were right, but you're not.
Come on, this is easy. He's white, that's obviously why.
Facebook has been abusing our data to undermine elections and stoke genocide for longer than tiktok has existed. No US government officials are calling for a FB ban either.
It's supposed to be rich white guys undermining our democracy and national security.
💲
Because he paid for his influence while China is not. They are “stealing data” they have not paid for and are competing with the NSA/FBI/CIA without sharing.
Because white.
because they might interfere with the elections. oh wait...
Yoo shut yer mouf, ya hear!
Jokes aside. Yeah, I've got no answer.
Edit: I do love the middle finger people are giving by hopping off TikTok (basically being shut down for being a Chinese company) and running to redd (a Chinese company) hahahahahha
Then getting banned from RedNote for posting pro-LGBT stuff and the like lol
Yeah... that's a good point lol
He's not Chinese.
Or so he says.
More specifically, he isn't sending all of the data to servers in China.
No, he's just a beneficiary of apartheid. Even Patrick Bateman knew we needed to end that.
That South African oligarch is a US citizen though and it hasn't been shown that he works in the interest of South Africa and South Africa isn't on the list of enemy countries.
Would you also want to prevent all naturalized citizens from owning a business?
The security at risk is that of the white tech monopoly my friend
It's more of a financial security concern from the aligarchy POV.
Banning the one mentioned is partisan
The govt isn't getting money from it?
The government can't control the narrative with it. Specifically the tipping point when they decided to ban it was when they realized people were free to call the genocide in Gaza a genocide without the US being able to overwhelm the platform with pro-Israel propaganda.
A government can control the narrative with TikTok, demonstrably.
Sorry, I meant the US government can't control the narrative on it.
They are, tho. TikTok still has to pay taxes.
But not on the data they harvest. Other platforms pay tax by selling the data rather than just harvesting it.
Google uses it to run ads. Facebook sold it to one of the listed countries back in 2016-ish and as a result in 2019 recieved the largest FTC in history at $5Bn and also faced similar cases in other countries, meaning they lost more money than they made doing that specific sale by far.
The US Government doesnt buy data, but they do sometimes request it via court orders and warrants.
Bc CHYNA
Interesting to see "technofeudal" entering liberal discourse
They know how much control they can assert of the population through controlling social media. They're not about to allow anyone else to use that, if they can help it. Also, it'll dilute their messaging, even if it wasn't as problematic as something like tiktok.
It makes sense the second you stop presuming any good faith.
It's true that both are security risks, and that Tiktok is even worse in general, however other proprietary social networks are also BAD and the proprietary algorithms behind them can all be used for massive user manipulation (control what they see, when they see it, and what they don't see, combined with tons of personal and psychological data about each user). That said, another factor that might be overlooked is that it also depends on how easy a target something is. An app by a foreign government that could be used to manipulate citizens is a much easier target for "banning". There's probably much less legal obstacles in the way in this case, and less resistance against it.
It's because money money money, nomnomnom
https://coub.com/view/23wglk
Idk I wouldn't touch most links on here with an 11 ft pole.
The only link I have found that has the particular part of BoJack Horseman that I am referencing.
I'm really curious what you thought this added to the conversation.
They're banning it because ChInA sCaRy
It has nothing to do with security. It has everything to do with controlling speech and maintaining management of public narratives. This became an urgent issue for the oligarchy when they lost control of Israel genocide discourse. This is what fascist states do. They are just getting started.
One's run by a white guy .... the other is Asian
When it comes to choices in North America ... it always goes to the white guy
If we were in a commercial passenger jet at 30,000 feet and the pilot and co pilot suddenly died and the crew had to choose who should fly the plane .... they'd think twice about the 300 Asian passengers and instead choose the only white guy in first class.
The problem with tiktok, x, or even red note is that the government ends up with an alternative to their narrative. They can't have any of that.
A good example is Israel/Palestine genocide. They lost the narrative war, people woke up. It's very difficult to put them back to sleep.
A lot easier to just ban the platform. Security is just an excuse/tool to do so.
bc china
Does OP think governments only face one issue at a time?
Because communism le bad.
I guess if words don’t mean anything the Elon Musk is whatever you declare him to be
Because at least in America when a Billionaire buys a company they can kick the Feds out the were manipulating and suppressing information for 8 years.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is owned by the CCP. Why make it easy for foreign governments to spread agit-prop in your country If you don't have to?
I don't see how videos of capybaras falling asleep is influencing me to overthrow the US government
oh man, we are watching different sleepy capybara videos then
Fuck tiktok. Go do the bare minimum of research& you'll find out for yourself.
I'm going to respond as if you posted this in good faith.
How about you cite your claims and pull people out of potential filter bubbles?
When I search for stuff I don't find information that leads me to the same conclusion as you. Clearly we're operating on two different sets of facts.
So instead of posting the most nearly useless kind of comment possible, educate and enlighten.
There is only one set of facts. Good effort, instead of educating yourself, get someone else to do it. Instead of posting a nearly useless comment, go get yourself an education. I'll give you a head start, it's all in the algorithm.
There is only one ground truth, yes, but the set of facts that live in my head and the set of facts that live in yours will be different. This is called "theory of mind" and most humans develop it around age 4-8.
Thanks!
Work smarter, not harder
Cruel irony, using my own words against me
I did, but I'm not on the same wavelength as you, so I still have a ways to go :(
Thank God, I didn't even know it was a race
Which one? I'm guessing quicksort.
I think 2,3, and 4 are correct but...
African-Americans aren't personally from Africa, but Elon Musk was literally born in Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
I mean you can think what you want but there is an objectively correct definition:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/African%20American
I'm not even going to attempt to explain it, you seem much too dense. :(
If you say so, bud
African-American usually refers to descendants of America's black slave trade. They are not Africans who moved to America. We don't call dutch born American emigrants Dutch-American. We call them Dutch. We don't call Chinese born American emigrants Chinese-American. We call them Chinese. Their nationality or continental heritage is usually how they are referred to. Calling Musk an African-American is by a long way, more racist than calling him unamerican.
You must really love the taste of Elon's dick in your mouth...
Breathtaking. However did you say that with a straight face?