And what is the evidence for it being a Chinese spying platform? Is it owned by a Chinese company? Is there any hard evidence? Why is it so controversial?

  • november@lemmy.vg
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    20 hours ago

    Tiktok is owned by a Chinese company, so all of the data harvesting that’s perfectly fine for Facebook and Twitter to do suddenly became a problem for the US government.

    • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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      20 hours ago

      It’s not about the data harvesting, please stop repeating this falsehood.

      It’s about how China is controlling the algorithm for polical goals. From pushing its claim over Taiwan to interfering with global elections by showing(or hiding) speicifc content to sway peoples choices.

          • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            They all suck, yeah. I think banning individual social media services is not the solution. The solution is to create meaningful laws that hold any company, Chinese or American, accountable for data privacy and misinformation/election interference violations.

            • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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              19 hours ago

              Funny you say that, because Chinese apps like tiktok can’t ever be compliant with GDPR, and American ones are fully reliant on an executive order where Biden pinky swore to not use the Cloud Act against GDPR.

            • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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              17 hours ago

              That wouldn’t solve the problem because the Chinese government is not bound by US law in China.

                • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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                  17 hours ago

                  Yes, which doesn’t solve the problem because the problem is in China. The Chinese government can demand any information that ByteDance possesses. Under Chinese law, they are bound to comply and bound to deny that they were even asked under threat of extremely harsh punishment.

                  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                    12 hours ago

                    It does solve the problem at least as far as then you’d have legal standing to ban til too, and equally anything else that doesn’t follow the law

                  • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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                    17 hours ago

                    I would expect a meaningful data privacy law would involve forcing the client software to be audited to ensure they aren’t collecting the information in the first place?

      • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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        13 hours ago

        I mean, that’s exactly what Facebook and YouTube and Twitter do as well just over different things like radicalizing people towards Maga and whatnot.

        • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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          9 hours ago

          Facebook and You tube haven’t been pushing Maga content, they’re just allowing it to exist. The feed itself isn’t set to give it to everyone or hide left-wing content for a default user.

          Twitter is a different story, and should probably also get banned at this point. Elon is absolutely using it to push his own rhetoric.

    • Tedesche@lemmy.worldOP
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      20 hours ago

      Seems like the most honest answer so far. The U.S. doesn’t trust the CCP with its citizens’ data. No surprise there.

      • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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        20 hours ago

        Please read my reply to the comment, it’s not about data ownership, it’s about weaponizing algorithms.

          • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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            18 hours ago

            Companies weaponizing algorithms for profit is different than governments weaponizing algorithms for all sorts of far worse reasons.

            If you can’t see that, you’re a bloody idiot.

            • snooggums@lemmy.world
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              17 hours ago

              You don’t think meta and xhitter are weaponizing algorithms for Republicans? They might not be the whole government, but they are now in power after coordinating their hate filled messaging and misinformation.

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                9 hours ago

                Meta, no. Twitter, yes.

                Twitter should be banned as well at this point. They have absolutely weaponized it, but not for government purposes, it’s for Daddy Elon’s purposes.

                Meta is just allowing the hate content, they aren’t prioritizing it to all users or something. My feed certainly doesn’t contain any of it.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        20 hours ago

        Except FB and Twitter sell their data to the highest bidder. If China wanted American’s data, they can just buy it.

        • Tedesche@lemmy.worldOP
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          19 hours ago

          Good point. Seems like another issue of concern. As usual, the issue seems to be data privacy laws overall.

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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            19 hours ago

            It is, but the relevance to the discussion is that China getting american’s data isn’t the reason for the ban. Nor is China influencing Americans because they tend to derank politically spicy videos. If China was controlling the algo to make the US look bad, videos tagged BLM wouldn’t have been deranked.

            Tiktok also wouldn’t have hired a bunch of state department spooks if they weren’t intending to keep amplifying US narratives.

            • Tedesche@lemmy.worldOP
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              19 hours ago

              It depends on the manner in which said “politically spicy videos” are being censored. If it’s being done in a manner that promotes Chinese narratives while demoting American narratives, that’s an entirely legitimate concern for the U.S. and I don’t really see why not demoting BLM videos is not in the CCP’s interest; videos that make America seem racist seems entirely in the interest of an Anti-American country.

              I also don’t see why hiring former American intelligence operatives demonstrates a pro-American stance, as their motivations for doing so could be to learn about American intelligence-gathering methods while promoting Chinese interests.

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                19 hours ago

                If it’s being done in a manner that promotes Chinese narratives while demoting American narratives

                Spicy in this case means protests, police misbehavior, stuff the US wouldn’t want amplified. The big waves of censorship came in 2020 and 2022. You can search news articles from the time with lots of people wondering why they’re no longer getting that content in their FYPs and content creators getting <1/10th of the views. FB and reddit do the same thing.

                I don’t really see why not demoting BLM videos is not in the CCP’s interest; videos that make America seem racist seems entirely in the interest of an Anti-American country.

                Amplifying the videos that show America’s response to antiracist movements would make America look like the racist country it is. Demoting them conceals that.

                I also don’t see why hiring former American intelligence operatives demonstrates a pro-American stance, as their motivations for doing so could be to learn about American intelligence-gathering methods while promoting Chinese interests.

                CIA agents living in America who disseminate intelligence-gathering methods while promoting Chinese interests get charged with treason.

                They were hired to help identify and amplify US state department narratives, same reason CNN and Fox hires them.

                • Tedesche@lemmy.worldOP
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                  19 hours ago

                  Amplifying the videos that show America’s response to antiracist movements would make America look like the racist country it is. Demoting them conceals that.

                  No, that doesn’t make sense. Amplifying shows of division in a country promotes the view that said country is flawed and weak, in this case along racial lines. China has plenty to gain by showing that.

                  And America is no less racist than China, btw. I would argue far less so.

                  They were hired to help identify and amplify US state department narratives, same reason CNN and Fox hires them.

                  That seems entirely speculative. There are plenty of other reasons to hire them. Can you provide evidence for your claim?

                  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                    18 hours ago

                    Amplifying shows of division in a country promotes the view that said country is flawed and weak, in this case along racial lines. China has plenty to gain by showing that.

                    Exactly! So demoting those videos suggests that China is not using the algorithm to promote anti-american views.

                    That seems entirely speculative. There are plenty of other reasons to hire them. Can you provide evidence for your claim?

                    No, CIA agents don’t go around saying they’re working for media companies to disseminate propaganda, and media companies don’t broadcast that they take extra care to make sure their coverage lines up with the state department’s narratives.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        Hard to believe this post is in good faith. This ban has been discussed at least for like 4 years now