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The TikTok Flip-Flop

LiteBright said:
The real issue with Tiktok which most people seem to be missing is the ability to manipulate public opinion through its algorithm. The CCP can exercise direct control over any company in China so its conceivable that they could use the app to manipulate the west in its favour. That is many orders of magnitude more dangerous than any data collection and a completely legitimate reason to ban the app.
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Every social network manipulates their audience by giving them what the devs believe users want to see.

TikTok just happens to be exceptionally good at it.
 
I listened to an episode of The Daily (NY Times daily podcast) about this on my morning commute. They used the same title as this thread.



Yes, he's done a complete 180 on TikTok, from the guy who wanted to ban it to now the savior of TikTok for all users with whom it is popular. And he doesn't seem shy about admitting that it's just that he thinks there's more votes or political support for him for being the guy who saved TikTok than being against it.
 
An article from the Rand Corporation discusses the danger of Tik Tok videos being used as training data for AI-generated "deep fake" videos:

"The discourse surrounding the national security implications of the app overlooks a critical threat—an unprecedented corpus of videos ideal for training advanced deepfake-generating AI systems.
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To curb foreign development of these and other dangerous AI capabilities, the government controls exports of semiconductors, the physical underpinning of AI. Equal emphasis, however, should be placed on cross-border transfers of large datasets, or bulk data, the fuel for generative AI systems.
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Most of the individual videos that Americans post on social media platforms are harmless at face value, but the 34 million videos posted daily on TikTok become ideal training material for massive generative AI models. These models will be able to create astonishingly convincing deepfakes and could be used to launch discreet, large-scale, and highly targeted influence operations.
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TikTok encourages users to post vertical videos with a 9:16 aspect ratio. This uniformity in structure, along with the diverse content of the posts, makes them perfect for training deep learning models."

 
d4m10n said:
Every social network manipulates their audience by giving them what the devs believe users want to see.

TikTok just happens to be exceptionally good at it.
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True but not every social network is headquartered in a country where the government has granted itself the power to take a hand in the actions of any company in its jurisdiction and has conducted regular cyber-attacks against the west. That makes Tiktok uniquely dangerous.

I think all social networks are dangerous for the enormous amount of power they have to unaccountably manipulate public opinion but none are quite the imminent national security threat that tiktok could be.

You could make a solid argument that twitter is reaching that level as well given Musk's ambitions of late.
 
LiteBright said:
True but not every social network is headquartered in a country where the government has granted itself the power to take a hand in the actions of any company in its jurisdiction and has conducted regular cyber-attacks against the west. That makes Tiktok uniquely dangerous.
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So, the geography is the problem? Because until you said "against the West", you could be describing actions by the US or our allies.
LiteBright said:
I think all social networks are dangerous for the enormous amount of power they have to unaccountably manipulate public opinion but none are quite the imminent national security threat that tiktok could be.
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Probably not, but can we agree they are a national security threat? I mean, these greedy ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ would happily sell us out to the CCP. It seems tiktok's big sin is cutting the middleman. The owner class are making themselves our enemy irrespective of what flag they wave.
LiteBright said:
You could make a solid argument that twitter is reaching that level as well given Musk's ambitions of late.
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And the Saudi ownership.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
To curb foreign development of these and other dangerous AI capabilities, the government controls exports of semiconductors, the physical underpinning of AI. Equal emphasis, however, should be placed on cross-border transfers of large datasets, or bulk data, the fuel for generative AI systems.
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Man, reading the stuff here there's nothing that TikTok CAN'T do with the data they get, but yet none of the other social media platforms have this issue? How many videos do facebook, instagram, etc. having posted to their platform daily? How about X?

If the goal is fear mongering that it's China, then just say it but I assure you China can get any data they get from TikTok by buying it from somewhere else. That somewhere else will be Musk or Zuckerberg and we've seen how both those companies don't seem to bothered by selling off information.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
An article from the Rand Corporation discusses the danger of Tik Tok videos being used as training data for AI-generated "deep fake" videos...
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Everything you quoted from the Rand report is substantively true of TikTok's competitors such as Meta's Reels and Google's YouTube Shorts, both of which can be scraped for content by any competent foreign cyber operation.

Where's the unique threat?
 
JayUtah said:
I'm not sure it is. I agree that any app can collect the same user data as TikTok does, but I'm not sure it follows that other apps are offering for sale everything that they have. The only reliable way to get the kind of information you think is valuable to your enterprise is to collect it yourself.


I think this is really the only reason China collects so much data on ordinary Americans. Yes, there was the fear that allowing TikTok on computers operated by U.S. government agencies or employees and officers might give China direct access to what those people are doing. But I think the "vast swaths" of data are being used most directly to tune and evaluate the manipulation efforts.

Normally even this would be allowed under the First Amendment. People who speak are allowed to attempt to use speech to influence others. But the clincher in this case is the determination that China is a foreign adversary. This creates a special characteristic of the speaker that carves out an exception to normal First Amendment protection.


This is why I don't trust Trump's proposed solution of joint ownership. It doesn't ring true. If the supposed commercial value of TikTok is its algorithm—which China will not export—and the solution is apparently a joint venture between an American company and a Chinese company, and China maintains control over and access to the data of any Chinese company, how does the proposed solution secure American citizens' data and avoid manipulation by a Chinese adversary? It really does seem to be more about the money than anything else. Or as an economist and lawyer I consulted last night put it, "It's just protectionism wrapped in national security theater."
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Trampy's proposed solution has one genesis, China rented him out.
 
All social media is essentially making the marketing data they scrape by nefarious means available to the highest bidder. For TikTok, that is the CCP. King Felonious wants a slice of that action.
 
Norman Alexander said:
All social media is essentially making the marketing data they scrape by nefarious means available to the highest bidder.
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Does it make sense to say that Temu targeting me with customized ads is a national security issue?

Congress, SCOTUS, and President Biden all agreed that there is some national security rationale here, but it's hard to imagine this is it.
 
d4m10n said:
Does it make sense to say that Temu targeting me with customized ads is a national security issue?

Congress, SCOTUS, and President Biden all agreed that there is some national security rationale here, but it's hard to imagine this is it.
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Being deliberately dense is not an admirable trait. Unless it's not deliberate, of course.
 
Okay...so for the less dense people, what does "marketing data" have to do with national security?

Basically what I'm looking for here is what Bytedance might do which justifies passing (Congress), signing (Biden) and upholding (SCOTUS) the law which requires TikTok (US) to separate from it's parent entity.
 
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Bump!

Trump says Murdoch, Michael Dell, and Larry Ellison will be in control of TikTok US operations. Because "they're patriots".

apnews.com

Trump reveals Murdochs and Dell could potentially take part in TikTok deal

President Donald Trump has mentioned that billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell could be part of deal in which the U.S. will take control of TikTok.
apnews.com apnews.com

Funny how earlier this year Trump was suing Murdoch over the WSJ publishing a story connecting Trump to Epstein. Or not funny.
 
d4m10n said:
Okay...so for the less dense people, what does "marketing data" have to do with national security?

Basically what I'm looking for here is what Bytedance might do which justifies passing (Congress), signing (Biden) and upholding (SCOTUS) the law which requires TikTok (US) to separate from it's parent entity.
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Remember when that jogging fitness app revealed secret military bases in foreign countries?

An app that can track people can pose all sorts of security risks, including ones we haven’t even figured out.
 
Ziggurat said:
Remember when that jogging fitness app revealed secret military bases in foreign countries?

An app that can track people can pose all sorts of security risks, including ones we haven’t even figured out.
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but only if the companies are in another country, not if they are controlled by naturalized immigrants?
 
Whoever gets TikTok will have to do so as a favor to Trump, and get a medal for fighting in the US-China War.
But users will just switch to something else.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Whoever gets TikTok will have to do so as a favor to Trump, and get a medal for fighting in the US-China War.
But users will just switch to something else.
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Teenagers who don't know anything about politics won't know to leave TikTok. They'll be susceptible to Murdoch/MAGA spin.
 
I think you are underestimating how much kids on TikTok will resent any interference in their toy, regardless of ideology or politics.
When it was briefly banned, they happily moved onto a pure Chinese version without hesitation.
 
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