What's your thought on the TicTok ban?

cypherstream

TicTok and some other apps like CapCut are now starting to trickle offline for users. This seemed to start happening around 9 PM and continues to shut people out.

Curious what your thoughts are on it? I think it sets a slippery precedent for banning apps. Sure there was some bad content on there, but there was also educational content, a lot of people made a decent living on there. The data collection happens on every app you go to these days.

Part of me thinks good riddance, but then another part of me thinks everyone will just go to Instagram, Youtube Shorts, Facebook Reelz, or something else I've never heard of. Its interesting times.

robxr4ti

cypherstream I am absolutely not a fan of censorship but the fact that the owners were sharing information with the Chinese government makes me (sadly) support it. China is America's enemy and the last thing we should be doing is making things easier for them.

egeezer

cypherstream
I think the ban's justification is similar in some ways to that placed on Kaspersky Lab products.
Eugene is based in Moscow, and although the company is probably presently operating independently, the potential for nefarious changes is a real issue.

Of course, with dozens of companies collecting and selling petabytes of data on people in the US, a shell company operated by China, DPRK or Russia could simply buy what they want on the open market. Banning TikTok is security theater. Strengthening US privacy and data collection laws is a better solution.

urbanriot

cypherstream I'm against stupid people giving their data to the Chinese military and I'm against stupid people encouraging unwatched children to kill themselves and overall I'm against all the stupid whiny people that post their latest videos crying about how hard life is.

But at the same time I'm more against the government involving itself in suppressing free speech regardless of the internet, whether or not its because used to spread propaganda that damages our societies, whether or not it's used to harvest our data for a future war, and whether or not stupid people are doing stupid things as a result.

The libertarian in me does not support the ban.

cypherstream

I realize its spelled TikTok, my bad. I don't have an account on there, but my wife does. It just went dark for her about 11:29 EST.

cypherstream

I also note if I switch my VPN to Canada, the site loads fine. The TOS applies all but the US, EEA, UK, Switzerland and India.

digitalfutur

China is a bad actor, though not the only one, when it comes to data security. Since the law requires companies based there to provide data to the government on demand, and since there is no independent judicial oversight of such requests, the security risk is self-evident.

Trump can legally delay the ban for 90 days but not stop it without Congress approval. If parent company ByteDance still refuses to sell, the shutdown must be permanent, as approved bi-partisan by Congress.

ElQuintron

I'm not going to whatabout this, but there's certainly an element of hypocrisy to the ban.

American social media harvests all sorts of data that its users can't possibly comprehend, as does Tiktok and there hasn't been enough discussion about that either, but... TikTok is beholden to a geopolitical adversary and the ban can be justified for that reason.

That being said, a lot of Tiktokers are fleeing to RedNote (another Chinese social media product) which is probably worse (at least of the propaganda and data harvesting front) and it's going to take another two years to ban that.

toolman1990

ElQuintron I think it is more about who controls that data and how that data can easily be weaponized by a hostile foreign government. That does not even include their ability to weaponize the video algorithm that can control the kind of content their users can see. I suspect Red Note users will eventually be banned due to sensitive content that CCP does not want their citizens to see, or the US government will ban the application for the same reasons as Tik Tok.

robxr4ti

ElQuintron but the funny part about Rednote is that it censors like nobody's businesses. The woke crowd won't be able to get the foothold they had on Ticktock.

ElQuintron

toolman1990 think it is more about who controls that data and how that data can easily be weaponized by a hostile foreign government.

This is exactly why the ban makes sense. I don't support it in spirit, but the security reasons are pretty solid. It's also banned on Canadian government officials' phones.

px_eliezer_

robxr4ti

Agree, and good to see you here even if sometimes our views differ!

ElQuintron

robxr4ti I've never been on TikTok so I can't say whether or not it gets by woke seal of approval, but... I suspect some people are making a lot of money there, and the move the RedNote is likely an attempt to keep tapping into that market.

cypherstream

I thought all the data for US users were in a Texas colo owned by Oracle. Cant they just block that data from connecting to China? If i can do it in a Palo Alto Firewall at work, you’d think at a scalable data center they could too.

It’s just if people move to another platform, Instagram for example, it’s the same data collection just by Meta. I guess it’s better to have US based spyware than Chinese though.

Looks like it’s coming back online for many users today. What the heck?

I don’t have a TikTok account myself, but I know many who do and make quite a living via Tik Tok shop. I guess they could move to something like Etsy with Instagram to market. It’s estimated that sales via Tik Tok were around $7 billion annual income to US Citizens. That’s a big hole to move. If anything Trump will be motivated by money and compliments to reverse the ban. Kind of interesting because back in 2020 he was for the ban. This seems like a big political stunt to make the right look like the savior to the younger generation.

toolman1990

cypherstream The issue is Tik Tok's owner Byte Dance which is domiciled in China is mandated by the Chinese National Security law to hand over all data requested to the CCP. Even if the US region blocked those servers, they can just use a VPN to disguise where the traffic is coming from. In addition, Donald Trump did sign an executive order giving Tik Tok a 90-day extension to sell so if Byte Dance does not divest from Tik Tok the ban will go back into effect.

cypherstream

toolman1990 you make a good point. This is all new waters and I’m watching on the sidelines how it all plays out.

At work in our intune policies if TikTok is installed on your device, we mark it not compliant and it will not be able to access company resources (email, share point, teams, basically anything in the Microsoft universe).

aurgathor

toolman1990 mandated by the Chinese National Security law to hand over all data requested to the CCP

Evidence please that they have been "mandated to hand over data". What specific data and when was it handed over? As far as I concern this is a red herring and just enables sinophobiacs. Much to the chagrin of some there is no evidence that the PRC would have much to gain from collecting videos of US teenagers posting cat videos.

robxr4ti

px_eliezer_ Can someone find Internet Jeff?

minni

I never use Tik-Tok, instagram, and so much more. Except for when i occasionally click a link referenced in someone-or-other's blog or forum comment. I really am over the hill. I just can't find time, because i'm so slow at everything.

DrStrange

minni Welcome!

Hydraglass

My 2 cents - I'd rather willingly send all of my personal info every single day willingly to the CCP than once to Meta. Heck I'd put my bank account information in a fed ex to Xi before I'd give Zuck my credit card number. There's no concern about what the CCP is doing with 180 million US users personal data - they could buy it from Google or Meta just as quickly.

This is all about the US Gov't having zero control over the messaging on TT. They can put pressure on Meta, Google, and Elon already does on X willingly to make sure the messaging stays on point for Americans. They have no such ability to exert that leverage on TT (nor Red Note - aka Little Red Book) - which is sort of the point of the app -- let people from everywhere in the world talk about whatever they want with no means of western gov'ts putting their finger on the scale. They really don't like when the general public is 12 hours ahead of mass media knowing what is going on in news and current events.

ElQuintron

Hydraglass My 2 cents - I'd rather willingly send all of my personal info every single day willingly to the CCP than once to Meta. Heck I'd put my bank account information in a fed ex to Xi before I'd give Zuck my credit card number. There's no concern about what the CCP is doing with 180 million US users personal data - they could buy it from Google or Meta just as quickly.

This is probably fine for most mortals, those of us that care are already taking steps to mitigate these efforts from Meta et. al already. But... where the problem lies is politicians and members of key industries that act like normal mortals. If you want a great real world example just think of Maxime Bernier leaving country secrets at Julie Coullard's residence. (For people outside of the Harper era political bubble before he launched his own Fringe Party, he was the minister of Foreign Affairs, and his then partner Julie Couillard is a known organized crime figure)

The potential for this kinda stuff on TikTok is much greater exposed persons there. Add the most likely algorithmic targeting by China on top of that and you have recipe for disaster.