They do in fact impose less extreme controls on data from these platforms, that lesser extremity presumably reflecting their lesser perception of the US's use of that data as highly dangerous, as compared to the US's perception of China.
US tech companies currently getting slapped around with large fines in the EU for similar infringements of privacy etc.
Restricting business operation altogether is a response a country gives when they see the other party as extremely adversarial, which is a few orders of magnitude above what EU fines are to Big Tech.
Big difference
We’re not your foreign adversary? (If we are, we shouldn’t have an obligation to defend you.)
This bill permits TikTok’s sale to a European owner. It just bans its ownership by a foreign adversary country.
More often they don't get elected at all due to coordinated media campaigns influencing elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_United_K...
The US Army literally have an entire army unit dedicated to running propaganda campaigns on social networks internationally. It's ludicrous to suggest this isn't employed to impact political and social policy in 'friendly' nations. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
That being said, there are worse things than Pax Americana. I'd certainly rather living under US influence than CCP. I'd be the first to argue that NATO has prevented another war in Europe. But lets not deny the reality on the ground.
Phrasing?
Thank you for letting me know. I am glad to have learned as much from an internet comment the day after renewing my passport!
Yes, America is a multiethnic and multicultural state. We’ve even had natural-born citizens—who served in office—born abroad. That said, our baseline public education could apparently use some help.
This wreaks of straw man.
> We’ve even had natural-born citizens who served in office born abroad.
What? Are you saying you are a government employee pushing propaganda here? You aren't making much sense.
Yes, everyone who has heard of John McCain works for the government.
I hope you get the help you need. (Genuinely [1].)
Do you get paid to do this? Are you working for free? Are you with a private organization or with a government?
Thank you for removing all doubt. I wasn't 100% certain until now.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. Note this one:
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39682943
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39636608
and we've already asked you once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39362247.
I'm not going to ban you right now but we need you to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start following the rules strictly. No more personal attacks, especially.
IMO, somewhat similar situations - popular social media, known for data gathering, based in another country that is viewed as a geopolitical and/or ideological opponent and is often villified.
0: https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/17/technology/russia-linkedin-...
1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/russia-tries-to-...
I think the reason for the outright ban is more due to it being a Chinese product. China isn't known to be very transparent.
Sadly European intelligence services actually want US to spy on their citizen in order to gain access to the data legally.
But its pretty clear that the security threat posed by US based services vs certain others is starkly different, especially since the US is generally seen as a beneficial/friendly state.
- The EU is fundamentally an American colony that has neither the economic power nor the political power to stand up to their colonizer in such a way
This is like arguing Europe was colonised by Britain when they helped the continent repel Napoleon.
Oh how the tables have turned
At least according to their website, it seems like US data does not leave US data warehouses: https://usds.tiktok.com/our-approach-to-keeping-u-s-data-sec...
I don’t know the details of course but if China wants the data there are umpteen companies who engage in data brokerage and can get the info they want.
I’m not for or against this bill, but it seems like really the issue is data collection in general, which obviously the Congress has no interest in regulating.
minimizing employee access to U.S. user data and minimizing data transfers across regions – including to China.
It is "minimized", or in other words, accessible from China.
How is that any different than say Press TV, whose website and media are not banned and are freely viewable in the US because we have freedom of expression?
However, I don’t see them being propaganda yet, but technically they can be overnight by download a new model from headquarter (and even without US user data leave US soil). The bill is trying to stop that possibility.
I don’t feel it morally sound to punish someone for sth they haven’t done yet. But what do I know? Reading many here and on Ars, most are actually thinking the two country are at war, so they can do anything to each other
I don’t think we are at war, but if enough people believe that way, does it matter?
Americans are ejecting to get this information. You have to download software, optionally allow it to send you notifications, the purposefully open and interact with it.
It's rational consumption. Simple as.
Edit: I now realize what /s means.
Surely letting someone make your populace addicted and/or stupid is problematic? In a way I consider it China's late payback for the opium wars.
There are plenty of companies that offer digital crack: video games, porn, social media (including this site). But we must give agency to humans. We must acknowledge that they make decisions voluntarily.
Regardless of the source, either we should regulate data, including streaming videos of all kinds, or we don't. Singling out a company seems like a political stunt with zero real world impact. And a bad policy at that.
For the record, I don't and never have. Occasionally something leaks through to me, including epiphenomena like this discussion. HN can be stressful at times too, but it's still somewhat useful and it'll be the final thing of this sort for me, should it ever kick the bucket (hope not, though).
> We must acknowledge that they make decisions voluntarily.
There's considerable behavioral determinism when exposing a population to addictive substances and propaganda. Modern neuroscience has basically killed the myth of free will. From an adversary's perspective this is awesome. From a profiteering actor's (corporations, drug cartels, influencers, casinos) perspective this is awesome as well. Would you like some sauce with this social capital?
> Regardless of the source, either we should regulate data, including streaming videos of all kinds, or we don't. Singling out a company seems like a political stunt with zero real world impact.
Sure, for all I care we can pull the plug on all of them and be better off. The systems we had for scientific, journalistic or cultural innovation and dissemination were sufficient and much better behaved (private TV can go as well). No more "professional" streamers (haha). No more perpetual reinserting the same recycled info into the collective goldfish's mind.
This would also abolish the "need" for storing the 86263961826th minecraft let's play, freeing up exabytes of storage space in the process.
Small online communities, that can actually (federatively?) host and moderate themselves will survive as they have before the maelstrom.
We ban accounts that do this. It's not what HN is for, and destroys what it is for. I don't want to ban you because your account has been around a long time, but we need this to stop.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Edit: this has been a problem for a long time:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35777673 (May 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23752945 (July 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331270 (May 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350549 (March 2019)
But I don't even think the real problem is videos of high school girls doing choreographed dances going to China. The problem is psyops and disinformation. I think it's much more likely TikTok could be, and probably has been, used to sow political discord. It's not hard to imagine the Chinese government "suggesting" to TikTok that they alter their algorithm to promote content that, say, discourages people from voting, or promoting political violence, or eschewing vaccinations.
There is little to no evidence that CA was able to manipulate anyone other than gullible campaign managers. And frankly the idea that a list of pages someone liked could be used to create a skeleton key that turned people into Republican voters is... far-fetched.
There is little to no evidence that CA was able to manipulate anyone other than gullible campaign managers. And frankly the idea that a list of pages someone liked could be used to create a skeleton key that turned people into Republican voters is... far-fetched.
Similarly, I haven't seen anyone actually articulate what the risk from TikTok actually is. They will eavesdrop on users? App store review is supposed to catch that. Promote videos about controversial topics to users? That's cable news. See what videos you have watched or liked? Doesn't seem like a big risk...
Profiling of a large population, you put them in cohorts, and slowly shift what you show to these cohorts (based on their preferences, worldviews, etc.) to slowly nudge them into a worldview you'd like. It won't be 100% effective but it can definitely shift perceptions, if each cohort is siloed into their own reality bubbles through what you show them you can stochastically nudge them into a view you want them to hold based on their preferences.
If marketing works even to the people aware of how it works, a concerted effort to use someone's profiling data telling what do they like, dislike, will definitely work on a majority of users.
It's not like it will be blunt, it only has potential if you use this data to slowly shift views by using what's most effective to each cohort, with a large amount of data you can be quite precise in defining these cohorts and using different strategies/tactics for each one depending on what's most effective.
Have you ever worked on anything that did profiling based on accumulated data? I've worked on a few projects back in the early 2010s and even at the time it was scary how much you could infer about your users based on some 100-200 data points collected over a period of 2-5 years. Weaponising that is not the complicated part, the data collection is.
What is so awful about the idea that people in the United States might be convinced of something? What does it matter who is doing the convincing? You just don’t like the hypothetical outcome you suggested.
Are you opposed to a Taiwanese propaganda campaign, conducted through a newly popular Taiwanese social media app and directed at convincing U.S. citizens to support Taiwan in the event of an incursion by China? What’s the difference?
I find scary the idea that the U.S. government would try to protect its citizens from anyone’s speech or ideas. The best response to speech you don’t like is to argue forcefully against it; not to suppress it. We can make up our own minds.
I don’t want the government trying to suppress or protect me from thoughts or ideas it thinks are bad.
That's how modern misinformation works, you simply bombard social media networks until the truth is lost in a sea of misinformation.
The difference between the truth and the lie though is that in the end when you actually have to implement policy or predict something, lies tend to eventually collapse in on themselves. Credibility as such emerges for the people/insitutions/frameworks that can consistently predict or give results that reflect reality more. But that can take years or even decades, while gepolitical decisions need to made today.
I don’t want government deciding, on my behalf, what is or is not bullshit — and then taking legislative steps to suppress ideas it doesn’t like.
Is Communism bullshit? Is anti-Anericanism bullshit? How about liberalism? Conservatism? Homosexuality?
Maybe. But those are for me to decide, based on whatever information people want to use to try and convince me. It is not appropriate for government to legislatively suppress ideas or information it thinks is wrong.
If you think otherwise, do you have a problem with the Chinese internet firewall? From their perspective, China is protecting its citizens from harmful, wrong information. You just disagree about their value judgments. (I assume.)
People like to think of themselves as being pro-freedom because it’s hip and cool and they are brainwashed from a young age to be proud to live in “the land of the free” but the moments you interrogate those beliefs a little they start to fall apart. It’s more of a political aesthetic than a true belief system.
A similar example, people should be able to freely assemble, corporations should not be able to form cartels.
No, nobody truly believes that. Whoever is trying to sell that is trying to manipulate you. We have exceptions, provisions and considerable case law which adds a lot of *) to the first amendment. The 'principles' you're referring to have never actually been a thing outside of political emotional speeches and Republican rallies.
None of us have been alive when America was in a hot war to see exactly how far free speech stretches when actual lives are at stake. We're in a cold war right now and people should adjust their expectations. I'm not shedding any tears when a foreign corporation has its 'free speech' rights restricted. If it wants free speech it should move to the USA.
China most definitely has their hands in the data that TikTok amasses and given its popularity it's not an insignificant risk to U.S. citizens. We all know how easy it is to manipulate users... aka Cambridge Analytica.
It'll be interesting to see what legal challenges come up if the bill passes the senate because that is where the real discussion will occur. I ultimately see it being reversed, but I can also see a solid framework for future bills being illuminated via the courts.