Is TikTok just straight up lying in the their official press release or is this just hysteria by our legislators?
> We store all TikTok US user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law.
> Let us be very clear: TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked. Period.
> Our US moderation team, which is led out of California, reviews content for adherence to our US policies – just like other US companies in our space. We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government.
Like TikTok is bending over backwards here https://usds.tiktok.com/usds-about/ Facebook refused to do something similar to this for the EU because of the NSA and they're our allies! Is there literally anything they could say that would make people believe that being owned by a Chinese company is not the same as being puppeted by the CCP?
None of this is inconsistent with changing the level of amplification of certain topics in concordance with the preferences of the CCP, which is what the evidence appears to point to.
Are you talking about that one "study" that claimed the TikTok algorithm aligned with CCP interests that was about as rigorous as a high school science fair project?
Banning TikTok wouldn’t be a dangerous precedent. Authoritarian countries do that all the time.
My concern is with forced sales. How do we ensure that the politicians’ incentives matches with ours and that they aren’t being paid behind our backs by the companies that are now able to acquire TikTok at a discount? Congress is notorious for (alleged) insider trading, they could very well profit from such a sale.
I'm pretty sure the Israel-Palestine genocide has played a part in speeding up partial transfer to the US.
The support among teenagers who have witness the destruction and terrorism caused by Israel has cause organic support for Palestine in both the US and Europe. Exactly against the wishes of US/Israel gov.
US based companies already have a tight grip on what's allowed to be shared on social media - and there's frequent documented cases of censorship in the name of anti-Semitism etc. The Israeli govenment has a degree of control already through their cyber warfare arm to flag material but it's a far cry from modifying the algorithm at will and outright account bans.
>Banning TikTok wouldn’t be a dangerous precedent. Authoritarian countries do that all the time.
Wanting to live in a non-authoritarian country, I think you missed the point you just made, or were just being sarcastic and it went over my head.
There's a theory that this push for a Tik-Tok ban is being funded by Meta, who can't buy it like it bought other competition like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Agree on the citation to authoritarian regimes. Otherwise, though, I have no qualms about banning what may very well be a mass psyops machine run by a hostile foreign government.
I agree. I think the government needs to block a whole lot of M&A than they do. I wonder if the ultimate plan is to break TikTok away from the CCP and allow it to be bought domestically. I recall Trump trying to do that with Larry Ellison of all people, but I think he ran into roadblocks.
Singapore is in a politically interesting position. In the one hand, they’re an authoritarian state. They don’t recognize the level of freedom of speech, press, or protest that we do in America. And they frequently cane criminals and execute drug traffickers.
On the other hand, they’re ostensibly a democracy, albeit one where only one party has significant political power. (For a country with the level of economic success that they do, maybe it’s understandable.) Singapore has an extremely low level of corruption on international indexes, even lower than in the US, and it’s seen as very business friendly.
Another thing to note, as I am learning more about it, is the extensive surveillance framework that is already available. (I’m about halfway through Byron Tau’s Means of Control now.) Surveilling people’s whereabouts is trivial, and for a nation state like China or the US it’s often easier to just buy information on the open market than allocate an agency to the task.
My final thought on this is that we’ve heard for so long about how private platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate content how they see fit. There are two cases in front of SCOTUS about this now. While I think this is a comfortably simple point of view, it elevates the speech of fundamentally profit-seeking entities to the same level of protection as that of everyday people. Once we start to block companies based on national security, we need to consider the ownership of other companies as well. Nothing is to stop Elon Musk from taking a bribe from a foreign adversary in a moment of drug-fueled weakness, and that bribe from affecting Twitter’s ranking algorithm.
I want to use TikTok as it exists today. Why should that right be taken away from me by the US government? This is going to have major political backlash from the millions of people happy with TikTok if they manage to pass it.
National security, hysteria, anything in between. The government is the people. We can agree to deny ourselves anything for any reason.
From what I've read I'd agree that TikTok should be more independent than it is from its current parent company. And other measures too, like some time limits on users under 18.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is playing a huge part. Israel has had a hard time controlling the narrative on Tiktok as organic support has stemmed from videos from Gaza. Especially amoung teens.
Israel has even gone to lengths to purchase advertisement slots on major platforms showing high budget propaganada. Once it's under US ownership they wll no longer have this issue.
To back this up, here is a link to a leaked audio recording, showing the head of the ADL complaining that TikTok was (in his view) responsible for Israel's usual propaganda not gaining traction anymore:
A lot of the claims in the videos were later denounced by the Israeli government i.e. Hamas beheaded 40 babies etc. To me theres plenty of signs towards a strong misinformation campaign. Unashamingly.
Since my comment, I have also found some supporting evidence. My God, the Anglo-Saxons are getting nervous about their land based aircraft carrier in the near east.
How will this discontent manifest itself? It feels like voter apathy is widespread[1], so it would be amazing to me if any politican feels that this is the issue that causes TikTok voters to mobilize no matter what side of the aisle you're on.
Is TikTok just straight up lying in the their official press release or is this just hysteria by our legislators?
> We store all TikTok US user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law.
> Let us be very clear: TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked. Period.
> Our US moderation team, which is led out of California, reviews content for adherence to our US policies – just like other US companies in our space. We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government.
Like TikTok is bending over backwards here https://usds.tiktok.com/usds-about/ Facebook refused to do something similar to this for the EU because of the NSA and they're our allies! Is there literally anything they could say that would make people believe that being owned by a Chinese company is not the same as being puppeted by the CCP?