Because the Chinese cyber threat is incredibly real. The United States should be playing hard ball. The US TikTok systems are compromised by Chinese spammers already.
> Because the Chinese cyber threat is incredibly real.
Comment like this lumps tiktok, a privately owned company with the Chinese government with no evidence. It's never about national security but really about US politicians seeing a social network with real reach in the US that for the first time does NOT need to pay to lobby in the US, nor to be responsive to congressional inquiry (as they have been able to do recently with US tech platforms, accusing platforms of suppressing conservative/liberal views, again without evidence).
If you know anything about bytedance's founder you would know that he's been an outspoken globalist, criticizing the government's approach to free flow of information on multiple accounts. Uninformed comments like this is truly tragic for many globalist people in China who grew up hoping for a global stage with open, fair competition and who often do not agree with the government's perspective.
It's worse than that. The hostilities towards everything China in 2020 are pushing all sorts of Chinese people away, who otherwise would have been supportive of US and liberal values.
What baffles me is that nobody knows that this is happening. Nobody is trying to understand how the other side sees it, and to work towards a real solution. Or maybe people are just wilfully blind to this possibility. People are so convinced that their view is the only possible legitimate view, and that no other legitimate views could possibly exist.
anyone with power and wealth in china is dependent on the government, they only have these things because the government allowed them to have and keep it, for now. thus it really doesn't matter how one individual on that side sees things, he sees things the way his side allows him to see.
it would be different if people exiled from china and were getting involving once they're in the western world, but to broadcast one's independence while in china is a moot point.
i have been to china many times and have many chinese friends, also many HK friends, and the chinese, while while very hospitable to the US will never pick US over china, never publicly or to an outsider anyways, they always follow the party line.
until the mentality of the regime allows and tolerates the discent there are no unique feelings on the other side to consider.
So you're downplaying the number of people who feel that way. You're also saying that their feelings are not genuine, and only forced upon them.
All this does not bode well for world peace.
Be careful of what you're wishing for. A democratic China may not be so different in terms of geopolitics as you would think (or they would be different, just not in the way you expect). Try reading what Kishore Mahbubani — ex-Singapore diplomat and ex-UN Security Council head — has to say.
with democracy and ability to speak your mind without goverment's persecution everyone is playing on the same field.
i'd much rather take democratic china's disdain than dictator's china friendly overtures. you can work towards a long term solution of common understanding under democracy.
If I think a few steps ahead, about the implications so what you say, then this is what I read:
Unless the Chinese people overthrow their government, and succesfully install a democratic government, they do not deserve to gain wealth through business with the rest of the world, and do not deserve to live a good life. The chaos and suffering that such a process brings is not important. The unknown chance that a post-overthrow government is both democratic and competent, is also not important. The fact that the Chinese people's lives in the past 30 years have become tremendously more free and more prosperous, and that these are the best 30 years in the past 3000 years, is also not important.
In the words of Kishore Mahbubani: do you want to FEEL good, or DO good? Condemning China on a single ideological issue, while ignoring the complexity of the context as a whole, feels good because it aligns with your values, but doesn't do anybody anything good.
Actual good changes are achieved through more dialog, better mutual understanding, better relations and rational approaches.
so here you are dismissing the views of the people in a whole country because their government isn't 'democratic'. This isn't the most ludicrous thing I've heard but It has obviously gone too far. You are essentially denying the rights of anyone who is a Chinese citizen to speak their mind, on the ground it's influenced by the government. And for some reason, a citizen of the US would fear not for speaking anything, which is simply not true. I'm pretty sure there are plenty people who don't speak their true views for the fear of repurcussion even though they hold that view, regardless how unwelcoming it maybe. To suggest we are somehow free of those outside non-debatable coercion would be a dilusion.
Is the Chinese cyber threat not real? The United States, Russia and China are the largest producers of state sanctioned attacks by a significant margin. You are painting me as some sort of bigot when in reality I have a perfectly legitimate reason to be concerned. I have every right and reason to feel the way I do. I would support similar sentiment of any Chinese or Russian citizen who uses an American product. They can be cautious too, it won't hurt my feelings. We all make the best decision we can with the information we currently have.
Moreover, my TikTok information has already been compromised which pairs nicely with my SF-86 data that was also compromised with the OPM attacks. Why did I decide to even use the application to begin with you might ask? I chose to because I didn't want to rule out what is otherwise one of the most popular social media platforms in the country because of my own bias. TikTok is by far my favorite social media application I just no longer choose to use it. I will watch the TikTok content that trickles down into YouTube for the time being. I have no means to verify authenticity of your statement that the owner of TikTok is some sort of 'outspoken globalist' who condemns the Chinese government. All the while operating one of the largest growing social media companies based out of a communist country. If the US data is segregated from the Chinese based data centers then why did I start receiving text messages with Chinese characters in it within several days of downloading the application and creating an account? Was it all a coincidence? I would be naive to not believe that it was simply coincidental however it is damning.
Let me make my next point abundantly clear since you made some significant assumptions about my character. My concerns are rooted in a lack of trust with the Chinese government to keep my best interests in mind as a citizen of the United States.
If the threat of Tiktok gathering data is so real, then isn't a much better solution, to pressure Google and Apple into improving their security models? That way, nobody can spy on your phone anymore. Or do you think Tiktok is the only and last threat there will ever exist?
But nobody's talking about actual solutions. All this looks more like a witch hunt to me.
Absolutely, but you of all people FooBarWidget should know that application security and privacy is a layered approach. This isn't our first run in with each other but I don't expect you to remember me but I will always remember the pseudonym used by the creator of Passenger. However we can find common ground because I believe at the root of all this we both believe in two things 1) the fair and equal treatment of others and 2) our inalienable right to privacy.
Perhaps I should have been more explicit in saying that the Chinese government is of concern, not necessarily the employees or owners of TikTok. But in all fairness, the Chinese government has a stronger ability to enforce their will on private business than seen in other places.
Addressing issues with Google and Apple is a tangential argument that is related but not entirely relevant to the conversation at hand. Why would I think TikTok is the only and last threat that will ever exist? I know that was a rhetorical question but a quite unnecessary one. To be fair, you don't know who I am so you can't make any assumptions of my intelligence or character outside of my comment history here on HN.
This is really an unprecedented situation so I believe it is fair to be somewhat cautious of further committing Chinese grown software into the pockets of tens of millions of US citizens. We are talking about mainland China here, not HK. If this company is so innocent then why did they pull out of HK? The acquisition of TikTok by Microsoft is interesting but why Microsoft? I don't believe Microsoft is doing it out of a sense of patriotism -- they want our data too. It isn't so much a witch hunt but we did get front row tickets to the bidding war on the commoditization of our personal data.
Thanks. It's good to hear you are someone who knows me.
My rhetorical question was not meant as an attack on your intelligence, and I apologize if it came over like that.
I agree with your common ground. I will not disagree on the desire to be cautious. Putting down measures to prevent spying is justified.
I'm just doubting whether that is the actual intention of the US govt. Let's say that they require that all foreign companies that process user data must undergo periodic security audits. That would be an actual, practical, fair solution. I have no problems with that. But that is not what is being proposed here by the US govt.
The Microsoft sale should have been the ultimate solution: replace all personnel with US personnel, use US servers only. Yet the US govt is still forging ahead with the ban, providing Tiktok with no way to solve this peacefully.
And now, they are banning Wechat. An app that nobody in the US uses except Chinese people to keep in touch with friends and family. How is this protecting national security?
I am only against the disingenuousness of it all. I am frustrated at the fact that so many people, in their zeal to oppose China (note: not making a value judgement here on whether that zeal is justified, just stating the fact that the zeal exists), don't see this disingenuousness.
I don't think the key data that TikTok is gathering is anything you can really block on your phone. It doesn't ask for your phone number, it doesn't ask contacts, it doesn't ask for access to your messages. Instead, it looks for trends, it looks at who you are.
I (18 years old) have used TikTok for about 2 months, before deleting it because it simply got too addictive. In that time it learned what my favourite games are, what shows I watched as a child, my political views, my eating preferences, my technology preferences. The list goes on. While I'm not sure how much of this is saved in a black box and only known by the algorithm and how much they can extract, I'd argue that this is many times more valuable for China that my personal phone.
Furthermore the power to influence the algorithm, subtle and slightly of course, may slowly change the minds of literal millions of teens.
There is a solution even to that. That's what the Microsoft sale is all about. That's why Bytedance proposed to sell ALL shares of their US branch. Replace the entire US branch staff with US employees. Vet every line of code. Don't send any data to China. This is the ultimate solution.
And yet nobody seems to be interested in this solution. People are still cooking up new reasons to ban Tiktok. Or ignoring the existence of this solution altogether.
Why do you think that might be? I suspect it's because the issue is more emotional and fear-based than rational. People are falling for the propaganda.
Yes, maybe I find it a little easier to trust Microsoft than Bytedance. But the problem is not who holds the data that I generate about myself.
The problem is that I have zero (or very little) agency to view or manage this data. That lack of agency is important because this data will have a tangible impact on my life.
People should have the right to choose not to use it. Tik Tok isn't a monopoly for obvious reason. That level of government intervention would be unprecedented.
How is that different than what Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc are doing though? Is the worry that China can do something more nefarious with that data than US corporations can?
Also please do keep in mind that the lockdown of both Android and iOS has been gradually increasing. If they slapped on all the restrictions all at once, it'd be too much of a shock to developers.
The cyber threat from China is very real, but cyber capability is super cheap. A one-off capability is going to run in the low single digit millions. You wouldn't endanger an asset currently worth tens of billions and growing for that.
The situation that we have is that the only person who actually has the willpower to stand up to China (Trump) is simultaneously too idiotic and too self-centered to effectively do so.
Comment like this lumps tiktok, a privately owned company with the Chinese government with no evidence. It's never about national security but really about US politicians seeing a social network with real reach in the US that for the first time does NOT need to pay to lobby in the US, nor to be responsive to congressional inquiry (as they have been able to do recently with US tech platforms, accusing platforms of suppressing conservative/liberal views, again without evidence).
If you know anything about bytedance's founder you would know that he's been an outspoken globalist, criticizing the government's approach to free flow of information on multiple accounts. Uninformed comments like this is truly tragic for many globalist people in China who grew up hoping for a global stage with open, fair competition and who often do not agree with the government's perspective.