TikTok: Is this a national security scare or is something else going on?(theregister.com)
theregister.com
TikTok: Is this a national security scare or is something else going on?
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/30/tiktok_ban_register_kettle/
28 comments
> If TikTok goes away, something else will replace it
And it'll be way worse. They'll always be able to lean on* being not-TikTok and therefore immune to criticism by the government -- there will be very little stomach for banning two platforms in a row.
And it'll be way worse. They'll always be able to lean on* being not-TikTok and therefore immune to criticism by the government -- there will be very little stomach for banning two platforms in a row.
Why not ban the offending behavior instead of one particular company?
Oh, that's right, because the US and other western governments still want access to that sweet, sweet data for themselves... Also the US-based tech giants have deep pockets.
Oh, that's right, because the US and other western governments still want access to that sweet, sweet data for themselves... Also the US-based tech giants have deep pockets.
I think as people realize they're not getting paid for their work they'll become a lot more selective about where they contribute time...
It will become hard for platforms to grow the huge user bases they had in the past.
TikTok dictates and heavily moderates what gets viewed on their platform. Creating consistently winning content on the platform is a full time job for many that does not pay well... There is a lot of smoke and mirrors over what creators actually get paid, and how consistent that pay is for many reasons...
One thing's for sure, the next platform to win public adoration will need to promise and deliver better and better business/financial opportunities to creators in order to grow, otherwise they'll never be able to take off. Free labor is a rapidly dying industry.
It will become hard for platforms to grow the huge user bases they had in the past.
TikTok dictates and heavily moderates what gets viewed on their platform. Creating consistently winning content on the platform is a full time job for many that does not pay well... There is a lot of smoke and mirrors over what creators actually get paid, and how consistent that pay is for many reasons...
One thing's for sure, the next platform to win public adoration will need to promise and deliver better and better business/financial opportunities to creators in order to grow, otherwise they'll never be able to take off. Free labor is a rapidly dying industry.
While they're not being paid by TikTok, they are getting attention, and companies are happy to pay them for promotion/ads.
You're right about the chicken&egg problem though. Who's picking up the traffic when TikTok is banned? Instagram?
You're right about the chicken&egg problem though. Who's picking up the traffic when TikTok is banned? Instagram?
Instagram has been shooting itself in the foot for a while now, people are abandoning Meta like the plague because even the content there is dry...
I think it will be something out of left field that will change the entire game... Something light and responsive, free to use, and something that allows everyone an equal post playing field again...
I think it will be something out of left field that will change the entire game... Something light and responsive, free to use, and something that allows everyone an equal post playing field again...
Much of the discourse seems to assume that only one thing can be true, either TikTok is a heinous scheme by the CCP or they are the scapegoat for Facebook, etc. I assert that multiple things can be true at once, but no single claim is unambiguously true in all its details. Consider:
- China is certainly intensely ambitious, and has provably engaged in economic espionage for decades (as has the West, but perhaps with considerably more subtlety).
- Chinese business leaders know that to disobey the government is to risk their personal security. So if the government were to ask ByteDance to do something, it very much would be done.
- The Western political elites desperately need an enemy to distract from the fact that their economic model is failing millions of their citizens. It wasn't China that stole the jobs. It was McKinsey that advised the board to send them there.
- one of the brightest spots in the US is technology. You think Zuckerberg and Musk dont have senators on speedial? They do not need a competitor eating their lunch. Unlike Insta and whatsapp, facebook cant buy their way out of their failure to innovate. They need to make tiktok go away asap. What could be easier than riding the anti china sentiment, which is happily bipartisan?
To be clear, I do not approve of many of the Chinese government's policies. But to whip TikTok when the Valley is strip mining your personal data every day seems pretty unfair.
- China is certainly intensely ambitious, and has provably engaged in economic espionage for decades (as has the West, but perhaps with considerably more subtlety).
- Chinese business leaders know that to disobey the government is to risk their personal security. So if the government were to ask ByteDance to do something, it very much would be done.
- The Western political elites desperately need an enemy to distract from the fact that their economic model is failing millions of their citizens. It wasn't China that stole the jobs. It was McKinsey that advised the board to send them there.
- one of the brightest spots in the US is technology. You think Zuckerberg and Musk dont have senators on speedial? They do not need a competitor eating their lunch. Unlike Insta and whatsapp, facebook cant buy their way out of their failure to innovate. They need to make tiktok go away asap. What could be easier than riding the anti china sentiment, which is happily bipartisan?
To be clear, I do not approve of many of the Chinese government's policies. But to whip TikTok when the Valley is strip mining your personal data every day seems pretty unfair.
TikTok, unlike Facebook, does not know your friends, your family, your education, your history. It is like TV knows what you have watched. I am not sure if I care about it at all to be honest. It is not a social media platform, it is a TV. Yes, everyone now can be a TV star, that's about it. There is nothing social about it to be honest. I think that's why Mark Zuckberg couldn't compete with it, he never understood the product, he is always coming from the social media point of view. People from YouTube or Netflix probably can do a better job to compete.
Around seven years ago I worked in a coffee shop and we would get a daily newspaper for the customers to read which I would browse on breaks or when it was quiet. I remember there was a sharp turning point where a distinct amount of anti Russian material started appearing and I got this odd but strong feeling that a war was on its way. I expressed it to a few customers whilst making small talk and everyone laughed it off. Fast forward to present day and look where we are.
I haven't had as strong a feeling that a war is on its way with China, but the same uptick of anti Chinese sentiment appeared a few years ago starting with the Huawei ban and has been growing since. And you've got top US generals and financiers saying a war is looking more likely than not within the next five years. So yeah, I'd say it's a combination of both a genuine security concern and a priming of the populace to get them ready for any potential conflict coming down the road.
I'm not saying that there wasn't any anti Russian and Chinese sentiment expressed occasionally before, but I just have this instinctual feeling that these were the dates where it upticked and solidified into something else, a pattern or a 'narrative' if you will. If there's any web scraper geniuses out there it'd be interesting to know if the data supports the hypothesis. It would be Winter 2016/2017 for Russia and probably 2018/2019 for China. But considering this is when it became consciously noticeable, it may have began a good while earlier.
I haven't had as strong a feeling that a war is on its way with China, but the same uptick of anti Chinese sentiment appeared a few years ago starting with the Huawei ban and has been growing since. And you've got top US generals and financiers saying a war is looking more likely than not within the next five years. So yeah, I'd say it's a combination of both a genuine security concern and a priming of the populace to get them ready for any potential conflict coming down the road.
I'm not saying that there wasn't any anti Russian and Chinese sentiment expressed occasionally before, but I just have this instinctual feeling that these were the dates where it upticked and solidified into something else, a pattern or a 'narrative' if you will. If there's any web scraper geniuses out there it'd be interesting to know if the data supports the hypothesis. It would be Winter 2016/2017 for Russia and probably 2018/2019 for China. But considering this is when it became consciously noticeable, it may have began a good while earlier.
Russian Troops Amassing on Ukraine Border
Russia Invades Ukraine
These anti-Russia headlines are getting out of control!
Russia Invades Ukraine
These anti-Russia headlines are getting out of control!
Those weren't the headlines in 2016 though. The "troops amassing" headlines only started appearing about 6 months before it all kicked off (that I can recall), after the US intelligence services became pretty much certain it was going to happen. Even then European leaders had their heads buried completely in the sand, Macron flying back and forth making a fool out of himself thinking he could talk Putin out of it. In 2016, it was more general and then a year or two later there was the whole Salisbury incident and it intensified even more. It's kind of mad really that it took til 2016 for the sentiment to properly turn considering they invaded Crimea in 2014. Looking back, the entirety of Europe was in a state of denial because they were addicted to the cheap energy.
Edit: Just realised I might have misinterpreted this and that you're instead talking about the headlines from 2013/2014. It seemed to me like it died down pretty quick after the Crimean invasion until 2016 but I'm probably entirely wrong and just wasn't paying enough attention.
Edit: Just realised I might have misinterpreted this and that you're instead talking about the headlines from 2013/2014. It seemed to me like it died down pretty quick after the Crimean invasion until 2016 but I'm probably entirely wrong and just wasn't paying enough attention.
I'm aware. I'm highlighting that maybe Russia or China have earned the negative sentiment from their actions.
Oh yeah, I am in total agreement with you. I'm just speculating that the powers that be who are making the actual chess moves might have known (or strongly suspected) what was going to happen long before it actually happened, that it might be happening again, and that we (the average joes) might be able to pick up on some of that through sentiment analysis of the headlines.
I think the correct answer is "both". TikTok means "the Chinese" have access to many billions of western eyeball-hours with really no way for anyone to know what's being shown. They don't even need to produce the propaganda themselves - all they need to do is tune "the algorithm" to show what they want to more people, and a million influencers will magically evolve their worldview towards the one that gets them the most followers. That may or may not exist.
And, yes, I think the Chinese government gives Byte Dance a huge amount of money to ensure they have some level of say in how this all plays out. Why wouldn't you? It's cleaner, easier and probably cheaper than (say) funding a rebel group somewhere. Probably less likely to bite you in the arse, too.
And, yes, I think the Chinese government gives Byte Dance a huge amount of money to ensure they have some level of say in how this all plays out. Why wouldn't you? It's cleaner, easier and probably cheaper than (say) funding a rebel group somewhere. Probably less likely to bite you in the arse, too.
I don’t like how many apps are effectively spyware.
Having said that I also don’t care if we ban an app from a non free / less than friendly country that doesn’t allow similar apps from the us to operate in their country….
So yeah I get some of the weirdness but I have no problem with the actions proposed either.
Having said that I also don’t care if we ban an app from a non free / less than friendly country that doesn’t allow similar apps from the us to operate in their country….
So yeah I get some of the weirdness but I have no problem with the actions proposed either.
We're going to ban the use of VPN and fine and imprison people who use them. This is actually worse than the firewall of china
No we aren't.
This is just blatant misinformation.
I haven’t seen anything to indicate that.
Search on rumble for the video "The late John McAfee explains the real reason for the crackdown on TikTok" and you get your answer.
> Search on rumble
The safe-haven video hosting site for alt-right snowflakes who get banned from everywhere else for their morally abhorrent views?
> John McAfee
The coked-out paranoid rich libertarian tax-evading sexually abusive asshole?
> explains the real reason
The real reason?
Do you think of yourself as anything more than a hate- and misinformation-spreading troll? I genuinely wonder how people like you see yourselves in the mirror.
The safe-haven video hosting site for alt-right snowflakes who get banned from everywhere else for their morally abhorrent views?
> John McAfee
The coked-out paranoid rich libertarian tax-evading sexually abusive asshole?
> explains the real reason
The real reason?
Do you think of yourself as anything more than a hate- and misinformation-spreading troll? I genuinely wonder how people like you see yourselves in the mirror.
Even if relevant anything recommended by Elon is an instant pass
I kind of assume that NSA decompiled it, freaked out, is semi quietly spreading the word.
Its not a security scare, its been known for quite some time that its possible to psychologically manipulate people like this.
Not content to fix it the right way which involves actually limiting their power, government is trying to do it the socialist/totalitarian way. Written so broadly, and so loosely that anything the higher ups decide to do won't violate the law (even if it violates their own authority granted to them by the constitution).
There's a good book by USMC University on Political Warfare which goes into depth about how these campaigns often work out.
Not content to fix it the right way which involves actually limiting their power, government is trying to do it the socialist/totalitarian way. Written so broadly, and so loosely that anything the higher ups decide to do won't violate the law (even if it violates their own authority granted to them by the constitution).
There's a good book by USMC University on Political Warfare which goes into depth about how these campaigns often work out.
TikTok is eating Facebook's lunch. I think the US social media companies have teamed up and lobbied to ban TikTok. Too bad they can't compete and win. This is how you get disrupted Facebook.
Not really, read this: https://anneta.substack.com/p/what-elaborate-tales-were-spun...
Its easy to eat the other teams lunch when you have an unfair market advantage of 1 billion users none of the rest have access to.
It's not until everyone learns to stop rewarding these kind of grift platforms for offering nothing business-opportunity-wise or growth-wise that this world of online exploitation will change. If TikTok goes away, something else will replace it, pedaling fear out of protecting TikTok (which barely does anything good for anyone but itself is a waste of time, and so is uploading content to TikTok.