As we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, social media companies based in the US are also vulnerable to US government interference — but that’s the way they like it.

They released a Marty Rimm-level report citing that pro-Palestinian was mentioned more than pro-Israeli content in ratios that differed from Meta products. This was the 'smoking gun' of manipulation when it's more of a sign Meta was the one doing the manipulation.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/6/7/china-spied-on-ho...

Every major social media and dating application has a law enforcement portal. This was documented in BlueLeaks.

https://archive.ph/kt0fY

But, this is done under the guise of commercial interests, usually advertising, so it's okay?

The only problem with democracy is that it's so fragile and susceptible to bad non-democrat actors intervention, which is more of an awareness problem.

I’d argue the TikTok remedy should be applied to X, too.

Companies in China (and especially those of prominence) have formal structures and regulations that require them to cooperate with the government, and sometimes require the companies to allow the government to intervene in operations if necessary.

It is not possible for a CCP official to show up to a board meeting at X and direct the company to take some action, because that isn't how US corporations work.

But regardless, there is a huge difference between a request and actually having managerial authority -- the most obvious being that someone with managerial authority can simply do whatever they want without trying to compel someone else. Also, X, being subject to US law, must comply with that no matter what consequences Musk is threatened with. So, any threats may have limits in what they can practically accomplish.

My interpretation of the parent’s comment is that we have pretty serious (and dubiously legal) overreach on this in a purely domestic setting as well.

As someone who has worked a lot on products very much like TikTok, I’d certainly argue that we do.

There is an adjacent point that many of us feel is just as important, which is that there is evidence in the public record (see Snowden disclosures among others) that there is lawbreaking or at least abuse of clearly stated constitutional liberties taking place domestically in the consumer internet space and has been for a long time.

Both things can be true, and both are squarely on topic for this debate whether on HN or in the Senate Chambers.

- China can access military personnel, politically exposed persons, and their associates. Location data, sensitive kompromat exfiltration, etc.

- China can show favorable political content to America and American youth. They can influence how we vote.

- China could turn TikTok into a massive DDoS botnet during war.

- China doesn't allow American social media on its soil. This is unequal trade and allows their companies to grow stronger.

- China can exert soft power, exposing us to their values while banning ours from their own population.

American culture has been such an influencing force on the world due to our conduits, movies and music. TikTok is a Chinese conduit, and I do believe this is happening. Our culture can be co-opted, the Chinese had John Cena apologize to ALL of China. They can easily pay to have American influencers spin in a certain way, influencing everything.

As an aside, TikTok itself is banned in China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica...

Edit: Apparently it’s not common knowledge that this is still happening. Here’s a story about a congressional investigation from 2023:

https://www.scworld.com/analysis/developers-in-china-russia-...

And here’s a story about an executive order from Biden the next year. Apparently the White House concluded that the investigation wasn’t enough to fix the behavior:

https://www.thedailyupside.com/technology/biden-wants-to-sto...

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/28/politics/americans-person...

Edit 2: Here’s a detailed article from the EFF from this month explaining how the market operates: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-...

I’m not anti-vax. I’ve been shot up with Covid vaccines more often than I can count and I was early in line for the J and J one shot and I took an mRNA booster before it was recommended by the US once I started reading it was recommended by other country’s health departments.

But where we are now is totally the fault of Biden and the Democratic establishment.

They can claim this is not a sale if they want, but it’s still a sale. Drug dealers make similar arguments about similar shell games where you hand a random dude some cash, then later some other random dude drops a bag on the ground and you pick it up.

Since Facebook was first caught doing this during the Obama administration, it’s hard to argue they are not intentionally selling the data at this point.

I'm not sure they do that anymore, not in the current geopolitical climate and not with the DC ghouls having taken over the most sensitive parts of Meta the company (there were many posts on this web-forum about former CIA people and not only working at the highest levels inside of Meta).