[4oh9do]

What are the actual privacy/security issues with TikTok, concretely?

Citizen Lab published a report last year - https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-priv... - which found that the app does not engage in any overtly malicious behavior:

> TikTok and Douyin do not appear to exhibit overtly malicious behavior similar to those exhibited by malware. We did not observe either app collecting contact lists, recording and sending photos, audio, videos or geolocation coordinates without user permission.

And if there's any organization I trust about this sort of thing, it's Citizen lab, owing to their groundbreaking work around Pegasus and other APTs.

[Workaccount2]

We'll find out if China invades Taiwan and American youth overwhelmingly think America needs to stay out of it.

[m0rti]

This is a weird take. Americans are free to not support military interventions planned by their country. To imply that this stance is only possible with brain washing by China is something I wasn’t expecting to see on HN. Heck, it is usually the opposite. People become avid supporters of current war/invasion/intervention due to intense propaganda by traditional and social media.

I would applaud the American youth if your post ever becomes reality.

[Workaccount2]

You would expect resistance the same as any other military intervention has. However the magnitude of the that resistance given what is at stake is what would be telling.

[ok_dad]

I mean, why would the USA get into it? It’s an off topic question, but what do we gain from an independent Taiwan that’s worth getting into a war with China when we have so many issues domestically that need those resources?

[xeromal]

The USA has an agreement with Taiwan which promises that we help them in some way.

The act further stipulates that the United States will "consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States".

The act requires the United States to have a policy "to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character", and "to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan." Successive U.S. administrations have sold arms to Taiwan in compliance with the Taiwan Relations Act despite demands from the PRC that the U.S. follow the legally non-binding Three Joint Communiques and the U.S. government's proclaimed One-China policy (which differs from the PRC's interpretation of its one-China principle).

Obviously, it's not something as strong as NATO but we will definitely get involved.

[jpgvm]

Traditionally nothing. However Taiwan became the centre of semi-conductor manufacturing and research such that it is now crucial to the national security of almost every nation, not just the US.

However the real reason why Taiwan can't either fall to China militarily or re-unite with China peacefully is that Taiwan forms the centre of the "Island Chain Strategy" which is a containment strategy established by the US after the PRC came to power in the Chinese mainland and ROC was relegated to Taiwan.

The Island Chain serves to contain the PLA Navy such that China can't operate as a Blue Ocean navy, i.e operate in international seas/oceans. Additionally it sets up a small number of chokepoints that can be used to completely isolate shipping in/out of China so they will alway be able to apply economic pressure through blockade.

This is the -real- source of tension between China and the "West" (even though it's really just the US/Australia/Japan in this case, China is relatively friendly with European countries etc).

If China was able to do the same thing to the US you can imagine the US would be pretty uncomfortable with that situation too.

Without being able to operate freely in the Pacific China's own nuclear deterrence is less effective as they aren't able to move nuclear ballistic subs without detection outside of the containment. This generally means needing bigger, more capable (read MIRV) ICBMs. Also generally means development of containment busting weapons, namely hypersonic nuclear tipped carrier-battle-group destroying missiles. They need effective nuclear deterrence to ensure their nuclear capability can't be disabled in a first strike. Specifically because their main adversaries are the US and Russia (yes, Russia is traditionally a Chinese adversary) both of which have significant nuclear assets so they need their own to ensure MAD is in place.

TLDR: If Taiwan was to come under Chinese control either by force or peacefully it would break a decades long containment strategy by the US, securing Chinese access to the Pacific for both trade and the PLAN.

[dillondoyle]

TSMC

But if we're not being sardonic a holes, we should be fighting with a Democratic and free government against an autocratic dictatorship whose stated goals are to restore the 'righteous' historical vision of China as the center of the world (it's even the name as far as what I've read, not a speaker of the language: 中国).

Not only is it critical geopolitically and militarily (as in ability to control important & huge swaths of seal / trade routes), ceding ground or worse not putting up a fight at all, would be the death knell of the push for more liberal governments and more freedom.

As always on any topic of Xi or CCP there are a whole bunch of 'but whatabout america.' It's just tiring.

[stickfigure]

To protect a democracy that demonstrates a benign alternative future for Chinese society.

[senttoschool]

What if I prefer a more Chinese society than traditional western society?

[stickfigure]

Then you should find some people that voluntarily (ie, not at gunpoint) want that society, and live there. That's actually one of the great things about modern western society, it's very tolerant of people who want their own societies (as long as they aren't trying to impose them on everyone else).

Obviously the Taiwanese aren't interested in living under the boot of the CCP. It's an interesting question what mainland Chinese would want if they didn't have the gun pointing at their head.

Also, what on earth is traditional western society? Like, Greek?

[unityByFreedom]

> Also, what on earth is traditional western society? Like, Greek?

There is some question as to what constitutes "Chinese society" too.

Do you use simplified or traditional characters? Must you simply respect your elders, or do you also need to be subservient to them? Can you trade with the west? Become successful without prior approval? Protest peacefully? Own property?

[fortuna86]

> I mean, why would the USA get into it?

Wow, not the point. The ability to mass influence foreign markets is the topic of discussion, do stay on point.

[em3rgent0rdr]

Not having another democracy in the world fall to authoritarianism. A future where more people have more freedom. Alliances.

[1270018080]

Is China going to save Americans from the theocratic authoritarianism destroying our freedom?

[dillondoyle]

We're fighting and voting to save ourselves. It can be messy.

But we actually have the rights & ability to change governments who threaten our freedom.

[brobinson]

Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, etc. would all turn their backs on the US if the US lets a liberal democracy fall to an authoritarian state LARPing as Communists.

[unityByFreedom]

Chips and shipping lanes.

[4oh9do]

Kind of like we find out weekly what happens when Facebook decides it needs to enforce US foreign policy for its worldwide users?

[darzu]

Let’s run a thought experiment:

All videos get assigned a 0-1 anti- vs pro-CCP score. Videos with a >0.5 score get a slightly (~5%) better chance of being shown, and <0.5 is slightly penalized. This would be undetectable if the algorithm is run off device. Anti-CCP content would still play often. But on the massive scale TikTok runs, this would still tilt opinion favorably towards CCP.

[4oh9do]

Yeah, I'm aware of the any number of infinite Evil China (TM) hypotheticals. Let's put the sinophobia on hold for just a second, and answer my question: what are the practical (meaning documented) privacy/security concerns with TikTok? I linked to a report from a (gasp, Western) group showing that there weren't any, but I'm aware that the report is a year old, so I'm very interested in documented recent information, not just mindless anti-China ranting.

[noptd]

>sinophobia

Purposely conflating China and the CCP, when the parent was criticizing the latter, is disingenuous at best.

>mindless anti-China ranting

And there goes arguing in good faith...

[em3rgent0rdr]

"documented". Unfortunately TikTok is closed source & proprietary. Though some privacy/security concerns can be gleaned via inspection of the binary and by viewing its network packets and such, it is still a black box running inside everyone's pocket.

[gman83]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/leaked-audio-reveals-china-repeat...

[_-david-_]

Even if they are not doing anything bad now, they are controlled by the CCP and could push propaganda or other material to demoralize the West.

[AlexandrB]

> could push propaganda or other material to demoralize the West.

Not necessary. Our governments are doing a great job of this already.

[user_7832]

>> could push propaganda or other material to demoralize the West.

>Not necessary. Our governments are doing a great job of this already.

I'd say it's a bit more nuanced than that - foreign countries are already quite active even when most don't realize it. Major political moves have been influenced by foreign country/ies, regardless of which side of the Atlantic you are - see both Brexit and the 2016 US elections.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/21/russian-meddling-brexit-referendum-tories-russia-report-government

[_-david-_]

Our governments don't want our societies to collapse. I'm not sure China has the same care for our societies.

[powerapple]

There is zero to worry about privacy because out of these social network apps, TikTok is the least invasive and doesn't really have much private information about users at all.

About security, US may worry about what such a powerful platform can influence users. Think about how people were saying about Facebook when Trump was elected. And how US has been using Facebook in other countries to influence people.

[dylan604]

Not all malware is the same. If there was a malware bit of code that did nothing that brought attention to itself as it silently sat there retransmitting every piece of data you entered, every interaction with every website, every document created, etc, the owner of that malware would have access to so much information that they could so so many things with that data that may or may not directly affect the user of that device. That would not make that malware any less vile just because it didn't encrypt user data or something obviously hostile to the user like that attracting attention to itself. That type of malware is almost there with social media SDKs used in websites, apps, etc.

There are ways that I can't even imagine that other people can imagine how to use that data for nefarious means.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Did you even read the parents link before spewing that?