This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The irony of their efforts is that it only proved to show that they could easily begin influencing users which is the key argument being used against them.
I'm still not sure what my feelings on the subject are. I don't use the app myself, but besides its connection to a company in China and, therefore, the Chinese government, it seems to do the same exact tracking and algorithm manipulating that every other social network does.
TikTok has always been on the extreme end of tracking and surveilling its users. For example, research found that the app had the ability to record all keystrokes made by users in the in-app browser (i.e. keylogging). This kind of tracking is way beyond what other social media companies do and borders on malware.That's one reason why the US, Canada, and others banned the use of TikTok on government devices.
A former TikTok employee also alleges in a sworn statement that TikTok stores its user data in China, that the CCP has full access to this data, and that the CCP used this data to spy on protestors in Hong Kong.
So their tracking goes way beyond what other companies do, and China uses that data for expressly political goals rather than simply selling ads to users.
Does Facebook not also do that? I remember there being some controversy a few years ago about them logging statuses that were typed out, but ultimately not posted.
The paper states that they studied the HTML form element interactions but “not the keystrokes or content.”
There's a big difference. Both are more invasive than we would like, but grabbing everything you type while in the app's browser is much worse than measuring a true or false "did this person submit their comment or did they give up and leave it unsubmitted."
Tiktok is getting the content of the text, which could be sensitive info, and it grabs from every site you visit, not just the social platform itself.
But I think the main issue is using the data for allegedly targeting of protestors and Chinese political opponents, more than the depth of the data collection itself.
logging statuses that were typed out, but ultimately not posted.
That's common practice across the web. For example in a lot of social networks (not Lemmy) if I were to close this reply box without clicking the "Reply" button, I'd simply be able to open it and my half written reply would be restored.
It's not about gathering data on users, it's about saving users from accidental deletion particularly on touch screens where it's so easy to accidentally brush the wrong button.
Also I'd argue anything you intentionally type into a facebook status message box, is something you're happy to share with facebook and everyone on your social network. There's no expectation of privacy and we self sensor what we type into that box.
Logging key strokes is different, there's no reason to record that anything you record (other than actually typing messages) is likely to be something the user intended to type somewhere else but didn't realise which browser window had keyboard focus.
They would be picking up all kinds of things including passwords.
You think Meta and Alphabet don't track your inputs?
Lmao.
I definitely see issues with how it targets young people so aggressively and can have a huge negative impact on their mental health. China can essentially use it as a tool to lower the mental health of our youth and spread misinformation on purpose. The fact that the version available in China emphasizes educational content and limits usage per day shows that they know exactly what they are doing with the international versions.
my teaching thrives on TikTok
If a teacher mandates students to stream lectures over TikTok, I’m raising a formal complaint. There is at least a dozen better options.
I think they’re using “teaching” here in a way neither you nor I would. Because there’s no way they can put any lessons in front of the right students. That’s the algorithms decision. And those signs reek of astroturfing.
Where are you seeing that? Searching the article isn't showing that text.
Sign held by a "protester" in the picture
Its one of the signs in the picture.
American phones were geolocated and TikTok users were locked out of the platform until they called their members of Congress.
Holy shit. Is that true?
They should be banned today if that's real.
When contacted about those allegations by the BBC, TikTok provided the statement: "With regards to users being locked out of the app until they called, that is false. All users had two methods for dismissing the notifications."
Probably the usual hidden grey button "dismiss" over greyish background, just as Google, Microsoft and some other do.
Question...
I don't use tiktok. I have a Twitter account. Why is tiktok bad while a privately owned social media platform (twitter) that's partially financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar not bad?
Twitter / X gets railed on nonstop. Where are you getting the idea that anyone thinks it’s not “bad”?!
Link me to where congress is forwarding a bill to van twitter
Why would they try to ban software from US billionaires no matter how bad it is for Americans? They know who writes their checks.
To me, that's the only complaint I have about this, that they're singling out Tiktok.
But, im not against it because the US has always singled out "the biggest guy" to set a precedent, which then causes all tbe smaller social media platforms to get their shit together. From Microsoft, to Google, to Facebook.
Twitter is also bad
For example — last year they sent what a spy balloon over the USA in what a lot of experts believe was a test of US defence systems - weapons used to shoot down the balloon had never been used before outside of top secret test facilities. And that balloon was covered in high tech sensors and almost certainly broadcasting data in real time. There's no plausible explanation for the incident other than to find out how the US would respond.
Why does China want to know how US defence systems work? A lot of people already think there's a chance of war between the two super powers. That balloon incident didn't help things.
And what went viral on TikTok? Claims that the balloon was a actually flying over Canada and never went near US soil. Claims that it was launched by kids in the USA. Where did those claims originate from? Nobody knows, but it seems pretty coincidental. These claims were spread on other social networks too - but they went viral on TikTok alone.
That's not the only incident, it's just one of the most recent one that involved TikTok. Others have been far more serious especially in busy international waters south of China.
If Twitter's financial backing by Saudi Arabia/Qatar is ever a concern, I'm sure the US will act on that as well.
I personally don't really mind TikTok. But the algorithm is a bit too addictive. The short form 30 second content consumption format is slowly eroding our attention span.
But that's not the cause for a ban here.
𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
thrives on
♪ TikTok
that is the most hilarious unorganic protest I think I've seen. I hope they at least got paid well
They literally had preprinted signs to hand out. Fucking epitome of laziness.
Not to be that guy but is there even any vertical video social media that currently provides what TikTok does as an exact competitor?
Youtube shorts is so horrendous I have it blocked via revanced.
This seems more like an excuse to get rid of competition than spyware allegations. It's not like CISA has some big report on TikTok software dump. Everything they do is mirrored by Facebook down to the COPPA violations that congress doesn't seem to care Zuck is abusing.
In what ways is YouTube shorts different from tiktok?
There is a huge lack of quality content compared to tiktok. And it's algorithm is horrendous.
Despite spending months trying to get YouTube to NOT show me far right, conservative, police loving, religious, or bigoted content, I still see it every once in a while. I've reported content, downvoted, selected 'I'm not interested' and nothing works.
There was a video from a lawyer about a black woman telling her child it's ok to take the entire Halloween candy bowl and if legally that's stealing.
Almost every other comment was some form of "well what do you expect from those people" or "it's always the one you expect the most" or just straight up slurs. So many racist 'jokes' and I spent an hour just reporting comments.
Another video of a person driving through protestors blocking the road. Controversial and frustrating, I understand. But almost every comment was "the protestors deserve it" or "I'd drive through them too" and some real sociopathic shit.
And almost all the ads are horrendous. Literally Joe Rogan brain supplements, trashy weight loss, sketchy ai read 'science' on what doctors don't want to to know. I would rather hear about Raid Shadow Legends.
I've found a couple gems in the mix, actual content creators that are funny or interesting. But almost all of them are also on TikTok too so there's no reason to torture myself scrolling through a post apocalyptic wasteland. And there are so many quality creators on TikTok that aren't on YouTube.
I believe a big part of it is (from what I've heard) TikTok has the best creator fund for paying the people who make videos. So without an outright ban, there's no reason for them to switch. Really, this would be an absolutely huge win for YouTube/Google. And as much as I distrust TikTok, it would be a loss for creators and viewers. At least imo
CISA's director literally just testified to congress about China fucking with shit.
Also, I see Instagram reels as a competitor.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Florida Congressman Neal Dunn's office told the BBC it has received more than 900 calls from TikTokers, "many of which were vulnerable school-aged children" and some of whose extreme rhetoric had to be flagged for security reasons.
Lawmakers have long accused ByteDance of having links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and have cast the video-sharing app as a potential threat to Americans' privacy and mental health.
Carlos Gimenez, who sits alongside Mr Dunn on the House committee behind the bill, said he would not be deterred from voting for it "regardless of TikTok's targeted campaign against members of Congress".
A spokesperson for New York Democrat Ritchie Torres - a joint leader of the legislation - confirmed that his office too has received "seemingly endless calls" though none were of a threatening nature.
"I am deeply troubled by reports of young people calling Congress, threatening to commit suicide or otherwise harm themselves," Mr Torres said in a statement to the BBC.
Mr Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, has been outspoken about the national security threat posed by TikTok and is supportive of the proposed bill, "so it's certainly possible that our office is targeted because of those things", his spokesperson added.
The original article contains 712 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I stay largely uninvolved with social media apps outside of this fediverse project, but why is it that bytedance must divest TikTok while meta is free to keep Facebook and Instagram? Aren’t the risks to mental health and security the same?
Meta isn't heavily influenced by a government adversarial to that of the US, so the risks to US security are not the same.
The mental health risk looks pretty similar, though.
I remember two decades ago when the US was screaming about the "great firewall of China" and how they should open up their internet to companies like Google. What made the US change their mind since then?
Can anyone get me up to speed what claims the bill gave to justify TikTok must be either sold or remove from app stores?
AFAIU - but that is a veeeeeery "skimmed" take on the issue, so please check what I wrote before taking it at face value:
There were legitimate concerns about tiktok (hugely popular platform distributed as a "black box", with very concerning permissions and behaviours, and owned by a foreign actor - tiktok is "unavailable" domestically - that demonstrably uses technology in an extremely dystopian way on their own population), so there was quite a lot of public pressure to "do something about it", and of course politicians jumped on the opportunity to make a (very) broadly fitting legislation targeting it, coincidentally also having utterly damaging and immensely concerning side-effects for the end users privacy and sovereignty of all applications.
Following that, some of the people got (rightly) concerned about the legislation's effect on their rights and privacy, but the vast majority just saw that their digital crack cocaine was being attacked, and started whining with arguments of varying relevance. At the end of the day, though, a given platform is irrelevant. What is, is the abilities given to the users, and the possibilities that those create. But now, we have a deeply concerning platform, still being immensely popular and uncontrolled; a totally unfitting legislation with incredibly wild "side effects"; and a growing, misguided popular movement to "save tiktok" that will only make a legitimate attempt at mitigating it much harder. Yay.
Edit: after quite some digging, I found the bill here (PDF) - source.
Edit 2: to answer your question more directly:
Can anyone get me up to speed what claims the bill gave to justify TikTok must be either sold or remove from app stores?
The justification is "America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States".
Which is IMHO fair. It isn't like the CCP would let American corporations, let alone government controlled ones, run services in China, let alone psychiatrically alienate their citizens, instigate discord and radicalization, potentially manipulate the public opinion, have the capacity to covertly do psyops, and actively, aggressively collect any and all data.
The potential problem I see (and probably what concerns most of the privacy advocates out there) however, is that while the bill is aiming at tiktok in particular (fine), it also targets any "foreign adversary". Meaning that, AFAIU (but IANAL), all the US would have to do to completely and entirely nuke an app (or an entire federated platform!) in the US would be to declare any foreign entity (country, state, corporation, person, etc) their "adversary". Effectively giving them a single "button" to directly nuke any app and services they don't see fit. No matter how legitimate.
Thanks.
I also had a brief read on the bill you linked and some relavent articles. The bill only cite "national security" yet doesn't explain what "national security" it causes.
The Bloomberg article states a few reasons, but none satisfied me to justify a ban. For example, reason 1 points out that the algoritm of generating feed is advanced and intoxicating. So they should be punished for a well written and effective algorithms?
Yes, there are and were dumb to harmful contents found on TikTok. However, I think it should be a content moderation issue, not a national security issue. I heard people can find CSAM on Twitter and Discord, harmful and damaging it's, should it get banned too due to "national security" concerns? It just have a smell of unfair.
Just my two cents.
Disclosure: I don't use Facebook, Intagram, Twitter, nor TikTok. I do have a Discord account.
They're not worried about CSAM. They worried about TikTok users being influenced during an election campaign.
And yes, it is a moderation issue. Specifically, the US doesn't want the current moderation team to be in charge of moderation.
Disclosure: I don’t use Facebook, Intagram, Twitter, nor TikTok
To put it in perspective, about a quarter of the US population uses TikTok. And politics are a major discussion point with the political content you're exposed to selected by an algorithm that is opaque and constantly changing.
It absolutely can be used to change the result of an election. And China has meddled in elections in the past (not least of all their own elections... but also foreign ones:
"China has been interfering with every single presidential election in Taiwan since 1996, either through military exercises, economic coercion, or cognitive warfare, including disinformation or the spread of conspiracies"
It not uncommon to see misinformatuon to fabricated information appears on many SNS platforms including Facebook and Twitter. It is not unheard of Russia use social media to influence election too via popular platform that is US based. All SNS are subject to the same problem, but only TikTok have more active users thus more far reaching, ~~but again this is a content moderation problem, not the inherent fault of TikTok itself.~~ Whom should perform content moderation is a business decision. It should not be dictated by law, though they can make moderation standards that companies needs to comply. I think this is a bit unfair to just targeting TikTok only, and should be universal.
EDIT:
political content you’re exposed to selected by an algorithm that is opaque and constantly changing
Isn't TikTok opened access to its algorithm for reviewing?
Actually it is not solely a content moderation problem. While some dumb and physically harmful content should be subject to moderation, speeches should be protected. Isn't American all about the word "Freedom"? It should be free to speak what they believe, right?
However, the recommendation algorithms might need some regulations that categorize content and have relevant display policies. For example, political content, user generated and advertisement, should be distributed equally for all views (i.e. a user will see content for all candidates for roughly same amount of time). The "addictive" thing shouldn't be regulated as that the point of the algorithm: maximize user engagement. However, there could be a rating system similar to game ratings that affect who at what age can use which platform. Otherwise, it should be free for one to addict to something, as long as it doesn't cause a physical harm to himself and others.
Because the Chinese government has inordinate control over Chinese companies and is not a friendly government. They routinely use technology to control their own population and work closely with hackers in their country that attack US businesses and consumers.
There absolutely should be serious legislation on data gathering and how large platforms manipulate public perception with their algorithms, but TikTok is a national security threat at a level the others are not explicitly because the Chinese government has control over it.
How dumb you can be protesting for a chinese spyware which is destroying IQ of children, americans.
BLEEP BLOOP you sound programed. The government doesn't like that there's a media source that they can't control.
