Is the hate for Meta so great that you actually trust a Chinese app more? China absolutely has zero privacy protection and everything explicitly runs through the great censor wall.
Don’t mince words. Meta absolutely has issues with data collection but it’s comical to think they somehow China is better.
It's endlessly amusing that people are willing to speak positively of an authoritarian state, not even for a paycheck which one might not forgive but at least understand, but merely for their daily dose of brainrot[0] videos.
The geopolitical utility of the app is to give the CCP more power to manipulate and hurt you. They want to get closer to the level of power that domestic US powers-that-be have. I'm blown away that this seems to lost on so many people commenting here
Putting CCP in quotes is silly. It is not a conspiracy theory that the CCP exerts an extreme level of control over ByteDance.
Your interests are probably not aligned with the CCP. The American public's certainly aren't. The Chinese government wants to achieve a hegemony and export their economy and culture by undermining the US wherever they can. We don't fit into that in a way that won't result in a markedly worse life for us.
TikTok would boost content about how Israelis making target practice out of Palestinian children is great and needs to happen more often if it made the US look bad. That you can't see that, or can't separate that instance from other possibilities, is exactly why TikTok is under scrutiny.
What is the point of App Store rules if your privacy continues to be at risk. Oh yes, every single app must declare if it uses name, or email, or address, or camera, but all of them are exempt except TikTok? If you want to make the App Stores more stringent, sure, go for it.
The issue is ability to manipulate people. However, should not the NSA monitor how the algo is working, and be empowered to cut off TikTok if for example you start seeing a million videos saying "Taiwan, the eastern province of China". I am sure we will still have control, we just need to be smart enough to "tap" into what content is being fed.
It has nothing to do with your data. That whole thing is a red herring.
The risk with TikTok is that it presents media entirely algorithmically, and that algorithm is controllable by the Chinese government and is opaque to everyone else.
Data collection is a worry of the previous decade, the recommendation algorithm is the battle ground, the US has decided that it much prefers having Meta push its white supremacist and gender wars drivel non stop than what was being shown in TikTok (Israeli atrocities)
While we are at it we should show the Hamas atrocities while we are at it. Would not be complete, without someone of the fake heart pull videos that Hamas traditionally put on as well.
What's your objective metric? I would say one side has way more websites and apps blocked than the other. So if we go by that measure then I'd say the one with more websites and apps blocked is objectively worse.
Civil rights aren't a zero-sum game. America must lead by example by not silencing 170 million people because of some "intelligence" that's likely less reputable than Saddam having WMDs or the Marty Rimm report.
I'm an American, and I have worked for both Zuck-owned and Chinese-owned companies, and you really, REALLY might want to re-think your stance. It's extremely ironic that we as Americans have this "question authority" thing so deeply ingrained in our DNA that it pushes us towards authoritarianism just to be contrarian.
"Please share a source" is an incredibly dumb retort in the realm of geopolitics.
"Please share a source that the allied powers are going to invade the beaches of Normandy". You can't, because people are working incredibly hard to keep that secret.
Yes, there is very little public sourcing for what hostile powers plan to do in a geopolitical struggle. That's how it goes.
It is perfectly reasonable to infer what might happen based on past actions by the specific powers, and on world history. Attempting to gain geopolitical influence through propaganda is nothing new.
What can China do to our social networks that is materially different than what American tech companies are already doing today?
Maybe I'm being naive because I don't use TikTok, but all the partisan misinformation I see is being spread by either Americans on American social networks or maybe Russian disinformation bots operating on American social networks.
> Nice substitution, now let’s try it in “ByteDance or US Govt” form.
Not substitution, and you somehow missed the fact that it's China's CCP, not ByteDance. It's China's CCP that acts through a de-facto shell corporation called ByteDance, the same CCP that stands behind the Uighur genocide, Tibet annexation, threat of invasion of Taiwan, etc. That's who you are defending as the desirable option.
Yep, there are no rules in the US, anyone can own a company and do anything they want. There is no evil government pulling the stings from behind the curtain.
Are you even aware of the context of the reasons why Tiktok went dark? Did they do it with no provocation? By accepting the US's arguments for the Tiktok ban we're just aligning ourselves with the same ideology of "the enemy" you're trying to malign.
What do you suppose is gained by making CCP pay Zuckerberg for the privilege? Or are you proposing that he'd turn their money down?
The US has done plenty of that sort of thing in south America and the middle east, but it has always had the extra burden of maintaining a narrative under which it was not doing those things. If we let the US ban services that are contrary to its narratives, what's left to stop the US from behaving like China even more than it already does?
Yeah we may have to cross that bridge later. (Indeed, I think it's a major concern that Musk controls Twitter and has demonstrated an inability to criticize the Chinese government time and time again.) But we can at least cross this bridge first.
America has genocided 10s of millions for what it is worth. From Native Americans to slaves to all the wars in the last years to "export democracy". If any country can rival China in killing people needlessly it is the USA for sure.
Hmm if Saddam killed 50 thousand innocent Iraqis each year, and American intervention only cost 40k lives each year ... Then do we deduct 10, or add 40, to the "ten million" number you came up with?
In the 21st century the United States did this? In the 1980s? At what point do we compare countries in a modern era versus a bullet list of their historical record.
By that standard, Norway, Sweden and Denmark should be shunned for their slavery, raping, looting and imperialist colonizing abroad -- in the 10-11th centuries.
Yeah, and it is within my rights to call for controls over its ownership. After all, we are a free country.
Just like one person getting vaccinated is useless, I want the country to be inoculated from insidious propaganda outside of democratic control and review.
And it is within my rights to point out the hypocrisy of those who cry freedom
Tibet was a feudal society. The only people who were "crushed" were the people landowners and the elite monks.
Both sides of the strait want the status quo in Taiwan for various reasons. Detent would be the correct approach instead of further military armament. It would be like if the Soviet Union continued to militarize Cuba from the Cuban missile crisis until the current day.
I'm more concerned about the genocide in Gaza than some CIA assets in Germany playing make-believe.
Can you recommend some social apps from China that we may have not paid attention to? I’m assuming there’s a list more than ‘RedNote’. I tried using WeChat but it’s not where my network hangs, unfortunately.
You probably know some that have enough non-China presence.
You almost fooled me with the sarcasm. I am concerned with how many folks in this thread have massive sympathy for China. No doubt the West has had many issues and continues to do so but China is getting painted here as the bastion of freedom and openness. That they trust a Chinese app more than Meta when it’s absolutely worse in mainland then the lives they have in the West.
with china wysiwyg, with USA you believe you have freedom of ____ (you don’t) and you believe “US-owned” (X is not, hence the quotes) social media is in any way “net positive” for its citizens…
No doubt the West has had many issues and continues to do so
This … you are right in that West has issue … where you are wrong is that the issues are just as dangerous (if not A LOT more) than China. I quoted “US-owned” cause one of the biggest social media platforms that everyone considers “West” is owned by an African
Don’t mince words. Meta absolutely has issues with data collection but it’s comical to think they somehow China is better.