Comment by zamadatix

Comment by zamadatix 16 hours ago

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The ban is not rooted in the concept ByteDance has a minority of investors who are Chinese citizens so any comparisons framed around that concept will not change the analysis. The reason for the ban, agree with it or not, is the perceived control and data sharing with the Chinese government made possible by many things (mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction and then have all of these other potentially concerning details, not that they just have one of these other details).

If the NYT were seen as being under significant control of and risking sharing too much user data with the Chinese government then it would indeed make sense to apply the same ban.

Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic. On the other the inherent problems of banning companies by law. Such things work out in other areas... but will it work out in this specific type of example? Dunno, not 100% convinced either way.

glenstein 12 hours ago

>Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic.

I wouldn't worry about that, as FB, twitter, reddit etc are banned in China. To the extent that we want equilibrium here, banning Tiktok would reprsent a step toward parity.

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patmcc 15 hours ago

>>>mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction

ByteDance is; TikTok is not. TikTok is headquartered in USA and Taiwan. Why is that not part of the analysis? The CCP can control/influence ByteDance, the US can't do anything about that. But it could do a number of things to prevent ByteDance control/influence on TikTok, and it jumped directly to "must divest".

Congress could have passed a law banning TikTok from transmitting any user data back to ByteDance/China, for example. Why not do that, if that was the actual concern?

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  • glenstein 12 hours ago

    Well, reporting as recent as April of 2024 suggested that Bytedance is able to access tiktok user data despite Operation Texas. And generally speaking, we have seen enough in the way of (1) security breaches and (2) leaky promises not to disclose data either to govts or 3rd party data brokers, only for those reassurances to fall flat. I would even go so far as to say that professions to uphold trade agreements or international agreements are uniquely "soft" in their seriousness from China in recent history.

    Guarantees of insulation from bad actors from major tech companies unfortunately are not generally credible, and what is credible, at least relatively speaking, are guarantees imposed by technology itself such as E2E encryption and zero knowledge architecture, as well as contextual considerations like the long term track record of specific companies, details of their ownership and their physical locations.

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    • patmcc 11 hours ago

      The reporting I found (from the Verge) was that an employee of TikTok (in America) would email spreadsheets to executives in China, and other similar cases of US employees having the actual access to data and passing it along to other folks in China.

      This all suggests to me that the 'Operation Texas' technical controls were actually in place and pretty good (or dude in China would have just run some SQL himself), and what isn't in place is hard process control to prevent US workers from emailing stuff to China. Which, you know, is exactly what Congress could pass a law to deal with.

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      • glenstein 10 hours ago

        I took the article to be absolutely damning in its reckoning on the utility of Operation Texas, precisely because it proved that no amount of technical control would be a match for the human infrastructure that tied Tiktok to China.

        Which I suppose is a different way of making the same point as you.

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