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They are both security risks. The difference is the SA oligarch has already successfully infiltrated our national security and installed himself in a position of power so we can’t do anything about it anymore.
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
This is a game any bad state actor with a huge wad of cash can play thanks to Citizen’s United.
Create
I think you mean buy. Fund is probably the most generous word you could use, but that’s a fat stretch.
Musk created SpaceX, he didn’t buy it.
He founded Space X, but he did not create the technology and do the R&D alone like Tony Stark. He got the funding though.
Who ever claimed he created the technology? That makes no sense at all. And SpaceX got funding from NASA, just like a lot of other aerospace companies. In terms of value they delivered for that money, they’re far ahead of the competition. Boeing got more money for Starliner than SpaceX got for Crew Dragon. And look how that turned out.
Who ever claimed he created the technology?
The initial comment in this thread:
Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.
This is what was being responded to.
Original comment…
Create technology
On the cabinet? He bought himself a shadow presidency.
They are all problematic. My disagreement with the removal of TikTok is that it should not stop with TikTok. Meta’s apps are an absolute nightmare. Google, Xitter, Amazon, etc., they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
Data brokering needs to be made illegal or VERY tightly regulated.
they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.
The problem with TikTok isn’t data collection, though. The stated concern of the US government is that TikTok may be used to inflict foreign influence (ie, Woke Mind Virus Communism).
That is, incidentally, why the flood of users to RedNote has been so funny. TikTok’s got a bunch of edgy western Zoomers doing “Did You Know Capitalism Is Bad Sometimes?” infographics in between dances. RedNote is just straight up “China Is The Best Country In The World” nature channel style hagiography.
The US pushed millions of Americans out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.
I don’t understand. Twitter was definitely used for that and Musk was “paying” to have people vote republican in Pennsylvania.
Meta paid like 800 million for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
So like, if they sold to a US company then they’d get wrist slapped too?
Yes, the ban of TikTok has been more about lip service than actual protections for Americans.
The real solution is passing a comprehensive law that fines/bans any app/platform that is opaque about its influence from governments and its data sharing with governments. But who in Congress today has any appetite for real solutions!
I had written about this to my reps and their response was a non response - TikTok bad.
Fell for one of the classic blunders
sniff’s glove
Ivermectin. I’d bet my life on it.
Of note, there is no evidence the government concern is founded.
I mean, if that’s the question you want answered…
X uses a native browser controller when you open a link, so the app can’t see what you do in there.
Whereas TikTok uses a managed webview… which they have been caught injecting keyloggers into.
Back in the olden days, we called this a cross-site scripting attack.
Finally a reasonable answer that isnt propaganda or stupidity
Because tiktok data goes to China, and China is a competitor/geopolitical adversary to the USA. If tiktok was russian, it would be the same story. Besides, tiktok has been proven to be by far the worst data miner you can download from an app store.
China buys a ton of data from Zuck and Musk and a lot of other people.
The reason it’s being banned is for cutting out the middle man.
If they actually cared about our data going to geopolitical rivals they’d pass comprehensive privacy protections regardless of where the company is headquartered.
And the PRC have been caught repeatedly running influence campaigns over social media platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamouflage
China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along, nothing to see.
Its such a bullshit argument. Don’t be the pot blaming the kettle.
We should ban ALL socials. All. Everything becomes an echochamber after 1-2 years filled with bots, algorithms and Ai. Nothing is trustworthy anymore.
Note that I am not disagreeing. Just pointing out that not being able to trust anything anymore is on-brand.
China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along
Nope.
Other gov spying on yanks: bad with no mitigation.
Yank companies spying on yanks: bad with mitigation option we just don’t take today.
Both: PR and disinfo campaigns to convince illiterate that it’s about more than surveillance, that it’s a conspiracy or nothing to worry about at all (paging Dr Schroedinger).
Source?
Sea lions?
Messenger is worse by far. This is a verifiable fact just from the permissions requested. The Dunning Kruger in this thread is comical.
Redditors just turn their brain off when TikTok is the topic
I find it funny that if TikTok was sold to an American it wouldn’t be a security risk anymore.
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Is it me or is everyone ELSE a moron except somehow for specifically ME
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I don’t know about the devil, but some doomsday prepper edgelord keeps popping up.
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You remember blocking me? 😍
I don’t think about you at all. Just happened upon a living stereotype and felt compelled to point it out.
Good luck with those neurosis and narcissism. So weird those traits only ever seem to affect the self proclaimed “best” IT stooges.
Reddit must be banning lots of people
They are, it’s all bots now
Eh? You do realize most people on Lemmy are not on TikTok.
We’re laughing at it all and enjoying the popcorn.
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The point of forcing ownership to be American was to force TikTok to be sold to Musk or one of the other massive data harvesting jack offs.
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Which is a ridiculous premise.
Exactly. I find it hilarious how some of these people conclude that China ONLY gets our data because of TikTok, when our own government and on soil companies sell and shares our data as long as the other (China even lmao) buy it from them. No issues as long as they get money, but if they don’t get the money, it’s “national security” risk.
It’s not the data they care about.
I know… it’s the things I’ve been trying to drum on about every time someone’s says it’s a “security” risk. No one cares though, because “TikTok” bad. :/
They would then be under US jurisdiction, that’s the issue with TikTok, the US can’t for them to comply with any laws, current or future.
Bullshit. Any country has jurisdiction over companies operating inside it’s borders. If what you say is true then we couldn’t even ban TikTok.
Who exactly do you expect them to sue if a website has no physical presence inside the US borders and it disobeys US laws? 🤔
The only thing they can truly do against TikTok is prevent people from downloading the app through official means and having ISPs blocking the website. Outside of that it could 100% continue operating and scraping user data to send it to China.
TikTok does have US offices and employees though.
And yeah if they’re blocked in the app stores, and by ISPs you’d have to side load it onto your phone and tunnel out with a VPN. 170 million Americans aren’t doing that. You’d be lucky to find 100,000 willing to do it.
And since even SCOTUS laughed at the espionage argument, we again need to bring up that China just buys the exact same data from Meta, Alphabet, and X. We aren’t securing anything.
Three companies that could easily be regulated to prevent them from selling that data to China, but wasn’t there political interference as well?
Anyway, they can just close their US office and then the US is shit out of luck unless they ban them (since that would be their only recourse at that point).
Sure. But they haven’t closed their US Offices. They haven’t done what X and Musk did with Brazil where they tried to just ignore the local government. TikTok clearly engaged with the system and has gotten a ban for purely political reasons.
No, the issue with Tik Tok is that the government can’t control it like it does Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There is nothing in China that can harm you as much as the American Government. No intention, no action, no belief will ever hurt you as much as America has.
They can’t control it because… It’s not located in the USA! Good job, you understood what I said!
because then they’d be subject to all the bullshit the feds do and required to comply.
Like what? What are American companies required to do to protect your privacy that TikTok doesn’t do because they are a Chinese company?
TikTok is not being banned to protect anyone’s privacy.
Fine, what national security obligations are US-based social media companies meeting that TikTok/ByteDance is not?
TikTok/bytedance are controlled by a rival country. US based companies can, of course, help our rivals too but there’s some degree of separation that makes it a bit harder to address/discover.
The PATRIOT act.
It’s not about what they aren’t doing. It’s something they are doing.
They aren’t required to protect our privacy, they are required to give data to the government and lie about doing it. Tiktok can’t be brought into that unless they are an american owned company.
As in implementing back doors and reporting to the NSA/CIA/FBI/CBP/BATF/ETC?
The Patriot Act would like a word.
Maybe both are bad?
“Facebook should be under incredibly strict regulation or killed outright” is also a position I’m fond of.
The Cambridge Analytica story explains how much I distrust Facebook.
Tiktok aren’t giving Trump loads of money
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. The CEO has a prominent seat at Trump’s inauguration.
Yep. Which means TikTok gave Thumper a load of dough and TikTok will be allowed to continue operating here. Zuck is probably not happy since he’d also given him a load of dough to get rid of TikTok.
pops corn
A fatal mistake for companies who want to do business in the US
Trump made saving TikTok a campaign promise.
Serious answer: because it’s owned by a US citizen and is operated and HQ’d in the US, so the the US government has effectively full control over it and can monitor it.
That’s not a lot better from an end user privacy and security point. But is wayyyyyyyyyy better from a national security standpoint.
The US government has no more control over X than regulations permit. They have the exact same amount of control over TikTok operations inside the US.
Oh, sweet summer child…
Sweet summer nothing. Don’t mistake billionaires as patriots for any cause other than their own. They don’t care about the country and will only cooperate if forced or convenient. Which is the exact same level TikTok exists on.
Cool, the point is tiktok is spyware that sends info the the parent company in China, where the US doesn’t have control.
Where evidence?
Technically the two divisions of the law banning TikTok and any company which sends US Citizens data to an adversarial nation, both passed at the same time, say nothing of citizenship.
When the courts say TikTok has to divest from Chinese ownership, they don’t mean heritage. They mean owners and operators who literally live and work exclusively in China.
I thought Mister Musty didn’t have US citizenship
Why did you think that?
I just knew he wasn’t when he was with PayPal and never really paid much attention since.
Well, the TikTok lawyers kinda said the quiet part out loud during their SCOTUS brief:
Mr. Francisco contended that the government in a free country “has no valid interest in preventing foreign propaganda” and cannot constitutionally try to keep Americans from being “persuaded by Chinese misinformation.” That is targeting the content of speech, which the First Amendment does not permit, he said.
It’s not a great look for your app when your argument before the Supreme Court is “yeah, we’re a propaganda machine for a hostile foreign power, but free speech says you can’t stop us. Neener neener.”
that’s not what they’re saying, they’re saying even if they were chinese propaganda, it would be protected under the first amendment for americans to read what they want and make their own decisions….
but, nice 4th grader logic you got there.
See, “I’m not gonna smack you across the face, but I totally could if I wanted to and you can’t do shit about it” might not be the best way to clear your reputation as a bully.
See, “Why aren’t you going after other social networks. Specifically Facebook and X…you know, the ones proved, since 2016, to lie and interfere with democracy? Is this gonna be wack a mole? Another chinese app its already trending you know…”
I don’t use none of these. Facebook, xitter, tik-tok…I don’t defend any of these.
But we KNOW Facebook was used to manipulate elections across the world. We know none of them give a dam about the truth.
I just want to ser Musk and Zuckerberg punished as the rest.
Unfortunately both of those people are american.
Rich Americans.
Its hard to take people down when they are responsible for making countless politicians and business people money, as well as assisting the government with their surveillance domestically and internationally.
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The issue for common people regarding tiktok is more along the lines of foreign adversaries obtaining personal information of the users or using it to spy on the government. The idea that chinese propaganda would be in any way a threat is absurd and shouldn’t even need to be defended in any way. “America bad” is hardly a hot take and they don’t need to spread any lies to get that point across.
I disagree. I think it’s incredibly dangerous for a malevolent actor to control the media we consume and can erode the community from within.
Just look at fox news.
So in your view Fox News should be banned because they’re propaganda machine for the right wing, calling out Dems for their faults and praising Reps for anything they did? Or because they’re lying pieces of shit that helped manufacture a false narrative that eroded democracy and allowed fascists to get in power? Because, as far as I know, tiktok didn’t do the later and it’s the platform that got banned.
Oh yeah it’s the latter. I’m not advocating for the tiktok ban at all, but I do think fox news is a malicious cancer.
In fact, because of fox news existence, I think foreign national propaganda engines are more important than ever. If the population is going to be manipulated for the gain of a few, at least have a lot of actors manipulating everyone so we have a chance of not letting one person control everyone.
How is it any different than the Russian propaganda campaign to get Trump elected? Or was that something you were fine with as well?
When you let a foreign government run an active psyop campaign against your citizens, you’re just begging for instability and chaos.
And how is it different than Dems calling Trump Hitler, regardless of how accurate it was? Should they also be tried for “propaganda”? And how about goverments claiming they’re doing well, should they be tried for propaganda? How about the entire red scare propaganda? How about anti-arab propaganda? Putting someone on a trial for “propaganda” is a dangerous violation of free speech. If you can prove they’ve been lying, then at best they’re at the same playing field as the government suing them, and in case of tiktok as far as I am aware there is no evidence that they were spreading any lies. It’s just that they weren’t censoring the genocide Israel commited in Gaza, unlike platforms aligned with USA, like Meta or Twitter. Which censorship was most definitely a propaganda, but instead of them it’s tiktok that’s being punished for not doing it? It’s nonsense. Boosting negative commentary about foreign country is basic freedom of speech, and attempting to silence that feels very dictatorial. It’s what China did with a lot of internet for spreading propaganda against them, don’t you feel like removing Youtube access in China for making anti-chinese material available was bad for free speech? I wouldn’t mind tiktok getting closed for spying on people, but it’s obvious they don’t want a precedent for that. Blocking propaganda? Bullshit.
As for me “being fine with” other peoples freedom of speech, I dislike what they had to say and I’d want them to be punished for lying, but I’d never advocate against them having option to speak. You end up living in a dictatorship by doing that. I’m not a free speech absolutist, by any stretch of imagination, but banning platforms for containing content casting bad light on you is going too far for me. Especially since there are much better reasons to do so.
The issue for common people regarding tiktok is more along the lines of foreign adversaries obtaining personal information of the users or using it to spy on the government
What’s the difference between Facebook / Meta selling my data to whoever, vs. TikTok harvesting it themselves?
There is no difference, neither should be allowed to do that. Person I replied to claimed the issue is chinese propaganda instead of any actual security risks.
Just something to think about when it comes to the influence social media has on society
TikTok has already transformed how Americans communicate, influencing language and behavior in ways that may have broader implications. The Chinese government, known for using censorship and language control to maintain social order and suppress dissent, leverages euphemistic language as a tool for manipulating public opinion and silencing critical discourse.
Phrases like “unalive” for suicide or “grape” for rape dilute the meaning and impact of language, making it easier for powerful entities to control narratives and obscure uncomfortable truths. This process, known as “language laundering” or “semantic bleaching,” strips words of their emotional weight and original meaning, making it harder to address sensitive or urgent issues effectively.
This trend has extended beyond language to visuals, with people obscuring letters or censoring words in pictures and posts—using terms like “s**cide” or “r*pe.” While this may help users navigate algorithms designed to suppress certain keywords, it completely erodes the clarity and impact of critical conversations.
The normalization of this behavior on TikTok has permeated Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media platforms, spreading a culture of diluted language and indirect communication. These practices hinder meaningful discourse, desensitize users to serious issues, and ultimately make it more challenging to engage with sensitive topics in a direct and effective manner. Recognizing and resisting this shift is essential to preserving the integrity of public discussions and fostering authentic engagement.
You’re attributing to TikTok what has been happening for years before even Vine came into existence and is actually a different issue: corporate-owned platforms cracking down on uses of those words as they’re not “advertiser friendly” and don’t “encourage a safe and fun space” or whatever. TikTok is in no way special here
It was already incredibly common to censor these words, grape for rape goes back at least 15 years to when WKUK were making their rounds. Unalive on sites like YouTube go back at least to 2018/2017 en masse if not earlier
This was never about national security. It’s about money. Most of congress owns Meta stock and meta lobbied the fuck out of trying to get the app banned. It’s extremely annoying that people buy this crap about national security.
Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something? 85% of these fuckwads agreed that banning this app is more important than literally anything else. Stopping school shooting, fixing our economy, providing affordable healthcare or housing, are all not important.
Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something?
Patriot Act and other government spying laws of course.
They are all a security risk
It doesn’t have to be our biggest problem for us to want to fix it. We can fix other problems as they come.
Also, server location. If TikTok reorganized in the USA it wouldn’t be banned, they know that and still chose to go under.
Tiktok is owned by Oracle in the US and has servers in Virgina and California.
Lmao
$5 says Elon or Meta buy TT and turn it into yet another GOP echo chamber.
You seem to think that it is for sale, Byte Dance has repeatedly said they will not sell. I also belive the PRC passed a law that would outlaw exporting the algorithom to the new owner
No need to buy anything when they already live rent-free on Lemmy.
Money.
Hey now. China’s not short on money. This is the other big problem with America.
If Elon Musk was a black South African with a social media company interfering in our elections and sabotaging our national interests here and abroad, I assure you that it would also be in the crosshairs of a ban.
Where the money is going.
