I don’t know why people think spying is the issue. It’s the potential control. For example, when this bill was proposed, TikTok sent a notification to users to contact their representatives. That’s not horribly harmful, but it does show a willingness to weaponize their user base (and their base’s willingness to listen).
If this bill wasn’t going to pass before, it sure as well would after that happened. You have to consider what else that could potentially be used for. Could they possibly use it to influence an election if a candidate was against their interests?
Yeah, except if a foreign owned company activates their user base to attack you, as a representative, it has to look threatening, and it should be seen as a threat. It was more than just a comment when opening the app. It was a notification pushed to the device, or that’s my impression at least.
As I said, this case isn’t that bad, but it does make the potential threat obvious. There’s a reason western apps are banned in China. Why should a Chinese company not expect action in the west?
My local dispensary had “write your congressman to support legal weed.” Is that a threat? Or is it just encouraging people who use your app to participate in politics? It’s not like they’re encouraging their users to march on Washington or commit violence. They’re just telling folks to do what every civics teacher has told them: Write your congressman about things you care about.
If Congress takes that as a threat that says a lot more about Congress than it does about Tik Tok.
There’s a reason western apps are banned in China. Why should a Chinese company not expect action in the west?
I thought that reason was because we post about events that didn’t happen and countries that don’t exist, not that it was a threat to China’s government. We didn’t ban apps here because we’re the free good guys, and they’re the authoritarians.
But I guess both countries are dickweeds now. So it goes…
Eh, all international (and even intranational to a large degree) politics is about power and always has been. We aren’t the “free good guys,” though China is absolutely authoritarian and controlling. Looking at it through a moral lense leads to the wrong ideas though. Morality has never come into play. If there’s a potential threat to power (even if imagined), it’ll be defended against. It doesn’t matter what country we’re referring to, nor is that unreasonable action to take.
I get you, but asking people to participate in democracy is not “weaponization”, and I’m 100% okay with popular figures, even from other countries, telling people how to vote, because who doesn’t tell people how to vote these days?
Using a weapon can be done for good. If they’re using it to attack something for their interest, it’s weaponization. However, they didn’t do it for “good.” They did it for self-interest. US representatives got bombarded with phone calls and messages telling them not to block a foreign company’s app after the company told them to do so. What would that look like to them? It looks like a weapon that has been turned on them.
We shouldn’t just accept foreign agents interfering with our election just because “who doesn’t these days.” That is totally the wrong response. If that’s all you see in this you need to re-evaluate your position.
There is a whole class of “influencers” that get paid to shill for everything from liquor to policy on every platform. Tiktok, a foreign company, owns the algorithm, so they can promote whatever they want.
This all seems sketchy, but then I recall citizens united and the fact that billions are spent directly purchasing influence in the actual government. They just don’t like some other entity putting their finger on the scale.
I’d much prefer systematic reform where money can’t buy influence and companies (US or otherwise) can’t spy on their users, yet that will never be on the table because of the money and power Facebook and others have.
I don’t totally disagree, but a foreign owned company playing with our politics is just a little different than a company in the US doing so. Sure, they’re all dangerous, but you don’t let foreign governments have power that can potentially control your nation. It’s why in China nearly all western services are banned. China sees the risks. Why would anyone expect a Chinese company to be ignored?
Data harvesting is half of the problem. I have a feeling that congress could give two shits about the data harvesting as it’s almost literally everywhere in modern society and not in the interests of donors or the nationality security apparatus to remove.
The other half is the platform and its potential (hypothetical and actual) for use in information operations. TikTok has direct access to something like 160 million American devices. That rivals other social media giants like Meta who have some government liaisons and relationships embedded in their security teams. ByteDance to my knowledge does not have these relationships. This problem could just as easily apply to any other foreign platform if any were large enough to pose threats of this scale.
Propaganda is effective. It’s at times silly, blatant, jingoistic, and offensive, but it has historically worked to influence public opinions.
I think you’re right, but saying the quiet part out loud. People don’t like to think they’re susceptible to scams and propaganda because they’re not that dumb or gullible. People still click on phishing emails…
Difference being, Facebook is just greedy, and will promote toxic disinformation because it gets high engagement numbers. If factual civics videos got high engagement, Facebook would gladly promote that. They want to promote whatever is going to sell more ads.
With the CCP, the motivation is the message, not the money. With Facebook, the motivation is the money and whatever message makes the most of it.
Based take. Seemed we learned nothing from Trump and What-aboutism. Just because Facebook does it and doesn’t get in trouble doesn’t mean Facebook is in the right. It means you should get mad and demand change from them too.
Also I might have missed this, but didn’t everyone get mad at tiktok last or a couple of years ago for circumventing Android and Apple app policies and collecting data they shouldn’t? I though Facebook and Twitter obeyed those policies, they just had other means to collect that data.
TikTok has been known to exploit 0-days to evade the Android permissions system and escape OS sandboxing, especially on rooted and/or unlocked phones. This is one of the primary reasons it was banned from government-issued devices in the USA.
So I suppose put it like this: what if the way for Facebook to make the most money is all their current operations + pushing the rightwing agenda? (or leftwing depending on what team you’re on).
How is that any less meddling than tik tok? Sure Facebook is based in america, but has clearly shown it cares much more about its own interests than any country.
It just feels like trusting a tank of gas cause you just saw someone get lit on fire by a tank of diesel
On one hand I can see your gas tank analogy being correct but I may be saying this out of habit of how we have been disarming disinformation that originates from random sources the whole time we have had social media but disarming disinformation that is backed and distributed by a authoritarian regimes that have a military force and possibly assassins and other means to physically shut people up it’s a bit harder especially when you’re going against them on a platform that they control and own
Yes, this is almost certainly it. They used the app to send a notification to users to contact their representatives about this bill. They are obviously willing to use it for political means, and their users are willing to listen. What else might they use that power to do?
Sure, you gotta limit the propaganda to American companies…
I’m no fan of TikTok and I think it’s actively harmful for a whole host of reasons, but freedom of speech is Constitutionally protected, and I can see an argument that “algorithms” should be included in that protection. That’s probably why this doesn’t target the “algorithms” TikTok uses, but instead targets the nation of origin.
The propaganda issue is not resolved by this legislation, it merely attacks one potential source and gives the President tools to address other similar sources w/o passing new legislation. It’s probably fine (and way better than previous, related proposals), but it doesn’t do much to solve propaganda.
I’d much rather see more focus on transparency, privacy, and consent, instead of just banning stuff because it seems dangerous.
No one. China already said it won’t let Bytedance sell the algorithm or code. So even if someone buys the name we’ll just get YouTube shorts under a different name.
I know that I heard (on the 538 podcast) that before voting on this, congress was given a security briefing about it, and after that there was wide bipartisan support for the ban (and we all know how rare bipartisan support is these days). It sounds like the security briefing was pretty compelling. If it’s not just theoretical that Chinese gocernment could leverage tiktok to spy on Americans and influence them, and there’s evidence that they are already doing it, I think it makes the case for the ban much stronger. But the information has not been made public.
I’ll also note that they set the ban to not go into effect until after the election.
Uhh, yeah, we’re a representative democracy. This passed through both houses of congress and is on its way to be signed by the president. You know, the completely normal legislative process.
I mean sure, if you pass a constitutional amendment, I guess? Which this is not.
“I don’t like this law that our democratically elected representatives passed” does not mean that the law threatens democracy. You’re allowed to not like it, of course. That’s actually a big part of democracy.
Just because they were elected does not mean you’ve avoided autocracy. There isn’t a magic shield. You need to make sure they are respecting the Constitution and our Rights. If they assign themselves autocratic powers then you’re going to live in an autocracy. And make no mistake, giving the executive the power to just declare a corporation illegal is autocratic. It’s literally out of the playbook.
This is why our Constitution repeatedly says the government must use due process and prove its case in court.
Only way you’re voting yourself out of the US is with your feet. There are no mechanisms to relinquish citizenship (and your vote, barring convictions) while remaining in the country permanently.
That hasn’t been the case for 50 years. Your rights are inalienable as long as there’s some enforcement mechanism. All three branches have walked back certain rights in various forms in modern times.
Be the change you want to see; work in Federal service, get yourself elected for any local or Federal positions, or draft policy for lawmakers
Dude, you made me snort chicken. Inalienable rights are a lot older than 50 years. Yeah 70 years ago a lot of people stood up to fight for them but that doesn’t magically protect them now. Having rights in theory means nothing if we let the government give itself the power to ignore those rights.
This seems to be the case, but congress is doing an awful job of communicating the danger to the public. There will likely be a lot of people angry at Biden when he signs this if there is no effort to justify the targeted action.
I feel like it isn’t congress’s job to do that. They don’t have to share or repeat information that they are not experts on to the public. They can share their thought process and rationale for supporting legislation, but we shouldn’t expect them to be perceived as technical experts. I bet that fewer than 10 congressional representatives can look at a portion of code and make an educated statement on what’s going on and how authors may be performing abnormal operations or obfuscating other actions.
It’s the job of the organization(s) that prepare the security briefing, and we’ve already been hearing this kind of thing in the cybersecurity field for years. Those in the know, know. Those not, tend to not believe it. Warnings about the potential for data harvesting and information operations via platforms like (and specifically) Tik Tok aren’t new.
This is like public health information during COVID. Medical professionals have the training and experience to share their professional assessments, but large portions of the population were instead solely relying on politicians to deliver medical information.
So they can’t talk to people about it because they’re not technical experts, but they also have the authority to make decisions despite not being experts.
They can talk about it if they want to, but we shouldn’t be using them as our only source of information. Curious on why politicians voted X instead of Y? Look it up! See what experts in the field are saying.
You shouldn’t rely on them to tell you why TikTok is a threat the same way we shouldn’t rely on them to inform us on why weakening EPA standards is good for the environment, why taxing foreign trucks is good for the economy, or why drawing voting maps to concentrate demographics is good for democracy.
These politicians probably know enough to make an informed decision if they care to seek out information. They don’t always have the time or desire to do this. If you believe this to be true even one in a hundred times, that covers a handful of politicians for every single piece of legislation that comes out, every single time.
The same way you may care about many things but only know a lot about a few subjects, they legislate everything and people act like they are the experts. Why assume they know what they’re talking about for every single topic?
Why assume they know what they’re talking about for every single topic?
Because I would hope they know what they’re talking about when they write the legislation. Or at least can explain their reasoning for voting a certain way. Especially when nobody has made the case that TikTok is any more dangerous than Facebook or Twitter.
As I mentioned earlier, the powers that be aren’t as worried about Facebook and the like because they’re US-based and have working relationships with law enforcement. Facebook has been used for the very campaigns that TikTok is being used for now, but a large difference is that another nation has near complete control over the platform.
They largely don’t write the legislation. Lobby groups draft the materials and if we’re lucky, the congressional aides make a pass and clean things up.
Yes but they should at least be able to explain why they voted a certain way on that legislation, right?
I agree that social media is dangerous for all the reasons mentioned, but I don’t see why Zuckerberg and Musk still get to do all those things.
I’m not arguing against them explaining their rationale. I originally argued that they shouldn’t be taken as experts.
Zuckerberg and Musk “get” to do these things because they are in the US, with majority US-based workers, running off US-based infrastructure. If any of these platforms are being used to facilitate attacks against the US, the government can choose any number of methods to step in and enforce compliance to mitigate the threat. That’s it. This is about free speech in that not all speech is protected. If somebody uses TikTok to perform the digital equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater, the government sees a need to control it.
If Facebook was run and operated out of Tunisia, I’d expect these same conversations to be happening with them as well.
I’m sure it’s just even more detail about the scope of that influence campaign (and possibly an extrapolation of effectiveness on public opinion).
The major thing is manipulation of the public’s information pipeline by a hostile foreign power. There are already existing laws about foreign owned media (as cited by the New York Times this morning www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/…/677806/).
Young people get a lot of their news and information from TikTok. The US government doesn’t have their hands in TikTok like they do domestic social media platforms.
That’s it. That’s the ban.
Edit: A lot of people downvoting, but this is 100% about control. It isn’t “oooo China spooky” national security stuff, it’s “we have no power here, how can we change this?”
I posted this in the other thread, but I’ll repost here for discussion:
Ew. I looked through the bill, and here are some parts I have issues with:
Main text> PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CON - TROLLED APPLICATIONS .—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following: > > (A) Providing services to distribute, main- tain, or update such foreign adversary con- trolled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application. > > (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
So basically, the US can block any form of software (not just social media) distributed by an adversary county for pretty much reason, and it can block any company providing access to anything from an adversary.
The adversary countries are (defined in a separate US code):
N. Korea
China
Russia
Iran
So if you live in any of these or work for a company based in any of these, you’re subject to the law.
foreign adversary company definition> (3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLI - CATION .—The term ‘‘foreign adversary controlled application’’ means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by— > > (A) any of— > > (i) ByteDance, Ltd.; > > (ii) TikTok; > > (iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or > > (iv) an entity owned or controlled, di- rectly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or > > (B) a covered company that— > > (i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and > > (ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
It specifically calls out TikTok and ByteDance, but it also allows the President to denote any other entity in one of those countries as a significant threat.
So here are my issues:
I, as a US citizen, can’t choose to distribute software produced by an adversary as noted officially by the US government - this is a limitation on my first amendment protections, and I think this applies to FOSS if the original author is from one of those countries
the barrier to what counts is relatively low - just living in an adversary country or working for a company based on an adversary country seems to don’t
barrier to a “covered company” is relatively low and probably easy to manipulate - basically needs 1M active users (not even US users), which the CIA could totally generate if needed
So I think the bill is way too broad (lots of "or"s), and I’m worried it could allow the government to ban competition with US company competitors. It’s not as bad as I feared, but I still think it’s harmful.
Well c’mon, if they write a legit privacy bill it’s going to hurt their Stateside vectors. This way, they can tout “yay security!” while funneling more traffic to Instabookapp where they can still access it.
and I’m worried it could allow the government to ban competition with US company competitors.
I want to give the benefit of the doubt and say they are concerned about getting programs running all over the country that can somehow “backdoor” a major issue into our network, but I not only don’t know enough about how feasible that is, I also strongly believe it’s as you feared. It’s what we get the government to do all the time: fuck with other countries to “protect” our major corporations…
Why give them the benefit of the doubt? Look at Snowdon"s revelations, they abused FISA courts to rubber stamp spying on US citizens. Why wouldn’t they do the same for lobbyists?
I get that TikTok sucks for all manner of reasons, but expanding the power of the executive branch isn’t the way to deal with it, especially this way. This is pretty similar to the “force authorization” crap where the President can just bomb whoever the want, provided they let Congress know afterward. But now it’s in the economy instead of just military…
So no, I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt, they’ve lost my trust every other time they’ve done something like this. The bill is bad and the precedent is sets is bad.
I think you should check out this article in The Atlantic, it goes into the history of the US government’s previous laws to protect against foreign propaganda and manipulation of the media. What you’ll find is this is more of an update (to catch up with the internet era) than a revamp of US domestic policy.
but it also allows the President to denote any other entity in one of those countries as a significant threat
The president can only do this for apps from the countries covered in the US code as Foreign Adversaries, which means the president can act quickly against threats, but this is a bad avenue for attacking competition in other friendly countries (e.g., shutting down Proton would require congress to pass a law that Switzerland is a foreign adversary – which would not be good for relations – AND a law specifically targeting Proton accompanying that or the president to then act against Proton).
All of this is still subject to judicial review as well.
What does the judicial review process look like? Because the bill only states (unless I missed it) that the President needs to give notice to Congress.
What it looks like is if China or Russia has a competitor to a US product (say, Yandex or Baidu), a US company (say, Google) could lobby the President to mark them as a threat and ban them from the US. The product doesn’t need to actually have the capacity to cause harm, it just needs to be from one of the adversary countries (currently China, Russia, N. Korea, and Iran).
It’s not as bad as it could be, but I think it misses a lot of the point here.
Just the standard “you can sue if you think this is unfair and have your day in court.”
What it looks like is if China or Russia has a competitor to a US product (say, Yandex or Baidu), a US company (say, Google) could lobby the President to mark them as a threat and ban them from the US. The product doesn’t need to actually have the capacity to cause harm, it just needs to be from one of the adversary countries (currently China, Russia, N. Korea, and Iran).
This is true, but it’s also pretty unlikely. Even TikTok is just a vine ripoff, but a vine that was successfully monetized.
There really hasn’t been much to come out of our “foreign adversaries” that I think most people would care about. If that’s the price we have to pay … I’m not the least bit worried about it really.
Furthermore, China is happy to use public money to back companies (as a sort of “state run venture capital”); that is a threat to competition in the same way venture capital is a threat to competition.
Google and Facebook certainly stand to benefit here since TikTok is a direct competitor. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ban TikTok (I’d like to see some evidence from the FBI though), but it means we should scrutinize the bill to see if there are undesirable parts to it.
Likewise, I think this bill could be used against companies with Chinese investment, like anything Tencent investment (e.g. Fortnite, League of Legends, etc). That’s obviously not the target, but I think it could be used to get those banned from the US.
So I’m worried about this bill. Maybe I’m misreading it (I hope so), and it doesn’t seem as bad as some people claim, but I do think it’s problematic.
Likewise, I think this bill could be used against companies with Chinese investment, like anything Tencent investment (e.g. Fortnite, League of Legends, etc).
IANAL but I believe that would not be covered under this bill. Those games are run by American companies with foreign investment.
Maybe when it gets to the point where the foreign power is the majority shareholder. However, I think in a publicly traded company they’d just be forced to divest and that would likely take a different law.
Division H, (g)(1)> (1) CONTROLLED BY A FOREIGN ADVERSARY.—The term “controlled by a foreign adversary” means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is— > > (A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country; > > (B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake;
So if someone from an adversary country directly or indirectly owns at least 20% of the company, which I’m pretty sure applies to what I’ve said.
But the text needs to apply to a “covered company,” which is intended to focus on social media, but here’s the text:
Division H, (g)(2)> A) IN GENERAL.—The term “covered company” means an entity that operates, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that— > > (i) permits a user to create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content; > > (ii) has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users with respect to at least 2 of the 3 months preceding the date on which a relevant determination of the President is made pursuant to paragraph (3)(B); > > (iii) enables 1 or more users to generate or distribute content that can be viewed by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application; and > > (iv) enables 1 or more users to view content generated by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application.
So if you have more than 1M monthly active users and allow users to share and view text, images, video, etc with at least 1 person, then you’re a covered company. I’m pretty sure that could apply to many things outside of social media.
There’s an exclusion in (g)(2)(B) for “product reviews,” so maybe EGS is safe, but I’m not sure because the primary purpose of EGS isn’t reviews, it’s selling games.
However, the above are merely qualifiers, so it must also satisfy section (g)(3), which states either:
A - is related to ByteDance or TikTok (mentioned by name)
B - the President decides it’s a threat to national security
So Fortnite, LoL, etc wouldn’t be caught immediately by the law like TikTok is because they haven’t been specifically mentioned, but I think they quality, so they could be impacted if the President thinks they’re a threat to national security. And the burden of proof there is pretty minimal, the President just submits notice to Congress at least 30 days before doing anything about it. If Congress is already in board (lobbyists and whatnot), that won’t be an issue.
For timing, you have 165 days from when this law takes effect or 90 days from any action under this law. So here’s a scenario:
President publicly notifies Congress that it’s considering marking Fortnite as a threat to national security - juicy bits sealed in a classified annex
30 days later, the President publicly determines Fortnite is a national security threat
90 days later, the statute of limitations has passed, and the President instructs the Attorney General to issue fines through the appropriate district court
My understanding is that if the company doesn’t challenge the initial public notice (2), they could lose their ability to fight the fines in the courts. So the question is, how much leeway does the President have to obfuscate that so the lawyers miss it? Is it sufficient for the President to post to that White House website?
This scenario is pretty unlikely, but it’s just a small bill change away from being a lot easier to sneak through (like making the public notice optional).
The bill is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be (earlier versions were worse), so it’s likely this will only apply to TikTok for now. But I’m worried about giving the President so much autonomy here. There’s no requirement that the company or app is actually harmful, just that the President decides it’s a threat. Oh, and I could probably be fined if I distribute TikTok or similar from a personal website after this bill goes live, though I think I can share a link for them to download it, provided the servers aren’t hosted by me and are hosted in another country.
Being the guy who signed the bill that threatens the existence of a platform that is super popular with young people whose vote he desperately needs during an election year. Masterful gambit, sir!
I don’t really use TikTok but I really hope this gets tossed by the courts. I don’t care if ByteDance is owned by cthulus and draculas, it’s a terrible precedent to have the government ban a media company. If we don’t like China having access to data, ban apps from collecting it in the first place. Require algorithm audits. There are so many better ways to handle this than singling out TikTok.
Everybody talks about Facebook like they’re owned by the American government. They’re not. I’m sure the US government gets massive amounts of data from them, but they can’t control Facebook in the way China can control Tik Tok. And much of their surveillance is public with warrants whereas China does not need to follow any of that.
So this bill is not going to do anything but require ByteDance to sell the tiny small insignificant minuscule 1% that the Chinese government owns and in no way uses to influence how the company is run.
If you think the Chinese government doesn’t have its hand directly up in Tik Tok, you’re absolutely fooling yourself. China has much more direct control over companies, well beyond what the US government has.
I don’t think that a hostile foreign nation has an inalienable right to collect the data of and interfere in the lives of American citizens, as a form of “free speech” lol
You think that it being unaddressed made it “fine?” The United States had slavery for years and years before being banned and I wouldn’t call that “fine” either.
No it’s literally the exact same logical process you followed in your comment, just on a subject dramatically worse. Also I know what it is you’re accusing me of, but a “red herring” is not it lol.
The United States is not an enemy nation to the EU. Nor does the United States own Meta or Xitter.
That being said if EU nations were worried about the NSA collecting information on their citizens and had reason to believe Meta was complicit in that, then they absolutely should ban Meta. I mean they have the GDPR don’t they.
They basically do, as revealed by Snowden documents when the US forced American companies like AT&T, Microsoft, or Google to let them spy on their users. I don’t even think Tik Tok stores their user data in China servers, it’s in Texas or Virginia or Singapore.
This was the original compromise, but Byte Dance repeatedly gave access to said servers to engineers with ties to the CCP against the agreement’s stipulations. Byte Dance broke the compromise.
Well then yeah maybe the EU should ban them. Thats up to them, but I would totally understand it if they did.
As for TikTok’s user data, it doesn’t matter where it’s geographically stored. ByteDance has unfettered access to the data regardless, which means the CCP has unfettered access to it.
More like evening the playing field. If China doesn’t want to let social media businesses operate freely in China, why would the US be required to do the same?
Add comment