The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

Utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the current geopolitical climate. China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops.<p>Shut it down, yesterday. Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. China sure as shit doesn’t allow its citizens to cough up their personal information for algorithmic consumption to Twitter et al.

A recent tiktok trend hitting my city and others seems to be calling in&#x2F;airdropping&#x2F;swatting&#x2F;posting active shooter threats at local schools. So far, this has shut down my kid&#x27;s school several times this year.<p>TikTok gets to be the vector for this new scale of virality, America loses future economic competitiveness. Who is the winner in this scenario?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spieltimes.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;what-is-tiktoks-active-shooter-challenge&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spieltimes.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;what-is-tiktoks-active-shoot...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedailybeast.com&#x2F;tiktok-shooting-challenge-seen-as-not-credible-schools-ramp-up-security-anyway" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedailybeast.com&#x2F;tiktok-shooting-challenge-seen...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wpde.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;rcsd-at-blythewood-high-school-after-report-of-shots-fired" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wpde.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;rcsd-at-blythewood-high-school-a...</a>

The very fact that not a single western social network is permitted to operate in China is a sufficient reason to ban TikTok in America.

TikTok as-is presents a massive attack surface for (d|m)information and worse. And the version available in the US is highly addictive with numerous bubble creating feedback loops. The amount of engagement and time spent on the app is incredible.<p>The creators know this and provide an alternate version called Douyin used domestically which optimizes for educational content and has additional rules&#x2F;safeguards<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-58625934" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-58625934</a><p>I don&#x27;t want to harp on which country has which political motive, but it&#x27;s pretty cut and dry to see that the service owners export something very different than what is presented domestically.

TikTok is only a part of a much larger problem that US was not ready to deal with.<p>Sure, TikTok having “coarse location” permissions seems like a very bad idea, give the fact it’s Chinese owned app. This is the obvious one and I personally absolutely cannot understand how this is allowed to happen. (And there is more… Russian owned family tracking apps for example)<p>But the larger and harder problem to solve is social media and their involvement in targeted advertising, potentially having a significant impact on election results. This applies equally to all platforms. Where do we draw the line? Should amount of money determine who gets elected? How do we know the money even comes from the parties and not from other governments? Or a new problem we have- should the richest person be able to own very influential social media? This is no longer a democracy.

I can&#x27;t imagine their reaction when they discover that so many IP cameras&#x2F;NVR&#x2F;DVR have been and still are being used as surveillance devices, and in some cases they have been hacked to either phone home (China?) video feeds, or as botnet hosts.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hacked.camera&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hacked.camera&#x2F;</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.insecam.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.insecam.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>

There are a couple of things we have to be careful of in these discussions: one is that the US has strong motivations for (economic) protectionism. We should be focussing on evidence of wrongdoing, not innuendo.<p>The second is how the accusations are being made. Too much of it reeks of borderline racism and there seems to be an uptick in outright racism against Chinese people. Remember, it is acts of the Chinese government at issue here <i>not</i> the acts of people who have no ties to the Chinese government.

I have a couple questions:<p>1) How is TikTok worse than other social media apps? Both in terms of privacy and &quot;the algorithm&quot;.<p>2) What another country&#x27;s government does with my data is far less important to me than what my government is doing with my data. Am I wrong for thinking that?

How does watching fail videos and memes radicalize people and make them politically polarized? Would it not be obvious to TikTokers that they are being manipulated in some way, even subtly? If I want to control narratives and shape opinion, TV is how I would do it. Fox News is basically a propaganda machine, and isn&#x27;t questioned, because, hey, &#x27;merica.

Oh so our current owners are concerned that they might lose control of the culture to some new foreign owners? If I believed that the US security state was there to protect the American people I might be more concerned, as it stands this is just a changing of the guard for who will be our technocratic authoritarian overlords, and I can&#x27;t be plotzed to care.

The Chinese government is hilariously bad at foreign propaganda. Seriously, just look at any of their official media channels. The US has a million times more experience in this business - it has Hollywood, it funds thousands of &quot;non-governmental organizations&quot; all over the world, it knows how to advertise.<p>The people who are worried that 15-second videos on TikTok are somehow part of a long-term plan by the Chinese government to subtly change Americans&#x27; opinions are giving the Chinese government far too much credit.

&quot;When we look at all of these wide-ranging apps that are connected to Chinese firms, it&#x27;s actually almost nonsensical to ban just one when we see platforms in areas like precision agriculture, communications, gaming, all connected to Chinese firms,&quot; she says. &quot;So what&#x27;s really important is to develop more robust data privacy regulations in the United States to protect users.<p>TLDR:<p>It has nothing to do with &quot;national security concerns&quot;, it&#x27;s just they are great competition, and the US is lagging behind, so banning it would mean having a chance to catchup<p>Hence why they tried to lure them to move to their US based servers, so they could peek at the source code ;) ;)<p>Because US firms are lagging behind, some stagnating and are greedy, therefore no competitors is allowed to do better until they wake up<p>The plan is clear, another confession of defeat

I hope the EU bans Facebook, etc. in response.

once center-left news orgs start echoing this line as well, time to buy Meta stock, because you know the ban is closing in.

Do the opposite thing the FBI wants.

TikTok is hitting a much broader slice of the US population, and getting a much broader slice of political opinions. And it&#x27;s connecting all these people and all these opinions. You can find communists and nazi&#x27;s on TikTok, building communities, and getting their voice out.<p>The administration hates TikTok because it is potentially destabilizing. The FBI&#x27;s concern is not that it&#x27;s foreign influence, but that it&#x27;s allowing internal movements to gain traction. Just as the FBI suppressed internal movements throughout the 20th century they want to suppress this new medium that may threaten the status quo.<p>Now I don&#x27;t want to see the US fall into chaos, but neither do I want to see a world where political change is stifled, which is what the FBI wants to do here.

Besides the obvious concerns about tracking&#x2F;spying, TikTok has great potential as a propaganda tool to gain subtle influence over America&#x27;s youth. For example, its algorithm could be tweaked to elevate content that is favourable to the Chinese Communist Party.

Zuckerberg wants TikT0k banned in the US so badly

just in time for twitter to resurrect vine

I agree with the feds on this, but will they actually do anything?

But the US was happy to force TikTok to share all that juicy data for the last few years.<p>They simply cannot accept that TikTok is the biggest wonder in the history of apps, and it&#x27;s not <i>theirs</i>.

I&#x27;m much more concerned about WeChat.

Wow, here in Germany this concern was always called a &quot;right wing conspiracy theory&quot; by literally every mainstream media outlet. Headlines like &quot;Is Trump afraid of dancing teens?&quot; were quite popular (even when it was clear that it&#x27;s a technical problem).<p>We live in bizarre times.

linkedin database too pal.

influence peoples mind and hack their brains

I remember when Trump was racist for saying this.

Trump: TikTok is a national security threat!<p>America: XENOPHOBE!<p>Biden: TikTok is a national security threat.<p>America: SHUT IT DOWN!

If only a previous president had said so and banned it. Oh, that did happen. And then Biden unbanned it because a bunch of liberal journalists told him to.

No kidding...

God the whataboutism that pops up everytime tiktok is discussed is suffocating.<p>Some people are just so desperately trying to divert attention away from it and others are trying to hijack the movement to make it into some kind of constitutional level privacy reform.<p>Tiktok can die, everything will be fine, and then we can focus on our own issues here.

Briefest of case studies: Anyone whose watched the rapid growth of antisemitic propaganda and disinformation since the 2016 election may note 4chan&#x2F;pol&#x2F; took the lead in dissemination of stereotypes and tropes intended to influence user thinking. Because there was widespread distrust of other media sources, and b&#x2F;c &#x2F;pol&#x2F; appealed to younger audiences, and b&#x2F;c &#x2F;pol&#x2F; developed a reputation for aggregating breaking news (often untrue but thrilling), its audience grew dramatically, to over 11m unique visitors per month. Fast forward to today and Kanye, Irving and others repeat and show &#x2F;pol&#x2F; meme&#x27;s as their &quot;proof&quot; of antisemetic conspiracies. Antisemetic propaganda has gone mainstream to the point the Jewish community is viewed by one of favorite comedians on SNL as a cabal suppressing AA aspirations, when the opposite has been true since the civil rights movement and the two are actually more in alignment on issues than apart. Tearing groups apart is geopolitics 101 and the US is losing this battle.<p>** Now multiply that by 50m daily users fed disinformation on whatever topic roils you and you have an idea of the scale of threat posed by TikTok. **

Remember when the previous administration tried to do this and was called racist and stupid for it? What changed?

It&#x27;s banned overnight in India along with a lot of other Chinese apps. I don&#x27;t see why that can&#x27;t be done in USA under national security policies. It&#x27;s ridiculous to let an app from foreign adversary which can manipulate citizen behaviour through its algorithms while being able to keep track of what interests whom is allowed to operate freely. Its frankly surprising they are even having this debate. Yes meta, Google and God knows what other companies are also in a position to do this. But then the government can always drag the executives to trial legally. They can&#x27;t do any of that with a foreign company.

I have no idea if it&#x27;s a legitimate security risk, but regardless, if China wants to play the game with us that they are currently playing (banning non-Chinese apps from their country) we have to play that game, too. It makes no sense to play the &quot;we&#x27;ll take the high road&quot; approach with them. If they ban our applications and services in their country, we need to ban their applications and services in our country. Full stop. The surveillance aspect isn&#x27;t even a starter here, it&#x27;s larger than that. If we have to play by their rules in their country, they have to play by our rules in our country.<p>I don&#x27;t give a shit if it pisses off GenZ. GenZ&#x27;s ability to share stupid videos of themselves dancing to crappy music is completely irrelevant to the wider geopolitical threats that China poses.<p>In full disclaimer: I helped build a service that was partially aimed at Chinese users, and had Tsinghua University as a client. When the trade wars started, our relationship was &quot;ended&quot; and Tsinghua took our idea &amp; software and essentially cut us out of the equation completely. (Yes, their copycat version of our software and idea was completely useless and didn&#x27;t work, but that&#x27;s besides the point)