Tik Tok is a national security threat

IMO the data privacy angle is not super important. There isn't that much that TikTok can collect from you anyway. IMO much more important is that the videos that are shown to you while you mindlessly scroll for that next dopamine hit are controlled by the CCP.

Google and Facebook would <i>LOVE</i> to have TikTok banned because TikTok is eating their lunch right now, attracting advertising money at a rate that is an existential threat to them both.

Having worked in the Chinese tech sector I have honestly no idea where this cartoonish idea comes from that the Chinese government magically runs every tech company in the country. I seriously question if anyone who says that has any personal experience with the country at all. This is some strange techno-orientalism where Asian governments apparently have superpowers nobody else possesses. Does anyone here think the American government is physically able to own or run every technology company or even one?<p>The Chinese tech sector, including TikTok (which is a distinct western entity anyway, the Chinese app is called Doujin) faced comparatively little oversight, and regulators usually aren&#x27;t exactly competent. Chinese entrepreneurs navigate laws and regulations just like they do everywhere else, with the added difficulty that they tend to be even more confusing than anywhere else. There is no mastermind sitting in a dark room smoking a cigar controlling entire sectors of the economy, because only the tech companies actually know how to operate themselves, same as anywhere else.<p>The government in China considers its own tech sector to be a competing power center, not some extended arm of the party, which is why they brought the hammer down on significant parts of the industry recently, wiping out ungodly sums of money in the process. You don&#x27;t do that to an asset. Chinese tech tends to attempt to skirt the rules (usually for its own benefit) whenever possible.

Reading through that thread and then a bit more of his twitter, just seems like yet another wannabe Dan Price style philosopher, acting like the enlightened person residing at the center of every debate. None of his arguments are particularly concerning or unique considering how much every other company lobbies and evades governments.

The thing that bothers me the most about TikTok is how it&#x27;s allowed to operate with little restriction in the US but US-based companies do not have nearly the same level of freedom to operate in China e.g. fb is banned in CPP).

&gt; 80 million Americans now spend 20% of their free time scrolling through an algorithmic content experience owned by the Chinese Government.<p>As opposed to a billion people spending 20% of their free time scrolling through a Facebook feed (back when Facebook <i>was a thing</i>).<p>Honestly, the more these issues get raised, the more it&#x27;s clear that there&#x27;s really no difference between a government and a corporation except one spends money and the other makes money.<p>We have been slowly moving into a post-Democratic version of globalism for decades. Consumerism is not a bulwark against oppression, and we&#x27;ve mostly only had the illusion of choice or control in our political process, with oligarchs deciding everything rather than the &quot;δῆμος&quot;. Totalitarian empires have been the dominant model of human civilization for the past couple thousand years; there&#x27;s no reason to believe it wouldn&#x27;t continue. China will be leading the new global status quo, which will combine heightened entertainment with heightened totalitarianism. Orwell was a prophet, a century early.

I don&#x27;t really understand how this is any different from any other social media platform besides the entity your data is being sent back to. Is the Chinese government really any worse than Google, Meta, etc.? I think if you really feel passionately about this specific instance, then you should also feel the same passion about any other social media platform that collects your data and does with it what they please.

This is hilarious. Social media is a threat to national security. The Internet is a threat to national security. People have a desire to be seen and see others. So long as we have that desire, and the Internet makes it possible, there will always be a TikTok.<p>The only reason they’re really saying it’s a national security threat is because of how big it’s gotten. What about Facebook? I would say Facebook represents a far greater threat to national security than TikTok.

Hi, uh.... OP here (from twitter). Didn&#x27;t realize someone posted this! And honestly I was expecting like 20 likes total.<p>Anyways, want to clarify a couple things:<p>- All of the information presented is accurate. And the questions are fair.<p>- I am not defending FB or other tech companies broadly. I&#x27;m pro data locality.<p>- China is an authoritarian mass surveillance state that forcibly squashes detractors and limits individual freedoms. The US has made many mistakes, but it still doesn&#x27;t come comparably close to this.<p>- Please for the love of God don&#x27;t compare me to Dan Price. Please? lmao.

Worth mentioning, ByteDance now also has an office productivity suite: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.larksuite.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.larksuite.com&#x2F;</a><p>I&#x27;d be interested to know what kind of reception this has had in the US, given the reputation of tiktok, regardless of however it actually is for privacy and security

As we see TikTok eating everyone&#x27;s lunch we will see a last gasp flurry of PR firms from Facebook, Google trying to spam these articles.

People would take this whole situation more seriously if it weren&#x27;t always discussed in such evasive terms as &quot;US Data&quot;. What data, exactly?<p>The truth is that every cell phone is a tracking device, and the US government loves this. The only thing they&#x27;re upset about is anybody other than themselves having all this tracking device data. So when a China-based company gets a hold of it, they&#x27;re upset, but they can&#x27;t really articulate <i>why</i> they&#x27;re upset, because it would amount to an admission of how much they love their precious surveillance economy&#x2F;state. Instead they just sort of stammer and sputter about &quot;US Data&quot;.<p>I feel a certain Schadenfreude about this situation.

Tik Tok is a garbage dumpster filled with junk. It’s no more a threat than an empty can of tomato soup. It is hated because it can’t be bought and controlled by Facebook as it’s a China company.

A lot of the sentiment in this thread makes it clear that Social Media (Google&#x2F;FB&#x2F;TikTok) is a tool capable of exerting power, a weapon.<p>The great firewall of china prevents American &quot;weapons&quot; from running rampant on Chinese citizens. Meanwhile America has no digital border, so Chinese weapons are able to run rampant on us. If you ask just about anyone &quot;Is it ok for China to store bombs in our cities, while they prevent us from putting bombs in theirs&quot; the answer is obvious.<p>Despite this America has chosen a &quot;one internet&quot; strategy to prevent the balkanization of the internet and generally has an anti-protectionism strategy.<p>The far more interesting question is &quot;despite the obvious national security risk posed by TikTok, why might it be preferable to not block it?&quot;

This is actually a good thing. Let me explain.<p>If there is a market for domestic video-based social networks, then it should be low-hanging fruit for a US-based provider to offer a competitive product. If there isn&#x27;t then the market has spoken, and consumers have voted with their attention.<p>There aren&#x27;t any other interpretations that don&#x27;t deprive the invisible hand of the market from delivering providence to consumers. These are rational actors making voluntary choices. Foreign policy should simply stay out as any intervention is necessarily a market distortion. If market actors are consuming it, it&#x27;s good definitionally.

[Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitter] is a national security threat.

And the very limited lip service paid to hosting&#x2F;keeping US data in the US was basically a nice massive government-mediated sale for Oracle

Can&#x27;t think of a bigger dissonance between most people and a typical HN commenter than this. Its a good intersection of infosec and geopolitical nerdom in general, but mostly it allows programmers to think that their expertise has bearing on something so seemingly serious and huge, when their work doesnt usually give them that opportunity. So I understand the fervor that way only because it just can&#x27;t all be the typical superiority dynamic presented here a lot with layman&#x27;s consumption habits, its just so extra with anything about software and China. I hope you guys get a fight worth your time one day.

Can anyone point to something that TikTok is doing that FB&#x2F;Google&#x2F;Twitter aren&#x27;t already doing, that we should be concerned about?<p>All the anti-tiktok takes seem to be rooted in sinophobia and nationalist sour grapes. I don&#x27;t like megacorps slurping my info up, but these conversations seem to have huge blinders around what has become standard practice for American web companies - especially when handling the data of foreign users.

<i>Today: The CCP now has your data</i><p>What data does the CCP have? The people I follow? The kind of videos I like to watch. My favorites? Videos I &quot;liked&quot;? How exactly is this a national security threat?<p>I&#x27;m all for pushing back against the CCP but it&#x27;s not clear what &quot;data&quot; they have

Why not to explain to public why privacy matters and what real consequences are if you don&#x27;t care and constantly doomscrooling?<p>I&#x27;m against any types of censorship. If you value freedom, you cannot implement practises of enemy.<p>To be clear... I&#x27;m not social media user, because of many ethical and technical issues that they have. And I know about them because I&#x27;m able to find that information or practically reproduce. With regulations, I wouldn&#x27;t.

It’s not, yet. Until there’s actual proof of the CCP pushing propaganda onto western users we can talk but otherwise it’s just incumbents upset they can’t compete.

I keep thinking the endgame is a Lucius Fox&#x2F;Dark Night-style, on-demand surveillance network. No basis in fact.

If another nation bans outside social media networks ... I see no reason that we shouldn&#x27;t do the same to those that operate from that nation. The amount of data available is just too much to hand over in a one way relationship.

None of this is good, but… how much damage can they really do with this data?

Ok, so how about the Terms of Service are just honest and we see if everyone still agrees? Personally, I&#x27;m happy to trade my psych profile for that sweet sweet content.

Maybe all countries should block all foreign apps. Back to the isolationist ways George Washington wanted.<p>Let’s skip all of the hand wringing and get to the conclusion here.

I have always had a bad guy feeling about tiktok. It never seemed right to me how it grew so quickly. It screams of privacy concerns even beyond what Facebook was doing and came after years of public scrutiny and general contempt for those kinds of privacy nightmares.....<p>everything about it says to me it was supported by military&#x2F;government programs from early on and it was obvious to me that anything that powerful came with strings....<p>I saw Facebook turn into a monster....and it still doesn&#x27;t have the data access that tiktok gets.....

The biggest risk is chinas potential future influence over the content being pushed on TikTok. This is also where the law is least prepared for regulation.<p>On the privacy side, If lawmakers really cared about TikTok data ending up in China, I’m sure congress could pass a powerful privacy law modeled off the CCPA or GDPR. This hasn’t happened so I’m assuming it isn’t considered a very serious national security threat.<p>On the content side, I don’t think the world has a very good model for regulating algorithmic content streams. The biggest risk is also the hardest problem to tackle

Same emperor, new clothes. It&#x27;s the same at home in the US, not with CCP but CIA &amp; Cie so.

Everyone is talking past each other.

I remember some years ago I saw the same rhetoric on Meta&#x27;s (Facebook) services in Russia.<p>Meta ended getting restricted in Russia and branded as &quot;extremist&quot; due to some ugly story with moderation rules and hate-speach.<p>All this is generally considered as a backwards decision and is criticized both in Russia and in the West.<p>I wonder when will we see the same for TikTok in the US and how would it be implemented. AFAIK, Trump had threatened to ban TikTok during his last presidency, but how would it be implemented practically? It seems that previously the US had only restricted internet by undelegating&#x2F;seizing domains, but that would be scandalous for an international corporation. Nationalization maybe? It seems that had already &quot;partly&quot; happened with that Trump incident - TikTok had to restructure a bit and let a few American investors in, strings attached.<p>In any case, this situation is a boon for America&#x27;s competitors, as it is a yet another demonstration of America&#x27;s integrity failing.

A lot of commenters either haven&#x27;t researched the topic or lack imagination.<p>What can China do with the data and attention of 80 million Americans? How about practically anything they want. They haven&#x27;t used it yet.

Why are they worried? If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear! Or does that only work when the Americans are spying on everything we say and do both online and off?<p>This is terrible, but its also karma.

Facebook is an existential threat.<p>Can we turn the hyperbole up to 11?

So is Facebook, yet here we are

I agree it&#x27;s a huge security threat but framing it as data privacy issue is a distraction from the real concern which is top-down censorship. People think of TikTok as pure algorithm but that&#x27;s wrong, the algorithm is manipulated directly by the CCP. They&#x27;ve censored BlackLivesMatter[1], blocked a teenager discussing China’s genocide in Xinjiang[2], blocked a video of Tank Man[3], Hong Kong protests and Houston Rockets basketball team[4]. TikTok guidelines censor Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, and the Falun Gong[5].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;02&#x2F;tiktok-blacklivesmatter-cens" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;02&#x2F;tiktok-blacklivesmatter-cens</a>...<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2019&#x2F;nov&#x2F;28&#x2F;tiktok-sa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2019&#x2F;nov&#x2F;28&#x2F;tiktok-sa</a>...<p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;1788836&#x2F;targeting-tiktoks-privacy-alone-misse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;1788836&#x2F;targeting-tiktoks-privacy-alone-misse</a>...<p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;the-china-cultural-clash&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;the-china-cultural-clash&#x2F;</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2019&#x2F;sep&#x2F;25&#x2F;revealed-" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2019&#x2F;sep&#x2F;25&#x2F;revealed-</a>...

The whatabout-ism regarding American companies doing similar stuff can be explained by that great quote, “in the United States the journalists are so powerful they can throw politicians in jail, in China the politicians are so powerful they can throw journalists in jail.”<p>The CCP is getting this data, and they have significantly more carte blanche to do nefarious things than US government officials do.

I am glad hackernews has not fallen to the nihilism that most other platforms have when clearly attacked by foreign agents or special interests astroturfing and using whataboutism.<p>Most other communities just go along with nihilism about democracy because it is in vogue to pretend we are another authoritarian regime. Nice to see the nerds haven&#x27;t given up :)

Wow. This entire thread seems to be written by Chinese agents, looking to, on the surface, minimize the threat against the West by China.<p>Clearly TikTok can be a national security issue.<p>All these comments do not address this at all, and seem to do their best to ridicule a valid concern.<p>Obviously the issue is that the data from TikTok is required to go to the Chinese government as do the algorithms.<p>China has clearly benefitted from the West, by all the money and IP that we have given it, by the products we purchase. Now, the Chinese are biting the hand that feeds it, by becoming an ally of Russia. By actively looking to undermine the West. To deny this is to deny reality,unless you are saying all the reports on how the Chinese are doing this is &quot;fake news.&quot;<p>.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;daily-comment&#x2F;russia-and-china-unveil-a-pact-against-america-and-the-west" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;daily-comment&#x2F;russia-and-chin...</a><p>Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, at the Wilson Center, in Washington, said “This is a pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder against America and the West, ideologically as well as militarily,”<p>.<p>The difference between TikTok and all Chinese apps is that the government essentially owns all companies, whereas in the West, this is not the case. Western governments can only access data from private companies if they have a search warrant.<p>Furthermore, I believe China will be seeking to invade Taiwan soon, and take over all their chip-making technology. Their population and economy is crashing, so now is the time to invade Taiwan.<p>To just dismiss these concerns about TikTok out of hand, without any discussion, is clearly wrong.<p>This entire thread seems like it was written by the CCP sleeper HN users.<p>.<p>Also, as noted by trident5000 below, China has access to all USA users of TikTok., but the USA or anyone else doesn&#x27;t have access to Chinese users of TikTok. That&#x27;s just one more issue to add on, and I&#x27;m sure there are others, too.

&#x27;Are There TikTok Employees... Who Are Members Of The Chinese Communist Party?&#x27;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=meWM8d4Uz7Q" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=meWM8d4Uz7Q</a><p>--<p>It&#x27;s a fascinating video in the sense that you can clearly tell that this COO is hiding information.<p>I mean it&#x27;s so blatant I am surprised the platform is still up and running, anywhere in the West to be honest.

At a simpler level, it&#x27;s a travesty that TikTok is allowed to operate in the US when Google, Facebook, Twitter et al are banned in China. Trump had the right idea in seeking to ban it, until he reverted to type and turned that into a shake-down instead.

Yes, I only use American spyware social media and hardware. Like my Android phone with gboard keylogger sending everything I type to Google.

Titkok is a threat because it threatens US internet monopoly which is 100% true.<p>How it would be dealt with is a different story. I see different Admin would take different approaches, the wait won&#x27;t be too long.

I&#x27;m so fucking tired of coming into these threads and seeing people false flag, shill, whine, moan, complain, strawman...<p>We need to start by banning these god awful threads. Then we move onto TikTok, then onto gutting Meta and Twitter.

FBI, and beurocrats want to control the discourse, and pick favorites which candidates Americans get. It&#x27;s harder to do that when platform is foreign. Still perhaps the best thing for Americans to have an alternative main stream source of information. Platforms should not get to do view point discrimination and censorship. Pendulums swing, and public opinion matters..the law will follow.

TikTok is the best app of its type, and for the first time USA being beaten by a foreign country to develop an international successfully app. Also one of the first times China developers catered for an outside audience. Obviously this has huge implications and the USA is quite offended<p>When China said Gmail&#x2F;Facebook&#x2F;Instagram... was a security threat, USA called it censorship, so now they&#x27;re in a pickle<p>And it is obviously a security threat, but USA does not care as long they&#x27;re the ones spying the world, and their own population<p>Also USA is much more prone to foreign interference, like their drones using cellular data in foreign countries to kill people, elections, blackmail, etc...<p>So as an European I would say.. fight fight fight!<p>No one wants to become China but USA&#x2F;UK&#x2F;EU&#x2F;AUS... are slowly becoming more authoritarian anyway. Maybe some competition will make them wake up and remember what they used to stand for

I am convinced that TikTok is addictive to a subset of the population by using the same methologies that video gambling machines employ - colour, movement, dopamine fluctuations and ease of use.<p>I also think that the use of infinite scrolling is unethical.<p>Facebook and Twitter drive user engagement differently as they have discovered that illicting negative emotions makes their offerings more &quot;sticky&quot;.<p>Then there is their algorithm. It&#x27;s good. Extraordinarily good. One day they will tweak it to sow narratives that the US or western governments find offensive and I&#x27;m guessing this is the real reason for it being a &quot;national security threat&quot;.

Isn&#x27;t TikTok effectively ran by Oracle in USA? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;technology&#x2F;tiktok-oracle-servers.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;technology&#x2F;tiktok-oracle-...</a><p>How did Oracle get its start, remind me? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-p...</a>

Twitter is also a national security threat for similar reasons. It&#x27;s tempting to say that advertising supported internet services in general, devolve into them.<p>The tracking technology used to help target advertising is a perfect tool for use by repressive regimes and organizations of any size or scale.<p>Offline caching and sharing of content in a distributed fashion, where it isn&#x27;t possible to get real-time location data, for example, is one possible route around this problem. Perhaps it&#x27;s time to revisit the Memex concept, and make computers personal again.