Do you want to try testing that feature out on the upper echelons of the CCP?
It is a problem that we have an unequal exchange with the PRC over social media companies, and that the situation with American businesses under American law and situation with PRC businesses under PRC law subject to the Politburo of the CCP are equivalent, and shouldn’t be ignored by Congress because they’ll look bad or look like hypocrites. They already look bad and like hypocrites on a daily basis, but they still have a responsibility to the American people to investigate what appears to be an asset of the PRC government that only appears to be a private business operating in the American market and address it through law if necessary.
Don’t forget these are the same people who spirited away Jack Ma until he toed the party line. There is no such thing as a private corporation in the PRC whilst it is subject to the CCP’s political regime.
Congress sucks, but it is a notable distinction that despite how much they suck, they also make their investments public information per laws they chose to pass.
Can't find that in China, though.
This isn't a feature of TikTok. Someone mentioned it on TikTok.
> In April 2021, a state-owned enterprise owned by the Cyberspace Administration of China and China Media Group, the China Internet Investment Fund, purchased a 1% stake in ByteDance's main Chinese entity and placed a government official, Wu Shugang, on its board of directors.
Pretending this is about human rights abuses is simply a farce. The US has, and continues to support human rights abuse wherever it deems it advantageous.
The recent witch hunt has done more damage to the US than TikTok was ever likely to.
This is not about privacy.
TikTok/CCP supporters keep dragging it in that direction to avoid the main issue.
It is about an adversarial government having access to the US population while shutting off US companies unfairly. It is about national security and fair trade.
> The recent witch hunt has done more damage to the US than TikTok was ever likely to.
And you have data to support that?
I was neutral about this when starting out but seeing the same weak pro-TikTok arguments repeated in different forms, have pushed to the other side.
You were the one to bring human rights into the conversation: "with one of the worst human rights violations in the modern world".
> It is about an adversarial government
The US has spent the last decade using China as a way to score political points at home, after spending the prior three decades moving the majority of their manufacturing there. China is far from perfect but from my perspective the US have been the ones fostering an adversarial relationship.
> And you have data to support that?
I'll qualify that statement as my personal opinion but from my perspective your politicians just spent a day engaging in an embarrassingly transparent attempt at stoking fear and mistrust. The main result of which was showing the world how deeply incompetent many of them are.
Buddy Carter confidently believes that TikTok is tracking it's users emotional response through pupil dilation but has no comprehension of why you'd need to identify someone's eyes to put a motion tracking filter over them[1]. According to Mr. Carter, TikTok isn't doing enough to protect younger users but thinks that asking a user their age and checking whether or not the users public videos align with the age they declared is "creepy".
Dan Crenshaw used his time to state that Chinese law requires it's citizens to co-operate with their national intelligence agencies. That might have been a good point if not for the fact that TikTok's CEO, the person Crenshaw was questioning, is not Chinese.
Richard Hudson proved himself unable of forming a coherent question as to whether TikTok attempts to access other devices on a WiFi network. Instead asking "So if I have a TikTok app on my phone and my phone is on my home WiFi network, does TikTok access that network?"
> Access to the US population while shutting off US companies unfairly. It is about national security and fair trade.
The average American is at much more risk from their own government's surveillance apparatus than China's. America has never been interested in fair trade, only trade which furthers American interests. There's no "fairness" in a financially poorer country having it's domestic players pushed out of their own markets by companies that can afford to lose more than the country's GDP.
> I was neutral about this when starting out but seeing the same weak pro-TikTok arguments repeated in different forms, have pushed to the other side.
Ah yes, TikTok have been famously adversarial and haven't taken any steps to assuage privacy or security concerns. They aren't a legally separate entity, they aren't already working with Oracle to process US data and they haven't already moved the storage of that data to Oracle's servers in the US either[2]:
> As of October, all new U.S. user data was being stored inside the country. The company started deleting all historic U.S. user data from non-Oracle servers this month, in a process expected to be completed this year, Chew said.
> access to U.S. data is managed by U.S. employees through a separate entity called TikTok U.S. Data Security, which is run independently of ByteDance and monitored by outside observers.
By all means, ban TikTok from the devices of government and security personnel. Banning it entirely will only cool the relationship between China and the US even further, followed by a resulting loss in global influence. The lack of support for the sanctions on Russia proves how much damage the antagonistic approach has already caused.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/25/tech/tiktok-user-reaction...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZDpJHl6amo
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-tiktok-ceo-...
In part, the campaign against Tiktok is a campaign for SF based big tech to hold the monopoly on people's attention. As a newer startup, Tiktok has not entrenched itself the way that other tech companies have in DC yet.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165249928/tiktok-congress-he...
> Tiktok's lobbying tops $5.4M in 2022 as it brings its charm offensive to Congress
> As a newer startup, Tiktok has not entrenched itself the way that other tech companies have in DC yet.
Any measure quantifying that? TikTok is not a usual startup. It has the whole force of CCP behind it. So calling it a "young startup" is disingenuous.
Has anyone made a credible argument for why top national leaders should be allowed to stock-pick?
(Rather than required to put any investments into total-market index funds, which is good enough for the little people.)
Another is that it'd be unfair to politicians who think that market indexes are a bad idea.
https://www.capitoltrades.com
Is it any surprise that they want to ban the tool that not only is the biggest competitor for their investments - which pay them hundreds of millions of dollars - but also tells its users where to find the very corruption that they try so hard to cover up?