Comment by ethbr1
Comment by ethbr1 14 hours ago
Forcing TikTok to divest from mainland Chinese control absolutely solves the second, in TikTok's case.
That there exist other problems is not a justification for inaction on this particular problem.
Comment by ethbr1 14 hours ago
Forcing TikTok to divest from mainland Chinese control absolutely solves the second, in TikTok's case.
That there exist other problems is not a justification for inaction on this particular problem.
You don't consider a massively deployed app, on a majority of mobile devices, via which blackmailable individual profiles can be assembled "security-sensitive"?
I'd absolutely consider Meta to be security sensitive. And Microsoft. And Google. And Netflix.
I'm curious what netflix behavior you imagine would ever be blackmailable?
"You watched Red One, and we'll tell you employer and wife about it unless you ..."
How does this work?
> What does that even mean in this context?
TikTok's CSAM problem is well documented [1].
Disposable idiots are a necessary asset for any intelligence operation. Kim Jong-nam's assasins, for example, "were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show" [2].
[1] https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/tiktok-under-fede...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam
Except they've just spun up different apps accessing the same data, and also people are flocking to alternatives even more connected to China's Intel apparatus than TikTok allegedly was, because fundamentally a shit ton of Americans don't trust their government. And IMO, they're right not to.
We could shut all of this shit down if we actually wanted to, but that means going after American companies too, which they won't. They want to have the cake and eat it too: outlaw foreign spying on American users without outlawing domestic spying on American users. They want to make it so China can't do exactly what social media et al does in America, to Americans. Americans are not stupid: they are perceiving this. They know they are being manipulated, perhaps by China, perhaps by the U.S., definitely by dozens if not hundreds of private enterprises, likely all fucking three.
On one hand, the American government's priority is the security of America and her citizens, but on the other, we have an entire segment of the economy now utterly dependent on being able to violate citizen's privacy at will and at scale. Surveillance capitalism and foreign surveillance are effectively interoperable. You can't kill one without killing the other.
Edit: And even more on the personal front, for your every day Joe: this is completely stake-less. "Oh China is spying on me!" big fucking deal. The NSA was caught spying on us decades ago, and by all accounts, they still are. Google AdSense probably knows my resting heart rate and rectal measurements that it will use to try and sell me the new flavor of Oreo. We accept as a given that our privacy is basically long gone, not only did that boat leave the pier, it sailed to the mid-Atlantic, sunk, and a bunch of billionaires imploded trying to check out the wreckage in a poorly made submarine. I don't fucking care if China is spying on me too, that's just a fact of my online existence.
Little Red Book/RedNote is the #1 app on the App Store, followed by Lemon8 at #2. Duolingo reported a 216% increase in parties interested in learning Mandarin[0], people are actively boycotting the likes of Meta/Google[1], and many content creators have set up shop there (albeit with a much smaller following)[2]. It’d be disingenuous to write off these effects.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/15/duolingo-sees-216-spike-in...
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-boycott-faceb...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/over-half-million-tiktok-...
Yes, because it went from like the worst app in the US to a pretty popular one in a short period of time. YouTube has 240 million accounts in the US. Instagram has 170 million. 500k accounts in RedNote is nothing in comparison.
People are protesting because it's cool to do especially when you're a rebellious youngster but I'm pretty convinced it's going to fizzle out. I don't think it's fair to say it's disingenuous to believe as much. Maybe you could say it's "too early" to write it off, to which I'd respond saying it's too early to buy into the belief that it will take over American culture in any way that resembles TikTok.... and, even if it did, that it would not be banned from the US again.
> People are protesting because it's cool to do especially when you're a rebellious youngster but I'm pretty convinced it's going to fizzle out.
Just wait until the Chinese government realizes young American social media users have no problems talking about politics, sex, and drugs on social media.
We'll see how long open platforms with citizens of both countries last.
Yeah, and BeReal beat out TikTok for a couple of months too. Being topical for a moment doesn't mean something has staying power. Learning Mandarin is a pretty big barrier to entry lol. 2x on Duolingo doesn't mean that much, how many were learning it last year?
If you consider TikTok a “Security-sensitive system” that seems to be such a broad category as to be useless. I guess we should stop using any and all Chinese produced software systems then? Which isn’t an unreasonable opinion but again it feels like a different conversation than “ban TikTok”.