The 2Raw2Real dude doesn’t get enough credit for his work:
There was another app that was banned by the Feds unless they divested from China successfully-and they divested and are still extant. So it’s not like there’s no precedent for this https://t.co/UDayG0nkz4
— Bowiegrrl🥁🇺🇦🇮🇱Biden2024 (@Bowiegrrl1) April 29, 2024
TikTok owner ByteDance would reportedly prefer shutting down its app in the U.S. rather than sell it to a potential American buyer if all legal options fail
A shutdown would have limited impact on its business while not having to give up its core algorithm— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) Apr 25, 2024 at 1:33 PM
I’m told TikTok is the ultimate PERFORMATIVE! app, so I guess it makes sense its ‘owners’ (CCP frontmen) are going full LEAVE BRITTNEY US POOR LIL SMOLBEANS ALOOOOOONE!!!… although, frankly, it doesn’t make me *less* suspicious of its data-harvesting potential, elderly Cynic that I am.
Reuters, last week — “ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say”:
TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer to shut down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., four sources said.
The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed core to ByteDance’s overall operations, which would make a sale of the app with algorithms highly unlikely, said the sources close to the parent…
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew said on Wednesday the social media company expects to win a legal challenge to block legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden that he said would ban its popular short video app used by 170 million Americans.
The bill, passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, is driven by widespread worries among U.S. lawmakers that China could access Americans’ data or use the app for surveillance.
Biden’s signing sets a Jan. 19 deadline for a sale – one day before his term is poised to expire – but he could extend the deadline by three months if he determines privately owned ByteDance is making progress.…
Reuters interviewed more than half a dozen investment bankers who said it was tough to value how much TikTok is worth compared with like-for-like competitors Meta Platforms, Facebook and Snap, as TikTok’s financials are not widely available nor easy to access.
ByteDance’s 2023 revenues rose to nearly $120 billion in 2023 from $80 billion in 2022, said two of the four sources. TikTok’s daily active users in the U.S. also make up just about 5% of ByteDance’s DAUs worldwide, said one of the sources…
This sounds, to me, like the very epitome of the ancient political art of ‘kicking the can down the road’. And IMO it’s the right move from Biden, at this particular moment in time; it’s not as though he didn’t have more pressing matters to spend his time on.
How TikTok grew from a fun app for teens into a potential national security threat https://t.co/XEDnnrlmlk
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 27, 2024
I’m not terribly concerned about who owns TikTok, I’m more concerned about who owns the Supreme Court.
— Harris (@GrandpaHarris65) April 29, 2024
RaflW
Banning TikTok is just another minor skirmish in problematic US-China relations.
What matters is that the U.S. remains too corrupt (as in, fully in thrall to industry lobbyists) to pass even a baseline modern privacy law. That would be a far better approach than forcing divestiture for one app (while FB and all the others just scrape you for anything and everything they can monetize).
different-church-lady
Another fuckin’ toy we shouldn’t care about that has inexplicably become “essential” to continued life on this planet.
Dangerman
Does never using TikTok make me old? Weird? Missing something?
Don’t TikTok. Don’t Facebook. Don’t tweet anything on my own.
Get off my lawn.
different-church-lady
@Dangerman: It might mean you’re not insipid.
Another Scott
Mr. TooReal is a great advocate.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kristine
TikTok is a popular marketing site for some authors/genres. I imagine other creators use it as well. I’m guessing it’s not a consideration but the removal will leave some folks scrambling.
It’s the one social media site I’ve managed to avoid
Brachiator
People use TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms because they like them and because they find the apps fun and useful. They tend to ignore privacy and data harvesting risks. This has pretty much always been the case.
Also, I wonder if younger people, the biggest users of TikTok have much useful data to be harvested. And young people are especially fickle. They get older and move on to other apps. I think they may be like some young cousins of mine and their friends, who used Facebook in middle school to talk to classmates and get homework assignments, but who had all pretty much ditched the app by high school.
There is little built-in loyalty when apps are free. And as they grow up, people accumulate new groups of friends and coworkers. There may be little to tie them to the apps they prefer.
I’m far more concerned about the government wanting to get into our devices.
ETA. Note that I don’t use TikTok or Facebook and also finally dumped Twitter some months ago. The only time I use Twitter is to view links embedded in front pager comments.
gene108
@RaflW:
I think more than being in thrall to industry lobbyists is the fact very few people who get into politics have an IT background. The younger members of Congress know how to get around the digital world relatively easily, as they grew up with the internet and later smart phones.
I doubt they have much understanding of the backend of how algorithms work, what information is harvested and sold, etc. Like a lot of technical matters, it’s easy for industry lobbyists to run circles around lawmakers limited understanding of technical matters.
Another Scott
@Kristine: I almost never pay attention to it (no account).
A few years ago there was a viral TikyToky thing of some young russian woman telling people phrases to use with the police when they were hassled by at protests.
“I’m American!!1”
Stuff like that.
I have no idea how useful it was, but it was an entertaining little video. So, I can see the appeal.
Cheers,
Scott.
gene108
@Brachiator:
TikTok will be used until something better comes along. As far as the Chinese government trying to use the data harvested to subvert Americans, I’m not sure it really matters due to all the disinformation and misinformation floating around.
Keep TikTok off of government phones, laptops, and computers as a precaution. It’s not relevant to any government work I’m aware of and avoids the risk of CCP hacking in via TikTok apps.
Otherwise I don’t think it’s a big issue. BS will be spread via Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, etc., with or without TikTok.
Content creators usually cross post across multiple social media platforms.
different-church-lady
@gene108:
Xavier
“How Tik Tok grew from a fun app to a potential national security threat.”
The word “potential” is doing a lot of work there.
YY_Sima Qian
Of course ByteDance would rather shut down TikTok in the US than sell TiKTok US.
1st, the PRC has imposed export controls over AI algorithms. TikTok‘s (& ByteDance‘s) competitive advantage is in the recommendation algorithms that is quite adept at bringing niche communities together & give audience to even the most obscure creators, as opposed to Facebook/Instagram/YouTube whose recommendation algorithms tend to favor the mega-influencers because the monetize by selling ads. This is the case w/ Douyin, the PRC market version of TikTok, as well. That is the reason behind the viral popularity of TikTok in the world & Douyin in the PRC.
2nd, even if the PRC government gives export license to ByteDance to sell TikTok‘s algorithm, along w/ the US operations, to a US based buyer, ByteDance doing so will be creating its own global competitor. A sold off TikTok US will not stay in the US, but will expand to compete w/ TikTok in the ROW. The US represents a small minority of TikTok‘s global user base, & TikTok represents a small minority of ByteDance‘s business.
As for TikTok‘s ownership, 3 US based VC funds actually own 60% of ByteDance because they were early investors, 20% is owned by the founder & 20% owned by ByteDance employees (including those in TikTok US), a PRC state investment fund owns 1%, has a board seat & can exercise veto power. If your are wondering why the PRC government does not give a damn about ByteDance‘s market cap, that is why. Of course, the owner retains operational control, & thus can be subject to pressure from the CPC regime. (Not that ownership by US VC funds are necessarily better, they represent the spectrum from the kleptocratic to the reactionary.) Relations between PRC internet platform oligopolies such as ByteDance & the CPC regime have been strained. Xi & the CPC leadership think such oligopolistic players distract from efforts to build the real economy & hard tech., & undermine its legitimacy w/ their ruthless rent seeking (exploiting their users & gig workers that use these platforms).
Even if TikTok US is somehow sold off to a US entity w/ the algorithm, it will not close off the platform as an attack vector for influencing operations from the PRC or any other foreign government (including nominal “friends” such as Israel & the KSA). See Twitter today. Russia executed its influencing operation in 2016 via Facebook, which was & is not Russian owned. One of the groups lining up to purchase TikTok US is headed by Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary. I suspect TikTok US would prove more corrosive to US polity under that ownership than the current one. Then there is the fact that USG has forced TikTok to partner w/ Oracle to manage the storage & processing of US based data, & Jeff Yass’ Susquehanna International Group is one of the 3 US based VC funds w/ substantial investment into ByteDance. Larry Ellison (& many of Oracle‘s top leadership) & Yass have reactionary political views, close ties to the ultra-right wing in Israel & likely the Mossad.
As for addressing data security, the legislation does no such thing. Even under new ownership, the PRC government, Russia, Israel, the KSA & US intelligence agencies & domestic law enforcement can purchase TikTok user data from the data brokers w/o much hinderance.
IMO this effort is a waste of time, & at best a distraction from any endeavor to actually address data security, disinformation, resilience against influence operation (foreign or domestic), etc. & there is no electoral upside for Dems, only potential downside.
Gretchen
Kansas legislature tried to ban gender-affirming care for minors. Our rock-star Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, vetoed it, and the House failed to overcome the veto. I hear some national dems are going to spend some money here in Kansas to at least break the supermajority. I hope so!
YY_Sima Qian
If you want a preview of what might happen in the US if TikTok is banned, see what has happened in India, the only other major market that has banned the platform. I was surprised to learn that, to many of its more niche & marginalized creators, TikTok is actually irreplaceable. From the BBC:
Another Scott
This CRS Report (18 page .pdf) seems to be a decent summary of the Tik-Tok issues, history of attempts to force the sale/ban, etc.
The TT/BD people haven’t done themselves any favors by saying that 1) no way the CCP can get access to US data; and 2) admitting that the CCP has gained access to US data. They’re acting guilty even if their US people are trying to follow the law.
I ass-u-me that things will go back through the courts again and it will be years before anything changes as far as US access goes.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cacti
Joe rarely misses a chance to step on his own dick with young voters this election cycle.
glc
ByteDance’s position is perfectly reasonable in terms of how that fits into their business, and ownership of the underlying algorithms. We’ll see how it goes.
There aren’t any meaningful parallels with Grindr.
.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: There is a big difference in banning an APP from government/military devices & banning an APP completely.
The only market that has banned TikTok on natsec grounds is India, which is not a good example to follow given how (ironically) Modi has been taking pages from the CPC regime playbook in terms of suppressing domestic dissent & leveraging market access to incentivize Western media & entertainment companies to self-censor. The EU investigation is on data security grounds, they are investigating every major internet platform, for good reason. Nepal & Kenya are mulling to ban TikTok in order to stifle a growing avenue for domestic dissent.
As far as business ethics are concerned, I think ByteDance is no better & no worse than Meta, Alphabets, Twitter, Oracle, etc. Best to regulate them all, rather than chasing after the shiny object.
Poe Larity
I’ll predict Ellison, Musk and MBS buy it.
Brachiator
@YY_Sima Qian:
Very interesting story. Thanks for the link.
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
Here’s a DailyMail.co.uk story about it with a link to a clip from it.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sister Golden Bear
@Gretchen: Per Erin in the Morning, who does heroic work tracking anti-trans legislation:
Jackie
@Sister Golden Bear: WOW!!! Great news, indeed!👍🏻
Ha Nguyen
Ever since I heard that Steve Mnuchin wanted to buy TikTok, I’ve been assuming that all the natsec concerns are just a smokescreen to cover attempts to steal a successful company from its owners.
Gretchen
@Sister Golden Bear: Erin said the Rs who were against cited medical privacy. That was part of how we won the abortion issue. One of the ads then wasn’t directly about abortion. It had an old couple in a doctors office and saying something like we don’t want lawmakers in the doctors office with us. They made it bigger than the abortion issue and I think that resonates here too. We don’t want the idiot state legislators overruling our doctors about our medical care or that of our kids.
RevRick
I’m old, I’m white, and I’m a guy, so my ass is always in the room. And I will throw $ around to stop Trump and the Project 2025 GOP dystopian agenda. And those who refuse to acknowledge the reality that our system is a binary win/lose by claiming that they are too pure to vote for Biden, because of Gaza, or because he voted for the 1994 crime bill, or because he’s old, or a myriad other reasons fail to understand that “our votes are not love letters, but chess moves.”
Melancholy Jaques
@RevRick:
I don’t think those voters are our biggest problem. What we have to change or overcome is the apparently widespread belief by voters that everything was just fine when Trump was president and Biden is bad at everything.
This is so ridiculous and so at odds with reality that I am not sure exactly what to say to such people.
rikyrah
I love Kenny. He is always on point.
HumboldtBlue
@YY_Sima Qian:
This is why we read this blog.
JCJ
@Cacti: Was this TikTok ban tied in with Ukraine aid? If so then sure, let a real genocide occur in Ukraine so people can make their TiketyToks. That would be the correct choice.
Fake Irishman
@YY_Sima Qian:
I was hoping we’d hear from you on this issue. I don’t always agree with what you say, but your nuanced perspective on what’s really going on in the PRC is always extremely educational and welcome and has helped shape some of my own thinking./
Anyhow, generally in agreement with you here, though I suspect this is going to be bogged down in a court case.
Also, everyone needs to remember this was one of the prices that the GOP demanded in their amendment to Ukraine funding — the Dems were happy to go along, but this wasn’t being driven by them. The House bill banning Tik Tok a few months ago did receive strong bipartisan support, but in wasn’t going anywhere in the Senate because Patty Murray was working on a more nuanced bill that was trying to address broader privacy concerns.
wjca
There would be a potential electoral downside for Democrats to having the ban go into effect immediately; hence deferring it until after the election. But there would also be a downside to blocking it: “Soft on China!!!” So, a certain amount of needle threading going on here.
If the Democrats keep the presidency, and take control of Congress, I’d look for it to be shelved as quietly as possible.
Fake Irishman
@JCJ:
Remember, we could have magically gotten Ukraine aid funded forever at no political cost because it’s possible to lock in long-term appropriations. And that wouldn’t have taken up valuable floor time that was used to do things like pass legislation protecting federal recognition of same sex marriage, confirm lifetime judges ( including one in Ohio who wouldn’t have gotten Vance’s support but had Portman’s) and probably get some other wins in the budget.
In conclusions Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer failed and anyone who suggests otherwise is an idiot.
(did I get that right?
In seriousness, it’s always OK to question strategy and choices, but one of the things I like about this place is there’s always a contingent of folks recognizing there’s usually an argument to be made for the choice actually made and pushing back on possibly magical thinking.)
Randal Sexton
@YY_Sima Qian: Hat Tip! This is a really meaty post.
Anoniminous
“A third of U.S. adults – including a majority of adults under 30 – use TikTok. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults under 30 (62%) say they use TikTok, compared with 39% of those ages 30 to 49, 24% of those 50 to 64, and 10% of those 65 and older.” — Pew Research
Gratuitously pissing off voters we desperately need is fucking stupid.
cain
@Kristine:
I like text based social media. I realize that a vast majority prefer videos but I read faster than average and given my ADHD I end up going through that.
Tiktok though does seemingly get around this with their video shorts but I still find myself impatient.
My wife on the other hand loves it and I see her go through tiktok like I used to channel surf cable in the 90s. 😂
prostratedragon
“We are devolving into a democracy!”
Maddow:
Brief, explicit video at link.
HumboldtBlue
@Anoniminous:
Meh, the service remains active and viable, as was pointed out, this wasn’t the Dems idea and while it’s a headline now there remains an up to 12-month extension for it to remain active. There were vastly more important needs to be met before the coddling of TikTok and it’s worth the trade-off if the Ukrainians get the help needed.
cain
@YY_Sima Qian:
Excellent post. Always enjoyed your break down of this stuff.
cain
@YY_Sima Qian:
Interesting article. The part that hit me was that the Indian tech sector didn’t make inroads into China which seems short sighted to me.
cain
My wife loves tiktok and sends links to me constantly. Most of the time though I don’t watch them because .. well videos.
Baud
@cain:
I watch educational videoa on YouTube, but generally feel the same way about social media videos. I just don’t find them engaging.
ETA: As I’ve mentioned before, I feel the same way about podcasts.
Anoniminous
@HumboldtBlue:
Please provide specific examples of Tik-Tok being “coddled”
Now compare to the the “coddling” of OpenAI which flat-out admitted they stole copyrighted and other Intellectual Property.
HumboldtBlue
@Anoniminous:
Just a turn of phrase as it was used a bargaining chip in advancing more important bills. I’m just not convinced that the survival of TikTok is going to be a weighty issue as we head to November, seeing as it will still be up and running. I could be wrong.
HumboldtBlue
And here’s your daily reminder that our nation remains the shining city on the hill.
Video shows chaotic scene outside E. Charlotte home where 3 US Marshals killed, 5 officers hurt
YY_Sima Qian
@Randal Sexton:
@cain:
@HumboldtBlue:
@Fake Irishman:
Thank you for the kind words!
As I said before, the effort to ban TikTok had been languishing prior to Oct. 2023, after actions by the Trump Administration & the state of Montana were struck down by the courts. Then the surprise & brutal Hamas assault into Israel happened, & TikTok became perhaps the only social media platform where voices sympathetic to the Palestinian side (yes, including but far from exclusively anti-Semitic & pro-Hamas voices) were amplified rather than suppressed, especially as the intensity of the Israeli war of vengeance became evident. Effort to ban TikTok very quickly regained momentum in Congress, especially in the House, as members of both parties apparently interpreted the phenomenon as evidence of CPC manipulating the minds of American youths, rather than American youths having different perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Lisa Monaco at the WH had coordinately closely w/ bipartisan house members in drafting the House bill, trying to minimize the probability of it being struck down by the courts. Even so, the legislation specifically named TikTok & ByteDance, raising the probability that it will end up being struck down as a Bill of Attainder (I am not a lawyer though), but they probably had to do so due to ByteDance‘s ownership structure (it is not CPC owned or even Chinese owned, per se). As soon as it passed the House Biden said he would sign the legislation if it passed the Senate (& probably undermined whatever Patty Murray was trying do, & Murray was being vilified as a useful idiot for the CPC by China Hawks for her troubles). So, the Biden team was not just going w/ the flow here.
TikTok, like Huawei, has become the poster child of everything [potentially] threatening about anything associated w/ the PRC in the minds of US natsec people through the last 2 administrations. I think Lisa Monaco is a very respected figure dating back to the Obama Administration, so I am quite open to any evidence based argument that TikTok represents an unacceptable threat that justifies these extraordinary measures w/ so little debate. Heaven knows the CPC regime & PRC intelligence are not shy actors when it comes to intelligence/IP collection or intimidation of critics among the overseas Chinese diaspora. However, neither Trump nor Biden Administrations, nor any of the Congressional committees, have produced any hard evidence, at least beyond kind of shady activities that other internet platforms have also carried out. At least so far, the security threat posed by TikTok (like Huawei, Chinese made EVs, Chinese made port cranes, Chinese made batteries, Chinese made appliances, & rail cars made by Chinese firms in the US, etc.) remain hypothetical & speculative. Given TikTok‘s enormous active user base in the US, & the impact a ban would have on so many people, I think the government needs more than “trust us but we won’t show our work because we need to protect ‘sources & methods'”.
Of course, the Biden campaign is staying on TikTok through the election to reach out to younger voters…
YY_Sima Qian
@HumboldtBlue:
That depends how quickly the court challenges go, how the legal actions are covered by the MSM, & how the GOP will certainly seek to cynically take advantage whatever the development.
Trump, who had tried & failed to ban TikTok when he was President, came out loudly against the House Bill, probably on Jeff Yass’ urging. He then reversed course when Steve Mnuchin became one of the potential buyers.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Wait,………what,………..hun?
It wasn’t fluoride?
I remember the Meng Wanzhou mess,……
YY_Sima Qian
@HumboldtBlue: Damn! I thought even in the US such scenes are only found in movies & TV shows. Well, aside from Waco, TX.
206inKY
This ban was Johnson’s price for Ukraine funding, but the bipartisan contempt toward reactions of sadness is unnecessary salt in the wound. Millions of people have built communities on TikTok that aren’t easily portable and don’t revolve around the already-famous. TikTok has many different sides and is not just a cesspool, and it’s frustrating to see people mock it who obviously don’t use it. Its closure will be experienced like many of us would feel if balloon juice got banned with no good way to find each other afterwards. Not cool to punch down at young people as if their ideas of meaningful community are dumb illusions and totally different from what older folks build online.
Can’t believe we’ve forgotten that TikTok came into the Republican’s crosshairs as a space of political organizing for young people during the pandemic that helped swing the election, including humiliating Trump at a June 2020 rally. He retaliated with an attempted ban within weeks like a petty dictator. Now we’re totally fine with going down the same road.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html
The Ukraine bill had to pass. The mockery is rude and unnecessary.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
@Baud: I watch educational videos on Xhamster
YY_Sima Qian
@cain: My impression is that Indian software prowess in the late aughts & early teens were mainly that of business processes & back office work, which did & do not translate well to the consumer facing space. Even in the business facing space Indian firms such as Wipro & Infosys faced enormous challenges in the Chinese market because Chines clients preferred the more “prestigious” Western firms, & English proficiency was not a competitive advantage in China. Indian firms also had much less cultural fluency in the Chinese market than Western or Chinese ones.
In the consumer facing space, India was slow to develop because the consumer market overall in India was underdeveloped. By the time Chinese consumer facing platforms burgeoned & matured, they brought their tech. & business models to India (& SE Asia & other parts of the Global South), because Global South consumers faced & still faces many of the same pain points that Chinese consumers faced, only worse. So for a few years Chinese tech companies invested heavily into E-Commerce, mobile payments, consumer electronic hardware assembly in India & helping to develop the consumer facing tech sector there, w/ fortuitous timing riding the wave of rapidly expanding middle class as the result of the reforms implemented 1st by Singh & then by Modi.
Alas, the skirmish that got out of hand at Galwan Valley turned relations chilly, & Modi banned dozens of Chinese APPs from India, & Chinese investment (into software & hardware) faced/faces heightened scrutiny & harassment. I suspect the actions were more motivated by protectionism (to nurture domestic alternatives) than real natsec concerns, but the latter provided a convenient excuse. Now, Chinese tech companies remain attracted to the Indian market (no one can afford to ignore the opportunities there, real & potential), but there is much greater skepticism & caution, & recognition that the Indian government is an unpredictable & possibly hostile factor.
Chet Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: You’re certainly right that American-based ownership of Tiktok will not improve things when it comes to political subversion: we’ve seen that with so many fully-American-owned social networks. But that’s not the issue — not at all. You mention that user data can still be bought via data brokers. Again, not the issue.
The *issue* is that Tiktok can decide to contort its content to push issues at the behest of the CCP. That is the issue. And the US can do *nothing* about that. By contrast, the US *can* rein in US-based social networks. That we choose not to do so is a big problem, but at least we have that ability.
Big picture: absolutely yes, many social networks are a danger to our Republic: I personally think Zuckerberg is a Fascist. But foreign ownership of social media with such an important reach in the US is a danger to American hegemony *also*. And that, we should not accept. I fully understand why American hegemony is not in the interest of China or the CCP: sure, if I were a citizen of China, I wouldn’t find it to be a good thing either. But as Americans, we benefit greatly from American hegemony, and we should be loath to give it up.
Chet Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian:
Around 2010 (maybe a little bit later, but before 2013) I had a friend who was a last-resort troubleshooter for Java apps worldwide for IBM. He told me about a gig he did cleaning up a mess at a US subsidiary in China. Apparently:
I’m pretty unsympathetic to complaints about Chinese IP being sold off along with Tiktok: the conditions described above have been pretty standard in China forever, and US companies have gotten used to losing their IP when they work in China. Turnabout is fair play.
frog
@Gretchen:
My first thought was a TV commercial to make this situation more explicit. In a medical office, a doctor, a patient, and off to the side a political minder. Every question of the patient, the doctor looks to the side at the minder who will either indicate ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Chet Murthy
@frog: I’ve seen a couple like this recently. I remember there was one with a couple and their doctor, getting the bad news about their fetus. And then when the couple ask about what the next step is, haha (ugh) the doctor says he needs to get a second opinion, and gets Greg Abbott on the line (a video call) to discuss with the couple what can be allowed. Of course, termination of the pregnancy is not allowed, and Abbott signs off on a jubilant note.
Heck, the G(r)OPers already did it with their anti-Obamacare ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBSLb9lC4Sg&t=50s
[Uncle Sam is your gynecologist, etc, etc — Koch funded apparently]
YY_Sima Qian
@Chet Murthy: Turn about is fair play, as any ByteDance’s decision to shut down rather than sell. But then, giving up tech in exchange for access to market was always a conscious choice by the Western MNC. The PRC government did not hold a gun to their heads to enter the Chinese markets. Huawei had been providing its source codes to German/British/Canadian counterparts to the NSA for examination, as conditions to access those markets, until the UK & Canada caved under Trump administration pressure & banned Huawei.
On green tech where the PRC is clearly in the lead in cost, scale & tech, I think US industrial policy is better served by requiring Chinese firms to produce in the US, w/ domestic content requirements that rise over time, and/or JVs w/ US companies w/ tech transfer mandates, & do so behind a temporary tariff wall. IOW, take some inspiration from the Chinese industrial policy playbook. Instead, CHIPS & the IRA are attempting to excise Chinese suppliers, tech & materials (including products made in the PRC by Western MNCs or made in Western countries using Chinese tech) from the supply chain to the US market, cold turkey. It is unrealistic as a short to medium term goal given the extraordinary dominance of the Chinese industry throughout the entire value chain of most green tech, & will only delay the necessary & urgent green transition to fight AGW, & make it much more costly. To do so on nebulous natsec grounds are self-defeating & only serve to coddle the lazy incumbents at the expense of everyone else.
Chet Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian:
Indeed, and the US government isn’t holding a gun to Bytedance’s head, either. BTW, the way that Bytedance has mobilized its user base to lobby Congress against this bill (before it passed) is a great example of why the law is needed. When China rattles its saber to ready an attack on Taiwan, the last thing we need is Tiktok using its reach to convince Americans that we shouldn’t come to Taiwan’s aid and defense.
Juju
@Dangerman: I’ll sit on the front porch with you and we can yell at the kids about your lawn.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
We’re going to end up going eye ball to eye ball.
China has to draw the line. If they give up the algorithms to TikTok today, then tomorrow they’ll come for the recipe for General Tso’s chicken.
opiejeanne
@prostratedragon: That happened in Washington state, in Spokane. I’m angry and shocked by them saying it out loud and where it could be recorded. .
YY_Sima Qian
@Chet Murthy: Sell to a US company or face a ban, even though neither TikTok nor ByteDance have been proven to break any US laws, is forced dispossession. Google pull out of the PRC because it decided that it could not follow the PRC’s censorship regulations any longer. The PRC government did not force Google to sell its China operations to a local company. Yahoo & Bing stayed by following the censorship regulations, Yahoo only pulled out recently because the PRC government tightened cross-border data regulations that made their operations prohibitively expensive.
The USG can pass regulation that ByteDance may prove unwilling or unable to follow, such as tough data security laws that the EU has done & is enforcing against all the tech companies. Of course, TikTok is trying to stay in the EU market, which will require following EU laws.
Companies mobilizing its users (& hiring lobbyists) to lobby Congress against unfavorable legislation is a normal part of the democratic process in the US, no? That it might backfires w/ Congress is the risk companies have to decide to take. & Congress is doing nothing to contain the ongoing mass data harvesting or rampant disinformation on Facebook or Twitter that is actively corroding American democracy, & you are more worried about how TikTok might be used by the PRC in a hypothetical a war over Taiwan? You think the PRC MSS will not launch influence campaigns on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter if there is war over Taiwan? You think the current laws & regulations will be sufficient to blunt such campaigns?
If it comes to a shooting war between the PRC & the US, USG can seize & nationalize TikTok US, but fate of TikTok in the US will be the least of all of our worries.
YY_Sima Qian
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch: You do know that General Tso’s Chicken is a Chinese American concoction, tight?
NotMax
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
Casus belli, as the original recipe for that is generally agreed to have been created by Chef Peng in Taiwan (and, as he tells it, begat the McNugget). Source: documentary film The Search for General Tso.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chet Murthy:
I don’t think hegemony by any power is to the benefit of anyone outside of monied interests that can profit from hegemony, which is not the working or middle class anywhere.
Hegemons trying everything possible to hold on to their supremacy, & would be hegemons trying everything possible to attain supremacy, is how we end up w/ ruinous wars that destroy hegemonic dreams, & lives & livelihoods of working & middle classes.
Anne Laurie
Thank you for this. Makes me even happier that President Biden seems to agree with you!
NotMax
@YY_Sima Qian
What’s served over here is an Americanized version (sweeter sauce, served usually with broccoli) of what’s deemed the original, which didn’t spread much to Asia beyond Taiwan.
YY_Sima Qian
@Anne Laurie: Since Lisa Monaco at the WH had worked closely w/ the House committees to draft the legislation, I don’t think we can say Biden thinks this is a waste of time. At least Biden’s team does not feel this is a waste of time. Being septuagenarian, I am not certain that Biden himself understands the issues & implications here, & I expect he is relying entirely upon the advice of his team.
YY_Sima Qian
@NotMax: I’ve never had it in TW, either. My TWese friends & colleagues think it is an abominable American invention. But the Westernized version could be so different from the original as to be unrecognizable.
NotMax
@YY_Sima Qian
Near the end of the trailer linked above, that’s a now elderly Chef Peng and his son tsk-tsking over pictures of the American version.
;)
YY_Sima Qian
@NotMax: I’ve always assumed that General Tso’s Chicken, like so many of the Chinese American classics, were developed by the early Cantonese immigrants.
NotMax
@YY_Sima Qian
As related in the film, Peng grew up and was trained as a chef in Hunan province, historic home of the real General Tso, before relocating to Taiwan, and named the dish in honor of a hometown hero.
As a documentary, wouldn’t rate it higher than a B-minus from a production standpoint as it takes extended detours tangential to the central conceit.
;)
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Ok, geez, where to start.
So, the fundamental problem that Congress has is that without coming out and saying this, they know that social media apps like Facebook and TikTok and Twitter and all the others are basically the most effective propaganda machines that was have thus far invented as a species. They are exceptionally good at being able to identify what you interests and alignments are, what you are receptive to, what messages you engage with – they do that through data collection. Okay, fine. But a lot of that we historically know through direct mail and other mechanisms that are coarser but better at the task than people realize. That’s not the problem which is why the legislation doesn’t seek to address it. And we know that this information is good for propaganda because we use it as such all the fucking time for ads, which are just propaganda for a product (or politician).
The problem is that social media also is the delivery mechanism for the propaganda *and* can do it in a way that is largely undetectable. The algorithms allow the company running the service to steer messages to the types of users that would be most receptive to that message. Further, TikTok can not just steer creator content to users, it can make the content itself. This is where we start to push the limits of US telecommunications law which treat social media companies as ‘distributors’ of content and not ‘publishers’. Whole different set of laws and liabilities.
The concern is that TikTok would become a publisher, either overtly or by proxy, of propaganda that it would be able to steer to US audiences, especially say, a few days ahead of a presidential election when insufficient time was available for legal efforts to take place or for that disinformation to be able to be countered in the traditional media. That could easily throw an election. We also know that Russia seeks to do this, but lacks good mechanisms to achieve it, and that China is much less motivated to do this, but pretty actively amplifies Russian propaganda. This raises the risk of TikTok being used to throw the 2024 election for Trump through content that Russia creates and TikTok steers. Not helping is that China does not seem to give workers who are Chinese nationals autonomy to whistleblow or legal protections to act independently to stop these activities, so we can’t really rely on good samaritans among the populace. I’m not saying Chinese nationals aren’t good samaritans, I’m sure they’re just as likely as Americans are, but as someone who has been a whistleblower several times, those protection are critical and they simply don’t exist. With US companies, federal authorities can and do work much more directly with the companies in a way that they can’t with TikTok (or any other foreign social media company – could be French, or whatever). And their legal reach is similarly limited because they aren’t subject to most US law. We have no extradition with China, for instance. With a French company, we can work with them and kind of get to a more balanced state.
So, okay, we have a bunch of hypotheticals here which I admit can be paranoid and overblown, but then what does TikTok do? They send a push notification to 150 million American users to contact congress with a message to lobby for TikTok. They do precisely the thing that Congress was worried about. Now, this is in the open, everyone can see it, but TikTok has moved from ‘distributer’ to ‘publisher’ in doing so. They are no longer staying within the prior agreed upon box in which we could trust them, they have chosen to step outside of it. Whatever claims of self-discipline can no longer be trusted, and Congress is a bit nervous about this because Congress lacks the ability to send a push notification to 150 million Americans, but a Chinese company does, and chooses to use it. Note, Apple can also do this, is currently facing an antitrust suit after several over federal suits and yet has never done anything of the sort.
This is the other part of norms and laws. Norms are this mutual agreement to prevent the need for a law. Apple has this great power, but is disciplined to not use it because they know if they do, there will be a law. It’s a wink and nod agreement with the federal government. Meta doesn’t use it. Google doesn’t. Meta doesn’t. Valve doesn’t. Microsoft doesn’t. Sony doesn’t. But TikTok did. They broke the norm. To Congress, they can’t be trusted.
Now foreign governments could do some of this by using the social media built-in ad system to steer content to users, leveraging that collected information and targeting messages to groups that are receptive to it, but we have laws preventing that. What the law doesn’t prevent is the company itself sending that content, just someone buying it. The law applies to commerce, not publishing, which is why crossing that line sealed their fate.
Does all this mean social media is fine? No of course not. There are still huge user privacy issues but the TikTok bill doesn’t try to address that because it wouldn’t have been able to. There are a number of bills in both chambers, some of which are concurrent to the TikTok efforts, to address this but they haven’t been passed yet. Maybe they’re trying to find consensus among a bunch of different approaches and limits, etc. but it’s likely we’ll get some legislation in the not too distant future. It’s not like passing the bill makes the existing data in circulation vanish – most of the damage is already done, which is why the urgency isn’t there.
NotMax
@YY_Sima Qian
Should add there is no evidence of anything labeled General Tso’s chicken on any menu of a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. until the 1960s.
Unlike Chop Suey, a totally American invention dating to the original age of Chinese migration.
;)
Baud
@Martin:
We should compromise and ban James Comey.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Since the TikTok legislation came out of committee w/ overwhelming bipartisan support, passage in the House was a foregone conclusion. TikTok directly mobilizing its users is unquestionably a PR own goal, but there has never been any trust in Congress to lose to begin w/. The other tech companies you mentioned have not, to my knowledge, been specifically targeted by name in US legislations, as TikTok has been.
In any case, the rest of your arguments is essentially making the case for internet sovereignty that authoritarian (the PRC, Russia, Vietnam, etc.) & illiberal (India, Pakistan, etc.) regimes have been advocated for years. The same hypothetical concerns you raise about foreign owned platforms in the US can be & are easily applied by foreign countries against US owned platforms.
If the argument is that a free & open internet is no longer viable in the world we currently live in, that is fine, & we will see a shift to internet sovereignty. It seems like we are heading in that direction already.
I wish I have your confidence that Congress will pass meaningful legislation on data security & mass surveillance by corporate actors. Against such entrenched & well funded vested interest, w/o “China” as a unifying factor… In fact, US tech companies will argue (& have argued in the past) that any regulation that constrain their behavior will make the US fall behind in the competition w/ the PRC.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: the problem with Huawei and ZTE isn’t their source code but their telecom hardware, which is extremely difficult to test for exploits in. The US can ban it because we have Qualcomm. Not all countries do and will be forced to import from someone. Guarantee that if they had a company in house that could build their telecom hardware, they’d ban everything too.
If you lose your telecom to a foreign hack, you’re dead in the water. It’s hard to function without a power grid, but you can function. Without comms, you can’t do shit.
eversor
I get the China risk but it’s bullshit.
For one all social media apps are spyware/malware. In 2016 it was a UK firm that bought facebooks data and collaborated with the Mercers to help elect Trump. Then Russia was all over Facebook and Twitter as well. Jan 6 and the alt right was Facebook and Twitter. The CEO of Twitter is a national security threat. I remember when we had to tell people not to use Fitbit products as their run routines were used to map areas that were actually defense and intelligence bases or office parks where what the contractors do is not talked about.
tiktok has done none of that
This is a shake down of an Asian company that built a better product so some conservative rich fuck, Munchin already wants to buy it, can reap the profits and weaponize it for the right.
I work in technology and deal with this crap and sensitive data it is a non issue. You couldn’t even install it on your work phone if you wanted to. I’d know, I’m the reason you can’t! Because we have an MDM (mobile device management the industry gold standard is Microsoft intune and it requires a TS/SCI to be an MDM engineer or admin at places that have high level shit to protect. Essentially your phone gets enrolled into the system and it gets hit with a management profile that cripples all sorts of functionality and cuts off the ability to install anything. It’s monitored in MDM and generates reports for the MDM team and security team.
Even then if you are going into some some sort of secure area it’s not just your personal phone you leave in the locker it’s also your secure phone. And this isn’t just for natsec stuff corporations do this as well because less than the app the problem is the damn smartphone to begin with.
Any IT administrator or engineer could tell them this. But congress knows fuck all about this. Which is why whenever some tech lord gets summoned to The Hill they either run rings around them or get extremely frustrated talking to a bunch of idiots. Which is baffling because organizations like Microsoft, DISA, and NIST publish tons of shit on how to lock down your shit and why you should do it!
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: The US does not in fact have domestic 5G telecom equipment suppliers, Cisco has long been out of that game. The U.S. is using Ericsson, Nokia & Samsung, which in turn still use Chinese components & certainly crosse-licenses IP w/ Huawei & ZTE. The U.S. is also pushing open source modular solution in the OpenRAN alliance, which counts major Chinese telecom service providers as members, & the open source solution could turn out to have worse performance & be more buggy. Qualcomm designs SoCs that enable 5G communication (& processing) for consumer electronic devices, its competitors are MediaTek (based in Taiwan), Huawei and Samsung (but the latter two restricted to Huawei & Samsung phones). Most high end phones from Chinese brands still proudly market using Qualcomm SnapDragon SoCs, including in the Chinese domestic market.
The US did not just ban Huawei & ZTE gear in its domestic networks (as its sovereign right), the U.S. did not just try to twist the arms of its allies to ban Huawei & ZTE from their networks (despite failing to furnish any evidence), the U.S. tried to kill the two companies as viable commercial entities by restricting access to any product or product process w/ any U.S. origin IP (again twisting the arms of reluctant allies in so doing). That last step represented an unprecedented escalation in the tech war.
At the end of the day, not having Russian owned internet platform in the U.S. has not prevented Russia from launching damaging influence operations in the U.S., & not having Chinese gears in its networks has not prevented Russia & the PRC from burrowing deep into the networks of U.S. critical infrastructure. Presumably the US does the same thing (hacking into critical Chinese & Russian infrastructure). The PRC still uses Ericsson & Nokia for ~ 20% of its 5G networks, & does not require either company to share source codes for inspection.
Every system & every piece of software, regardless of vendor, will have bugs that hackers can exploit. However, if Huawei is found to have deliberately installed back doors for the PRC MSS, that will prove fatal to its highly successful global business (& PRC influence that goes w/ it), to a degree that no amount of U.S. pressure can achieve. You can be sure hackers, state affiliated or otherwise, are constantly looking for exploits in Huawei & ZTE gear because they are so common around the world.
p.a.
Techno-rube commenting in a dead thread: would a VPN be a workaround?
Martin
They can’t be – bill of attainder. TikTok can be because it’s not subject to US laws because it’s not incorporated here, and because Congress has complete authority over US trade. This is all 18th century law here – foundational stuff.
Except that a free and open internet is only viable via mutual consent. There are no policing agencies. And it was TikTok that broke that consent as I noted, not the US. Now, I personally think that most of the others are breaking that consent as well. You seem to think that ‘free and open’ only runs in one direction. I would also argue that in order to maintain that consent that companies need to work with local laws. Which position would you take regarding Apple pulling Meta apps from China’s App Store at the request of the Chinese government? Should they substitute their own judgement for that of the Chinese government and refuse to pull the apps, or should they follow local laws and allow the governments to work that out? Apple is on both sides of this issue – as a distributer or platforms and itself a platform.
And? California passed CCPA and CPRA and damn near every one of these companies is in the state. And there’s nothing stopping other countries from passing their own laws to shape this space. The EU has done so. But China is not the space from which to be defending free and open internet. For fucks sake, TikTok is banned in China. They banned their own goddamn company, and I don’t think it’s a terrible rule of thumb that if a country bans a consumer product made by one of their own companies, that it doesn’t instantly become fair game for every other country to ban to consumers in their country. Isn’t that the very baseline of ‘free and fair’ in this context?
But you seem to think that Congress is easy with US social media, and given the regularity with which they get hauled in for all manner of things. They were just there a couple months ago over concerns to children – eating disorders, addictive features, bullying, etc. Congress is clearly not at ease with any of this, and like everyone else they are struggling to figure out how to rein this in. But your argument is that, oh, no, they don’t give a shit what US social media does, they only care about China. I mean, we effectively banned two US based social media companies after Jan 6 – ran both out of business in a week.
Your argument really seems to gloss over a hell of a lot of context.
Martin
@p.a.: For TikTok? Yeah. But it’ll fall apart quickly given how many of the creators are American and the content algorithm geared toward who you are would get pretty busted. My guess is the appeal of the platform would collapse. These are cultural system, and the VPN removes you from the culture.
Martin
@eversor:
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, they have. Now, we can question whether the federal government is correct there or not, but the feds have made that assessment and presented it to Congress.
TikTok has admitted it uses the app to spy on reporters. It is very strongly suspected to be spying on Chinese students in the US (I have some experience with this from a few years ago, but not related to TikTok).
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think TikTok is the social media app that will take down the global order here, I think it’s more likely to be Meta, but I would also like a lot of things to be cracked down on in all of these platforms. I think the US is playing with fire by letting these companies run as close to the edge as they do but the Constitution doesn’t give Congress a huge set of tools to work with. But TikTok doesn’t get US legal protections from China, which is why they are being singled out.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: TikTok US, even as a wholly owned subsidiary of TikTok Global, is incorporated in the U.S. & is both subject to U.S. laws & entitled to protections under U.S. Constitution & laws.
As for the free & open internet, that is something the U.S. & the West have long advocated for, & two way street was never a precondition. The argument was that the PRC (& other authoritarian/illiberal regimes) will hurt themselves more by closing themselves from the global market place of ideas, whereas those in the free & open internet will reap the benefits. The free & open internet will include objectionable ideas, but they will inevitably lose out. That is the justification the U.S. used to ensure countries did not out up barriers against dominance by U.S. internet platforms.
Now, I agree those assumptions were probably unrealistic wishful thinking, & the global nationalistic turn will likely make internet sovereignty the dominant regime. However, the U.S. cannot preach free & open internet for thee but natsec considerations supreme for me, or industrial policy for me & neoliberal trade regime & governance for thee. The CPC regime’s position on both the potential TikTok ban & trade barriers are hypocritical through & through, but the U.S. position no longer has any coherence.
Plenty of countries are passing regulations for internet governance, the EU, India, South Korea, the PRC, each w/ its own emphasis, examples worthy of emulation, & pitfalls needing avoidance. The U.S. is significantly behind here. Outside of India, no one else has banned any platforms based solely on nationality of ownership or place of domicile, because it is obviously discriminatory. Even the PRC allows US owned internet platforms to operate w/in the Great Fire Wall as long as they follow the PRC censorship regulations. Which is why Yahoo, Bing & LinkedIn maintained their presence in the country for so long. Of course, the CPC regime can tightened the regulations enough so that it is no longer worthwhile for them to be in country, as the latest restrictions on cross border data transfer has forced Yahoo & LinkedIn to finally shut their ORC operations. That might be a better approach for Congress to try, rather than this brute force solution that might be struck down by the courts.
BTW, the PRC government banned TikTok in the PRC because its content moderation is not subject to PRC censorship rules, not because it is a harmful product to minors. You sure you want the U.S. to follow that lead?
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: I think you are wrong on TikTok U.S. not entitled to Constitutional protections. The courts have already spoken on that when they struck down the Trump ban & the Montana ban.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kristine: As I’ve said, my publisher asked me to get on tiktok, specifically the booktok part. I hope the Chinese are enjoying my videos.
Albatrossity
When are we gonna ban FaceBook for selling data to Cambridge Analytica that eventually ended up in Russia? When are we gonna figure out that our data are already out there, in multiple platforms? When are we gonna figure out that any of those datasets can be sold to anyone with enough money?
I predict we will not learn these things, because it is just so much easier to ban a platform and pretend that it solves the problem of massive data mining by ALL of the platforms.
Starfish
@Brachiator:
We don’t know what data is being collected and how it is being used.
Are the videos being used to train geo-location algorithms, facial recognition algorithms? Does it know you are pregnant before you do?
What permissions does the TikTok app want you to give it, and what can it do with that data?
There is no reason that we do not at minimum have a national version of the CCPA where we can write a company and say “No, really, delete my data.”
Manyakitty
@YY_Sima Qian: thanks for this. The details matter.
Chris Johnson
They become voters. You mustn’t think of it in terms of this one TikTok user knowing the secret to cold fusion and having it somehow stolen.
You gotta think of it in terms of, can you manipulate the algorithm to get the herd of TikTok users 10% more likely to go to war with Taiwan.
And yeah, not necessarily to 10% (probably less, perhaps sometimes more!) but you can. Look at the history of Cambridge Analytica and how intensely Facebook got weaponized. It’s a factor behind how we got basically a fake President.
Kids are more malleable. This is one of the most important things happening in the world: working out what to do about massive social media platforms and how to abuse them or mitigate the abuse of them. TikTok is rightly in the crosshairs. If Russia was running it, we’d probably be one of its territories by now. China is more capable than Russia and has less primitive intentions.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chris Johnson: If the PRC MSS is that capable, & TikTok is that effective a propaganda tool, popular opinions of the PRC would not have nose dived across the West over the past 6 years. Instead, popular opinion predictably followed the marked pivot in elite opinion, starting from 2018 when Trump Administration’s hardline turn (marked by Pence’s speech practically announcing a new Cold War) towards the PRC gave breathing room for the pivot in elite opinion.
Glau
@Martin: feels like a game played between elites over who gets to manipulate public opinion. I’ve got no reason to prefer being manipulated by an American elite as opposed to a Chinese one.
I’m happier having a news source the US can’t trivially control.
But the things that actually pisses me off is that we spend years watching kids die from guns but Congress does nothing; we have a potential (not actual) threat to the power of Washington over America and it gets dealt with immediately.