And then they are banned. Not because they are China or TikTok, but because they break specific rules we hold everyone to.
I'm no fan of the CCP, but I'd take Chinese propaganda over American censorship any day.
If we actually care about surveillance by App, we have to make rules that can prevent that including requiring levels of access and transparency to enforce those rules.
Of course, there is little appetite for making those rules... But that doesn't mean that such rules are impossible.
> A China-based team at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes.
Isn't that called "an app store"? Good luck getting non-signed binaries on an iPhone.
My point is that if TikTok is somehow able to escape its sandbox and perform surveillance, that's a fault in the sandbox, and there should be a general process for handling this otherwise you just have to deal with the next week's app "TokTik".
Man the FBI acts like tik tok is used in jet planes and nuclear power plants...
1. Shaping and manipulating minds. Eg, show healthy, educational, intellectual content to Chinese users, and unhealthy, addictive, emotional, short-attention-span-inducing content in US and foreign markets (already happening [1]).
2. Train AI for analyzing and further manipulating foreign publics, or for providing strategic insight into political and election dynamics, making political and election interference operations more effective.
3. Collate data on individuals gained from TikTok with other sources like credit ratings agency breaches, OPM, etc. for their entire life, to create a continually growing lifetime data profile on every American, European, Asian, South American, African, etc. which may be used for pressure, coercion, or manipulation operations or similar. Think of it as "customer lifetime value" [2] for political purposes.
None of which we want an adversarial, totalitarian foreign power to be capable of doing to us.
[1]:https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tristan-harris-social-media-pol...
It can't be more than a week ago that we discussed here on HN a way that MS Powerpoint can leak your entire presentation to microsoft. Lots of people in my country use the entire MS suite, and I don't think the CIA/FBI/ABCDEFG should have our data.
That said, yes if you use FB/etc you should assume your data could be used by US intel agencies for similar purposes. Just don't use those apps. Heck, I'm American and refuse to Facebook or any of their other services (Insta, Whatsapp, Meta). None of this stuff is actually necessary to live a happy healthy life, and often even detracts from it.
And that's precisely why there is a trade war in between the US and Eu since early 2005. Because the Eu started making up its own rules and standards. TTIP, ACTA, PIPA were all attempts by the US to bring the Eu to heel. All failed. And voila - there is a proxy war that deprives the Eu out of cheap oil and gas, leading to literal deindustrialization of the Eu.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-09/european-...
Its not an argument for what you are proposing. Its an argument against it.
CCP can do very little to impact me directly. The feds could ruin my life if they wanted to - just fabricate a few charges.
How the hell CIA rendition flights are a 'lesser problem'.
> Western companies subject to Western laws, which Western citizens have some say in
Western public has not been able to change neither the economic policy, nor forign policy, nor the surveillance state laws in the past 40 years. Also, the western laws are wantonly ignored in the west when western corporate or state interests are at stake. So no.
...
This is exceptionalism. You are applying to others the standards that you are not applying to your own side, where you have no means to do anything about the problem.
Its a coping mechanism that helps avoid cognitive dissonance by projecting 'worse' problems to outside, to external 'enemies'.
You mean China has regulations on how youths interact with the internet and the US prefers an on-going social experiment lead by sheer engagement numbers that will continue with or without TikTok?
That is happening, because the US audience is CHOOSING to interract with shtty content online. Actually, the majority of shtty content, from flat earth to Reagan being alive et al, come from the US.
> which may be used for pressure, coercion, or manipulation operations or similar
So Chinese government will coerce and pressure me to do what, exactly. Will it be any worse from the rendition flights of CIA.
...
This sounds like double standards.
That is the only information that should be protected?
Unless you audit every foreign app's source code and sign its binaries, those laws are meaningless. And if you do that you're really just swapping foreign advertising for domestic wiretapping. shrug Lose-lose.