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It’s not, there’s no evidence that it is, and even if the Chinese were trying to get all of our data they could buy it for far less trouble and expense from any of the American data brokers happy to sell it. They don’t need an app to obtain our data, they just need money.
The influence argument is similarly baseless. Cambridge Analytica demonstrated that existing American social media capabilities already permit foreign interference in American public opinion. TikTok is remarkably expensive to run, and the influence campaigns that they could run on Facebook would be much less expensive.
TikTok is competing with American social media companies. It’s no better or worse than any other social media company, but because it’s not based in the US it’s labeled a national security risk. We’re happy to let any company collect and sell personal information, so long as they’re based in America.
They are both security risks. The difference is the SA oligarch has already successfully infiltrated our national security and installed himself in a position of power so we can’t do anything about it anymore.
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
This is a game any bad state actor with a huge wad of cash can play thanks to Citizen’s United.
Create
I think you mean buy. Fund is probably the most generous word you could use, but that’s a fat stretch.
Musk created SpaceX, he didn’t buy it.
He founded Space X, but he did not create the technology and do the R&D alone like Tony Stark. He got the funding though.
Who ever claimed he created the technology? That makes no sense at all. And SpaceX got funding from NASA, just like a lot of other aerospace companies. In terms of value they delivered for that money, they’re far ahead of the competition. Boeing got more money for Starliner than SpaceX got for Crew Dragon. And look how that turned out.
Who ever claimed he created the technology?
The initial comment in this thread:
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
This is what was being responded to.
Original comment…
Create technology
It is the only active one that he didn’t buy into I think. I guess maybe the money pit boring company that doesn’t do anything?
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Paypal he bought into by merging X.com and got thrown out after
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Tesla he bought into and ousted the founding members and paid and retconned gis heart out to call himself a founder. It is also where most of his wealth comes from from insane speculative overvaluation (look at market cap vs Toyota and then market share vs Toyota) that he can continuously borrow off of at essentially 0% interest or tax rate.
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the boring company he did found, mostly as a scam to kill goverment mass transit projects (Chicago, San Jose trail link, hyperlopp) essentially winning competitions through good presentations and getting better projects involving mass transit to drop out or be rejected before canceling the project. Who would have thought, coming from a car company. The LA loop is the only thing they ever accomplished and is a nightmare unsafe hellhole of non-working self driving and traffic that is a huge enclosed fire tragedy waiting to happen
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twitter he got forced to buy into after being a loudmouthed asshole idiot and turned it into a bot-riddled right will hellhole
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musk bought into solar city and since bought it out by Tesla and it is riddles with problems
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musk venture capitalist funded openAI but was against pretty much everything and almost got throws out. I guess if you consider having almost no impact or vision besides providing some money founding then I guess he founded that?
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musk bought neuralink out from scientists, by pretending to not be elon musk, for pennies to expand on their ideas and make it mainstream. Stealing someone’s name, work, and ideas under the pretense of being someone else doesn’t seem like founding to me
But he pays to be named founder on Wikipedia for many of those lol
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On the cabinet? He bought himself a shadow presidency.
Maybe both are bad?
“Facebook should be under incredibly strict regulation or killed outright” is also a position I’m fond of.
The Cambridge Analytica story explains how much I distrust Facebook.
Look, the problem isn’t China getting your data.
The problem is they’re not paying a US oligarch for it.
I mean, if that’s the question you want answered…
X uses a native browser controller when you open a link, so the app can’t see what you do in there.
Whereas TikTok uses a managed webview… which they have been caught injecting keyloggers into.
Back in the olden days, we called this a cross-site scripting attack.
Seems like meta were trying something similar with thier replacing all links in Facebook messenger with thier fbrpc://facebook/nativethirdparty?app_id Links, but seems like they gave up on it because it was all broken.
Yup. They’re all dangerous monsters.
IMO, it doesn’t even matter who’s worse, cuz they’re all bad enough they should all be subject to aggressive regulation with the goal of establishing safe interop off-ramps for people to stop using the services or at least use more trustworthy clients.
In my estimation, TikTok is worse, but that’s not even what the ban is about. It’s because China is spying instead of the US. That’s not a reason to defend TikTok though, or to oppose the government’s decision — cuz they were accidentally right, for the wrong reason.
That’s where I’m at. If in an alternate universe Congress did something like banning the distribution of harvested data, even just to foreign entities, and TikTok then refused to comply, then I’d be fully in support with them getting banned for it.
Here in the real world though, Congress apparently doesn’t have the balls to pass blanket privacy rights like that, because you see, that’d catch some of the wrong fish. I think it says a lot about the state of modern social media that all they were willing to go after TikTok for was something as nebulous as “national security risk”.
It is really difficult to write down good regulations. There are so many diverse issues with tech companies. For instance, data harvesting, misinformation, addiction (to short-form content), propaganda, anticompetitive practices, tax evasion etc etc. Ideally there would be some good-standard platform/tech company so we have some idea how to deal what to regulate towards. Otherwise it’s a really tough task.
Finally a reasonable answer that isnt propaganda or stupidity
Easy, you have a very different idea of what the “nation” in “national security” and “national interests” is than they do.
They are all problematic. My disagreement with the removal of TikTok is that it should not stop with TikTok. Meta’s apps are an absolute nightmare. Google, Xitter, Amazon, etc., they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
Data brokering needs to be made illegal or VERY tightly regulated.
they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
The problem with TikTok isn’t data collection, though. The stated concern of the US government is that TikTok may be used to inflict foreign influence (ie, Woke Mind Virus Communism).
That is, incidentally, why the flood of users to RedNote has been so funny. TikTok’s got a bunch of edgy western Zoomers doing “Did You Know Capitalism Is Bad Sometimes?” infographics in between dances. RedNote is just straight up “China Is The Best Country In The World” nature channel style hagiography.
The US pushed millions of Americans out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.
I don’t understand. Twitter was definitely used for that and Musk was “paying” to have people vote republican in Pennsylvania.
Meta paid like 800 million for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
So like, if they sold to a US company then they’d get wrist slapped too?
Those aren’t foreign but also why a lot of those sites are blocked in china
Yes, the ban of TikTok has been more about lip service than actual protections for Americans.
The real solution is passing a comprehensive law that fines/bans any app/platform that is opaque about its influence from governments and its data sharing with governments. But who in Congress today has any appetite for real solutions!
I had written about this to my reps and their response was a non response - TikTok bad.
Fell for one of the classic blunders
sniff’s glove
Ivermectin. I’d bet my life on it.
Of note, there is no evidence the government concern is founded.
Because Musky has conned America into thinking he’s a smart good American.
Well, the TikTok lawyers kinda said the quiet part out loud during their SCOTUS brief:
Mr. Francisco contended that the government in a free country “has no valid interest in preventing foreign propaganda” and cannot constitutionally try to keep Americans from being “persuaded by Chinese misinformation.” That is targeting the content of speech, which the First Amendment does not permit, he said.
It’s not a great look for your app when your argument before the Supreme Court is “yeah, we’re a propaganda machine for a hostile foreign power, but free speech says you can’t stop us. Neener neener.”
that’s not what they’re saying, they’re saying even if they were chinese propaganda, it would be protected under the first amendment for americans to read what they want and make their own decisions….
but, nice 4th grader logic you got there.
See, “I’m not gonna smack you across the face, but I totally could if I wanted to and you can’t do shit about it” might not be the best way to clear your reputation as a bully.
See, “Why aren’t you going after other social networks. Specifically Facebook and X…you know, the ones proved, since 2016, to lie and interfere with democracy? Is this gonna be wack a mole? Another chinese app its already trending you know…”
I don’t use none of these. Facebook, xitter, tik-tok…I don’t defend any of these.
But we KNOW Facebook was used to manipulate elections across the world. We know none of them give a dam about the truth.
I just want to ser Musk and Zuckerberg punished as the rest.
Unfortunately both of those people are american.
Rich Americans.
Its hard to take people down when they are responsible for making countless politicians and business people money, as well as assisting the government with their surveillance domestically and internationally.
deleted by creator
The issue for common people regarding tiktok is more along the lines of foreign adversaries obtaining personal information of the users or using it to spy on the government. The idea that chinese propaganda would be in any way a threat is absurd and shouldn’t even need to be defended in any way. “America bad” is hardly a hot take and they don’t need to spread any lies to get that point across.
How is it any different than the Russian propaganda campaign to get Trump elected? Or was that something you were fine with as well?
When you let a foreign government run an active psyop campaign against your citizens, you’re just begging for instability and chaos.
And how is it different than Dems calling Trump Hitler, regardless of how accurate it was? Should they also be tried for “propaganda”? And how about goverments claiming they’re doing well, should they be tried for propaganda? How about the entire red scare propaganda? How about anti-arab propaganda? Putting someone on a trial for “propaganda” is a dangerous violation of free speech. If you can prove they’ve been lying, then at best they’re at the same playing field as the government suing them, and in case of tiktok as far as I am aware there is no evidence that they were spreading any lies. It’s just that they weren’t censoring the genocide Israel commited in Gaza, unlike platforms aligned with USA, like Meta or Twitter. Which censorship was most definitely a propaganda, but instead of them it’s tiktok that’s being punished for not doing it? It’s nonsense. Boosting negative commentary about foreign country is basic freedom of speech, and attempting to silence that feels very dictatorial. It’s what China did with a lot of internet for spreading propaganda against them, don’t you feel like removing Youtube access in China for making anti-chinese material available was bad for free speech? I wouldn’t mind tiktok getting closed for spying on people, but it’s obvious they don’t want a precedent for that. Blocking propaganda? Bullshit.
As for me “being fine with” other peoples freedom of speech, I dislike what they had to say and I’d want them to be punished for lying, but I’d never advocate against them having option to speak. You end up living in a dictatorship by doing that. I’m not a free speech absolutist, by any stretch of imagination, but banning platforms for containing content casting bad light on you is going too far for me. Especially since there are much better reasons to do so.
The issue for common people regarding tiktok is more along the lines of foreign adversaries obtaining personal information of the users or using it to spy on the government
What’s the difference between Facebook / Meta selling my data to whoever, vs. TikTok harvesting it themselves?
There is no difference, neither should be allowed to do that. Person I replied to claimed the issue is chinese propaganda instead of any actual security risks.
I disagree. I think it’s incredibly dangerous for a malevolent actor to control the media we consume and can erode the community from within.
Just look at fox news.
So in your view Fox News should be banned because they’re propaganda machine for the right wing, calling out Dems for their faults and praising Reps for anything they did? Or because they’re lying pieces of shit that helped manufacture a false narrative that eroded democracy and allowed fascists to get in power? Because, as far as I know, tiktok didn’t do the later and it’s the platform that got banned.
Oh yeah it’s the latter. I’m not advocating for the tiktok ban at all, but I do think fox news is a malicious cancer.
In fact, because of fox news existence, I think foreign national propaganda engines are more important than ever. If the population is going to be manipulated for the gain of a few, at least have a lot of actors manipulating everyone so we have a chance of not letting one person control everyone.
They are assholes, sure… but are they wrong?
I mean, yeah? Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press are inalienable rights, sure, but they’re generally intended to extend to citizens. Not foreign governments.
There’s a big difference between a Chinese citizen here on a green card going around saying they love China and a company running an active misinformation campaign on orders from their government.
It’s no different than how the government tried to crack down on Russian election interference. Turns out, hostile nations running psyops campaigns is bad.
I agree that it’s bad, and it should be forbidden… but with the whole US decisions that “corporations are people” and “money is speech”, I think it’s legally questionable.
I might grant questionable, but not super.
I think a large part of why it was a 9-0 decision was that it’s not speech to run a social media site. It’s commerce, plain as day. Congress has the authority to regulate commerce full stop. The fact that China is using that platform to spread misinformation, and then claiming that stopping them from doing so is a 1A violation is just a red herring.
“Money is speech” just means rich people can donate all the money they want to a politician. Not that you can run an otherwise unlawful business because “money is speech and free speech is a thing!”
I find it funny that if TikTok was sold to an American it wouldn’t be a security risk anymore.
that was literally the whole fucking point.
is it me or did Lemmy fill up with the most oblivious users all of a sudden?
Is it me or is everyone ELSE a moron except somehow for specifically ME
speak of the devil and who should appear?
I don’t know about the devil, but some doomsday prepper edgelord keeps popping up.
hey look it’s that guy that I blocked forever ago that I unblocked just to laugh at.
I see you’re as popular as you ever were.
well enjoy being relegated back to my block list until I want to have a hearty chuckle.
You remember blocking me? 😍
I don’t think about you at all. Just happened upon a living stereotype and felt compelled to point it out.
Good luck with those neurosis and narcissism. So weird those traits only ever seem to affect the self proclaimed “best” IT stooges.
Reddit must be banning lots of people
They are, it’s all bots now
Eh? You do realize most people on Lemmy are not on TikTok.
We’re laughing at it all and enjoying the popcorn.
yeah…not from the threads I’ve been in.
I mean, I find the countdown to tiktok town hilarious, but there are some very angry Chinese propagandists on Lemmy.
Yeah, they’re on .ml and hexbear and lemmygrad.
The point of forcing ownership to be American was to force TikTok to be sold to Musk or one of the other massive data harvesting jack offs.
that’s an awful big stretch. would have been a convenient delivery though.
I do believe that’s still a possibility though. just don’t think that was the intended goal of the legislation.
Which is a ridiculous premise.
Exactly. I find it hilarious how some of these people conclude that China ONLY gets our data because of TikTok, when our own government and on soil companies sell and shares our data as long as the other (China even lmao) buy it from them. No issues as long as they get money, but if they don’t get the money, it’s “national security” risk.
It’s not the data they care about.
I know… it’s the things I’ve been trying to drum on about every time someone’s says it’s a “security” risk. No one cares though, because “TikTok” bad. :/
They would then be under US jurisdiction, that’s the issue with TikTok, the US can’t for them to comply with any laws, current or future.
Bullshit. Any country has jurisdiction over companies operating inside it’s borders. If what you say is true then we couldn’t even ban TikTok.
Who exactly do you expect them to sue if a website has no physical presence inside the US borders and it disobeys US laws? 🤔
The only thing they can truly do against TikTok is prevent people from downloading the app through official means and having ISPs blocking the website. Outside of that it could 100% continue operating and scraping user data to send it to China.
TikTok does have US offices and employees though.
And yeah if they’re blocked in the app stores, and by ISPs you’d have to side load it onto your phone and tunnel out with a VPN. 170 million Americans aren’t doing that. You’d be lucky to find 100,000 willing to do it.
And since even SCOTUS laughed at the espionage argument, we again need to bring up that China just buys the exact same data from Meta, Alphabet, and X. We aren’t securing anything.
Three companies that could easily be regulated to prevent them from selling that data to China, but wasn’t there political interference as well?
Anyway, they can just close their US office and then the US is shit out of luck unless they ban them (since that would be their only recourse at that point).
Sure. But they haven’t closed their US Offices. They haven’t done what X and Musk did with Brazil where they tried to just ignore the local government. TikTok clearly engaged with the system and has gotten a ban for purely political reasons.
No, the issue with Tik Tok is that the government can’t control it like it does Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There is nothing in China that can harm you as much as the American Government. No intention, no action, no belief will ever hurt you as much as America has.
They can’t control it because… It’s not located in the USA! Good job, you understood what I said!
because then they’d be subject to all the bullshit the feds do and required to comply.
Like what? What are American companies required to do to protect your privacy that TikTok doesn’t do because they are a Chinese company?
TikTok is not being banned to protect anyone’s privacy.
Fine, what national security obligations are US-based social media companies meeting that TikTok/ByteDance is not?
TikTok/bytedance are controlled by a rival country. US based companies can, of course, help our rivals too but there’s some degree of separation that makes it a bit harder to address/discover.
The PATRIOT act.
It’s not about what they aren’t doing. It’s something they are doing.
They aren’t required to protect our privacy, they are required to give data to the government and lie about doing it. Tiktok can’t be brought into that unless they are an american owned company.
The Patriot Act would like a word.
As in implementing back doors and reporting to the NSA/CIA/FBI/CBP/BATF/ETC?
Because tiktok data goes to China, and China is a competitor/geopolitical adversary to the USA. If tiktok was russian, it would be the same story. Besides, tiktok has been proven to be by far the worst data miner you can download from an app store.
Not just a data miner, it has some crazy capabilities that are malicious even by the standards of social media phone apps, which were already explicitly malicious. If I remember right, it can download custom code to augment its capabilities per-target, and has encryption to attempt to thwart any attempt to analyze it, which are both pretty unusual amounts of effort to spend from the POV of “we just want to gather your advertising data and listen to your microphone all the time” which are pretty standard things.
Yep, the thing is actual malware which for some reason gets a pass from Google/Apple.
That kinda makes Apple and Google malware too IMO, I should really switch to Graphene…
Yeah it’s been over a decade since I’ve dealt with the Apple App Store. But at the time, when publishing an app, they did all of this review and analysis of your app and they did not allow downloading additional executable code IIRC. Though if you are clever enough, you can get around that.
That’s just AB testing, downloading over https, and having DRM. Every app on your phone does this, but it sure sounds scary when framed that way.
Every video game you have does the same thing too.
You’re doing the same thing Republicans do when they go into great detail about food ingredients to make salt sound scarier than it is.
Edit: You better also remove this foreign controlled app, targetted at children, that can download new code outside of the app store updates
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/
“There’s also a few snippets of code on the Android version that allows for the downloading of a remote zip file, unzipping it, and executing said binary.”
Obviously, the app creator can write whatever code they want into the app. If they want to update it, including to run an AB test, they can do a new version.
The only reason for unzipping and executing random binaries on-demand, outside of the normal app update process, is if you want to specifically target one individual or a group of individuals and enable functionality specifically for them that is custom to those particular people. Maybe you just have specific needs for them that aren’t served by the overall process, or maybe what you want to install is secret enough that you don’t want security researchers getting their hands on it. That second one would be consistent with the obfuscation around even the stock behavior of the app.
I am obviously not talking about HTTPS when I say “encryption to thwart any attempt to analyze it.”
If you can find me a large app that doesn’t have that capability then I’d be shocked. This is extremely common behavior for apps, and every piece of software I have ever been employed for has done this. That code is also still sandboxed by iOS and Android and has to go through the same APIs to interact with the OS, unless Pegasus found a way to infiltrate via app payloads.
This is one of those things that sounds really scary if you go into extreme detail and the other party doesn’t have enough experience to realize that it’s normal; like the way republicans talk about “hyper processed foods” and seed oils.
I know you’re not talking about https, which is why I mentioned DRM too. Nintendo encrypts all of their software, which is why they were able to DMCA Switch emulators.
Show me where in the Chrome or Firefox app there is code to download an executable – not a versioned update to the app through the Play Store, but a random chunk of code – and run it.
In iOS, sure, just give me the app source code and… oh wait, the compiled apps from the store are also obfuscated, guess I can’t search the code for you.
On Windows though you can look at what process runs when you click “update and restart” in Firefox or Chrome. Both have an updater service that is just there to run an update exe with admin permissions. Both could be used for the same attack vector you’re afraid of. Every
{softwarename}_helper.exeis the same thing.Chrome on iOS can execute javascript and has a history of vulnerabilities using that code execution, so much so that I even had to use the browser to jailbreak once, so I am not sure what point you’re trying to make other than fear mongering. You also still haven’t addressed the fact that the code execution is still sandboxed. Any app that uses electron can download a zipped bundle of code and run it as well. Also any app with a built-in web browser is allowed to do this
But you can also just look at Bloons TD 6 and their “downloading new content” windows when the game starts.
Let’s also look at the comment from the reddit thread you originally linked.
Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
Yeah that’s pretty normal, even javascript can get that just to render a page. I don’t like that it’s normal, but none-the-less
Other apps you have installed (I’ve even seen some I’ve deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?)
Yeah this is normal too, and imo a huge issue. On windows there’s even an unprotected API for it. Again, I don’t like it, but it is normal.
Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)
Sketchy as hell, I agree, but every app you give local network access to does the same, so we should ban Messenger too.
Whether or not you’re rooted/jailbroken
Every banking app and Pokemon Go do this. This one can be very dangerous if you’re jailbroken.
Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds - this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC
Normal for social media. Shitty, but normal. We should just ban this feature
They set up a local proxy server on your device for “transcoding media”, but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication
As does Adobe Premier Pro and Final Cut. Sketchy again, but maybe we should just ban proxying without notifying the user.
Edit: The source your reddit source gave is agreeing with me. https://www.zimperium.com/blog/zimperium-analyzes-tiktoks-security-and-privacy-risks/
Over the last few months, we’ve analyzed top banking apps and top travel apps, related to security and privacy issues. Much like TikTok, some of the results are alarming
Their other source appears to not do anything and gets “suspected phising” warnings on firefox https://penetrum.com/research/
This is a pretty impressive amount of deflection.
“All apps on iOS are obfuscated, so it’s not important that TikTok on Android takes extra trouble to obfuscate itself in a very weird way which other Android apps generally don’t do.”
“All Windows apps work by downloading new binaries for themselves, because there’s no package management, so it’s not important that TikTok on Android takes extra trouble to bypass the package management and enable downloading custom per-user executables and running them.”
“Some apps have vulnerabilities by accident, so it’s not important that TikTok has a remote code execution vulnerability built in on purpose.”
“Apps have a security model, which by the way can be jailbroken, so it’s not important if something malicious happens within the app. Actually, forget what I said about jailbreaking.”
You haven’t actually addressed anything I said, just threw a whole bunch of words about related topics to make it sound like what I described about this particular topic is, within the scope of this topic, a normal thing. It’s not.
There is a difference in the data gathered and where it goes. But just like the cheap
Source?
losers sealioning to invert the how-do-you-know question hoping people forget the pedigree of the information isn’t the same, it’s easy for people to both-sides data gathering too.
And I say that’s fine. HAVE it so gathered data must go through a Clearinghouse or two (a gov entity eg SeaLandia or an org like fsf) so it’s provably anonymous and then we carry on. To me, this is the result of the discussion we need to have around who gets to spy on you and how we choose that to get benefits at reduced exposure to risk.
Just, it’s not the same.
Is this a bot response? Where did I mention the US Government buying through a clearing house?
I am not arguing we shouldn’t ban tiktok, I am arguing that they’re not unique and if we’re going to ban them then we should ban Meta too because they are worse. Meta and Twitter have already done the things people are afraid of tiktok maybe doing in the future.
Ok, so Bytedance does exactly what Microsoft, Google and Apple do. Got it.
All 3 can and do run arbitrary code on their platforms. All three share your data with third parties. All three encrypt stuff in their codebase and especially google tries it’s hardest to break networking standards just to obfuscate what their code is doing.
… And two of them can be sued by the DoJ and forced into revolving compliance evals .
… if we had a non-toothless DoJ; I get it. But the ability is there.
In a surprisingly Reddit-esque move, Lemmys best answer is buried below emotionally charged nonsense
China buys a ton of data from Zuck and Musk and a lot of other people.
The reason it’s being banned is for cutting out the middle man.
If they actually cared about our data going to geopolitical rivals they’d pass comprehensive privacy protections regardless of where the company is headquartered.
And the PRC have been caught repeatedly running influence campaigns over social media platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamouflage
China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along, nothing to see.
Its such a bullshit argument. Don’t be the pot blaming the kettle.
We should ban ALL socials. All. Everything becomes an echochamber after 1-2 years filled with bots, algorithms and Ai. Nothing is trustworthy anymore.
Note that I am not disagreeing. Just pointing out that not being able to trust anything anymore is on-brand.
China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along
Nope.
Other gov spying on yanks: bad with no mitigation.
Yank companies spying on yanks: bad with mitigation option we just don’t take today.
Both: PR and disinfo campaigns to convince illiterate that it’s about more than surveillance, that it’s a conspiracy or nothing to worry about at all (paging Dr Schroedinger).
Source?
Sea lions?
Messenger is worse by far. This is a verifiable fact just from the permissions requested. The Dunning Kruger in this thread is comical.
Redditors just turn their brain off when TikTok is the topic
Just something to think about when it comes to the influence social media has on society
TikTok has already transformed how Americans communicate, influencing language and behavior in ways that may have broader implications. The Chinese government, known for using censorship and language control to maintain social order and suppress dissent, leverages euphemistic language as a tool for manipulating public opinion and silencing critical discourse.
Phrases like “unalive” for suicide or “grape” for rape dilute the meaning and impact of language, making it easier for powerful entities to control narratives and obscure uncomfortable truths. This process, known as “language laundering” or “semantic bleaching,” strips words of their emotional weight and original meaning, making it harder to address sensitive or urgent issues effectively.
This trend has extended beyond language to visuals, with people obscuring letters or censoring words in pictures and posts—using terms like “s**cide” or “r*pe.” While this may help users navigate algorithms designed to suppress certain keywords, it completely erodes the clarity and impact of critical conversations.
The normalization of this behavior on TikTok has permeated Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media platforms, spreading a culture of diluted language and indirect communication. These practices hinder meaningful discourse, desensitize users to serious issues, and ultimately make it more challenging to engage with sensitive topics in a direct and effective manner. Recognizing and resisting this shift is essential to preserving the integrity of public discussions and fostering authentic engagement.
You’re attributing to TikTok what has been happening for years before even Vine came into existence and is actually a different issue: corporate-owned platforms cracking down on uses of those words as they’re not “advertiser friendly” and don’t “encourage a safe and fun space” or whatever. TikTok is in no way special here
It was already incredibly common to censor these words, grape for rape goes back at least 15 years to when WKUK were making their rounds. Unalive on sites like YouTube go back at least to 2018/2017 en masse if not earlier
It’s mainly because words/phrases such as: murder, suicide, rape, human trafficking, forced prostitution, child sexual abuse, etc can get you banned on those platforms. Don’t blame the people who work around, to discuss important but heavy subjects, blame the algorithms and report -happy users who for some weird reason, are opposed to these topics being discussed. Probably perpetrators or enablers imo not who knows?
Tiktok aren’t giving Trump loads of money
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. The CEO has a prominent seat at Trump’s inauguration.
Yep. Which means TikTok gave Thumper a load of dough and TikTok will be allowed to continue operating here. Zuck is probably not happy since he’d also given him a load of dough to get rid of TikTok.
pops corn
A fatal mistake for companies who want to do business in the US
That’s not relevant to the argument about how they could be dangerous for national security.
Trump made saving TikTok a campaign promise.
It’s the Democrats pushing the TikTok ban, Trump loves TikTok.
Edit: Trump originally was the big driver for banning TikTok yes, but since his election win saw a big swing in the younger vote that’s being attributed to TikTok his stance has switched and I’ll put money on the ban being dropped the instant he gets in.
Except when he wanted it banned during his first term and up until very, very recently when he flip flopped to loving it.
So you’re saying that he now currently loves it? That’s what I said!
Trump started this whole thing.
He wanted to ban it until he thought it helped him with the youth. So no. You are incorrect.
Clearly that user has trouble keeping up with our multiple reality spacetime logic to forget stances Trump supposedly held concurrent with contradictory stances he supposedly holds currently as well as absurd stances he supposedly will hold in the infinite futures.
So he hated it, and now he loves it, but that means he must still hate it? Make your mind up
If I recall correctly, it’s a lie being pushed that he won amongst the younger generation when he actually did not. I believe the last thing I read is that he lost the young vote by 11 points. So that’s a lie that he’s pushing for some reason or other.
Let’s compromise on it being bipartisan.
Serious answer: because it’s owned by a US citizen and is operated and HQ’d in the US, so the the US government has effectively full control over it and can monitor it.
That’s not a lot better from an end user privacy and security point. But is wayyyyyyyyyy better from a national security standpoint.
The US government has no more control over X than regulations permit. They have the exact same amount of control over TikTok operations inside the US.
Cool, the point is tiktok is spyware that sends info the the parent company in China, where the US doesn’t have control.
Where evidence?
Oh, sweet summer child…
Sweet summer nothing. Don’t mistake billionaires as patriots for any cause other than their own. They don’t care about the country and will only cooperate if forced or convenient. Which is the exact same level TikTok exists on.
national security
lol
Same reason China wants it.
Technically the two divisions of the law banning TikTok and any company which sends US Citizens data to an adversarial nation, both passed at the same time, say nothing of citizenship.
When the courts say TikTok has to divest from Chinese ownership, they don’t mean heritage. They mean owners and operators who literally live and work exclusively in China.
I thought Mister Musty didn’t have US citizenship
Despite allegedly being an illegal immigrant himself, he does have citizenship now.
He became a US citizen in 2002
Should be an invalid citizenship, he falsely stayed in the us under a student visa while he did business, and didn’t attend school
He should absolutely have his citizenship revoked and be deported because we have it on record that he knew he falsely stayed for his personal benefit.
I will cut less well off immigrants slack for not following the complex and difficult process, especially if they immigrated for asylum, but Musk did it because he could get away with it and deserves to be punished for it.
Why did you think that?
I just knew he wasn’t when he was with PayPal and never really paid much attention since.
$5 says Elon or Meta buy TT and turn it into yet another GOP echo chamber.
You seem to think that it is for sale, Byte Dance has repeatedly said they will not sell. I also belive the PRC passed a law that would outlaw exporting the algorithom to the new owner
No need to buy anything when they already live rent-free on Lemmy.
