Comment by dijit

Comment by dijit 3 days ago

53 replies

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Agreed.

All this fearmongering about telegram and tiktok is weird.

China can decide what it wants from me- I have no plans to visit or engage with regime; however my life is dependent on the US not thinking of me as interesting.

So, the less I give to US companies, the better.

Especially as, being a non-US citizen I have no right to privacy afforded to me in the constitution, and US companies can be forced to comply with the government in secret- much in the same way we consider that China does it to even part-owned China based companies.

ruraljuror 3 days ago

The concern over tiktok is not that Xi’s autocratic regime is surveilling you, but manipulating the algorithms in its large social media market share to foment anti-American (& anti-Israeli) sentiment.

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  • tracerbulletx 3 days ago

    Russia seems totally capable of doing that just by paying people and using bots.

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    • Sabinus 3 days ago

      Indeed, but that doesn't mean you should expose the youth more to belligerent foreign controlled agitprop information channels.

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      • roenxi 2 days ago

        What is the real risk here? The only thing they can really do is make the case that if China invades Taiwan then the US shouldn't get involved. There problem is they might well be right; if I compare Hong Kong and Ukraine, I'd expect Taiwan would be better off going with the HK model of an "invasion" rather than fighting an actual war with the world's #2 or arguably #1 economy. So I'm not sure what the case is for quelling the message; there are some important issues there to debate.

        Even if we start with the questionable idea that the US has the moral and physical might to be deciding where the borders are drawn in Asia; it isn't obvious that TikTok would be influential enough to matter. The military-industrial complex lobbyists in the US have a lot of actual power in pushing for war and experience in getting messages to the public.

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    • mpweiher 2 days ago

      Knives are perfectly capable of killing you, so let's not worry about nuclear bombs?

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    • kelnos 3 days ago

      Sure, there are many avenues to spread this sort of propaganda, but a state-run social media platform can certainly be a lot more effective than someone flooding someone else's social media platform with propaganda.

      Assuming the Chinese government is using TikTok for influence campaigns (they'd be foolish not to), they only way to stop it is to outright ban it in your country (which the US seems to be trying to do, with possibly-disastrous effects), or find a way to get your citizens to dislike it (good luck with that).

      While Russia is doing pretty well at their influence campaigns on other platforms, those platforms can choose, if they so desire, to step up their detection and banning efforts. It's a constant cat-and-mouse game, of course, but it's at least possible to stamp out most of that crap if you're willing to spend the resources to do so.

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    • ekianjo 2 days ago

      really? any proof?

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      • Brybry 2 days ago

        Over the years I have personally found multiple accounts on Twitter/X that appeared to be Russian propaganda trolls (or someone with resources looking to appear that way).

        They would pretend to be Americans and pushing certain narratives by retweeting/following/commenting/etc.

        I found one that claimed to be a single mother living in the midwest USA. It was using a cropped photo from the personal blog of an Australian woman (who had multiple kids and a husband). If you went far enough back in the history you could find accidental Russian language usage. The timestamp trends in the posting behavior were clearly not American. It followed, and was followed by, other similar troll accounts.

        Most recently I found one that claimed to be a 26 year old woman from the US. No reverse image search hits on the English web. But reverse image search with yandex you'd get hits for a couple of vk profile picture databases. From there it was possible to find the actual vk account, which was a Russian woman who clearly was not the same person.

        I could link you some of the accounts but the ones I've reported have been banned or deleted by now. I'm sure the US government is wrong on some stuff but there's too much evidence for stuff like the Internet Research Agency to be fake [1]

        [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

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      • eigenket 2 days ago

        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40656550

        This is a comment I made on hackernews, replying to someone who (IIRC) claimed to be German but (in my opinion) was clearly a Russian astroturfing account.

        After I mentioned it they deleted their comments, and they have since all been flagged by the moderators here.

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      • anigbrowl 2 days ago

        My goodness, there are so many examples of more or less direct Russian influence operations. Here's a recent one where a bunch of political influencers were being paid ~$100,000 per single podcast episode by a company in Tennessee, whose founders were fully aware that their super-generous investor was located in Moscow.

        https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/media/right-wing-media-influe...

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  • lupusreal 2 days ago

    My concern with tiktok is that it rots your brain like television, but far more effectively because it's rapid fire content constantly tuned to the individual user to keep them hooked on it. It's an instant gratification machine, effectively a drug, that fries people's attention spans. It has people spending hours a day consuming vapid short-form nonsense, and alters their psyche to make them less effective in other endeavors even when they aren't distracted by the app (particularly school, since it hits children particularly hard.)

    The medium is the message.

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    • account42 2 days ago

      This is a very valid concern but it also applies to many "western" social media and entertainment channels.

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      • lupusreal 2 days ago

        I have the same concern with those western apps too.

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  • immibis 2 days ago

    Isn't Israel doing enough to foment anti-Israeli sentiment anyway?

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    • Cthulhu_ 2 days ago

      It feels like they're spending more on pro-israel sentiments, and have for decades. A biblical quote about a beam in one's eye comes to mind whenever people go "but china!".

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  • whatnotests2 3 days ago

    Isreal is doing just fine, drumming up dissent, based on it's behavior alone.

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    • ilbeeper 2 days ago

      Right. That, and a few hundred million petrodollars

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  • Woshiwuja 2 days ago

    [flagged]

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    • voltaireodactyl 2 days ago

      Arguable in general, but certainly not if you’re the American government, which is what is being discussed here.

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      • rakoo 2 days ago

        I'm not sure the American pov is really the topic here. This story can have consequences for everyone. The USian government is not the center of the world

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  • olalonde 2 days ago

    I'm not sure why influence should be illegal. What about books and movies? Or even schools and universities? American schools are probably the greatest source of anti-American / anti-Israel sentiment in the country. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GXm-NYyWEAA1jNs?format=jpg&name=...

    If you believe in freedom of speech, you should also accept that people, including foreign people, may try to influence you. China doesn't believe in freedom of speech so they censor foreign sources of influence. Does America really want to go down that path?

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    • lukan 2 days ago

      Books are quite static.

      But dynamic algorithms, targeting exactly you, knowing what mood you have in that moment (by analyzing what you have looked at, liked, disliked), what opinions you have etc. opens up a whole different world of influence possibilities amd I think those possibilities are just starting to get explored with AI. The data is already there.

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    • hcfman 2 days ago

      The Netherlands also doesn’t believe in freedom of speech.

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    • talldayo 2 days ago

      > American schools are probably the greatest source of anti-American / anti-Israel sentiment in the country.

      Damn the education system, and it's penchant for teaching the history of colonialism instead of a revisionist policy. What's next, after Mandatory Palestine we'll teach our children about the Civil War and slavery too? What an anti-America sentiment, clearly we need our conservative lawmakers to... I dunno, rewrite history for both countries? Teach feel-good cookie recipes instead of international politics?

      As long as America has anti-BDS laws there won't be any freedom of speech in the first place. Our first amendment rights are currently being suspended by international lobbyists that can't handle their share of due criticism. A shame, considering the US does so well to educate others on it's own embarrassing history, but is threatened with a lawsuit when anyone tries to meaningfully criticize Israel.

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dghlsakjg 3 days ago

The constitution does not exclusively apply to US citizens is the good news.

The bad news is that there is no explicit and broad right to privacy in the constitution. You are protected by the fourth amendment requiring a warrant for searches and seizures, but the court has ruled that, citizen or not, if a third party like Meta willingly hands over your info, it’s fair game. L

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cryptonector 2 days ago

"You have no privacy, get used to it!" -Scott McNealy

Scott was not saying "you should have no privacy"; he was making a statement of fact. That was nearly two decades ago, and he was prescient and right.

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PaulDavisThe1st 2 days ago

> So, the less I give to US companies, the better.

and all of a sudden, you're interesting.

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  • talldayo 2 days ago

    You shouldn't be downvoted, the whole industry ought to know by now that Palantir aggregates multiple international sources of data for sale to American defense agencies. If you're legitimately afraid of America, the internet has few places of refuge.

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JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

> China can decide what it wants from me- I have no plans to visit or engage with regime; however my life is dependent on the US not thinking of me as interesting

If you have something of interest to Beijing and you’re doing something shameful or illegal in America, and they have evidence, they have leverage. This is human asset development 101.

Most people don’t have skills or information relevant to a foreign state. But some do, and for them being mindful about not giving a foreign adversary blackmail leverage is prudent.

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nindalf 2 days ago

> my life is dependent on the US not thinking of me as interesting

Why do people engage in this sort of larping, like they're secret agents or intellectuals that may be hunted at any moment by the grey suits in western governments?

We know it's not true for this person in particular because one click on their HN profile tells you their real name. I stopped there, but I'm sure there is plenty of additional info available with 3-4 more clicks. If they were really so afraid of government reprisal like this larping suggests, maybe they'd attempt to be at least a little pseudo-anonymous.

The actual fact is that 99.9999999999% of us are boring and will remain boring no matter what kind of comments we write on HN. It wouldn't hurt to touch grass once in a while.

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babkayaga 2 days ago

cleber. but china can blackmail you into working for them. you will have no recourse if it does.

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  • dijit 2 days ago

    Blackmail me how? By giving information to the people who would have had it otherwise?

    Hardly a defensible position to blackmail someone from.

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    • pvaldes 2 days ago

      Anybody that has lots of videos from you could train a deep fake realistic model and create a fake video depicting you committing a major crime. Sadly blackmail is the easier part.

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      • dijit 2 days ago

        I am failing to understand why I would prefer the US to have the ability to do this over China though.

        Reply View 2 replies