TikTok is the most successful espionage operation of the 21st century so far, and it is based on a simple idea - people will happily give away their data and privacy if you consistently entertain them.
In my opinion the application should be shut down as soon as possible, but there are many lessons to learn from it. And most of them have little to do with technology.
Yes. China and Russia are the biggest geopolitical threats to the world.
It is surprisingly that simple.
While the US and the western governments have their issues, they are still largely law abiding. China, however, is not. Additionally, under Xi, it has become more authoritarian and more willing to undo the rules based order that has someone kept the world somewhat sane since WWII.
I don’t know why anyone would be afraid to say this.
I am from latin america and at least neither China nor Russia have participated in coup d'etat to install a military junta to then torture and massacre anyone slightly left of the US "Democratic" Party.
China has learned from US policies and has instead opted for more insidious and less "noisy" approaches like hard to repay soft-loans, mass buying of agricultural lands, starting vice businesses like casinos etc which also result in societal changes once the businesses started by Chinese start bringing a sizable influx of Chinese to work in them. See northwest Laos for a direct example (this is not an armchair comment - I have relations there and have seen the changes firsthand over the decade during numerous visits).
Which is fairly tame in terms of securing geopolitical influence and enables more win-win arrangments. Especially with respect to Laos - a landlocked country with (to be blunt) zero long term development prospects. Laos per capital GDP growth has been on pace with booming Vietnam that has access to outsource manufacturing and maritime trade. Laos should be worse off than Cambodia that has 60% of current Laos per capita GDP. Even their largest export/growth sector - hydropower to Thailand is enabled by PRC (not to sound patronizing). PRC infra projects setup Laos to be the battery of region + rail connectivity for other exports = only real viable of short/medium term growth strategy for a undeveloped landlocked country with poor human development. Go look up gdp per capita trends of ASEAN since 2000 when PRC growth started blowing up, also LATM during same period. You'll be hard pressed to find any country whose per capita GDP increased by 8x like Laos. Many are luck with half that. As for societal changes on border regions that benefits from flow of migrant and economic development, that's what happens when countries get richer - things change. If you think that's a bad deal then I'm curious if you can find a better one, especially for a land locked country with no maritime access.
Just repeating "landlocked country" twenty times doesn't paint the clearest picture. They have a lot of untapped mineral resources. It has never been rich but people have had organic means of growth like agriculture. Sure it was never blistering growth but it was steady progress that lifted everyone. Once the PRC money started to flow, they basically bought the agricultural lands and now people who used to own the lands are working as laborers in what used to be their own land. Sure they got that initial money but they never knew how to handle that - so they blew it in the casinos, also operated by the PRC or in drugs (which were always a problem, it being the Golden Triangle area) or other things like tricked-out pickup trucks. Everybody is running after that quick PRC cash and the culture is undergoing rapid changes; signboards are in Mandarin, people prefer to learn Mandarin (even though it is English that connects them to a wider part of the world). Micro level societal changes are more subtle and hard to quantify. The country is basically becoming an extension arm of China
It is easy to look everything through the lens of GDP but it is a poor measure of healthiness of a society from sociological perspective.
Your comment reflects typical nostalgic time bubble lamentation about culture "decline" due to rapid development change. Lots of older gen Chinese miss Mao's China too and complain about the decadence and corruption caused by new wealth. Meanwhile most of country eager to dig themselves out of subsistence are running after quick growth cash and pickup trucks. It sucks being poor.
> Just repeating "landlocked country" twenty times doesn't paint the clearest picture.
...
>untapped mineral resource
Being landlocked is one of the major development traps, it's highly relevant. And the point is Laos is landlocked AND underdevelopped in both infra and human capita. They're not going to be Switzerland without generations of development, if ever. All those untapped resources can't be economically exported relative to sea trade... incidentally why PRC rail development in Laos also game changer. Improves economics of rare metals (gold, Laos other huge export) but less for bulk cargo like agriculture. Laos has zero prospect for being an ag-commodity export power. The most profitable specialty ag trade had export potential of something like 600M. There's simply a ceiling on how much ag can uplift, it's why largest growth sector in last 20 years is industry, which requires capital investments, for a poor country like Laos, it means FDI and period of upheaval caused by new wealth and modes of exploitation.
> never knew how to handle that
Yeah that's what happens to nouvel rich everywhere. That's a sign of development. Laos is not usefully connected to English sphere via geography... again they're landlocked and only large economic connector is PRC. If people want to make money therer it's only prudent to learn Chinese and which will increase integration, especially in border regions. Why would Laos look to rest of world when the fastest growing region is Asia? Learning English is one way street to being brain drained and losing your best.
> GDP but it is a poor measure of healthiness of a society
This is true, ergo why Xi prioritized correcting the excesses of Deng's unbalanced growth that had caused huge problematic culture shifts. Every country that's gone through rapid growth will need manage that transition. Per capita GDP is strongly correlated to Human Development Index for a reason, you need money to make a healthy, educated, productive society. At end of day Laos/PRC relationship enables Laos to have more omney than her geography would otherwise enable. It's not upper income but it's a path out of subsistence if managed properly by Vientiane, which they may absolutely fail at.
Cherry picking what? The op was about Laos, I talked about Laos. Debt trap meme / lie has been debunked by many academics, it's a myth. PRC refinances / renegotiate. It would be really nice for PRC security posture if they actually siezed these ports to build naval bases to gain foothold in indopac, but so far overriding geopolitical interest has been commercial / economic and for a intiative as large as BROR, some of them do poorly. It's the price of exporting massive infra projects around the world to find new markets for domestic overcapacity.
I am from eastern Europe and right now Russia is invading a democratic country to install its own government, tortures and massacres everyone left and right.
More like "US during British Colonial Times" != "USA Today", for starters USA during Reagan and USA today have the same constitution and the same governmental system even if specific laws and lawmakers have changed
This is very true. Whereas the USSR was run by one man who controlled the state security apparatus, and so controlled the country as an autocrat, Russia is run by a man who controls the country as an autocrat, having controlled the state security apparatus.
No? We finally had a president that hasn't started a new war (trump) and we are on track to having a president that hasn't started a new war and has withdrawn troops from one war. Things are changing.
Russia definitely has, just not as much in your backyard. China hasn't, but that's probably because the last time they tried that they got their ass handed to them by a country that had just been savagely attacked by (but also defeated) the us. Also it has been slowly encroaching on India and bhutan territory. China definitely declares it's intent to export it's style of polity around the world. And that does include torturing and disappearing citizens that are supposed to be on their own watch.
What was once a beautiful nation is now rife with crime, even the military of all things is told not to have cell phones out by stop lights because somebody will swing on by on a motorcycle and hijack the phone. From the darn military! Still surprised they get away with it.
I also remember hearing from a relative that Chavez would basically bring Cuban doctors over from Cuba.
Absolutely nothing about the historical bad behaviour of the US in Central and South America has any bearing on the threat the CCP poses to a billion Chinese and the world today. Nothing.
Not their actions in Latin America, but the USA did parttake in some extreme violence in Asia about 75 years ago that could be blamed for the CCP gaining power in the first place.
I'm not sure Imperial Japanese rule would be so much better, though.
Actually, they have a lot to do with each other, as the violence that the United States did to Central and South America was always justified with anticommunist rhetoric, like this. A Peter Kingsley quote, more about spiritual perception, also applies to the political:
"The only possible way to understand is by standing back in the stillness that lies underneath thinking and sees things as they really are. It's like watching hundreds of colors, each of them trying to persuade you it happens to be the most important one-then stepping back and seeing they all form a single rainbow. Thoughts in themselves are always leading to division and separation. But all thoughts, together, are a single whole." (from "Reality")
Russia has put down multiple popular uprisings within its sphere - Belarus, Kazakhstan. Invaded Georgia, and Ukraine to effect regime change. And looks to be behind the Coup in Mali and one in Montenegro.
China has supported violent Juntas in Myanmar, and Sudan. It has essentially performed a coup in Hong Kong.
And of course it loves supplying weapons to latin countries via Norinco. And it's doing economic damage and putting more of those countries in debt, just like it took Hambantota International Port from Sri Lanka.
Both are racking up kills elsewhere in Africa too.
> This is shown to be a myth, as some other comments here suggested.
There have certainly been a bunch of opinion pieces expressing that opinion coming out at the same time. Which is incredibly weird, unless... oh right, opinions can be bought and China has a history of doing that.
The case is not that such pieces appearing in uniform in short period of time.
The case is that western media is so fixitated on negative coverage on China, so much so that any positive or neutral coverage will be seen as carefully manipulated campaign.
Every thread of China topic, here on HN, will see your type of comments consistently.
The real mystery is not that there is positive or neutral report on China.
The real mystery is why US people seem cannot use their brain on China topics...
Chinese media is state controlled, and no alternative is possible. If they wanted credible positive reporting, then they have only themselves to blame.
The mystery is why you think that I think you are American.
> There have certainly been a bunch of opinion pieces expressing that opinion coming out at the same time.
I was talking about English media.
That's a reasonable assumption, since you are commenting on the HN comments, which is part of English media, and heavily influenced by mainstream English media, obviously.
You are an american or not is not relevant.
> If they wanted credible positive reporting, then they have only themselves to blame.
Wow.
Let's jail the SoB based on media reports.
This is what you suggest, right?
Ah yes, also curiously enough the US is way more prone to completely embargo Cuba and Venezuela but neither Russia nor China. (Due to political-economic reasons and not moral/ethical ones)
Edit: profile I am replying to has the following in their about section: "about: I play music and I code videogames. I live in Brighton, UK." so assuming the "hi from venezuela" was sarcastic.
I'm currently living the dictatorship in Venezuela. Ask me if you think Ciro's opinion is not valid, for whatever reason. (Don't know him btw. Epale Ciro!)
¿Crees que solo hay dictaduras bajo gobiernos anti-capitalistas o es algo en donde por ejemplo Qatar (o Reino Unido) siendo monarquías constitucionales podrían superar en autoritarismo?
That's because Latin America is nowhere near China or Russia. They aren't going to go half way around the world to harass Latin Americans. But if Latin America was in the place of Hong Kong, Laos, or Ukraine they wouldn't enjoy the same peace
You would be surprised if you polled non-US, non-China citizens about what country is the biggest geopolitical threat to the world.
Wait, I don't even need to talk in conditionals. I Googled it and apparently it has indeed been done several times, and the results are what I expected.
Let me rephrase your comment: "Eastern European opinion on Russia doesn't matter because they've suffered and continue to suffer from Russian imperialism".
Non-US, non-China citizens don't speak Chinese but they speak English (or their journalists do). US shenanigans are for the whole world to see. You probably can't read Chinese so you have no idea how the Chinese government and their citizen view the rest of the world.
That feels like a weak argument. OP is talking geopolitics, not domestic shenanigans. I think internationals news happily picks up Chinese international interventions.
The situation is like highlighting the British empire's horrible actions while downplaying Nazi Germany's because they haven't invaded anyone (yet) and not knowing what Hitler and his friends have in store because of the language barrier.
And that's not a Godwin because the CCP's rhetoric these recent years is extremely racist and aggressive. They are feeding their population with a warped view of non-Han, non-Chinese people.
CCP has always been extremely racist and aggressive, at least according to all the web novels i've been reading (translated into english, as i don't speak chinese).
The second poll is not about world peace, but about democracy. Historically, the US has been promoting democracy worldwide (and this has been a major contributor to their belligerence). With their ongoing schism between MAGA and WOKE, there is a risk they will end up non-democratic themselves, either as some kind of facisit or socialist.
THAT, and the fact that this conflict is being exported to other democratic countries is a threat to democracy, although not so much to World Peace.
2013 was before Russia's first hostilities against Ukraine and also before China started to flex their military muscles. Also, at that time, the Obama administration was involved in several wars as well as the use of drone warfare against their enemies elsewhere. I don't find it surprising that many would feel that the US was the greater threat at that time, even though the threat level overall was much lower at the time.
Well maybe those in power should have read up on their history before trying to 'take over' Afghanistan. Might have been a good idea for a country half a world a way, separated by a large ocean.
There's a lot of very nasty, bad-faith arguments in this thread, and you seem to be involved in almost all of them. It is time to take a step back and consider what this kind of derailing does to the quality of discussion overall.
The point is obvious to anyone even tangentially following the israel-palestine conflict: Israel is a close ally to the us and heavily supported by them in their brutal occupation of Palestine.
CIA helped in getting Lumumba and wanted to put a halt to his movement. They along with Belgian officers even tried killing him by poisoning his toothpaste.
CIA overthrew Mosaddegh in Iran which lead to where they are today in terms of an oppresive theocratic government.
And US military and CIA are acting as world police in Somalia.
You call the overwhelming majority of the world population unwashed savages whose opinion must be disregarded, and then sit there in disbelief that most people might dislike see your country (of which, sadly, that attitude is quite representative) as a threat.
This is wild. GP is correct. That poll is from 2013. In the 10 years since, which country has been "The Greatest Threat to World Peace?" It's Russia. Let's see how many got that right...
Only Poland.
History has actually shown how little popular opinion is accurate on this. Meanwhile, there's a swarm of sibling comments in opposition to GP? Do better HN.
The US and it's cronies have invaded more countries than Russia has since 2013. Not to excuse Russia, they'd be worse also if they could, but it's far from having been disproven - Libya is in a worse state right now than Ukraine thanks to the France, the UK, and the US (Libya in 2014, Syria continued after, then there was the sabre rattling in Iran, etc...). And of course Afghanistan, and the saga with Iraq where the US threatened military force if they were kicked out. And there's also the war in Yemen in which the US is a belligerent in all but name. And then there are also military actions in subsaharan Africa. Not to forget ongoing regime change initiatives. By all metrics the US has been more deleterious to peace than Russia in the past 10 years. Not out of inherent evil or any moral consideration of course, but mostly because of greater scope of action - which is of course an element in the magnitude of a threat.
Since 2013 US-backed wars have indeed led to more deaths and have broken the peace in more numerous countries with a higher population than Russia.
So no, you are incorrect in saying that they were wrong - they were definitely right. However, your media bias has led you to focus more on one event than on multiple others and from a different viewpoint.
> Since 2013 US-backed wars have indeed led to more deaths and have broken the peace in more numerous countries with a higher population than Russia.
Can you link to some sources here? I'm especially curious to see who initiated many of these conflicts. Because once in a while the US tries to back existing movements toward more democratic governance.
> What people think is a threat and what is a threat are completely 2 different things.
Meaningless. A threat is by definition subjective and context dependent.
> First of all average people's opinions outside of western democracies are meaningless because those people don't have access to education or information to form any real opinions.
Get off your high horse. Most of the world have a terrible opinion of the US just for the arrogance you just showed. The US education system is in shambles, the divide between can and can't do is the one of the highest in its GDP class. Poverty is just a broken leg away.
> Second of all at least the first research is more or less a complete lie. In Finland people have throughout the history without a doubt kept Russia as the biggest threat.
Russia is seen as a big threat by the Fins. However, in the next conflict: who will supply the arms? Who will benefit the most? Who is likely to incite?
> 3rd, even if we assume that it isn't would be pretty fun to ask those same people the same question again. Finland, Sweden, Australia and Ukraine are begging for the help of US now that the curtains have opened and Russia and China have either started a war already or are threatening to start one.
It's exactly 1 and 2 why the world largely considers the US such a threat.
Any disagreement is discounted as "you're just ignorant and don't have a real opinion" followed by "you need to trust The Experts, but only the ones that agree with us".
It has been a hoot to watch the US Democrats and all their useful idiots turn these arguments against the rest of the US over the last 6 years.
Probably ends as well as Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, etc.
The difference is that we don't have Hollywood movies about those.
The real reasons why people hate America so much is not US military actions (though that has contributed in some cases), but American culture.
Nationalists worldwide absolutely hate it when young people in their countries drink Coke, eat at McDonalds, wear Levi's, consume US Music, Movies and video games, social media, etc. US culture has been displacing other cultures gradually for about 100 years.
If you are a westerner, consider the impact of Tik-Tok, and multiply it by 100x, then you may even empathize with them.
Yeah westerners have so much access to information. I mean look at all those informed opinions about WMDs in Iraq. The US begged countries like Finland, Sweden and Australia to join them in their middle east occupation.
Australia has assisted US in most all major conflicts they have been involved in since WW2. Being a small democratic nation, the US is our most powerful ally and we have invested in that relationship for close to a century. We didn't just come knocking on the door yesterday 'begging' for help.
“ First of all average people's opinions outside of western democracies are meaningless because those people don't have access to education or information to form any real opinions.”
This is insane. Your arrogance and total ignorance about the rest of the world is just crazy.
Threats depend on who the attacker is in relationship to the victim. The United States is quite a big threat to PRC and the persons who claim sole citizenship there.
> all average people's opinions outside of western democracies are meaningless because those people don't have access to education or information to form any real opinions.
Please do better. This is incredibly naive and insulting.
A treat to what world? A treat to the western dominated world, with rules that only favour them.
Not abiding to whose law?
Those international laws that even the US and its allies would not respect when it's not convinient to their agenda and narrative.
This has led to the destruction of Irak, Libya, the killing of Lumumba, and scores of other exemples across all continents.
The western world has been responsible for destructions and destabilisations all in the name of ensuring the economical and political future of their countries.
The West would happily support and never critise authoritarian regimes such as Rwanda just because it's convinient to them, and in the same sentence accuse China and Russia. I've never seen calls for democracy in place of the Kagame's regime for example.
You are failing to see the forrest for the trees, and at the same time overlooking so many details just to prove a point.
> While the US and the western governments have their issues, they are still a largely law abiding.
Perhaps on an internal level. But for those of us in third countries what matters is how they act outside their borders, and the US is doing considerably more dronestriking of their political enemies than China is.
(And even if you just look at domestic aspects, the relevant area is one of the exceptions. The NSA seems to be decoupled from any oversight - its leaders lie to congress with impunity, any attempts to hold them to account via the courts are dismissed...)
you conveniently left Russia out of your “acting outside of their borders” discussion… In case you haven’t noticed they started a bloody war in Ukraine this year.
I don't care about the US in this instance, but how many of those bases are wanted by the countries they are in? In most cases it seems US citizens are subsidizing the defense of many other countries.
Define wanted? In Australia's case they're 'wanted' by the government insofar as the PM that tried to get rid of them was unlawfully ejected from parliament. Tye populace are at best indifferent, and this is after decades of pro US propaganda.
Most of these 'wanted' bases are wanted in the same way the subjects of any other protection racket want their opressor.
In a protection racket, isn't the victim paying the oppressor money for "protection"? But when the US maintains foreign military bases, isn't the US footing the bill?
The relationship is complex and contingent, but generally the host country will be making a range of concessions to the US (e.g. ceding land, giving US troops a range of indemnities, agreeing to purchase weapons systems from the US).
It may not be profitable for "the US" as an abstract whole, but the US is not a unitary entity; it's very profitable for the largest lobbying organisations in the US (Lockheed etc.).
I believe it's profitable for Lockheed, etc., but isn't that at the expense of the American taxpayers? And doesn't the foreign location usually make money from the base being there?
> I believe it's profitable for Lockheed, etc., but isn't that at the expense of the American taxpayers?
It's generally both - they're getting both American and foreign taxpayers to pay for their stuff.
> And doesn't the foreign location usually make money from the base being there?
If you're only looking at the direct impact of the base, sure, it tends to mean there are a bunch of young American men with money to burn around (though they also tend to be a not entirely positive influence in terms of e.g. sexual assaults). But the full package of obligations that goes with it tends to add up to something that's costly for both sides, and the people with the supply contracts are the only real winners.
The entity making decisions and benefiting does not heed and does not work to benefit the american taxpayers. The US from the point of view of the rest of the world is the military industrial complex, a network of corruption/compromise of varipus governments and one sided trade treaties, and the interests of american oligarchs.
The american taxpayer only benefits insofar as they are goven crumbs so they do not revolt or use what little democratic control they have to reign in the beast.
From the point of view of the rest of the world, there is nothing really to distinguish the US from the CCP other than the CCP are slightly more forward thinking in some of their projects in terms of long term benefit to themselves and are (momentarily) more brutally authoritarian. On the US side the main downsides aee they're currently dominant and there is a real danger of the US being taken over by a literal apocalypse cult that seeks climate change as an end to seek rather than merely something to be ignored where possible as the current incumbents do.
Other than that, one imperialist is the same as another -- to some degree even for the other countries in the imperial core.
I can't take anyone seriously who says there's nothing to distinguish the US from the country that's commiting genocide against the Uyghurs and imprisons innocent foreign civilians because their country had Chinese criminals in prison.
Ah yes, because the ongoing state sanctioned systematic murder and enslavement of native and black americans is completely different from the ongoing enslavement and state sanctioned murder of Uyghurs.
Except any country hosting US military bases basically loses their sovereignty. Once you have these bases, you can not discuss removing them. You can not debate the alliance with the US. You can not say no when they ask you to fuck up your entire economy to slightly damage Russia, even tho Russia poses no threat to you nor ever had.
Since when do you need military bases to defend against economic war?
Furthermore, the US is waging economic war on half the world since I have memory of it, isn't it time the rest of the world starts to protect themselves?
> ask Ukrainians whether they want US bases and whether they want to be part of Nato
That doesn't make it right. Ukrainians are scared right now, that's not the right mental state to take decisions that will trap you for decades or more into a state of subjection to the US.
Also I don't care wether they want or not, the US must not expand further or we're basically asking for them to rule the world even more then they're currently doing. Plus I know by experience Ukraine will be better off without US bases.
My country has several US bases and this makes us a target for any US enemy and at the same time makes us a puppet state, lacking any sovereignty especially when it comes to foreign politics. Ask most people in my country, they'll tell you the bases can burn to hell.
Those bases are not there to defend us, their role is that of an offensive platform. We have many nuclear weapons ready to launch in case Biden decides it's time to fuck up some population.
I feel my safety and wellbeing are actively compromised by having foreign military bases on our soil.
Plus the American soldiers hosted in our country committed violence and rape several times and this is all documented and confirmed by our courts. Those yankees can definitely and quickly go home.
This exactly the moment that Ukrainians would like to make quick decision given information at hand. Other countries are making sam choice (e.g. Sweden, Finland).
I am from Eastern Europe and closer ties with US, although have a price, are the preferred option.
Soldiers should be judged accordingly, but it’s an incident and not US supported norm.
I think you don’t get sentiment from this part of the world.
5x more folks die in shootings per day in the USA than in that border conflict. Please note that neither Chinese soldiers nor Indian soldiers escalated to using firearms - despite carrying them - in order to stick to a mutual agreement!
I'm all about criticizing the us for the drone striking it's doing (and how our media underreported it -- try getting stats of how many strikes Obama delivered, you can only get straight answers about individual regions, not a totalled number).
I think the reason the US gets a pass in the international political zeitgeist is that it's motives serve a greater peace. In the past imperial powers have largely used their militaries to enrich their own mercantilist motives; the us has been the opposite, it has used trade and greed to bolster a security stance that has been positive for a lot of people (if you look at trade figures the beneficiaries of us-led trade globalization has mostly been other countries, ironically, mostly china, < 10% of us GDP is foreign trade).
Not to diminish the suffering of Latin American nations under us meddling, the pax Americana has directly brought peace to Europe which has basically been infighting since the beginning of time -- that's 450 million people that are not at each other's throats. Is that worth a Pinochet or two (Allende was no saint either), and bombing a few thousand innocent pashtuns, destabilizing iraq? I can't say, but at least I understand why people give the US a pass.
You didn't read the whole thing. The point is: Europe has not since WWII. That is definitely machinations of the us at work. Whatever shitty motives the us had pre-wwii, like fighting wars on behalf of dole, something has changed, and if you don't understand that and take the lazy mindset that "history never changes" you're gravely mistaken, and in fact you won't be served well in general.
>Yes. China and Russia are the biggest geopolitical threats to the world.
It is surprisingly that simple.
You may want to consult the so called 'global south' on that question who represents the majority of people on the planet and seems to have quite a different impression. Undoing America's 'rule based order' isn't a geopolitical threat to the world, it's a geopolitical threat to the US. Why would billions of people on earth be afraid of living in a world where their countries have actual influence? You may want to get used to the fact that you're not going to get to define what's 'sane' for everyone for much longer.
May turn out that it’s not a threat in the same way you are not a threat to a homeless man. Until he takes over your job and puts a paid gate in his alley, of course. Then he’s fucked up, lost his goddamn mind and must be dealt with in the name of our freedom.
These days, the United States has proven they mainly follow the rules when it benefits them. So much for rules based international order. It's all unraveling as we return to a multi-polar world. History will probably look back and see the United States' global regime as starting off well. But it quickly engaged in the same brutalilty, lawlessness and arrogance as every other failed empire.
There are certainly manifold shameful aspects to US foreign policy. However, it does humanity a disservice to disregard the degree to which the US has tried to promote self-determination in the past 40 years. The US really tried to run free and fair elections in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban and Al-Sadr-aligned parties were allowed to stand in elections. The majority Shia and Kurdish minorities in Iraq now have much more political representation than they had under the Ba'athists. The elections in Afghanistan showed that the US installed government was closer to majority opinion than the Taliban regimes before or after.
The many shameful aspects of US foreign policy absolutely should be brought to light, but that doesn't mean retreating to defeatist nihilism. There can be something new under the sun, and US occupations of the past 40 years have been markedly different from previous empires. It's not enough progress as a society, but it is progress.
Invading a country is the opposite of self-determination, and justifying invasion based on an abstracted universalism was also used by the British empire.
Maybe I should have used the term "popular self-determinism". If the result is the government better represents the will of the populace at large, then popular self-determinism is improved, even if externally imposed.
This pattern goes back to Napoleon: the idea being that the democratic states created by the invading armies were more legitimate/self-determined than the existing monarchal states. However the idea didn't work: monarchal rule returned, and returned in a stronger and more powerful form. There's at least 200 years of experience to suggest that liberal/democratic imperialism is not viable as a strategy, and in fact, provokes more reaction.
The simplistic language if your post reads as blind patriotism or jingoism. To suggest that the US is more law abiding is absurd, considering the countless wars of agression and covert actions. The problem with any debate on this subject is that every evil action by the US is "justified" somehow, and every action by others is the work of madman dictator, and by default wrong. It's impossible to discuss.
Edit: to be clear, I don't condone China's actions. I see both the US and China as very bad actors on the world stage.
> Yes. China and Russia are the biggest geopolitical threats to the world.
> I don’t know why anyone would be afraid to say this.
Probably because it's not that they are afraid, they simply don't agree. For many people around the world, the US and Europe have inflicted far greater problems over the past 0-100 years.
and by defining their opinion on the past rather than the current geopolitical environment, they would be prone to fall prey to china and russian influence.
If they've got to be under the thumb of some foreign power, they ought to choose the US over china or russia. At least in a democracy, there's ways to change the public opinion.
"and by defining their opinion on the past rather than the current geopolitical environment"
Yeah, who cares about the bad stuff 3-5-10-20 years in the past! All those US wars and coups are not applicable since the USA has turned into a bright, shiny fairy now!
"If they've got to be under the thumb of some foreign power, they ought to choose the US over china or russia."
Yeah, the US holding a gun to your head and saying: You are either with us or against us. Many nations want to make their own independent sovereign choice. Your diplomats actually use this language when they feel they can push folks around.
Well if you put bad things in the past 3-5 years, China and Russia have a lot on their hands
Russia: uses their natural resources as weapons, invaded Ukraine, supports dictatorship in Syria
China: embargoes anyone that dares to have a relationship with Taiwan or talks bad about the CCP, provokes Taiwan like crazy, likely will invade it in the next 10 years
This is just the recent stuff, China has invaded Vietnam and fought against UN coalition that was protecting South Korea against North Korea aggression
Russia has done so much ** i am going to take too long to write
And these are only what affect other countries, they have done horrible things to their domestic population as well…
I suspect the US would not be very happy had one of its states unilaterally declared independence and claim they're the real US (of one). China views Taiwan as a separatist, secessionist province that would be long reclaimed if not for support from the foreign powers.
Ukraine views Donetsk/Luhansk People Republics exactly the same.
A tiny part of Taiwan was under Chinese rule for barely 2 centuries 400 years ago. Even at that time China never cared about it nor made an effort to develop it. China doesn't have more claim to Taiwan than any other similar colonizers that came and invaded Taiwan throughout the centuries. Japan was the first invader to achieve real control of most of the island.
Eventually, beaten by Mao, Chiang Kai Shek and its army invaded Taiwan and claimed it theirs. The CCP never ruled the island of Taiwan.
Your analogy is wrong and there's no really other country with a similar history in the world. The CCP loves making claims based on dubious (i.e false) historical basis.
Thanks, I took CCP claims at face value. I'll go read more on the topic. I was convinced that the Republic of China govt and army retreated to Taiwan, as in, it was already theirs. I didn't know it was conquest.
Edit:
> barely 2 centuries 400 years ago
Wiki says it was 1683–1895, so 2 centuries but just 130 years ago. It was then ceded to Japan after China defeat in a war, so it had to be Chinese before that (otherwise, how could China cede it?).
Edit:
> [Wiki says:] In September 1945 following Japan's surrender in WWII, ROC forces, assisted by small American teams, prepared an amphibious lift into Taiwan to accept the surrender of the Japanese military forces there
In 1945 the Chinese civil war was still ongoing, but WW2 has already finished, Japan lost, and ~300k Japanese residents of Taiwan were expelled from the island. There was no fighting during the takeover, so I don't think it can be called an invasion.
There are important differences between that situation and Ukraine, but... I don't believe they are enough to invalidate the whole analogy. My understanding is that both PRC and ROC see themselves as continuation of imperial China, which means both have equal claim to Taiwan (and mainland). Taiwan was colonized by Japan for some 50 years, but I don't think that's enough to claim it's inherently Japanese (especially after the deportation of Japanese citizens). If not, then it has to be Chinese.
So: there was a civil war in China, then because of unrelated happenings a part of China that was occupied by Japanese became Chinese again, and then an external power chose one of the warring sides in the civil war and unilaterally gave a part of Chinese territory to that side. Is this about right?
If so - I see enough parallels to current Ukraine situation to say that I don't believe my analogy breaks down, as you said. Following 2014, there was a civil war in Ukraine (honestly, saying it was a "special anti-terrorist action" is as valid as calling Russian invasion "special military operation"). The insurgents did not get a newly reclaimed land to retreat to, so they stayed where they were. Then an external power chose one side of the civil war, and propped it up so that they won't fail. There was next to no fighting during proclamation of secession. A few years later, separatists backed by the external power were recognized unilaterally by that power as independent entities. It was even similar timeline: ROC went to Taiwan in 1945, but the island was officially recognized as not-Japanese in 1952. That's 7 years; in Ukraine it was 8 years (2014-2022).
The more successful/bigger side of the civil war in both case never considered the other side anything other than rebels and terrorists. The less successful sides claim to be freedom-fighters trying to exercise their right to self determination.
The only real difference is that the powers backing ROC didn't, for one reason or other, try to help them retake more of the territory of the more successful side - but they were arming that side for 70 years now.
I really don't think the differences make the two situations incomparable.
Japan did get Taiwan from whoever was ruling China at that time.
My point is not that Taiwan never was under Chinese rule, but a) it never was really integrated to China like most current chinese provinces (China boasts about a 5000 year long history, loosely controlling (5% of) an island for 200 years before losing it at the very end of the their these 5000 years is not a very strong claim), b) never controlled the entirety of the island because Chinese settlers stayed on the coast, the rest of the island was under aboriginal control (which were not a uniform block) c) never cared about it (it was under the rule of a former pirate turned governor - look up Koxinga) and never did anything with it.
Chiang's army retreated to Taiwan but it's a matter of semantic. It was under Japanese occupation until the end of WW2. Chiang raised the question of Taiwan to the Americans who at that time couldn't care less about that tiny island because they had so much on their plate. The Americans were like "sure, whatever, go for it", but nothing was officially signed (iirc) and Chiang and his army invaded the island and went on to subject it to an horrible authoritarian rule for the next decades.
Final words, about the R.O.C claiming China. That's a sad legacy of Chiang's lunacy. And now the CCP says that if the R.O.C dares to say that they're independant (which they are, but can't say it) they will invade. So Taiwan is stuck with this nonsense because of the threats coming from the Chinese government. Also Chiang had a chance to have a seat the UN but refused because he wanted to be the only China. The rest is history.
Most of what I wrote above comes from the book "Forbidden nation" by Jonathan Manthorpe (and other books but that one covers the history of Taiwan since the very beginning.)
Edit: I posted that before you edit (which I haven't read yet).
Edit 2: I'm not arguing against the parallel with Ukraine which I know nothing about. Just against the analogy with a hypothetical US state leaving the union.
> I'm not arguing against the parallel with Ukraine which I know nothing about. Just against the analogy with a hypothetical US state leaving the union.
Ah, ok. Yeah, I know basically nothing about the US and that analogy was indeed not a great one. I was thinking about Ukraine more, as it's both close by (to me) and happening right now.
In any case, thanks, I learned a bit more about the Taiwan history and will spend some more time reading about it, as it seems quite interesting :)
Far better that compared to Obama's "moderate", rapist rebels who evolved into ISIS. All the scenes of jubilation and crying when women were unchained from basements in Aleppo never made it to the US media and were taken down in 15/20 mins on youtube. The mind-boggling thing is that Aleppo was liberated from Al-Nusra by the Syrian Army - the US were providing weapons to folks on their own terrorist list!
"China: embargoes anyone that dares to have a relationship with Taiwan or talks bad about the CCP, provokes Taiwan like crazy, likely will invade it in the next 10 years"
Regarding China and Taiwan, the amount of American ignorance here truly astonishes me. When the United States moved to recognise the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and de-recognise the Republic of China (ROC) in 1979, the United States stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was “the sole legal Government of China.”
The recent statements by the US president seem to reverse that acknowledgement severely enflaming tensions. Washington is playing with true fire here - China has no interest in invading Taiwan as long as they can moderate Taiwanese policy and as long as Beijing is recognised as the real Chinese government. But Biden is regularly being used as a play-the-dotard puppet by the War-Hawks to inflame tensions, with a nod-and-a-wink later: oh my dear, he didn't really mean it. Until the next inflaming statement comes out of his mouth.
If the US attempts to worsen the state of affairs and keep escalating tensions with statements of support for Taiwanese independence, then YES, there will indeed be an invasion. It will be utterly brutal and Taiwan will be annexed in the end - unless the US is willing to suffer heavy casualties in the hundreds of thousands and transition to a war-economy (which they will not as that would make the donors un-happy. They need to be paid more not less for arms)
Tens of thousands of Taiwanese lives will be lost to American egos and the American military industry who are always looking for the next war to keep their billionaire shareholders fat and happy. More Transfer of Wealth from the American taxpayer to the American elite.
The US is law abiding only when it is in their interest. The rest of the time they either flout law or bend it. How many other nations have effected: directly or covertly, the change in another countries leadership only for their own selfish interests? .. . as much as the US?
> Yes. China and Russia are the biggest geopolitical threats to the world.
For many parts of the world, the USA is the biggest threat and tyrant in the world causing significant pain, loss and helplessness for hundreds of millions. Usually followed by deep hatred. I know folks who have lost their entire family to the USA. Unlike Ukraine, US acts of civilian violence rarely make the news or if they do, they are glossed over.
"more willing to undo the rules based order that has someone kept the world somewhat sane since WWII"
What rules and order that justified by Invading Iraq
You have to understand that, for the rest of the world, seeing the US act is if invading another country was the worst thing anyone could do is highly hopocritical
> Yes. China and Russia are the biggest geopolitical threats to the world.
If you bring together three people from USA, Russia, China then none of them will have trouble naming the two biggest threats. None of them will agree, but they’ll all name 2 of the same 3 anyone from anywhere in the rest of the world would name.
"undo the rules based order that has someone kept the world somewhat sane since WWII."
Only an American/NATO nation citizen can believe this utter nonsense. The only rules being followed were the ones the USA laid out with its military fist, crushing of the opposition and sponsored coups - all in their favour.
Now that they finally have a serious competitor, the US is getting antsy. I am frankly speaking utterly glad for China's ascent. It will keep the USA in check (somewhat).
The USA is creating a significant oil and energy crisis today by sanctioning the big 3 oil producing nations: Iran, Venezuela and Russia, leading to economic collapse and famine in several nations. But its all cool and great because the US are the "good" guys. Who cares if a few million citizens of the third world die ? They should know their place after all - being crushed under the American boot.
More people are dying in Yemen every-day thanks to US embargoes and US weapons than in Ukraine, but not a whiff about it in Western news. No photos of Yemeni mothers holding dead children. No photos of limbs being blasted off by US supplied bombs. Americans who support their military and state are ignorant, sanctimonious hypocrites of the highest order.
when was the last time China invaded another country and killed hundreds of thousands?
I really not interested in arguing good vs. evil, China VS US, but your blindness is just amazing!
The UK treated Hong Kongers as second class citizens. They censored newspapers and history books, only allowing those which agreed with imperialist Britain.
They then suppressed any autonomy in Hong Kong for decades, installing a ruthless puppet government.
I am a bit unnerved each time I read an american using this self referential logic that the US are good because the US are good.
We dont all want to live in a theocratic bi-party corporatist paradise, crushed by personal loans to cure grandma s broken leg, to exgaerate a bit. I live in China and while I dislike the communists just as much as the next guy, I'm quite unsure what's so good about the US.
It's just as much a giant country blabbering all day long about how we should be their protectorate (I'm French), a lot like China...
But yeah let s not be afraid to say China, Xi in particular, are in an endless dictator trap, covering the crimes of the past with the crimes of the present. I just wouldnt put all my bets on the US evolving better just because God wrote their constitution or whatever else they think make them so virtuous.
The extent at which so many americans are absolutely convinced they are “the good guys” of the world is simply amazing. A real testimony of the power of american propaganda.
As a US citizen, I'd rather a foreign power with no jurisdiction here gobble up my data than the local jackboots with a rubberstamp judge who can execute a no-knock raid on my home whenever they feel like, predicated on dubious suspicion elicited by whatever precrime data-mining operation they're running.
China isn't going to shoot my dog at 4am and throw me in a concrete box.
And if I were a Chinese or Russian citizen, I'd be far more wary of domestic apps than US apps for precisely the same reason. Not playing favorites here, it's just a jurisdictional arbitrage question in a world dominated by tyranny.
Why are we letting FB off the hook? Why are we letting any of the platforms that harvest data off the hook? FB tweaked their algos to literally see if they could fuck with people's moods. They know the power they hold, and they constantly refine it to keep people's attention. At some point if FB promoted via algo something that riles up a group of people against another group of people to the point of violence, how is that any less bad? Especially, since that's what has happened?
Essentially threats to folks up north. Down here (in Latin America) and other places such as the entirely of Asian and African countries, US has been a threat since it exists.
US is still moving it's pieces here in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador. Not to mention espionage on half of the world (thanks WikiLeaks)
If you're looking at it from that perspective, tiktok should be the least of your worries. Currently The U.S. is entirely dependent on this "geopolitical threat" to survive. At least with tiktok its as simple as shutting down the app.
The U.S and China are entangled in ways you cant imagine.
Well, let me try it this way: if massively popular social networks weren’t a threat, both China and Russia wouldn’t have cared about Twitter, Facebook, or any other “western” internet company operating in their countries.
Clearly, they think that these are important sovereignty issues such that they’ve clamped down or disallowed these services entirely.
The ability to manipulate people via state sponsored algorithmic tweaks to TikTok’s ranking algorithm is a powerful tool.
You don’t need to do much to sour US’s support for Taiwan in the eyes of just a minority. Or you don’t need to do much to tweak the algorithm such that content about politicians friendly to China is ranked higher than others.
It's not just Russia and China. Most nations have realised that these large social networks have selective censoring and US tilted "fact-checking". Many, many nations are clamping down, banning, restricting or raising applicable laws to limit the damage of these social-media "services".
It is because China is the enemy. When it's Facebook or Google strangely it's never an issue. Moral is always a facade for international economic war. And some people fall for it.
While most people on HN would agree that they would like more regulation of their data on FB and Google, these are largely still separate actors from the US government. You can even indicate that something like Cambridge Analytica is starting within a party, rather than the actual governing body.
There is too much sharing, IMO, without a doubt. That being said, they are not near synonymous as TikTok is.
Data regulation, privacy, influence through exposure are real issues worldwide. Tiktok has a raised profile due to its closeness with a governing state body.
The thing is that "government = bad" is typical American mindset. As another non-US, non-Chinese citizen, the fact that those megacorporations are independent from the government makes it worse, not better.
At least governments respond to their people (especially in the case of democracies, much less so for authoritarian governments, but they still have to worry a minimum to avoid revolution). Corporations respond to profit only, everything else be damned.
When Facebook starts opening concentration camps, I'm likely to agree with you.
> especially in the case of democracies, much less so for authoritarian governments, but they still have to worry a minimum to avoid revolution
What do you think is more likely to still be relevant in 100 years from now, China or Facebook? I think a 'revolution' is more likely to affect Facebook than China
> When Facebook starts opening concentration camps, I'm likely to agree with you
I wonder. If your product is used to recruit soldiers, spread propaganda, disseminate hate speech, and organize and deploy said concentration camps or their equivalent, are you liable and culpable? If you've known for years and done next to nothing about sectarian violence and genocide, are you still blameless? When moderation could have been hired and trained for an immaterial amount of profit? SEA wages are notoriously low in dollar terms. Poorly implemented machine learning models don't suffice to halt genocide. Greed, ignorance, malevolence, sloth, arrogance. Take your pick.
If a security hole was found in Google and in the US government, which do you think would respond in a way that would make that less likely to happen in the future?
It is that government having data which allows for influence of people == destruction of democracy as the government is supposed to reflect the will of people rather than the other way around. It is an incredibly short path to: autocracy, oligarchies, dictatorships, etc.
Just because the chinese oligarchs give themselves government titles and the US oligarchs do not is no reason to believe they're not the ones in control.
That being said they are also highly disparate with a variety of motivations and are incredibly hard to whip (using this the way its used in congress) into directions that are nuanced. Things like "we wanna make more money" "regulations/unions are bad" ofc oligarchs in the US manage to see eye to eye on, but anything further nuanced - that class discipline - is harder to achieve in the US than China
Not just PRISM: Apple has actually been (presumably) forced to not publish e2e encryption software that the feds didn't want deployed, an example of prior restraint that is blatantly unconstitutional.
I think there's a difference between a private company having my data and an adversarial government. The company has a clear motive, profit. They're lawful neutral. An adversarial government may be chaotic evil. I don't know why this isn't obvious.
Wasn't everyone freaking out just a few years ago when Russian government was manipulating people with political groups on Facebook? And that's even with Facebook's earnest effort to prevent these things. With this company, there's a direct tie in with an adversarial government.
Yes, ideally I don't want anyone to have my data, but lets not pretend Zuck and CCP are the same thing
> Wasn't everyone freaking out just a few years ago when Russian government was manipulating people with political groups on Facebook?
Yes, if by everyone you mean Americans, because their country was the target. There are many countries where media has been manipulated by the CIA, too.
I'm the opposite. I would much rather have the CCP have my data then a US based company like FB. Unless I travel to China, what are the CCP going to do to the average American with their data? Whereas, in the US, the data could be used in the future to prosecute me for my political views or whatever with law changes.
The CCP could be actively trying to get you hate your neighbor and spread disinformation. That could be a byproduct of either group, but it is more likely to be an explicit goal of CCP. Here's a gem from the WHO in January 2020. This was almost certainly known to be a lie to the CCP based on their actions at the time
> Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.
Yes, private companies like blackwater, shell, bp, dutch east india, coca cola, nestle, amazon, or facebook never participate in fascist propaganda campaigns or organize coups, hire mercenaries to kill unionizing (or just competing) workers, murder, or steal. And facebook didn't promote lies and propaganda during the pandemic at all /s
The CCP is at least very indirectly accountable to their own people and holds their country's long term interests in mind even if they do not care about the people and hold the usual abhorrent views of authoritarians towards minorities. This is extremely evil, but pales in comparison to an unaccountable corporate entity with what little human oversight it has steered by a combination of narcissists, neofuedalists and literal apocalypse cultist theocrats.
I agree about the contradictions and hypocrisy but the answer can be much more pragmatic:
> As a non-US, non-Chinese citizen, is there something that makes TikTok espionage and Facebook not? Or is it just "china scary"?
There's problems with US big tech and TikTok but the case against TikTok is easier to push through.
There's nothing wrong with patching the first of many holes in your roof and starting with the one easiest to get to.
---------
My primary emotional and ethical driver is to point out my own government (the US) not living up to its marketing material, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't support eliminating a vector for another (openly autocratic) government to meddle with my country as well.
Edit: distinguish my reply to prior comment from my ramblings about my reply.
"Currently, China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States. Seizures of fentanyl sourced from China average less than one kilogram in weight, and often test above 90 percent concentration of pure fentanyl."
Presumably, if the CCP wanted to do so, they could put an end to the groups shipping this deadly substance into the United States.
>Presumably, if the CCP wanted to do so, they could put an end to the groups shipping this deadly substance into the United States.
Presumably, if the United States wanted to do so, they could put an end to the groups shipping this deadly substance from the China.
Just changed the wording a little to show the bias in this sentence. Why do think China would be more successful than the U.S. in prohibiting illegal drugs?
This is assuming manufacturing is being done by large groups... but it usually is. Manufacturing tiny amounts is much much harder than importing tiny amounts.
This just isn't true for anyone but die hard nationalists. The average citizen has no reason to care what country their products and services are coming from. It's better that the world trade and communicate beyond borders. Calls for banning Tik Tok are coming from people afraid of fair international competition.
TikTok's format is more successful at micro targeting and influencing people than Facebook. Other future social media networks will probably work in a similar way and be just as concerning. YouTube is another one that's very good at influencing people. I wonder if video is unsafe at any speed, so to speak...
Influencing sure, but espionage ? From what I can tell, people mostly consume content there in a similar fashion to YouTube, i.e. you don't really add your real-life friends and you don't post your day-to-day stuff unless you are already a celebrity
Contrary to facebook where people would literally "Follow" their political parties, workplaces, friend groups from school/work/gym/life, etc.
Espionage for the sake of espionage isn't useful. But if you're collecting lots and lots of data about what people like and what makes them angry and you have a direct line to feed them whatever information you want, having tens of millions of targets for opinion-influencing content is a very powerful tool for a state actor.
I like these kinds of replies that minimize the dangers China presents to the world while implying people concerned about the same are just ignorant xenophobes and racists.
As an ex FAANG, nothing could be more true. TikTok is just continuing what Silicon Valley started, only they're better at it. Having seen what US tech companies have done with my data, I'd much rather it was in the hands of the Chinese.
What have they done with your data? Also have worked at a few FAANGs and from what I’ve seen (admittedly not working on social or B2C products) data is subject to rules and is generally used in aggregate only.
Lets say apple engineers all have kids who use tiktok and some of the kids or engineers do something shady and someone gets blackmailed. As a consequence apple launches 3months later and in the meantime someone from china launches a killer phone with the same or almost as good tech specs. Sure the apple fans may wait it out but that could be a billion dollars of sales to china that would have went to USA
That's one of the point of espionage. To get a competitive or monetary advantage. If facebook did this to other companies within the states, at least the country isn't losing money
The other would be things used to jail innocent people but for the most part I don't think thats how tiktok is being used
TikTok is BigTech too. Chinese BigTech rather than US BigTech. That's a problem for some. As someone who is neither Chinese or American, and with no local alternative to any of the BigTech's service, I am screwed either way. With lax privacy laws and regulations in my country, both American and Chinese BigTech freely abuse our naivety and trust to harvest our personal data.
> it is based on a simple idea - people will happily give away their data and privacy if you consistently entertain them.
there’s the individual-level view, and the state-level view.
i, as an individual, don’t really care if China has my location data or shopping data. what are they going to do with it? they can exert soft power over me: propaganda; distort my worldview a bit.
meanwhile, if my own government has access to this same data, i suffer direct consequences. my odds of getting arrested for nonviolent crime (e.g. political activism; buying drugs online) go way up when my govt surveils me: far less so when it’s a foreign govt doing this.
it doesn’t have so much to do with individuals making foolish tradeoffs over their own interests IMO: the way espionage plays into this is as an alignment gap between individual and state interests.
I don't use TikTok, but I assume there's also a concern over foreign influence of a nation's voters? Whether you use TikTok or not, that'd be a potential concern. Entire countries could be subtly influenced by supposed algorithms. A finger on the scales or whatever they call it.
I've long wondered if we might (past or future) see a social media company be successful mostly because, in their infancy, they were indirectly funded by intelligence services in exchange for data access. However, I assume as operations scale, it gets harder for that sort of link to stay secret.
> meanwhile, if my own government has access to this same data, i suffer direct consequences. my odds of getting arrested for nonviolent crime (e.g. political activism; buying drugs online) go way up when my govt surveils me
It seems like an error to assume these two forms of surveillance are mutually exclusive.
At any of
> the Starbucks you’re using for free wifi
> the ISP your endpoint is using for internet access
> the data centers in which Tiktok is serving you data
> the device on which you didn’t write the OS or any background programs written on it
Presumably anyone with the power and inclination to listen or influence the design of the above can intercept any non-encrypted or not-yet-encrypted data you’re exchanging (and if they’re a state actor, probably get access to whatever information they’d need to perform decryption) - including your government.
Almost all APIs are TLS-encrypted these days, leaking only the hostname to which the client is connecting (via SNI which is as yet unencrypted).
This is not to say you're not being surveilled (as to which apps you use, etc) but there is relatively little unencrypted traffic coming out of most devices in 2022.
What if US government makes a (secret) deal with China to get data from them? It might seem unlikely today, but politics can change any time. Data markets can be fairly efficient. Once someone has your data, they can always (re)sell it to the highest bidder.
China doesn't exactly limit its activities to people within its borders. There are reports of Uighurs speaking up who get harassed after fleeing the country and speaking up: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56563449
It's certainly not direct physical violence to citizens of an established world power that is a concern. It's pushing things in one direction or another politically.
See well documented: Intelligence community v.s Trump v.s Facebook v.s Russian propaganda campaign v.s traditional "manufactured concent" of citizen.
How these players interplay is what is at stake.
If helps tremendously if some of the actors are "trying" have enough independent thought and don't suffer too much when they push things in more liberal & egalitarian direction.
More effective than Facebook or Google? Last I checked they didn’t have their “pixel” or SDK embedded in every web page or mobile app, beaming data back to them.
Not saying that TikTok is benevolent or not a surveillance operation, just that they are not yet as big, insidious, or effective as Facebook or Google.
Some naively said that it was 'The best thing to have happened to the Internet.' [0] This is an example of a user under the spell of the glorified algorithm that dictates what is seen and unseen.
So given that this [1] is the general capability of what the algorithm can do, it looks like that it is the largest and the most dystopian controlled experiment of the 21st century. Even worse than Facebook.
We have hit a new nadir on screwing with 'users' with this new digital crack / cocaine invention that Bytedance has created.
Problem is that everyone that shares their data will draw everyone in a form of co-dependence as their data will be used for governance and content decisions. Even if there is the at least one obvious difference of some users sharing data and some users not doing so.
I don't think you can close a platform like this again. It won't be the end of civilization either and perhaps another platform will at one day take its place. Arguably the privacy protection for western users are even better if the data doesn't leave China.
What people are afraid to say is that the United States arguably has a bad enough rap sheet as China, but still, even with its shortcomings, it's still not China.
People will "give away" their data when there are no laws to stop "tech" company intermediaries^1 from collecting it.
Google, Facebook and others collect heaps of data. TikTok is hardly a special case.
1. Like Google and Facebook, TikTok does not author the "content" to which they provide access that serves as the "bait". They sit in between the author and the consumer and collect. The lesson I see here is that intermediaries need to be regulated.
It's so weird Windows never gets mentioned in the privacy discussion. Competing over what people do on the Web and phone apps them might have more economic impact than what MS collects, but MS has a more ingrained view of someone's electronic life via the OS. Deleting TikTok and installing an Adblocker is an order of magnitude easier than switching to Linux or Mac.
What data are we exactly giving Tiktok? I would agree with it being called a propaganda platform, but I’m not sure about it being a surveillance platform.
You can't sign up with just an email, you need third party integration like Twitter, and surprise, you need to give TikTok full access to your account.
I don't think it's the privacy issues that will defeat TikTok, I think it's the deception of a success economy being possible on the platform.
In the past few weeks I've been observing a lot of marginal content trending on the platform which indicates to me that a lot of the more quality posters aren't posting new content.
The minute quality creators leave a platform is the minute it dies. TikTok has not really been rewarding creators fairly, and pushes the idea that organic growth is possible, and that people have become really successful, but many creators realize after months of working for little to no reward that it's a false narrative.
There are billions of accounts on these platforms yes, but the main question is are they actively posting, engaged, and satisfied? The answer is most likely no, and that's why Twitter didn't sell fast too.
> The minute quality creators leave a platform is the minute it dies. TikTok has not really been rewarding creators fairly, and pushes the idea that organic growth is possible, and that people have become really successful, but many creators realize after months of working for little to no reward that it's a false narrative.
I heard the opposite story from 2 creators in my local language.
Their growth on Tiktok is crazy, one got a million followers in less than a year, this is almost impossible in YouTube or Any Facebook based social media, also the amount of interaction and views on videos is amazing compared to YouTube.
Its why many are going to tiktok, even if they don't like the Platform, its actually possible to reach people, while on other platforms such as Instagram, you have to pay to reach even half of your followers.
Now that YouTube has shorts I wonder how many creators are switching. Part of the reason you can get so many followers on TikTok is the video length. When it started you could only post a 15-second video. Later on they allowed you to link 15-second videos up to a minute in length. Then it was 3 minutes, and in February they changed the maximum video time to 10 minutes.[1]
Viewers can watch a lot more 15-second or 1-minute videos than 10-minute videos. If 5-10 minute videos start becoming popular, expect the reach new creators can get to drop drastically.
They are all portrait mode videos though, not very versatile and useful in the long term... Actually, portrait content was dying off before TikTok...
It's bewildering how they warehouse so much content that will really not endure, at some point they're likely going to need to archive a lot of TikTok user posts, because the content is very low quality overall, and a lot of the content generated is limited by it's context.
It probably be a huge sticker shock to see the monthly cloud hosting bill for any one of these apps.
They monetize by advertising on behalf of companies to their viewers. And they have no idea how to price their monetization so I presume the companies are winning here
I noticed a similar narrative and noticed it even first hand on some accounts I am following on Instagram which only recently started moving to TikTok. The growth is insane. Comedians with something like 10k followers on Instagram getting 1-2m views on their TikToks in their first few vids. But they are fully adjusting to the TikTok format and dynamic.
On instagram I am increasingly seeing ads for popular sports and music stars - which I would suspect could be triggered by unsatisfying reach or growth for them and Instagram cutting down even more on free exposure.
If TikTok can sustain a mechanism that boosts new creators it will be golden for a long time. Organic growth seems to be dead for Instagram and YouTube unless someone puts in 10x the effort than for TikTok.
They constantly tweak the bias of what is shown on these platforms to keep engagement high. By the minute we talk about a trend online, the bias has already changed to a new focus. All of these sites are driven by manipulating users into compliance and over-investment of time and money. That is how they make ad revenue to pay overhead, and create product dependency.
The problem is that there are so many people addicted to the possibility of being a popular influencer that no one is being honest about how little real success and money they make on these platforms... In truth it may be a possibility that most users are completely faking social media success.
Based on what I've observed, most organic followers are scripts, and views are carefully metered and pre-determined based on each account's personal characteristics. The merit system isn't conducted without bias.
TikTok forces use primarily of it's app, and only offers limited use in web browsers, which makes their methods less transparent.
For successful YouTubers, the money coming from YT is actually not their primary income, one YouTuber publically said YT payout is ~1/4 of their total revenue. Their other main sources of revenue includes brand deals, affiliates, product/merc sales and direct donation.
Tiktokers are generally following YouTuber model in how they monetize their content, minus Ads revenue share.
If Microsoft said "Come work for us every day for free, you may get brand deals!"
Would anyone with talent, skills, and self respect jump to do it?
Working for free at a large and quite profitable company?
The problem is that because of how perception can be manipulated on social platforms based on that success illusion. It makes people think that the success comes just for creating simple content, and trumps one's ability to prioritize making money to do real world things like paying rent and for food. It's borderline exploitation of children, who often over expose themselves just for likes, and that is going to be bad for their future prospects in being taken seriously when they want to get real world and respectable jobs.
It's free work with little reward. The brand deals go to celebrity creators, NOT to normal creators, while the platform profits massively and underpays most everyone who does the real work. Most of the influencers on these platforms find that even the popularity they gain fades quickly in the real world, especially as the platforms begin to decline in popularity as well, and the minute they stop working hard for free.
Even normal creators, on YouTube and TikTok, can get paid; it's called the Partner Program and Creator Fund respectfully the bar to clear it is relatively low. From there you can earn yourself a percentage of those millions; at roughly one dollar for everyone million views.
It's not different than acting or professional sports; and it's far better than Facebook/Twitter model where they monetize your content with no path revenue at all. Among my list of problems with YouTube/TikTok, the revenue model is not one of them.
Vine died because quality creators left the platform, and they left the platform because Vine wasn't willing to pay them to stay. The formula is remarkably simple and for these next generations, many of them only know social media personalities. I fear that your definition of "quality content" has been shaped by your upbringing; what you consider "simple content" is "real content" for people who grew up on these platforms. I'm sure you are unaware of the thousands of creators who have millions of followers in niches you have never even heard about. While the content is "simpler" it is more diverse than you can even imagine; and thats where the staying power comes from.
Given that there are 8 billion people, a video that is watched by everyone on this planet once will make $8000 then. Not sure any self-respecting actor or professional athlete would work for that kind of money. Djokovic had a much smaller audience this Sunday, and he made £2000000. I don't see him switching to TikTok.
Umm people definitely don't consider posting on tiktok "labor" like you're suggesting. a) It's fun, and b) they're getting social status / minor celebrity status. Even if there was no chance of making any money I can guarantee you people would still try to grow a following.
There are quite different experiences outside of your own. Many people and businesses work on TikTok and every other social platform, there is a creator fund on pretty much every major platform out there. Millions of people work full time to find success on sites like TikTok, and almost every trending post is an ad for some sort of business, or for profit. Don't just lean on your own personal understanding and experiences.
Fair. I guess I just don't think TikTok is misleading anyone into thinking once you hit x views, x likes, and x follows, you'll see an appropriate financial return. Maybe I'm wrong though. I figured everyone views (or at least should view) TikTok HQ as a kind of neutral medium, not an employer.
I have a moderately successful YouTube channel and good instagram following. Filming, editing , posting and commenting on 2 videos a week is absolutely a job.
I think TikTok will stay for a while but you are onto something regarding the deception. An issue with TikTok is that the shelf-life of its content-creators is pretty short. Usually they hit it big with 1 video that gets picked up by the algorithm. And then all their subsequent videos are them trying to recapture that lightning. You can keep it going for a bit and develop a decent following but eventually it gets boring.
How do most users interact with TikTok? through the FYP (for you page) which is the algo curated feed that you can endlessly scroll through. From my observations - FYP starts out by showing you content from creators in your geolocation (drains so much battery cuz it loves to use location services). From there it will try to associate you with trending hashtags in content you are more likely engage with. Most important engagement metric is watch-time. So if you complain that your tiktok is full of porn/horny content then you probably have high watch-time in these areas. It will alternate between showing you vids of high user engagement (1M+), medium engagement (<1M) and low engagement (<1K) in the trending hastags/topics it associates with you.
So the content and trends move very fast. Eventually your schtick gets old.
Not everyone is cut out to be an entertainer. That quickly becomes apparent when scrolling through TikTok, but it's good at pushing endless encouragement, tips, and other hype that keeps people believing they can be famous for sharing their personal life details. If I was a parent, this would worry me terribly, because children are so impressionable.... But even grown adults overshare on the app frequently...
Not everyone is meant to be an entertainer, but now pretty much everyone invested in social media operates as if a camera is constantly on them.. This ego-centric self-esteem-influenced social media "influencer model" drives even terrible things now too, like school shootings and personal harm.
I am really annoyed at how we (EU) and the US treat chinese companies and citizens.
We (europeans and americans) cant do really anything in China, we have essentially no rights and cant really conduct business. Unlike chinese who are pretty much granted all of that when they want to immigrate or conduct business in EU/US.
Hugh Hendry talks about this a lot, its not just tech companies but nearly all industries are like that. We allowed China into the WTO and to trade with the world because we expected them to allow us to sell stuff there. They continue to play the game on their rules, and keeping their currency low by flooding the world with its surplus savings, further enriching itself and causing this huge asset boom in the West. Its not fair, he says we should start by putting extra taxes on the investments owned by Chinese government.
That arrangement seems to be almost entirely to the benefit of the EU/US, as there's little incentive for bright/ motivated Europeans or Americans to move to China, vs significant incentive in the opposite direction.
His point isn't mainly about individuals looking for jobs. It's about the economic environment for doing business in a country. You're basically forced to hand over your IP if you want to operate in China, among many other problems.
And btw, the job market for very qualified people in China arguably at least rivals the one in Europe, i.e. you can get better salaries in China than in large parts of Europe.
Google and Meta are the best software companies the US has produced in the last 25 years. These two companies are also largely responsible for driving up wages for SV workers. TikTok could destroy both companies.
Those two companies will be "destroyed" when they can no longer do what they do as well as their competitors. What the current laws are in China are unlikely to have much impact either way.
The point is that we allow competition from China but they can’t compete in China. It’s asymmetrical competition. The Chinese companies have a bigger population of customers (so more access to make money, more people to serve and grow from etc).
China protects their businesses from American competition but we don’t protect our businesses from Chinese competition.
Define well? There is no singular dimension of “well”.
Protect them from international threats works if the goal is stabilizing domestic business for national security purposes. Ask airlines for most of their history. Or look at the ability to use American car factories for the defense production act.
Will it produce the best product for their customers? Probably not. Look at American made cars. Not the best product.
Will it produce the best outcome for employees? American car companies employee thousands of union jobs that pay very well.
What if we successfully starve the competition? What if we don’t? No amount of government intervention was able to kill foreign car companies. But American car companies are still chugging along providing valuable employment to many Americans.
> We (europeans and americans) cant do really anything in China, we have essentially no rights and cant really conduct business.
Sure you can. You just have to conduct your business in China under the same rules that Chinese businesses in China have to follow.
Most countries or pseudo-countries work this way. For example the EU is about to tell US companies conducting business in Europe that they have to use USB-C for device charging ports and impose a bunch of limits on what exclusive feature hardware makers can include on their devices.
But those same rules apply to European businesses operating in the EU and to Chinese companies operating in the EU and to anyone else operating there, so it is fine.
This is one of the reasons international businesses often set things up so that they have separate companies in different countries. You set up BigCorp USA, BigCorp China, and BigCorp Germany as separate companies incorporated in those jurisdictions, with the latter two handling all your Chinese and EU customers respectively.
Same happens with non-tech businesses. If you wanted to open a chain of international bookstores, you'd face all kinds of restrictions on what books you can sell in various countries. A lot of books that would be fine in your San Francisco store might get you in serious trouble if you carried them in Saudi Arabia. But they would also get a Saudi owned bookstore in trouble too, so you aren't being treated differently.
> You just have to conduct your business in China under the same rules that Chinese businesses in China have to follow.
Isn't one of the rules that foreign companies are required to partner with, and thus share all of their trade secrets with, a domestic Chinese company?
It isn't. It has been for specifically the auto industry and it generally hasn't had any positive effects for the domestic Chinese auto industry. Their side of the partnership has been mostly sticking with assembly and lower barrier items whereas the drivetrain continued to be made in Germany. This is why China is having a better chance starting from scratch and leapfrogging in electric, and why Tesla is let to not partner with anyone.
That’s not remotely true. You can open a Wyoming LLC and be off to the races in under 48 hours and under $100. I personally know people from half a dozen countries who have done so.
Where in the world is more convenient for a foreigner to start and run a business?
I can register certain types of business, but I can’t do anything that actually matters, like entering the country. According to US law I’m not even a proper human, so I could get lawfully executed on the spot, as evidenced by numerous dronings.
To compare, within EU I have all the usual rights, from establishing a company to healthcare.
Pretty sure anyone can form a US company, citizen or not. You definitely cannot form one in China without Party involvement, and depending on the size, even needing to have a full time Party member on staff.
The idea that when entities from two countries interact we have to apply the norms of the least free country to the interaction seems counterproductive. Are we going to ban Afghani women from driving in the US because US women can't drive there? It seems like a race to the bottom.
> Are we going to ban Afghani women from driving in the US because US women can't drive there
If they don’t have a valid international drivers license (presumed because they don’t drive at home) then literally yes we do de facto ban them.
But it’s not about giving the people less rights at home it’s demanding they give us as much rights as we give them. The framing is backwards. Why do we honor their license (for men or women) if they don’t honor ours (incl our women)? Why is it not wrong to demand they treat us as well as we treat them? “If you want America to honor your licenses then you must honor ALL American licenses as equally as America does”
Don’t tolerate intolerance. Don’t play games with bad governments.
Disclaimer: I have no idea what actual Afghani laws around driving look like I’m just using your example.
> Don’t tolerate intolerance. Don’t play games with bad governments.
the initial tolerance of the intolerance is due to the idea that by freely trading and allowing trade in such a (asymmetric) fashion, the less democratic country would democratize. Over time, the gov't would become more open and "westernize".
That is a miscalculation by the US administration (particularly clinton's, but i won't pin this onto any particular one, as it's a wide policy not decided by a single administration). Neither russia nor china had leadership that would see themselves removed from power - that is their primary prerogative as dictators. And any policy changes that those countries implement is first, and foremost, a policy to keep themselves in power. To the extend that their policies benefit the people, it's done for the express purpose of keeping themselves in power, and never a primary objective.
Therefore, it's clear now, that neither china nor russia would want to integrate themselves in to the west as allies and partners. They forever see the west as an adversary to which they must best - it's an imaginary threat, made real by the fact that democratizing means disposing of dictators.
This can only end one way. I hope it's the west that wins, because despite the woes and poor performance, it cannot be worse than the alternative.
The addictive nature of TikTok scares the shit out of me. It's like the culmination of 20 years of social media research and testing purposely designed to create the most addictive product possible. Such a large percentage of young people use it...it's absolutely terrifying.
I see the view you express here pretty frequently--that older generations have /always/ viewed any new cultural development as a sign of moral/intellectual degradation, and--surprise!--it never really is. I do tend to agree that most fears about the new crop of addictive social media engagement engines is just handwringing, just like it was for TV, or music, or radio, or books.
That being said, just because coffee and methamphetamine have comparable effects on paper doesn't mean that they pose the same level of risk. A difference of degree is still a difference, and at least from my own experiences I'm starting to wonder if the human brain is biologically equipped to handle the addictive overstimulation modern life exposes it to.
> a sign of moral/intellectual degradation, and--surprise!--it never really is.
I'm not sure how you'd measure that... Right now there seems to be a heart disease and obesity epidemic, which I understand is primarily due to sugar and processed foods, but I find it hard to believe the massive amounts of TV watching and computer use plays no role in that, if not a significant one.
With TV, there was also the passivity effect, people were just fed a diet of propaganda with little way to do much about it, whereas now at least there's some choice although I'm not sure we're much better off and what the tradeoffs are. Prior to TV and radio, people weren't very educated at all, so it's kind of hard to compare. We don't get the science experiments we need out of natural development.
Then, I can't know but I wonder if a society where more reading and radio wouldn't be better in some important ways.
Then, yeah what if TV is like coffee but a certain kind of Internet use does turn out to be like a more addictive drug...
Have you used tiktok? There’s nothing about it that isn’t addictive.
Facebook, Twitter, and HN hold a different behavior because they are used for asynchronous communication between general users while TT is full of parasocial relationships between the created and fans. FB and Twitter also offer more utility than TikTok, an example being small businesses using Facebook and Twitter instead of a website.
I noticed that the webapp doesn't show personalized content (or my privacy extensions do a wonderful job). You have to use the mobile app to see the full power.
It took me a month before TT actually figured out my interests. For some reason it thought I would be absolutely interested in the local content of Latvia (where i live)
I created a TikTok account with a VPN and for the first few days most of the content was tailored towards the faraway city that the VPN IP address pointed to. Geolocated IP is one of the few pieces of info TT has initially, so not surprised they rely on it.
I also used tiktok for about a month but quit it. That's not to say it's not addictive though, my mom spends a significant amount of her free time on the app (but she still uses fb and ig, if anything tiktok just supplanted some of her time spent on ig). I suppose my point about it is that it's not absurdly unique compared to reddit, YouTube, or twitch which are similarly bottomless content holes.
TT isn't unique in parasocial relationships though. Most of the discourse around those relationships actually center around yt and twitch for a reason (and to a lesser extent twitter and onlyfans). If anything tiktok is better than streaming platforms because there's less of that illusion of familiarity; you only see the content creator for minutes at a time before another's there to replace them (twitch you see them for hours at a time and often people only identify strongly with a few streamers).
I'd also argue against the utility argument. Tiktok has allowed for both information and misinformation to spread on its platforms, but that's a non unique argument. Small business accounts on tiktok have also flourished, a commonly repeated piece of advice currently is for small business owners to create accounts and just record their daily routines. Businesses like specialty stationers have exploded in recognition due to this.
The much stronger case against tiktok over other social media's is your communication point. There's little opportunity there for people to actually, you know, socialize with each other. It's content and only content, and even YouTube comments have more meaningful opportunities for educated discussion. It's more similar to twitch chat in that regard but even on twitch content creators regularly engage in discourse publicly. Tiktok enables this through its reply system, but because of its content delivery system you might never see that.
Ya, I also used tiktok for about a month before getting rid of it. I still think my point stands that everything about it makes it addictive.
TT is a bottomless content hole and isn’t that different from other bottomless content holes because they are that. TT takes it a step further with their format focusing on short, attention grabbing content, a best-in-class recommendation algorithm, and rewarding their creators with more views than other networks.
I don’t know if I agree Tiktok fosters better (do we mean healthier?) parasocial relationships than other socials. There’s a certain intimacy from the cell phone camera that YouTube and twitch doesn’t have (twitch has a different intimacy, but like you said they are on for hours a time). I think when TT creators are encouraged to upload multiple times a day, compared to once a week on YouTube or twitch, pushes something that feels closer seeing a best friend than watching your cool cousin.
I absolutely agree that TikTok is better for marketing a business than other networks, but it doesn’t have much of any utility beyond that. I wonder about the effectiveness of communicating over DM with businesses over Instagram vs tiktok.
For the record I’m addicted to YouTube and HN and don’t currently have accounts on any of the other services mentioned.
Lol I'm also addicted to YT (not proud of it, but the amount of well-produced, solid educational content makes it a hard habit to kick).
I think TT's algorithm is the strongest selling point. Vine had even shorter content and even faster dopamine hits but ultimately died (I can't recall if Music.ly died or was absorbed before it met a natural fate). I can't speak towards monetization but I hazard that TT creators still make most of their money from sponsorships (like twitch and YT) based on that one Hype House thing. That said, the algorithm might be a bit overstated in its strength. Put enough creators together on the same place all trying to be relatable, add in the fact that people are going through dozens if not hundreds of videos at a time, you're bound to yield several hits. In this sense, I think TT is successful not directly because of its format, but in that it's achieved a critical mass because of its format, and that critical mass allows it to easily perpetuate itself.
I think the parasocial relationships aren't "better", except that TT is "better" than Twitch and YT because it's harder to develop these parasocial relationships. Maybe your theory about phone cameras is correct, but I think what's absent is that sense of _address_. On YT, creators will often call their viewers under some aggregate nickname, or make direct references to their audience in a way that invites closeness. Combine this with frequent references to their fanbases as "communities" and I think that YT and Twitch have developed something of a cultural illusion that TT has not yet developed (again, mostly second-hand as I no longer frequent the platform). Again, this remains to be seen, but I lean towards seeing IG as the model here: where you can have similarly frequent posts, cellphone livestreams, and videos (and now shorts). However, since IG is usually not criticized as heavily for parasocial relationships as YT and Twitch, I really think that the difference maker is the systems of address and sense of community that, at the very least, has not fully developed on TT.
Back when we only had TV, we weren't sharing videos of ourselves twerking, crying, and doing illegal, controversial, or questionable things as children with the entire world... Things are different now in many ways.
This drive to post personal content to the entire world (in order to be popular) is pretty harmful, lasts potentially forever, and can be devastating to reputation for children and even adults in years ahead...
It's addictive, based on what I've observed, mainly because of the pandemic we're experiencing... If people were actually able to go out and meet others in real life more and perform live (with less Covid risk) the deceptions on social media effectiveness and celebrity status would be more glaringly obvious... And app usage probably wouldn't be as high as it is.
The platforms have all been highly opportunistic upon captive audiences since the pandemic began, and they probably know their days are numbered I imagine.
As a relatively young person, we will be fine--changed subjectively, sure. In the vein of Heidegger: Human + TikTok = TikTokHuman. As we learned from Prohibition, artificially restricting consumer freedom never works. The market does not and should not coddle those who make choices against their interests. Addicts can change, however difficult it may be, if they so choose. On the other hand, if this line of reasoning is incorrect, then we have a serious issue with some very fundamental principles of our extant community.
China passed a law a couple of years ago requiring all Chinese companies to give the government live access to their databases. Is TikTok exempt? If not, statements that the government hasn't requested any data are misleading. They don't need to.
The FCC commissioner just point out there is no firewall between Chinese engineers from rifling through and copying all the data from the “USA based” servers. It defies belief that anyone thinks that the CCP isn't doing exactly that lol and building up dossiers on every TikTok member. For example just find all the MAGA leaning people and try to convert them over to CCP terrorist cells. I mean I'm not a CIA analyst, but this is global espionage 101
Make America Great Again conservative "China virus" people are very much not aligned with Chinese communist party terrorist cells, and I don't see how anyone could believe they are unless you mentally lump everybody you don't like into a single bucket.
Is there any type of due process for when the Chinese government accesses data? Like do they need some court order? Or can a government official just go browse the databases for fun?
USA did the same in the name of anti-terrorism, after (possibly) blowing up their own twin towers. If I were an USA citizen I rather give my information to a Chinese company than to a USA company, since at least the Chinese can't raid me if they don't like me.
TikTok is technically not a Chinese company, so it wouldn't be affected by such a law. But I haven't read the law and don't know how accurate your summary of it is. Do you have a link?
> As the first consumer-facing app from China to take off in the West, TikTok is a source of pride in Beijing. But the app’s Chinese ownership makes politicians elsewhere uneasy about its tightening grip on their citizens’ attention
If you are a major company in China you are controlled by the CCP. They may leave the day to day business to execs but they are 100% at CCP beck and call. Look at what happened to Jack when you go too far off script. CCP has full access to US Servers (yeah I know that TikTok "US" says all data is kept here.
> As in, there are apparently sub companies, that are in the US, not in china,
Sure, the US "sub companies" are located physically in the US and managed day-to-day by US-based employees but they are still owned by a Chinese parent company meaning at the end of the day, they still report to managers/executive in China and are obligated to follow directions given to them by people working for Chinese parent company. If the Chinese government cotrols the Chinese parent company then they, by definition, control the US-based company as well.
Not seeing anything about live access in there. Maybe you're referring to this?
> The written regulations that give the Ministry of Public Security the right to just “take it” are the Regulation on Internet Security Supervision and Inspection by Public Security Organs (公安机关互联网安全监督检查规定).
But the law in question http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2018/content_5343745.htm doesn't actually grant public security organs the right to just "take it" as the blog post claims. Having the authority to request on-site network security audits or do penetration tests would certainly give spies ample opportunity to find ways to exfiltrate data, but that doesn't mean they're legally allowed to do so.
I guess not many people care whether Chinese intelligence agencies spy on TikTok users legally or extralegally, but I just wanted to know whether there really was such a law. Apparently not.
I like to say that the difference between Republicans and Democrats in the US is that Republicans break the law and Democrats subvert it.
It's no wonder that the largely liberal audience of HN supports the subversion route the US takes compared to the more brutal but vastly more honest way the Chinese do it.
excellent article, surprisingly nuanced and - I think - fair in its analysis.
The main fear is not that it is a foreign owned app - after all, most people in the countries all over the world are using foreign owned (US) apps - it is because it is the first non-US app used by US citizens which unnerves both the US government and US commentariat.
Whether those fears are justified or not, I suspect US will follow the China's vision of the internet, prioritise national security concerns over freedom of choice, and ultimately ban TikTok
>The main fear is not that it is a foreign owned app - after all, most people in the countries all over the world are using foreign owned (US) apps - it is because it is the first non-US app used by US citizens which unnerves both the US government and US commentariat
As you can imagine, citizens from other countries are observing this development with great interest.
we can anticipate - maybe even observe - countries which retain something close to sovereignty make moves in this direction. China obviously, but also Modi's India, and I would also say any version of France, still have the ambition to maintain an independent line
They definitely ignore and dismiss anything made in the EU. I don't think there's been an overwhelmingly popular app that's forced them to confront the idea of most US citizens using EU software yet.
I hope that the US doesn’t ban TikTok. That would be a very bad outcome for the concept of an open internet.
I do think more regulation are likely in order. There are some very good arguments for not letting children under a certain age to be allowed on the social media platforms. However, the enforcement of those laws is spotty and is left to parental controls.
What we need is an outbreak of social media literacy among the youngest members of society. Like, this needs to be taught at school in first grade or something.
This is effectively demanding an impossible solution to a present problem.
Asking grade school children to weigh the geopolitical consequences of their cat videos is never going to happen. You’re talking about an age group which is still learning basic literacy.
The solution is regulation, we already regulate children's television programming for this exact reason.
If by "present problem" you mean, the fact that TikTok happens to have been built by a Chinese company, then I see what you mean.
Even still, for a democracy, the best protection against any potential threat is to prepare its citizens. In this case, the citizenry needs to be prepared cognitively.
Arguably, it would help, if we started early -- get them while they are young?
I don't see what other long-term things that a democracy can do.
Other than starting a war in the near-term, I suppose?
>In this case, the citizenry needs to be prepared cognitively.
This is such a pie in the sky suggestion that I'm forced to wonder if you even pay attention to US politics. To give you some context some of the biggest issues in education right now is:
1. Arming teachers with rifles
2. Dismantling the public school system and replacing them with vouchers.
The last federally mandated educational solution, No Child Left Behind, was a massive failure and has soured most future federally mandated educational policies. Asking underfunded teachers to teach 9 year olds why they shouldn't use the "funny cat app" because of complex geopolitics will end up ignored at best or lead to incredibly xenophobia at worst (Ms. Adams told me not to use TikTok because China is evil, henceforth all asians are out to trick me).
>I don't see what other long-term things that a democracy can do.
Actually enforce data privacy laws universally. Of course this will anger the Facebook/Google trillion dollar oligarchs so we are told there is nothing we can do. The crux of the issue is that US wants everyone else data (EU, Oceania, Asia) but it doesn't want other companies to do the same. Your solutions are either you ban it for hegemony reasons, and pray that Europe/India/Japan/Australia doesn't enact the same law, or you ban it for privacy reasons.
> Even still, for a democracy, the best protection against any potential threat is to prepare its citizens. In this case, the citizenry needs to be prepared cognitively.
There's no way I would trust managers, certainly, their managers to not simply regurgitate the most "CNN-friendly" curriculum imaginable. Maybe pre-2015 I would agree. US education simply isn't a trustworthy system at the moment. The threat has already arrived and the good teachers are leaving in droves.
>What we need is an outbreak of social media literacy among the youngest members of society. Like, this needs to be taught at school in first grade or something.
I use TikTok loads and I'm completely onboard with the idea that it's extremely concerning for democracy. Nuanced education doesn't help any more than it would for say, healthy eating advocacy vs fast food industry. We need carrot and stick approaches.
Imagine getting downvoted for what you just said lol. HN people can't be so out of contact with children to think they will make complex political decisions. All they want to see are funny dance and cat videos. I remember when I was a tween and early teens. All I cared about was decent grades, baseball, my crush, and my computer side jobs. I wouldn't have cared if tiktok was based in Iran as long as it entertained me.
Is that not already technically the case? It certainly is/was in the UK. And I assure you everyone was using whatever they wanted, including e.g. eBay which probably has more stringently regulated rules.
It's a lot easier to lie about your age on a Facebook sign-up form than to buy drugs or alcohol, and teens will find a way to do the latter if they want to.
Long have primary education financial and internet literacy been proposed but the pessimist in me sees a low likelihood of US-nationwide adoption of either given the polarization. Ironically due to those exact same issues.
This seems like a classic case that needs some more direct regulatory intervention.
same, I think the argument for open internet can only be made by example. However, there is no domestic political mileage in maintaining that position, vs plenty of political mileage in china bad policy making. He is out of office but we are in the trump timeline
they mention data harvesting and influencing public relations as risks, and both are worrisome . another more subtle but pernicious concern is the trivialization of entertainment (which started from a low bar )
tiktok is addictive and much of the content is low bar , slapstick and sexually suggestive thirst traps .
there may be a good share of high quality content , but we all know time spent is on garbage.
our grandparents said “tv will rot your brain” and we laughed at them, but maybe because we just didn’t notice
Imo tiktok is a bit of a mirror. Its a thirst trap for you. For the short time i used it, it quickly started centering around cute/funny pets and science explainer videos. I also doubt it would show thirst traps to the typical straight female user too too.
I hate this argument. Firstly, the content is still on the platform and can be shown to a user at any time for any reason. Over time it could influence what you watch in any way TikTok wants. Secondly, it paints the user as some kind of pervert if they fall into "thirst trap". Men like looking at women - it's not something that needs to be swept under the rug.
I think GP's point still stands. There is good content on TikTok, but given the time many users spend, the content isn't a good trade for time. Same could be said for other platforms. Tiktok/youtube worry me most since they seem to be the most addictive for kids.
fr it's scary how i watch ppl on it, they're like zombies. and yeah like half that shit is just girls "dancing" (shaking jiggly parts) in short clothes, like i mean that's fine but watching it all the time isn't healthy. look at how much is under #fakebody which is basically all people in short clothing trying not to get banned. and yeah probably you can make it show interesting stuff but it plays to people's weaker natures.
besides that literally the only reason we need to oppose tiktok is that it's chinese. i'm fine with them manufacturing commodity goods but they should not be providing any cutting-edge tech to us. personally i would like to see the government try to subpoena the tiktok algo from oracle and make it public so anybody can knock it off. that would be some poetic justice against china.
It's pretty ironic how a large swath of the public decided it was the right thing to ban anything that's Russian, but somehow it's a no-no to be opposed to an app because it's from the PRC. Not saying that necessarily means that no one should use any Chinese apps, but those against anything Russian really ought not to come to the defense of the PRC.
This comment follows a pattern common in other comments criticising TikTok - the person says “this content I saw isn’t very good. Why would anyone spend their time watching X?”
> sexually suggestive thirst traps
Not realising that only they (and people with similar tastes) are seeing X. And it says more about them than it does about TikTok.
There’s plenty of room for thoughtful critique of TikTok and it’s current/potential impact on society - but this ain’t it. The original article by the economist is much closer.
Yeah people who complain about Tik Tok being filled with X bad thing are spending their time engaging with X bad thing. There's A LOT of really good content on Tik Tok.
I’ll go one better than that. I’ve never installed TikTok, nor have I checked out someone else’s phone with TikTok one it. I couldn’t tell you what the UI looks like even if you put a gun to my head.
So no, we’re all not on there checking out soft porn.
What's your definition of alright, and what have you done to check?
If it's the kind of check where you look around, and see that the world goes by - then the same "everyone's doing alright" could be said to dismiss all of history's horrors so far.
> More likely you are seeing that content because something indicates to the algorithm that you like such content. Very bluntly, you are most likely telling on yourself right now.
This is true for literally every giant app/site. Is it "telling" that everyone thinks Youtube is full of conspiracy theory videos? Or that Twitter is a cesspool of outrageous political commentary? Of course you can shield yourself from it somewhat, and maybe the biggest accounts are not cesspools at all (Cristiano Ronaldo or whatever). The point remains that the content is low-level and the algorithm encourages engagement by the lowest common denominator.
> Is it "telling" that everyone thinks Youtube is full of conspiracy theory videos? Or that Twitter is a cesspool of outrageous political commentary?
Especially with those two, yes, what you are recommended and who you subscribe to or follow is heavily in your hands. Stop interacting with the content you so much despise. It's not even "shield yourself from it somewhat", you can totally avoid such content. It's very much telling me more about the person than the platform, if they're logged in.
However, without logging in YouTube does tend to suggest the most popular content in the region, but in the US that's mostly just bad prank channels, pop music and some major US news channels.
Not sure why this is downvoted--that's basically exactly how the app picks videos for you to watch. YOU click on things or linger on them; the AI remembers and shows you more.
most popular means most concentrated not highest volume . thirst traps are taking up the most time in aggregate but there’s a massive supply diffusing the audience , hence they don’t surpass khaby lame
There is lot of good content creators on TikTok apart from (dancing/singing) ones, the TechTok community is huge , It really depends on what interest the end users have, It's all individual attention driven algorithm that caters to the end user needs based on their likes/dislikes. It's faster to learn if you don't like something it does a good job in not recommending those type of content again. Which I believe Instagram/youtube isn't that great at.
It's hypertailored compared to YouTube and the likes. When people complain about the content they see, be it terrible DIY hacks or something more bizarre, I can't help but wonder what they've done that TikTok recommends such content to them. After dropping a few hints that it's very tailored a few have gotten a bit embarrassed and stopped complaining.
Interestingly it also separates a lot of the users from the rest, people call them [thing]-toks and crossovers aren't very welcome. Kinda like subreddits, but algorithmic.
This has been my experience--once and awhile a new topic will start showing up in my feed, say 1%'r motorcycle clubs or peanut-butter-whisky drinkers. All it takes is a couple "not interested" clicks and poof, back to people showing off vintage computers and HAM radio videos.
> To that end, sometimes you may come across a video in your feed that doesn't appear to be relevant to your expressed interests or have amassed a huge number of likes.
> By offering different videos from time to time, the system is also able to get a better sense of what's popular among a wider range of audiences to help provide other TikTok users a great experience, too. Our goal is to find balance between suggesting content that's relevant to you while also helping you find content and creators that encourage you to explore experiences you might not otherwise see.
The underlying narrative here that most people do not grasp is that each user's experience is different than ours, and their preferences are different too.
If someone else is complaining about their experience, we shouldn't be dismissive of it, it could easily be a real concern based on dark patterns the platform leverages.
For example, the platform can amplify triggering content to someone who exhibits schizophrenic traits, or it can show self harming or depressing content to someone who exhibits bipolar traits.
It's harmful to assume algorithms can't be implemented without flaws, agenda, and human bias... Actually it's willfully ignorant to think that anything inherently made by humans can be made without flaws and bias.
A lot of concerns are focusing on (person) -> (tiktok) -> (CCP) data flow.
What about the reverse information flow?
A foreign political party tuning the algorithm to affect public opinions? I think this is even more impactful than data snooping. It's also a lot harder to detect and prevent.
> TikTok’s growing role as a news platform has sparked fears that, in the words of Ted Cruz, an American senator, it is “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist Party can use to influence what Americans see, hear and ultimately think”.
So many videos are just reaction videos, or doing trends which are the same concept (e.g. a dance, or challenge) just by different people. There's so much reptition, lots of creators that keep doing the same shtick because that's what gets them views. But it's so much worse than something like youtube where it's something that has to be condensed into a few seconds so it's all very superficial.
There's a significant amount of original content on TikTok, so I'm not sure what you've seen exactly, but you might want to scroll past those to see less of them.
85% of US teenagers use tiktok. That's 85% of the future generation of US senators, Cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices, of police chiefs, civil rights activists, mayors, CEOs, etc. in their bedrooms right now consuming content curated by, and filming their lives and that of their friends, and uploading the video to data centers, that are controlled by a strategic adversary of the United States. This is, to put it lightly, a huge national security risk.
A world where we want $29 microwaves and iPhones produced 24/7 and delivered to our doorstep. People in America need China in order to keep living the lives we have.
I'm not so sure that is really true anymore. I think that was the case in the past, when most manufacturing was very labor intensive. But now, so much is automated that things could be made anywhere for almost as cheap. Unfortunately, the US doesn't really have the infrastructure and capabilities to do so now.
A long time ago it was about labour costs but that isn't been true for over 2 decades. manufacturing anywhere outside of China can't compete with China anymore because of critical mass of supply chain. You should visit Shenzen and you will quickly understand why there is no place in the world like it and why there probably never will be.
Hearing that people think you can 'just' replicate Shenzen somewhere else makes me giggle.
Unfortunately for the US it also goes for batteries and other green energy tech that the US turned their back on in favour of oil these past decades. You can't just replicate Xinjiang polysilicon production, without which we can't have PV solar cells, also primarily made in China. CATL is probably the largest manufacturer of EV class batteries in the world. China makes more EVs than the rest of the world many times over, etc.
Now they are also leading in nuclear, rolling out 200GW of next-gen reactors, they have their own fusion experiments.
They have been leading in AI research for the last 10+ years.
The days of China being cheaper are long long gone. You go to China because you can get access to talent, work ethic and optimised supply chain + logistics that can't be bought anywhere else on earth for any price.
That dominance isn't going to be easily displaced because it's the product of decades of investment and R&D.
> If china is a rival to the US, why do they have one of the most favorable trade deals?
I don't have an answer for you, but when you rephrase the point you're getting at it's easy to see there are plenty of valid reasons, because this is not true:
> There are no reasons for the US to give a favorable trade deal to a country that is otherwise a rival
You claim you don’t have an answer, but then state that by simple rephrasing the answer is obvious?
Can you specify a specific reason? There are historic examples of trade deals made for this reason such as with the Soviet Union or communist china. However I cannot think of an example where a country has given unilaterally favorable trade terms to a rival except out of fealty/tribute.
One of these countries spent a century preaching to the world the benefits of free trade, the other ridding itself of the capitalist class. So the issue from the point of view of the rest of the world is that the US should practice what they preach even in the one case where that would mean allowing some mild competition to their massive and insanely profitable internet monopolies.
US rules the world through a liberal voting political propaganda; a rule-based capitalism market economy; a USD denominated financial structure.
Sure, US blocked Huawei through rule of law; and you think China has no laws to block FB & Google? But behind the cloak of laws regulations, the intention of mutual exclusion is pure and same, nothing different.
> 85% of US teenagers use tiktok. That's 85% of the future generation of US senators, Cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices, of police chiefs, civil rights activists, mayors, CEOs, etc.
What's the basis of social elites are coming uniformly from the population?
I think it's obvious that the social elites in all areas are predominantly from wealthy and affluent families. So the line of thinking of 85% teens corresponding to 85% or some number close elites, is baseless at best, and misleading at worst.
I feel like the 15% that do not use TikTok are more likely to be from lower class or impoverished families. Likely because they have limited access to smartphones or electronics of their own.
I’m sure there are “elite” families who strictly forbid their children from using social media, but I suspect this population is very low. In my own anecdotal experience, the most affluent teens had the most access to drugs and things our parents forbade us from having.
Is there reason to believe that the elite use TikTok at disproportionally lower rates than the rest of the population? If anything, it's probably higher.
I do agree about the risk and that cuts both ways, it's why EU and Russia and other countries are taking some precautions about the US companies and govt access to their citizens data.
On the other hand, TikTok is a result of the stagnant US-made social media platforms. TikTok did innovate and gained its market share fair and square.
As I said it multiple times before, I hope US takes the EU approach, that is, regulating the data access and not the Chinese approach of banning.
US is facing this issue for the first time and it is a touchy topic. But please consider the implications, what happens if each political block chooses the banning/blocking approach? Do you want to live in a world with each country having its own separate internet?
A lot of people are quick to rise the pitchforks and believe in the US superiority but ironically they demand government solution upon free market failure. I was genuinely scared about the future of the internet when the Trump admin tried to force acquisition by US tech giant or App Store ban over TikTok. What a relief when it failed.
And where is Vine now? Nothing is blank sheet new, everything is building on top of something and iterates and the truth is, when the US-made social media consolidated on politics and glamour photos TikTok came up with something fun and creative and apparently people love it.
I think the danger is way more in the addictive part.
It is al interessting, and the users are a nice research group.
But here in the Netherlands, 25% of the young people have the chance to become illiterate (yes become, reading/writing/communication skills dropping after primary and/or high school),
part of it is the mobile phone, part of it social status and background.
National security is the sum total of the individual earned securities
of each citizen, no more or less.
The distortion occurs when "national security" becomes the interests
of a business elite, or a political party, or the job security of the
security services themselves. We lose focus about what "security"
really is.
I agree with your point (as I understand it), but to my knowledge
there isn't and never has been a division of national apparatus
dedicated to defence of culture, national values, and the sanity of
our children from insidious foreign propaganda. And as for direct
counter-propaganda we are not allowed to direct psyops internally, at
least not with a taxpayer's dollar.
The "disappearance of the perimeter", as understood through the lens
of the Huawei debacle is an example of how fast this has materialised
and ambushed us in the social media age. But to be honest, I see the
same problems with Facebook or US companies filtering and amplifying
values.
There isn't an easy answer. There are not enough human resources.
There is very little common agreement. Nobody wants to open that can
of worms. Doing so would mean going up against powerful businesses and
I don't think the IC has the stomach for it or can adapt to the
changing threats fast enough.
So we just keep pretending "national security" is limited to
industrial espionage by the Chinese or hacking by the Russians and so
on.
That's why I think individual Digital Self Defence via education is
the only option. It needs baking into the curriculum for age 6
upwards.
It’s possible that the first generations who read Ulysses were worse off than the ones before—who thought Ulysses was harmful—but still better than the generations now, who don’t read much at all. If today’s next generation spent their time reading literature that was considered obscene 100 years ago, I think we’d all agree they’d be better off than spending 3 hours a day scrolling.
But that knife cuts both ways; usage numbers for YouTube internationally are I presume quite similar, and that is content curated by a US company in US datacenters &c.
You cannot have an open free global internet without having it be the case that people will use foreign services. If you do not think that's worth the tradeoff then state clearly what you want: for the internet to be cut up into disjointed silos along geopolitical lines.
> 85% of US teenagers use tiktok. That's 85% of the future generation of US senators, Cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices, of police chiefs, civil rights activists, mayors, CEOs, etc
Are we really sure this follows (even if the numbers are correct)?
This might sound like a fallacious argument; but do you think the same about Europeans who consume almost exclusively US media and interact almost exclusively with US social media platforms?
The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances.
If you're discussing ties to government, Twitter and Facebook have members on their boards publicly who are sitting and/or former members of government including, at least in facebooks case: Robert Kimmitt (who was United States Ambassador to Germany from 1991 to 1993, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1989 to 1991, General Counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1985 to 1987, and National Security Council Executive Secretary and General Counsel from 1983 to 1985).
Is it different rules for us in Europe? or are you suggesting that we should never have allowed this to happen?
tl;dr: Why is US/China much different from EU/US or US/Japan (whom also makes a resounding impact on our technology and strongly affects our culture in the west).
Europeans are free to quantify the threat which the US poses to European geopolitical concerns, and many European countries have decided to avoid AWS for such reasons.
The US, similarly, ought be free to feel that EU is not the same as China, and allow a different economic relationship with the EU than with China. The US is currently amicable with the EU and is thus willing to treat the EU very differently than with China.
> The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances.
Far from me to defend American imperialism, but this is not true, is it? The USA has a decent list of long standing alliances, that include a variety of countries: Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, South Korea, among others.
By that pessimistic definition, no country can really ever have allies.
The US has a number of nations with which its interests have long aligned with, and are likely to continue to, and are formalized via treaty. I’m ok with calling those alliances.
That might be a perspective, but it feels weird to say it the way Kissinger does if it doesn’t elude to something deeper.
For example: There could be war between Finland and Sweden, but it’s fair to call them allies, in this day and age, they are friends… friends can still fall out. I know he says permanent friends, but permanence in friendship is simply the act of not sabotaging it.
In the same way it might be fair to call the US and Canada allies, but given that the US has been considerably more hostile to the EU, even spying on politicians, I think the quote is more telling than you believe.
A man who is widely reviled by a decent chunk of American population. One of the few issues that both parties and independents agree on is how terrible and damaging this person was.
Am I missing where this is quoted from, or is it like many other quotes where it could be attributed to the person, but nobody really knows?
Edit: if I'm reading right, it seems to be a quote from Dinesh D'Souza's book "What's so great about America" quoted by Henry Kissinger in his book "The White House Years"
The US is actively NOT doing what Kissinger thinks, in current geopolitical affairs. He doesn't speak for the country and hasn't had an active role in its actions for 45 years.
You're right, and that list also includes European countries like France. You're just quoting a bad actor, no way that he ever opened a history book about the subject.
The US interference and surveillance in the EU is well-documented and at a massive scale. The Chinese ditto is much smaller though the media attention much bigger.
Hopefully non-US tech finally will lead to reasonable regulation: Storage of citizen's data on national ground and protection against arbitrary surveillance by foreign governments whether perceived friend or for.
Unfortunately the push to simply ban anything Chinese is strong as it has massive commercial interest of old US-tech (Facebook, Google) behind it. But it is not in our (Europeans) interest and I hope our politicians can resist.
> The US interference and surveillance in the EU is well-documented and at a massive scale. The Chinese ditto is much smaller though the media attention much bigger.
Why do you think that's the case? Aside from the trade-war that's going on, which is pretty arbirary;
The US has routinely spied on Europe, allowed backdoored technology to make it's way into the continent including to spy on government officials from another sovereign (allegedly allied) nation.
It's hard for me not to draw direct comparisons, because other than the surface level of "everything's fine, we have a common culture and we're all white" - I don't see them as being much different.
Of course you're right, they're not the same, we don't see them the same. But China has arguably done less to the US than the US has done to the EU.
At enormous expense the US rebuilt Europe (Marshall plan), protected it from Soviet Encroachment (and is still doing so to this day, apparently), and is above all reciprocal with Europe in a way that China is not.
Facebook is not banned in Europe. Spotify is not banned in America. Both are banned in China. On that basis alone both entities have ample cause to limit China's influence in their own domestic spheres.
EU and US are both fundamentally liberal democracies and not adversarial. China is an authoritarian single party state which openly declares the US an enemy...
No, two parties representing largely the same lobbyists and sharing largely the same views are not "night and day" compared to one party. I'd go as far as to say they are exactly the same, except for pretending there's some actual, working opposition.
We won't really find out until there's a big European social media platform or whatever - I agree with you it's weird, but the obvious response (and you've received it) is along the lines of conjecturing that they wouldn't worry about UK-Tok, Têtebook, or Deutschezon. Maybe that's right. It'd be fun to find out. (Also for other reasons, come on, what's going on that there isn't really even one to name?)
There have been international competitors in key US industries for decades. The most that’s occurred has been bailouts of US heavy industry such as cars. Examples include Toyota, Ericsson, Sony, Hyundai, VW etc.
When there are reciprocal markets between countries with similar approaches to government and law, there isn’t much of a problem. When one country adds tariffs, the other usually just matches them.
Of course but I'm talking about more consumer-facing (and.. 'interactive' in a way car manufacturers aren't) companies, social media, etc.
Closest I can think of are Ocado and Monzo, neither of which (especially the latter) are big enough to compare yet. Perhaps Just Eat (UberEats competitor) too which recently announced US partnership with Amazon. (Veering off-topic here but I've long been surprised that Deliveroo hasn't massively expanded globally? That's the dominant one in London at least, and very quickly ate Just Eat's lunch, which long predated it.)
The majority of the time something successful comes out of the EU, the US buys it wholesale.
Skype, Shazam, iZettle, Mojang etc
I’m not sure it would be different for social networks. (similar to how the match group owns practically all the dating sites and apps; interestingly I just found out that the match group refused to pull out of Russia.)
>This might sound like a fallacious argument; but do you think the same about Europeans who consume almost exclusively US media and interact almost exclusively with US social media platforms?
i'm not OP, but yes.
>Is it different rules for us in Europe? or are you suggesting that we should never have allowed this to happen?
this should never have been allowed to happen.
the mass collection and storage of video, audio, location data, public and private messages, browsing history, topics of interest, sentiments and mood, social graphs, menstrual status, political leanings, and so on, is a travesty. it is an unprecedented and powerful invasion of personal privacy, and it's happening to every online adult and child around the world, and there is essentially no way to opt out, and no expectation that the collected data will ever be deleted.
if it only scares you when china does it, something's weird.
"The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances."
What? Are you a troll or just a cpp bot?
NATO is an alliance, and also the US has many other defense pacts. (AUS, and more). Those are not temporary allegiances (if you call 70 years 'temporary' then you are either trolling or just delusional).
The US feels too incompetent to try to manipulate other countries and it feels more like they have a bad culture and they export it to European countries (where kids in half broken and sad schools dream of partying in cool fraternities).
China, on the other hand, sounds perfectly capable and willing of manipulating our society to make it weak and broken, while at the same time forbidding the same content in their land.
I'd argue it even predates tiktok and it could explain why media and politicians are so much worse than 30 years ago.
The other explanation is that we got complacent, and all great empires need generational weakness before collapsing.
Not the person you are asking, but I think I have a point that can help shed some light on the matter. I'm going to be speaking from the Canadian side of things, and so I'll be saying 'We' a lot due to the US and Canada tending to trade alike in a lot of ways AFAIK.
Ultimately, it all boils down to known trajectories. The EU and other places in the general area such as the UK, are all known to have histories of their own no doubt. Not just good histories, but bad as well. We trade with Germany, despite WWII. We trade with middle eastern countries, despite having many beliefs and ideologies and laws that are not exactly loved by all to put it lightly. We trade with even out economic adversaries because why not. Cheap labor, etc.
In all of these cases where we trade with any one of these places that someone could make some argument or another that they would be undesirable trade partners for; the future trajectory of that nation is what is the key point of where the decision is based off of to keep trading, or go with sanctions, etc and so forth.
The key to understanding this as I do, is the basis of Canada still trading with China when USA decides not to, or to restrict trade, etc and so forth. This is because our government for the past while now has decided that they wanted to help China get out of its economic slump from the past decades. And so of course since America tends to be a bit hawkish around working with communism in any form, while Canada has more socialist roots established; we tend to be more willing to work with such nations than America tends to. (And this absolutely sometimes pisses them off, government wise so to speak. And the nationalist types...)
Now in the past, most of this would have been water under the bridge, and nothing to be concerned about. Trade is trade, nothing more, nothing less; usually.
But with the advent of all of this digital revolution we are going through, and politics being stuck into everything that has a usable screen; the end result is stuff like this where countries with histories of X thing that Y government doesn't like automatically get extra scrutinized.
Especially when those countries have active militaries that support that kind of regime in said country. Doubly so when that country is in support of those militaries. One might say militia instead, but I fail to see the difference once they own navy vessels. I think this should be a fair opinion on the matter.
Anyways, right or wrong on the military/militia part as I may be, the end point is that we are seeing a rise in more extreme behavior in that country, in this case China and Russia lately; and so it only makes sense to be even more scrutinizing of anything to do with them.
Literally anything, since again; politics is in everything now.
Even us in Canada are starting to pull back from China, even though we are doing it at a slower rate. Our government is trying very hard to basically only enact these kinds of retracting changes only when it is going to hurt their future election outlook the least; or hurts their opponents outlook the most.
As for an example of this in action; Huawei 5G networks are effectively banned in Canada now. It took a while to come into fruition, but it finally happened. Whether or not they were right or wrong to do so is not my hill to fight on right now, but it is a great example of them biding their time til the last moment.
Huh, a single guy having all the power and changing the fundamental rules of the game (aka constitution or however it's called in China)? Not a red flag?
If it was democratic, disagreeing with the government wouldn't send you to jail. Try walking in Shanghai with a sign saying "the government is corrupt" and see how long you last.
As for the quotes - according to Chinese their system is democratic. According to Americans theirs is. From my European point of view both are somewhat flawed democracies, China because despite advancing surprisingly quickly they are not there yet when it comes to transparency and human rights, and US because its political system is essentially just institutionalized corruption. That and indirect voting.
Yes it's normal for the police to ensure a demonstration goes peacefully. It is a fundamental right in many countries to demonstrate. In China it is not. What country do _you_ leave in, where demonstrating is not allowed?
1. Public legal process for data requests
2. Now that I think about it, there are no requests for data at all (they don't have to ask, it's just given)
3. Ability for any Chinese company to say no to gov requests
Surely you don't view these circumstances as the same?
Strawpoll literally any sample of people in the world if they've heard of VoA, indeed, have ever listened to the radio. Now do the same for TikTok…
You could maybe make a better case for something like Western cultural exports like music and movies. e.g. Like The Beatles with impressive centralised data gathering. Marvel movies, but more addictive.
So here’s my tinfoil hat theory. When I watch Tik Tok (and I am fully aware my feed is different from others), I become genuinely happy. I see people singing, creating music together via duets, showing homesteading skills, teaching things they know, telling funny jokes, etc. I never see dangerous challenges, though I am not a teen. Here’s the tinfoil hat theory: Tik Tok is what social media was meant to be, but unlike American social media giants that made their deal with the devil and drive growth via separating and polarizing people, Tik Tok makes people feel like the world isn’t a scary awful place with “them vs us” mentality, and so it poses a threat to our political culture which feeds off division.
All I know is that when I go on Facebook I just see angry boomers being quasi political, when I go on Instagram I am filled with envy, when I go on twitter I feel overwhelmed by the sheer flood of information and vileness, and when I go on Tik Tok I feel happy and a new ambition to pick up the guitar again.
I agree that my experience with FB/Twitter vs. TikTok is as you describe. I'm not sure that our political leadership understands how social media work well enough to see what you're describing.
I do think that they are angsty about a foreign government having control over a major social network. Imagine if a partially Chinese-owned company had to make the call of whether or not to ban the account of a sitting US President, for example. Plus, I have zero doubt that the US government requires Microsoft, Facebook, and other US tech companies to give them access to data in extremis, and there's no reason for the US gov't to expect China not to.
TikTok is the only social media app I use anymore. I didn’t even change my default ‘user12345’ account nor have I linked anything to it. I also consume it differently than I used to do the others, by going maybe once per week or two and binge for a couple of hours. It fills me with joy and ideas just as you say.
Me too. I haven't used Facebook since 2010, Twitter since 2016, and I recently closed out my Instagram after using it since 2012ish. Tiktok has almost zero of my info besides my email address, a few videos I've uploaded, and my watching preferences. I'm actually fine with data collection on the location/watching habits/likes--it gives me more relevant content.
This is a valid point. I am not the poster you are responding to but the top level poster. I too don’t follow people I know and perhaps that’s the difference from the social platforms. In that regard it is more like YouTube, but unlike YouTube, the algorithm isn’t radicalizing me other than making me want to learn guitar again.
So what is it about YouTube that makes people more likely to become radical incels willing to shoot up a school, and TikTok makes people more like to learn a new dance routine and leave with a smile?
I am not linked in the sense of my having provided only minimal information. I do follow people, of course; however, the fun part of TikTok is the random awesome people that pop up.
You can be a nobody in the middle of nowhere with no followers and if you have a cool concept it will spread out.
Urbanism TikTok comment sections are the absolute worst out of all the apps. Completely made up economics on a level that surpasses FB and I just can't believe how many tankies are in there. The algorithm is the perfect soap to blow filter bubbles with.
Crazy but Twitter has better content when it comes to bike lanes.
Tiktok is an extention of lessons learned by Douyin - content that survives crucibles of PRC censorship are wholesome, not divisive (promotes political serenity) and hits the dopamine button just as hard. And if Douyin ecommerce integration is any sign, also wildly profitable. TBH, PRC has absolutely been precient on web moderation in general, i.e. facebook and twitter got the boot when they refused to censor calls of violence post 2009 minority riots. A few years later, western platforms forced to up the moderation game due to violence in the west, incidentally when they tried to get back into PRC market. After building (filtering (read: censorship) tools for western markets that can be transplanted to satisfy PRC legal requirements. Some lessons to learn even if US decides to ban TikTok, don't have to go full douyin/PRC, but going full facebook/twitter/free speech hasn't worked so well either.
There are some very vile areas of tiktok with white supremacy and lgbqt+ hate and those are as easy to get to as dance videos of chinese algorithm designers see that you're watched one of those, or just randomly throw one up in front of you and see if you immediately kill it or watch it all the way through. This isn't rocket science level of propaganda/and brainwashing.
I completely agree. Another thing I like is that Tiktok is also nearly completely anonymous. I don't see anyone I know on there, showing me their stupid kid videos or telling me about the latest thing they just bought. I see OTHER PEOPLE's kid videos and things they bought and if I don't want to see them, I just scroll on.
US social media amplifies human nature which isn't pretty. Meanwhile CCP's love to building facades of utopias produces this... Utopias are nice till you step out of line and it becomes dystopia, eh?
> US social media amplifies human nature which isn't pretty.
If you only consume western media and social networks, this is certainly the conclusion you are led to. But if you observe your surroundings with your own eyes, my experience is that there is a stark contrast with the above quote. I have travelled continuously all over the west for the last five years and I have found people to be kind, generous, and friendly.
There’s money and power in dividing people. I don’t think we are as divided as the news media and social networks would have us believe.
Majority of people ain't on social media either. Well, they may be lurking or registered at most, but won't post or comment much if at all.
And then there's a portion of nice people who will befriend you and then use for their benefit.
And then there's one's own bias. When traveling, at a random city in foreign country you'll probably pick a bar accordingly, skip heated topics and distance yourself from people that may cause trouble. Meanwhile engagement-driven interwebs make sure you meet such people and keep discussing.
About ready to leave Hacker News with all the anti-globalist and anti-decentralist sentiment I've been seeing.
Valid arguments are grayed out and the top comment is an unfounded "TikTok is the most successful espionage operation of the 21st century". Looks like HN can't break out of its own bubble.
There’s a lot of political chat on this thread, and usually geopolitical discussions seem to bifurcate into two falsehoods amongst nerds.
The first group seem to be missing the terrible things the US has done to the world. It has had unrivalled military and economic dominance for the best part of a century and it has abused that power. Whether that’s invading countries, organising coups, killing foreign citizens in large numbers via CIA operations, etc etc, America has shown little restraint. I think often folks are not aware of this, because (a) a lot of America’s imperialism doesn’t get much news coverage in the west and (b) the victim countries are often not very interesting or significant to that audience. Only the really obvious events like Iraq get flagged.
And on the other side, there is this tendency to demonise America and defend other countries in order to criticise America. So, ignoring the realities of what China and Russia have done to other countries and their own people. I mean, just look at the eastern block communist countries, or what is going on in Ukraine now, to see how Russia operates. I’m less knowledgeable about China but internally the government has tried to unite the country by eliminating all types of diversity in very disturbing Orwellian ways. Externally it hasn’t found its military feet quite yet, but we can see the use of soft power to cripple countries in a way not dissimilar to western imperialism.
I think what does bother me is that either viewpoint is very black and white, very simplified, and ignores the positive things that those countries do achieve. The truth is the world is complex, it’s a mixed bag, and “America is great” or “America is pure evil” are viewpoints that lack any sense of nuance. I mean, America is not one president or one set of staff or one institution. Its government is multifaceted and can be in public disagreement with itself.
I think the big issue with America is the influence of corporate power, the way capital interacts with democracy, that’s its biggest sin when it comes to geopolitics, that’s where to focus your anger and inquiry.
The fact is that TikTok is currently superior to other apps in terms of user engagement. As a consumer, I understand that a business simply exists to generate profit, and while I can and do benefit from this pursuit of profit, our relationship remains adversarial; consequently, my allegiance is mercenary. TikTok is the best product, so I use it.
I wonder why U.S. firms pay U.S. senators to loosen data privacy laws, such that they can compete with TikTok. U.S. firms seem to think that the cost changing privacy laws is greater than the cost of paying news outlets to turn public opinion against a business rival.
> All this disruption is healthy in a market long thought uncompetitive.
The US market for one, is so tilted in favor of established firms that use their market positions to build moats and buy or crush any upstart competitors and focus all their on attention on lobbying and rent seeking behaviors that the only place for legitimate contenders to appear is from places like China where American firms can't just buy them out of existence.
I'd be in favor of banning TikTok just so I don't have to see those mind-annihilatingly stupid ads for it on YouTube anymore. And before people comment, I'm seeing ads because I like using the YouTube mobile app.
If you're on iOS there are a few "open source" tweaked YouTube ipa's you can sideload. The one I use has adblocking, Premium-free background playing, SponsorBlock and actual mp4 downloading built in. If you have an Apple Developer account, you can sign it once a year. If not, there ways of automating the weekly resigning (look up altstore).
A lot of the other Chinese apps were clones. TikTock was a novel improvement to the crap of Twitter and Facebook, etc. And it's algo is(was?) very "good"
One has to wonder why none of the big USA based players don't have as good product? From what I have heard there isn't really anything special with the app itself. Ofc, it has reached the critical mass in creators, but it was there for taking...
Youtube has built shorts (youtube tiktok competitor), and according to Google it has more users now than tiktok [0] even though it's been launched in September 2020. It contains tons of reposts of tiktok videos, sometimes legal ones by the original creators, sometimes uploads by third parties.
That being said, I would take that claim with a big grain of salt, for multiple reasons. First you need to look at the relevant generation where tiktok is strong, whether youtube can break that monopoly. Also, it's fairly easy to make existing youtube users "try out" shorts via an in app pop up, and then mark that down as successful use of the feature. If your app has enough users, you can reach relevant usage counts easily, even though none of the users are there for the shorts feature only.
Also, what matters with social apps like these is also not just the content consumption but whether friend groups etc. are communicating on that app or another one. This has extremely strong network effects that are hard to break.
The shorts browser UI is a clone of the tiktok UI. I don't really like either, they could have innovated at least a little by introducing more powerful video controls like the seeking shortkeys that work on youtube for example.
But it wasn't built to appeal me (or you), but other parts of the population, people who prefer tiktok like experiences.
For me personally, the reason to use shorts every now and then is because tiktok is authwalled while shorts is not. But I don't know what other users of shorts would say why they prefer it.
Because TikTok has so far kept its strongly algorithmically tailored content to retain users, instead of optimising for more ad minutes like YouTube or Facebook.
YouTube could be just as good, even without shorts, if it actually gave people what they want instead of what makes YT the absolute maximum amount of money over.
I”m open to good-faith criticism of TikTok, but “our authoritarians don’t like an app controlled by their authoritarians” isn’t particularly compelling.
It's ironic you even mention abortion, given that abortions were forced to maintain the one child policy until 2015, and then 3 child policy until 2021. Is not the government's absolute power to control family size the most blaring example of authoritarianism?
Officially there was only the massive financial incentive. However local officials also had financial incentives to keep birth rates low in their areas, and many of them resorted to more direct coercion, which is widely thought to have been a not entirely unintended consequence.
If you are given a choice between financial fine or abortion, and there's nothing you realistically can do to afford the fine, wouldn't you say the abortion is forced?
The police in China doesn't kill with guns. It kills by preventing people from demanding better healthcare.
The same goes for incarceration. In US 3M people can't use Internet due to being incarcerated, but in China more than 1.5B have significant restrictions. (This is just an example for the idea of total restricted freedom)
> The same goes for incarceration. In US 3M people can't use Internet due to being incarcerated, but in China more than 1.5B have significant restrictions. (This is just an example for the idea of total restricted freedom)
All countries have restricted interactions on the internet. Go ahead and google how to make a pressure cooker bomb and see how long you have a job after the secret service starts asking your employer questions about you, or download some songs and get sued 150k per song by the RIAA.
Given the head start by foreign countries and the radical nature of the internet (totally different way to communicate) some caution and restrictions probably aren't out of order.
As I mentioned below, your first link is poorly sourced.
As for your second one, your attempt to claim the restrictions are similar is going into wrong ears here. Both the cooker claim and the songs claim are laughable.
Look if you disagree that china is more authoritarian, then I would encourage you to go there, and make a large amount of public statements making fun of their leaders, or saying that Taiwan in a country, (while in china). And to do it in a public and viral way, and see how it works out for you.
It can't be used alone, but invasion or not destroying the lives of dozens of millions of people violently for marginal gain is authoritarian and it's the essence of the problem with authoritarianism.
I don't really get why people imply that these two are somehow disconnected.
A global superpower that systematically employs military agression to impose its will somewhere far away around the globe is definitely authoritarian. Even if it had managed to create a convincing brand of democracy benifiting only, like, 5% of global population.
Because those events specifically are not connected to authoritarianism - and more generally military might is not is not authoritarian at least not directly. We’re talking how governments govern, not their ability to project power.
EG - North Korea is the most authoritarian state in the world but we haven’t seen them “invade” anyone “in the last 20 years”. The two are not directly related.
I didn’t say they were equally authoritarian. But if you’re more concerned about TikTok’s corrosive effect on American democracy than Donald Trump’s and Ted Cruz’s, I’m not sure what to say.
No one here said that TikTok is more corrosive than Trump or Cruz, and you're the only one who brought up democracy. Speaking of the latter, even a purely democratic society can be authoritarian.
“TikTok’s growing role as a news platform has sparked fears that, in the words of Ted Cruz, an American senator, it is “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist Party can use to influence what Americans see, hear and ultimately think”.
Maybe you have the opinion that Ted Cruz's policy is corrosive to democracy (however you define that) and more so than that of TikTok, but neither the article nor anyone in the thread suggested anything contrary. The article is remarkably neutral, considering it's from the Economist. So what is your point? That no one should be concerned about TikTok until the eternal evil of the Republican party has been thoroughly addressed?
I'm not a fan of china controlling such a popular app, but at the same time, I don't see how it could be a security risk. I guess in the same way fake news and deceptive political advertising was used on Facebook to elect Trump, for example?
I'm really puzzled by how the US believes in free speech, but when speech comes from another country, it's a security risk. Now I totally get that China can use propaganda for "bad ideologies", but again, isn't propaganda part of free speech?
What this whole thing reveals, is that US likes to influence other countries (with its long history of foreign policy), but is afraid to be influenced by others, so it's a bit hypocritical.
And if it's not hypocritical, it's fair game at worst.
I don't mean to suggest there is a hot war, but more of a propaganda war so they can take the US down without a physical war.
China sees the US as a threat and has been attempting to undermine the US at every turn. Many Chinese students in the US basically become spies due to the threats against their families. The Chinese government has been propagandising people in the US with Confucius Institutes. A Chinese spy was sleeping with a US house member and another was on a US senator's team. I'm sure there are more cases than just these two as well.
They are infiltrating the US to destroy us from within so they don't need a hot war. People in the US either don't know or don't care.
As for exporting goods to the US. With cheap labor it hollows out the middle class in the US. We used to have good paying jobs for non college educated people but those jobs were offshored to China. This weakens the general population and causes increased drug use and other actions of despair. By continuing to send us goods they are keeping the US restricted in what they can do. If China blocked exports it would devastate the US economy.
It’s a subversive platform. It quickly profiles someone and begins serving them mind-altering content. Content which will change someone’s perception, behaviour and world-view. Part of its power is our new belief in the transcendental nature of ‘the algorithm’. People believe they ‘should’ be viewing the content that TikTok serves to them, so the messages in the content are more potent.
When you put this limbic weapon in the hands of a communist regime, incredibly bad things will happen. Facebook at least had some backlash over manipulating their users mood using their platform. It’s not hard to imagine China attempting some fairly subversive things with TikTok. I would never sign up for it.
Your first paragraph describes Instagram's algorithmic feed or YouTube suggestions just as well. The original sin IMHO is not killing algorithmic feeds in the crib with regulation. I don't get how companies can continue to claim immunity from liability under section 230 when they actively curate user feeds to maximize their commercial interests.
From the economic point of view TikTok's arrival is more than welcome so Meta's and Alphabet's dominance of digital ad market can be challenged but looking it from US national security point of view it is a disaster. Thanks Jack Dorsey for destroying Vine, now you can let Elon Musk destroy Twitter and your job will be done. Adios Amigo!
Hard to believe that the US government just doesn't cut them off unless they sever all ties with China. Again Trump was a garbage President and dumpster fire of a human being, but he definitely got that right. It's a national security matter at this point.
