[paganel]

Companies like Zoom are probably 5th column-like entities. Had someone told me something like this just a couple of years ago I would have called that person crazy or paranoid, but the latest moves from the CCP have cemented that belief for me.

Again, I was almost totally against Tik Tok's de facto nationalisation ordered by the Trump administration, but seeing executives like this one acting on the orders of the CCP as part of a huge IT company lead by a Chinese citizen (and I now presume also a CCP asset himself) has reversed that belief for me.

[vineyardmike]

No way is the CCP not manipulating TikTok's black-box (cough cough "Machine Learning") algorithm to surface content that is better for them in some way. Should they be sold to America though or should they just be forced to die on the Chinese vine?

[gonehome]

Yeah - this is the real risk with TikTok, not the data (or who hosts the data).

Moving the cloud hosted data to Oracle doesn't solve the underlying risk.

The real risk is CCP manipulating what's surfaced via the algorithm to sway public perception or to censor things they dislike. They've already done this explicitly with the protests in HK and Tiananmen Square, they'll do it in other ways that suit them.

The worst part is with TikTok the manipulation is more subtle, harder to see - are you seeing something because it's popular? or because the CCP is interested in you seeing it?

Are you not seeing something because it's not popular? or because the CCP has told Bytedance to kill it?

Moving the data to Oracle misses the point. The data is not important in this case, but the ability to control what the public sees is. Letting the CCP have control over that lever when they abuse it elsewhere: that's the risk.

This can be an issue anywhere, but the CCP has a terrible track record and no interest in a free press or free speech. What they're doing to the Uyghurs and what they've done to HK and how they treat people talking about Tiananmen Square. They don't take responsibility for any of it and they do what they can to suppress all of it.

It's a very machiavellian view and their soft influence on the US and western companies tied economically to China to self-censor or otherwise defer to the CCP's interests is alarming.

That recent article about Tim Cook killing an Apple TV show written by a couple ex-gawker editors doesn't bother me at all. Gawker was awful and we're better without it, shows glorifying it, or supporting the editors that worked there. This is Tim Cook deciding for himself he doesn't want to support those people, it's a principled position.

The other bit in that article about an Apple rep saying the two things Apple TV would never do are 'nudity and China' was a lot worse. The South Park 'band in china' episode was right. This is Tim Cook knowing what's expected of him to be able to operate in China - it's not a principled position, his hand is forced.

[vineyardmike]

Ugh, china's control over apple has to be one of the biggest political compromises and also successes (for china) in the world. They can't do anything too awful since Apple is likable and high profile, but after the HongKong app censoring and tim cook's letter, it became apparent who was in charge.

[tonyhb]

No joke, when I first signed up early August it was literal Trump propaganda on every video. I had to train their algo to tell it that I wasn't interested in pro-trump videos - 5 days later they disappeared. This is a complete anecdote but, yes, it is plausible that some promoted videos have an agenda.