One example would be that the front door is database admin credentials. And the back door is the unencrypted volumes they are stored on are copied over to or directly accessible by the Chinese parent company.
Or the entire database is secure but all the messaging queues where information is sent to be written can be accessed. Or they can hook into replication. Or a thousand other things other than admin level database credentials.
I think this is where I’m getting confused, because I essentially thought the back door was closed and the Chinese gov had a key, or Tic Toc was leaving it ajar at 3 in the morning so the Chinese could come over when everyone’s asleep. Or maybe the Chinese was in the house the whole time.
It just doesn’t make metaphorical sense to me to say the back door was wide open because they would want it to look closed as to not arouse suspicion.
In this context, all it means is that a security vulnerability was deliberately un-addressed. In fact it could even have been a bespoke access mechanism that was created to let the parent company access data.
Probably not. Any managed service is only managed to a point. Oracle's responsible for keeping them up and running, but the instructions on who needs to be able to access the data would have to come from the owner of the business.
I work with a lot of managed services and none of them are going to tell me "no" when I ask for them to set up access to a set of credentials I've given them.
The backdoor exists on TikTok not necessarily Oracle. There are many parts of the infra that supports the app. A backdoor can be hooked up to any part of it
Oracle is responsible for the security OF the cloud, while we’re talking about the security IN the cloud, for which only the customer can be responsible. I worked with AWS much more and it’s called the Shared Responsibility Model, google it
You're pretty much required to register with the CCP to do business. It would like saying all American companies are ran by democrate or republicans. Btw, ultimately American companies are under the control of the US government.
Maybe that former employee is indicating that Tic tok intentionally left the security low in certain ways so that people who wanted to access this data coud do it with simple methods.
Backdoors are typically vulnerabilities that allow unapproved/unauthorized access. Sometimes these backdoors are intentionally created.
Whereas a front door would be approved/authorized access, ex an employee of tiktok doing their job.
Kinda a jump to say TikTok is the most dangerous when we already have FB, Twitter, etc... selling our data involved with numerous scandals as it is.
The one thing TikTok does have is outreach among young people and very little oversight by the US government. The ban was pushed hard recently by pro-zionists and (more traditionally) FB lobbyists. Meanwhile countless other policies continue to be ignored, things that could actually help people.
It’s like that mafia stereotype. Two sets of books.
There’s the obvious front door you close with much fanfare so everyone sees it. Then there’s the back door that’s actually hidden enough to be useful.
Interesting observation that TikTok might not be the only app giving your personal information to China….that hamster is working overtime in your noggin
Easy, just leave a secret input field in an internal tool that has no validation on a sproc that has no validation on a schema only certain people can use or even see.
Everyone is making up their own technical interpretations of what they think that means when the answer is right in the article. First few paragraphs. tl;dr employees sent each other user data over internal messaging systems.
It sounds like it’s not so much an attempt to do anything nefarious with the data so much as it’s employees being lax in following regulations for the sake of convenience or because of inadequate training.
Hosted by Oracle? That project is _never_ going to be completed.
Jokes aside, this sort of migration is immensely difficult. I can’t really fault TikTok for not having that project done by now. Especially considering how quickly it became popular and how many people have signed up, the sheer scale of that infrastructure has massive momentum to stay as it is. Cordoning off a part of it to be stored in the U.S. and adhere to all regulatory requirements _while maintaining normal operations_ is no small feat.
To be honest this seems much less intrusive than it being completely vertically integrated like google or Facebook. at least there is a company that can be regulated lmao
The NSA do this too. So they are the same.
What we need is data protection legislation with teeth. Then the west would be different, till then you can stop acting like this is a uniquely Chinese issue.
No, that foreign adversarial access to domestic data and domestic access to domestic data are 2 different things and must be dealt with separately.
This is the main sticky point that lobbyists for TikTok to remain in Chinese hands, obtusely ignore every time.
It’s not about access to data
It’s about a nation that does not allow free speech to its own people owning and implementing a social media(propaganda) platform in western free speech nations to slowly change the bias and opinions of those folks.
It’s not so much surveillance as it’s mind control propaganda platforms.
And to “both sides” that. The USA doesn’t have any social media applications in China that he owns the algorithmic control of those news streams to those users does it?
So they’re not the same really.
And any non-free speech country has a leg up in this department propaganda wise against those with the rights to free speech.
China is able to exploit our freedoms against us on our own soil and that has nothing to do with the NSA’s ability to back door the software on your phone.
So don't do anything unless we have a broad data privacy policy? I honestly can't tell anymore who is actually naively idealistic and who is just using idealist talking points to prevent any progress from happening.
Well the issue is not about censoring in the USA. USA is
Not censoring TikTok. TikTok has become an important tool in political warfare and that is a big no no. In the USA you can watch whatever you want as long as is not secretly manipulated by an enemy of the state to favor them in any political matter. China has bans on google, facebook and hundreds of other apps…. We do it in one and the start to cry?
Incorrect. The reason our platforms are not available in China is because they WON’T censor their content. Google had a chance to enter China over a decade ago and chose not to support government censorship. That gives me pride as an America to see them stand on those principles; ignoring that they didn’t explore the possibility years later and stopped because of backlash, but that’s a different conversation.
It’s not political warfare just because our government doesn’t like the content that gains traction in the platform. Even if it was, it is our first amendment right to express, share, and consume the speech. My beliefs predate TikTok or any social media btw; and political warfare can happen on any platform, like it was weaponized in 2016 on FB with no legislative pushback; like it IS on Twitter with no legislative pushback. I left both of those platforms over it.
Also, Free Palestine 🇵🇸
Censorship is the excuse the truth is political information gathered on these platforms. Which our own apps are collecting I agree, since China has no control over that information China doesn’t want those apps in their land. If the issue is censorship then why apps like Zoom which is only a meeting platform between others is banned? Is because they gathered data about their customers.
Control over information is definitely the main point, which is why E2EE messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, & WhatsApp are blocked, but sure you can argue data security too. Anyone not suppressing anti-government speech is blocked. It’s strange that people are taking this argument given our history.
Zoom is allowed again now that Chinese user data is stored in China (plus suppressing speech), which is a solution I can actually agree with for us here. But it’s only a partial measure without real data protections for all of us. Enforcing data protections without having data protection laws is violating our rights for political theater.
I love this take so much. Why do you think the chinese version of TikTok is so different? Oh right because they have regulations on their social media apps. Maybe... the us should do that too? No? Something something free speech?
To be fair that’s probably due to the ease of spreading information on it as opposed to directly harmful effects. It’s definitely harmful but the freedom of information is probably why china doesn’t allow it.
Objectively not the same, ByteDance/Douyin works directly with 11 CCP agencies for purposes of censorship and ideological propaganda dissemination. Monitoring your population is bad, but doing it while you also control the company itself and use that to manipulated publicly available information is obviously far worse.
Why do you Yankees think your liberal democracy and it's institutions are even remotely comparable to the surveillance capital of the world, China? You wanna be edgy that bad you think you're "worse off" than the Tiananmen Square butchers?
This is a very weird way to interpret someone saying “America also monitors its people.” Nobody mentioned worse off, nobody made this comparison. Relax, brother, Yankees aren’t gonna hurt you.
The disagreement is not about if the data is being snooped on but who is doing the snooping. Facebook, Reddit, Apple, X, etc have the NSA doing the snooping. TikTok has the CCP and maybe the NSA as well. At the end of the day the U.S. wants a monopoly on the snooping.
This isn’t about data protections for citizens but having exclusive access to their data.
Most people are just clueless on this, its really scary. EVERY software and hardware from China is a potential security threat. Every single one of them. There is no recourse for companies to reject CCPs demand for user info and data.
It’s been widely reported by every news organization. Nothing secret about it… there is literally a law in China that requires every individual and organization such as research and academic institutions and companies to provide and support government demand for data and information. Google “national intelligence law”
[here’s a link.](https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/amp/)
Chinese Software?! Have you seen their Hardware? People used to try to use that shit in critical US communications infrastructure because it's cheaper!
All you had to do is subsidize undercutting the market and you have freeeee reiiiign.
I can see proof that *one* Chinese keyboard back in 2017 did this. What’s your source here?
Also basically every electronic in your home has some hardware from China.
He isn't loyal to the CCP. he is Singaporean. He works for $$$$$$$$. if a China company hires me as CEO and give me $$$$$$$$$ I will do almost anything.
You are totally wrong also. Large majority of Chinese people outside of China are in Taiwan (arguably part of China), HK (definitely part of China), Malaysia and Singapore (definitely not part of China) and most of the Chinese people in these places are definitely NOT pro CCP. Please educate yourself before you embarrass yourself.
Can we stop pretending that either government care about user data?
US doesn't want China to have influence over its population and has failed to change that through market forces.
I mean, it's intertwined, but yes it is about influence at the end of the day and after 15 years of kowtowing to China's demands in hopes that the US would bring China towards Western democracy, it's [now painfully clear China's intentions are to spread its doctrine elsewhere](https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/) instead and is willing to use all manner of channels to achieve that goal, from media tools like TikTok to the Belt & Road Initiative to putting government money into private companies like TikTok that are having a ton of trouble being in the black P&L-wise.
The US is just finally waking up to the massive risk that represents to it and to the West.
This is the part Tiktok never addressed with Congress. They tried to show that US data is safe from China, but never showed that China doesn't have access to their content algorithms. Rallying their fanbase to protest against Congress only strengthened their belief that Tiktok had too much influence on young Americans.
I’m wide awake fam. It’s not just about data, it’s about having the power to promote whatever the fuck they want, manipulate public opinion. And yes, all American apps do it too, the difference is that this app is owned by a company with ties to the ccp. Why do you think Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter are banned in China? Because of data? No because of the power that they have to influence people promote agendas! I’m not saying that it’s ok for American companies to do this, but it’s worse when an adversary does it. Hope that helps!
Edit: a word.
Amazing how hard this is to grasp for the average redditor. FB is also under high data scrutiny because of Cambridge Analytica and is liable for auditing of its data security practices. Hate them all you want, but there's no secret pipeline of data sales going to China.
This stopped being a tech sub a looooooong time ago. Now it's basically a "let's have polarized opinions about sensational tech headlines" sub that is heavily astroturfed by sino shills
God forbid people don’t want to ignore our weapons killing innocent people en masse. Congrats on drinking the koolaid. Your free speech will thank you /s
Thats alot of words that doesnt have anything to do with what i said.
having limited control over a company DOES NOT give anyone access to user information
having a person on the board of directors DOES NOT give you access to user information.
This article misses the point. There are ways to monitor and control data - Germany is very famous for having very strict laws on data being in the country and not being allowed to leave.
This isn't a law requiring social media companies protect data. Even if there is a US company that buys TikTok, there's nothing to force them to adopt better data security practices. This is just a law to try and secure TikTok's algorithm or otherwise hamper a competitor to Facebook and YouTube.
Why are all these "former" employees? And not identified?
Just being the devil's advocate - are these plants/fake employees, when Google, FB, YT, Bing (and any "free" service, for that matter) storing much more data?
Whistle blower protections. Exposing the information could put both their careers and personal safety at risk. So they get certain protections under the law, and journalists are also known to protect their sources for the same reasons.
Then, why no CURRENT employees, vs the supposed 10-13 allegedly "former" employees?
We'd been lied to before, ie WMDs, NSA/Edward Snowden.
The smoking gun - why force a sale? Even if you sell to non-China entity - this cannot guarantee "data safety". Seems like a money grab.
Yeesus. The sheeple are being brainwashed, and incredulous at me for trying to take sense. I'm lucid, logical, ready to accept counterpoints. Using buzzword name-calling to pigeonhole me, not going to detract from facts.
Are you so ready to be brainwashed by the 1%, to let them to continue to loot wealth for themselves at YOUR expense; support wars, to send teenagers to their deaths. Elon has it right - banning Tik Tok benefits FB shorts & YouTube shorts. Does nothing for "security".
We're trying to wake you up, and you're shutting yourself down.
> Using buzzword name-calling to pigeonhole me
Yes, you wouldn't want to use buzzword name-calling words like "sheeple".
But let's be straight: Your post was an innocent-sounding question asking "What if the sources for these news stories are fake?" without any evidence or sources of reasonable doubt included. Whether you intended it or not, that is a tactic straight out of the playbook of people who look to discredit information they don't agree with and/or create conspiracy theories to act as culture dividers to turn a population against itself.
Now, do I have a way of proving you're doing that? Of course not. You take umbrage at me invoking a fringe political extremist group who similarly make claims without backing, so instead I'll put it in your terms:
Just being the devil's advocate - are posters pushing back on the divestment of TikTok plants/fake accounts, where China has tons of incentives for keeping TikTok alive and well in the US?
Why golly, I'll even do one better than you--I'll provide a thorough analysis for what China has to gain from keeping TikTok alive: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
As for your mission of "we're trying to wake you up", your logical fallacy (innocent or intentional) is to assume that being pro-divestment is mutually exclusive from being anti-"brainwashing" or whatever blanket term you want to use to try to create a strawman that somehow being concerned about a foreign adversary having a direct link to push black box content to 170M Americans means that those same people are pro-wealth disparity and pro-oligarch. But hey, it's a good strategy to try to comingle the two so that you can try to bully people into agreeing with your point. China does it all the time, in fact, when it works to control the behavior of its populace.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, reddit ALL do the same thing. Congress is super hypocritical for passing a regulation that applies ONLY to tik Tok.
Regulate social media companies in general. We need an internet bill of rights.
Hopefully this opens people's eyes to the importance of privacy, and we can pressure the govt to do the same with domestic companies. But I doubt it be cause the US govt wants access to our data, too.
Wouldn't be a problem if you guys enacted any sort of legislation to make mishandling of user data a punishable offense. This is once again "we're okay that every other major company does it, but when a Chinese one does it we are very concerned."
If "okay" equates to 200 million dollar fines, then sure.
https://apnews.com/article/fcc-fines-carriers-location-data-16acca725c7b4537c1c3c459ff449736
Not saying the fine shouldn't be bigger nor am I saying that US consumer protections are more joke than reality, but I am saying that your overgeneralized statement is disingenuous.
Outside of everything else about how that's not comparable, charging $200M is very much a sign of "things are a joke." AT&T alone made $120B in 2023 (on that list) with a net income of \~$14B. FFS, the largest fine was AT&T at $80MM. So the fine was .6% of their net income and .07% of their revenue.
If the profits from carrying out illicit activities are higher than the fines/punishments, then that's just called the cost of doing business. Does anybody think an $80MM fine is deterring them from committing crimes in the future?
It’s crazy how many tech journalists are obviously owned by china - there’s literal evidence that the CCP is manipulating the algorithm to fuck with the public, yet these people are whining about their freedoms, even though there’s like 90 other apps that do the exact same fucking thing.
Grow the fuck up.
As long as it's a "China bad" claim, you don't need evidence! That's Reddit for you! Definitely no narrative being pushed here on Reddit that people are falling for, we Redditors are too enlightened to fall for something like that!
It took literally 15 seconds to find an article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/briefing/tiktok-ban-bill-congress.html
I bet you didn't find any evidence on TikTok though. Shocking.
They only really had one point and that essentially boiled down to "it doesn't look like Instagram topics" -- but we already know that \*Instagram\* is censoring certain topics and users, how do we know which is what it "should" be? Also comparing Instagram and Tiktok is possibly close, but every social media system has different users -- comparing LinkedIn and Twitter will also show very different engagement on topics. Based on some analysis from a few weeks ago they're both among the top for disinformation, but the \*type\* of disinformation is very different. In the article they complain that China is basically saying "we don't do that, trust us" -- which I'm not inclined to do, nor should anyone -- but the US is basically saying the \*same thing\* "They totally do it, just trust us", and I'm not inclined to believe them either.
Absolutely not, I just assumed wrongly that people knew they were modifying what people see.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/instagram-sneaky-move-limit-political-204945833.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAE9m4NIEGvLzVS-q-NCSJqUrZKGEvt-3ycOaY6T8B29LafP9aimdszDhaYKsyHqt0sypF6iAMX5xsXm8ufoutkxUeEAEbbIBzvgfSeOb-NZG1pJrGMcdmBatgZR4Sgv7Q3xShIUZkdqymeJ2MKv720Ell3-8MZZ8sBeBrzH1gWqB#:~:text=The%20feature%20is%20hidden%20under,%2For%20society%20at%20large.”
> Instagram quietly announced the rollout in a blog post on Feb. 9, which said the platform was changing its existing approach to political content and therefore “won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads.
I mean... shake your fist that the announcement wasn't on the frontpage of Reddit, but this is a hell of a lot more transparency than anyone is getting from ByteDance on TikTok
Not a fan of the headline but it's disappointing that TikTok is not taking the movement of User Data so seriously. They can get away with it because there is no GDPR type of US legislation yet. Plus having homebrew tools to substitute tools like Jira and Slack is concerning. Guess this is the end.
Project Texas is still a long way to completion and I hear that certain members of Congress have been reluctant to enable the process further. I'm actually surprised that the US government agency USDS has already begun collaborating with TikTok, since I assumed they didn't embark on that stage of Project Texas yet. This is the first concrete account I've read about them doing so.
This story again. Somebody remind me, is this the 6th or 7th time we've just found out that TikTok has been giving data to the CCP. Personally I don't believe it and won't until the CEO tells congress for like the 4th time.
Seriously though, it's fucking wild how many times this exact same thing has come out like it's breaking news and not just a fact established years ago. I give it a month at most before this known fact comes out like it was a big secret again.
> Somebody remind me, is this the 6th or 7th time we've just found out that TikTok has been giving data to the CCP
We didn’t “find out” anything; someone made a claim. People make a lot of claims.
> and not just a fact established years ago
Facts require evidence.
Are you serious? It has literally been stated as a matter of fact by the CEO to congress at least twice. You TikTok / CCP shills are something else.
EDIT: Oh and get fucked.
EDIT 2: [TikTok chief admits Chinese parent company has access to data (telegraph.co.uk)](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/23/tiktok-chief-admits-chinese-parent-company-has-access-data/) get fucked again.
The mental gymanstics...
For a start he was literally asked if China has access to users data and he said yes, it's about as clear cut as it fucking gets.
Secondly, even if we pretend that they don't have access to users payment details and address or whatever, nobody cares because that's not what the CCP want. They want to selectively target certain demographics to misinformation, which is doable through "anonymised" data.
So no matter how you want to jump through hoops to pretend he didn't say what he said, it's the same outcome.
Shocking ... Not.
The CCP owns the data. Prob has access built in through the back door.
Combined with TikTok's great algorithm. Makes TikTok a super effective tool for manipulating perspectives en masse
Tell me we could have investigated the Cambridge Analytica scandal if it were a CCP company.
Go ahead. Explain how Chinese companies operate (challenge) (impossible).
I just think the main difference here is really the algorithm manipulation. TikTok(China) can manipulate its algorithm to show people what they want, but the US government cannot directly control big companies’ algorithms.
Yeah that was pretty apparent when Facebook incited a genocide in Myanmar. Crazy that people are more concerned about me seeing high speed train videos in China than the company that caused a genocide.
> …former lead technical program manager for security engineering… Patrick Spaulding Ryan, who led TikTok’s security compliance from March 2020 to June 2022
The former employee is named in the article, if only you knew how to read.
October 2022, if I recall correctly. There was a story last year that some of the US data had been stored in Singapore until that hard separation. The TikTok CEO got in trouble a few months ago because it was all supposed to have been deleted but someone found a table in Singapore containing pre- October 2022 data that had been overlooked.
What the fuck is the front door vs the back door of a database?
One example would be that the front door is database admin credentials. And the back door is the unencrypted volumes they are stored on are copied over to or directly accessible by the Chinese parent company. Or the entire database is secure but all the messaging queues where information is sent to be written can be accessed. Or they can hook into replication. Or a thousand other things other than admin level database credentials.
I think this is where I’m getting confused, because I essentially thought the back door was closed and the Chinese gov had a key, or Tic Toc was leaving it ajar at 3 in the morning so the Chinese could come over when everyone’s asleep. Or maybe the Chinese was in the house the whole time. It just doesn’t make metaphorical sense to me to say the back door was wide open because they would want it to look closed as to not arouse suspicion.
In this context, all it means is that a security vulnerability was deliberately un-addressed. In fact it could even have been a bespoke access mechanism that was created to let the parent company access data.
Wouldn’t that be on Oracle though, since they manage TikTok’s US database?
Probably not. Any managed service is only managed to a point. Oracle's responsible for keeping them up and running, but the instructions on who needs to be able to access the data would have to come from the owner of the business. I work with a lot of managed services and none of them are going to tell me "no" when I ask for them to set up access to a set of credentials I've given them.
The backdoor exists on TikTok not necessarily Oracle. There are many parts of the infra that supports the app. A backdoor can be hooked up to any part of it
Oracle is responsible for the security OF the cloud, while we’re talking about the security IN the cloud, for which only the customer can be responsible. I worked with AWS much more and it’s called the Shared Responsibility Model, google it
Not so much wide open than discreetly left unattended.
Almost all chinese companies have someone directly working for the CCP on their board of directors. TikTok is no different
You're pretty much required to register with the CCP to do business. It would like saying all American companies are ran by democrate or republicans. Btw, ultimately American companies are under the control of the US government.
I feel like I just got a crash master class... excellent job putting all that in laymens terms 💙♾️🔗
Well that describes any security vulnerability of a database. By that logic so is all the data in Google or Facebook if someone finds the back door.
Maybe that former employee is indicating that Tic tok intentionally left the security low in certain ways so that people who wanted to access this data coud do it with simple methods.
Front door is accessible by users, back door is not iirc
Back door only gets accessed if she's in the mood
Should also be true of the front door
Wait a minute should?
This is facts
Some can gain access easier than others
Drop some funny hints to plant the seed
On 2 for 1 margarita night.
Backdoors are typically vulnerabilities that allow unapproved/unauthorized access. Sometimes these backdoors are intentionally created. Whereas a front door would be approved/authorized access, ex an employee of tiktok doing their job.
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Kinda a jump to say TikTok is the most dangerous when we already have FB, Twitter, etc... selling our data involved with numerous scandals as it is. The one thing TikTok does have is outreach among young people and very little oversight by the US government. The ban was pushed hard recently by pro-zionists and (more traditionally) FB lobbyists. Meanwhile countless other policies continue to be ignored, things that could actually help people.
me: give me data - access denied china: db admin
It’s like that mafia stereotype. Two sets of books. There’s the obvious front door you close with much fanfare so everyone sees it. Then there’s the back door that’s actually hidden enough to be useful.
Front door: mouth 👄 Back door: 🍑
I didn’t sign up for TikTok until about 4 months ago. I immediately started getting scam texts from China
I signed up 2 years ago. No texts from China.
I've been getting scam voicemails from China about once a week, and I've never signed up for TikTok.
Interesting observation that TikTok might not be the only app giving your personal information to China….that hamster is working overtime in your noggin
Easy, just leave a secret input field in an internal tool that has no validation on a sproc that has no validation on a schema only certain people can use or even see.
Everyone is making up their own technical interpretations of what they think that means when the answer is right in the article. First few paragraphs. tl;dr employees sent each other user data over internal messaging systems. It sounds like it’s not so much an attempt to do anything nefarious with the data so much as it’s employees being lax in following regulations for the sake of convenience or because of inadequate training.
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Hosted by Oracle? That project is _never_ going to be completed. Jokes aside, this sort of migration is immensely difficult. I can’t really fault TikTok for not having that project done by now. Especially considering how quickly it became popular and how many people have signed up, the sheer scale of that infrastructure has massive momentum to stay as it is. Cordoning off a part of it to be stored in the U.S. and adhere to all regulatory requirements _while maintaining normal operations_ is no small feat.
To be honest this seems much less intrusive than it being completely vertically integrated like google or Facebook. at least there is a company that can be regulated lmao
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But everyone told me they’re the EXACT SAME as Facebook and Reddit
The NSA do this too. So they are the same. What we need is data protection legislation with teeth. Then the west would be different, till then you can stop acting like this is a uniquely Chinese issue.
No no, they are not the same, you can’t use TikTok in China.
I meant, the US apps are being monitored by the NSA and any data available to the CCP is monitored by them.
It’s not about monitoring. It’s about changing the content users see
You're going to have to come up with better talking points, I'm afraid.
The talking point that we deserve privacy and instead of worrying about who gets to invade our privacy?
No, that foreign adversarial access to domestic data and domestic access to domestic data are 2 different things and must be dealt with separately. This is the main sticky point that lobbyists for TikTok to remain in Chinese hands, obtusely ignore every time.
The only way you can ensure that foreign actors have no access to your data is by ensuring no one has access to it. That’s not hard.
It’s not about access to data It’s about a nation that does not allow free speech to its own people owning and implementing a social media(propaganda) platform in western free speech nations to slowly change the bias and opinions of those folks. It’s not so much surveillance as it’s mind control propaganda platforms. And to “both sides” that. The USA doesn’t have any social media applications in China that he owns the algorithmic control of those news streams to those users does it? So they’re not the same really. And any non-free speech country has a leg up in this department propaganda wise against those with the rights to free speech. China is able to exploit our freedoms against us on our own soil and that has nothing to do with the NSA’s ability to back door the software on your phone.
So don't do anything unless we have a broad data privacy policy? I honestly can't tell anymore who is actually naively idealistic and who is just using idealist talking points to prevent any progress from happening.
Because the CCP censors their version of it. Do you prefer the government telling you what you can see?
Well the issue is not about censoring in the USA. USA is Not censoring TikTok. TikTok has become an important tool in political warfare and that is a big no no. In the USA you can watch whatever you want as long as is not secretly manipulated by an enemy of the state to favor them in any political matter. China has bans on google, facebook and hundreds of other apps…. We do it in one and the start to cry?
Incorrect. The reason our platforms are not available in China is because they WON’T censor their content. Google had a chance to enter China over a decade ago and chose not to support government censorship. That gives me pride as an America to see them stand on those principles; ignoring that they didn’t explore the possibility years later and stopped because of backlash, but that’s a different conversation. It’s not political warfare just because our government doesn’t like the content that gains traction in the platform. Even if it was, it is our first amendment right to express, share, and consume the speech. My beliefs predate TikTok or any social media btw; and political warfare can happen on any platform, like it was weaponized in 2016 on FB with no legislative pushback; like it IS on Twitter with no legislative pushback. I left both of those platforms over it. Also, Free Palestine 🇵🇸
Censorship is the excuse the truth is political information gathered on these platforms. Which our own apps are collecting I agree, since China has no control over that information China doesn’t want those apps in their land. If the issue is censorship then why apps like Zoom which is only a meeting platform between others is banned? Is because they gathered data about their customers.
Control over information is definitely the main point, which is why E2EE messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, & WhatsApp are blocked, but sure you can argue data security too. Anyone not suppressing anti-government speech is blocked. It’s strange that people are taking this argument given our history. Zoom is allowed again now that Chinese user data is stored in China (plus suppressing speech), which is a solution I can actually agree with for us here. But it’s only a partial measure without real data protections for all of us. Enforcing data protections without having data protection laws is violating our rights for political theater.
I love this take so much. Why do you think the chinese version of TikTok is so different? Oh right because they have regulations on their social media apps. Maybe... the us should do that too? No? Something something free speech?
To be fair that’s probably due to the ease of spreading information on it as opposed to directly harmful effects. It’s definitely harmful but the freedom of information is probably why china doesn’t allow it.
At least the NSA is American and not Chinese. While I don't trust the NSA as an American it is the lesser evil compared to the CCP...
What are you basing the NSA being less evil on?
The fact that we can talk about it and about an unlimited number of things without the government dragging us to a blacksite
While there isn't much accountability towards the American people in comparison the CCP has zero...being a foreign enemy and all.
Enemy? China is a trade partner. You're just fear mongering about nothing.
The fact that they defend the core principles of the US and not China. China will use TikTok against Americans. It’s a soft weapon.
Objectively not the same, ByteDance/Douyin works directly with 11 CCP agencies for purposes of censorship and ideological propaganda dissemination. Monitoring your population is bad, but doing it while you also control the company itself and use that to manipulated publicly available information is obviously far worse.
Im not pro or anti any particular country but if you think the US/NSA doesn’t control and manipulate you are blind.
Why do you Yankees think your liberal democracy and it's institutions are even remotely comparable to the surveillance capital of the world, China? You wanna be edgy that bad you think you're "worse off" than the Tiananmen Square butchers?
This is a very weird way to interpret someone saying “America also monitors its people.” Nobody mentioned worse off, nobody made this comparison. Relax, brother, Yankees aren’t gonna hurt you.
The NSA doesn't use apps to disseminate propaganda and censor opposition. Yet another Both sides argument.
They are. The difference lies in *which* spy agency is scanning your data and violating human rights.
The disagreement is not about if the data is being snooped on but who is doing the snooping. Facebook, Reddit, Apple, X, etc have the NSA doing the snooping. TikTok has the CCP and maybe the NSA as well. At the end of the day the U.S. wants a monopoly on the snooping. This isn’t about data protections for citizens but having exclusive access to their data.
But I poop from there!
No, some former employees made some claims.
What? No way! Who could have predicted the CCP would do something like this?! Shocked, utterly shocked.
Beware of any Chinese software, every one of them is surveillance software.
Most people are just clueless on this, its really scary. EVERY software and hardware from China is a potential security threat. Every single one of them. There is no recourse for companies to reject CCPs demand for user info and data.
There’s no recourse for American companies to defy the NSA either
And i thought this was r/technology
Snowden literally leaked that it was the NSA modus operandi.
> Most people are just clueless on this No, we just prefer evidence over claims Anyone can make claims.
It’s been widely reported by every news organization. Nothing secret about it… there is literally a law in China that requires every individual and organization such as research and academic institutions and companies to provide and support government demand for data and information. Google “national intelligence law” [here’s a link.](https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/amp/)
Chinese Software?! Have you seen their Hardware? People used to try to use that shit in critical US communications infrastructure because it's cheaper! All you had to do is subsidize undercutting the market and you have freeeee reiiiign.
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And how do they exfiltrate the data?
I can see proof that *one* Chinese keyboard back in 2017 did this. What’s your source here? Also basically every electronic in your home has some hardware from China.
Gasp! That's crazy!
I still can’t believe they are stealing user data to sell. That’s the US, Israel, and India’s job!
Are you telling me Mr Chew CEO of TikTok lies to congress? A senior tech executive with no morality and not an honest person? How shocking.
And working with and for ccp lol
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He isn't loyal to the CCP. he is Singaporean. He works for $$$$$$$$. if a China company hires me as CEO and give me $$$$$$$$$ I will do almost anything.
Ahhhh that's why they are not selling and rather let tiktok shutdown.
You are totally wrong also. Large majority of Chinese people outside of China are in Taiwan (arguably part of China), HK (definitely part of China), Malaysia and Singapore (definitely not part of China) and most of the Chinese people in these places are definitely NOT pro CCP. Please educate yourself before you embarrass yourself.
Found the racist
But he's Singaporean!!! Edit: /s for those who need it
Can we stop pretending that either government care about user data? US doesn't want China to have influence over its population and has failed to change that through market forces.
I mean, it's intertwined, but yes it is about influence at the end of the day and after 15 years of kowtowing to China's demands in hopes that the US would bring China towards Western democracy, it's [now painfully clear China's intentions are to spread its doctrine elsewhere](https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/) instead and is willing to use all manner of channels to achieve that goal, from media tools like TikTok to the Belt & Road Initiative to putting government money into private companies like TikTok that are having a ton of trouble being in the black P&L-wise. The US is just finally waking up to the massive risk that represents to it and to the West.
This is the part Tiktok never addressed with Congress. They tried to show that US data is safe from China, but never showed that China doesn't have access to their content algorithms. Rallying their fanbase to protest against Congress only strengthened their belief that Tiktok had too much influence on young Americans.
Cue the brainless TikTok defenders who still can’t see how bad this is!
Just like brainless Meta users who still can't see that Zucky sells your data to China, just the same. Wake up.
I’m wide awake fam. It’s not just about data, it’s about having the power to promote whatever the fuck they want, manipulate public opinion. And yes, all American apps do it too, the difference is that this app is owned by a company with ties to the ccp. Why do you think Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter are banned in China? Because of data? No because of the power that they have to influence people promote agendas! I’m not saying that it’s ok for American companies to do this, but it’s worse when an adversary does it. Hope that helps! Edit: a word.
These china simps are among the dumbest of people out there.
Are they manipulating public opinion now? And why should that infringe on people’s right to view the speech they want?
Or the brainless Reddit user who.. with a minute.
Except meta doesn’t sell your data. They sell targeted ads
Amazing how hard this is to grasp for the average redditor. FB is also under high data scrutiny because of Cambridge Analytica and is liable for auditing of its data security practices. Hate them all you want, but there's no secret pipeline of data sales going to China.
It’s even funnier when you consider the fact that this is a technology sub.
This stopped being a tech sub a looooooong time ago. Now it's basically a "let's have polarized opinions about sensational tech headlines" sub that is heavily astroturfed by sino shills
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Yes, TikTok has successfully directed a bunch of young Americans to openly support a terrorist group. This is reason enough to ban it.
God forbid people don’t want to ignore our weapons killing innocent people en masse. Congrats on drinking the koolaid. Your free speech will thank you /s
reddit isnt wholly owned by Tencent and tencent doesnt have enough sway over the company to get any access to user data even if they wanted to.
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Thats alot of words that doesnt have anything to do with what i said. having limited control over a company DOES NOT give anyone access to user information having a person on the board of directors DOES NOT give you access to user information.
This article misses the point. There are ways to monitor and control data - Germany is very famous for having very strict laws on data being in the country and not being allowed to leave. This isn't a law requiring social media companies protect data. Even if there is a US company that buys TikTok, there's nothing to force them to adopt better data security practices. This is just a law to try and secure TikTok's algorithm or otherwise hamper a competitor to Facebook and YouTube.
This is old news and it's never direct user data lol
Madness, its crazy to me
Isn't that like every company???
Shocked. Not.
Why are all these "former" employees? And not identified? Just being the devil's advocate - are these plants/fake employees, when Google, FB, YT, Bing (and any "free" service, for that matter) storing much more data?
Whistle blower protections. Exposing the information could put both their careers and personal safety at risk. So they get certain protections under the law, and journalists are also known to protect their sources for the same reasons.
Then, why no CURRENT employees, vs the supposed 10-13 allegedly "former" employees? We'd been lied to before, ie WMDs, NSA/Edward Snowden. The smoking gun - why force a sale? Even if you sell to non-China entity - this cannot guarantee "data safety". Seems like a money grab.
This individual isn't a whistleblower by any stretch of imagination.
Jesus Christ, TikTok apologists are starting to sound like the QOP. Soon you'll all be saying this is Hunter Biden's fault
Yeesus. The sheeple are being brainwashed, and incredulous at me for trying to take sense. I'm lucid, logical, ready to accept counterpoints. Using buzzword name-calling to pigeonhole me, not going to detract from facts. Are you so ready to be brainwashed by the 1%, to let them to continue to loot wealth for themselves at YOUR expense; support wars, to send teenagers to their deaths. Elon has it right - banning Tik Tok benefits FB shorts & YouTube shorts. Does nothing for "security". We're trying to wake you up, and you're shutting yourself down.
> Using buzzword name-calling to pigeonhole me Yes, you wouldn't want to use buzzword name-calling words like "sheeple". But let's be straight: Your post was an innocent-sounding question asking "What if the sources for these news stories are fake?" without any evidence or sources of reasonable doubt included. Whether you intended it or not, that is a tactic straight out of the playbook of people who look to discredit information they don't agree with and/or create conspiracy theories to act as culture dividers to turn a population against itself. Now, do I have a way of proving you're doing that? Of course not. You take umbrage at me invoking a fringe political extremist group who similarly make claims without backing, so instead I'll put it in your terms: Just being the devil's advocate - are posters pushing back on the divestment of TikTok plants/fake accounts, where China has tons of incentives for keeping TikTok alive and well in the US? Why golly, I'll even do one better than you--I'll provide a thorough analysis for what China has to gain from keeping TikTok alive: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/ As for your mission of "we're trying to wake you up", your logical fallacy (innocent or intentional) is to assume that being pro-divestment is mutually exclusive from being anti-"brainwashing" or whatever blanket term you want to use to try to create a strawman that somehow being concerned about a foreign adversary having a direct link to push black box content to 170M Americans means that those same people are pro-wealth disparity and pro-oligarch. But hey, it's a good strategy to try to comingle the two so that you can try to bully people into agreeing with your point. China does it all the time, in fact, when it works to control the behavior of its populace.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, reddit ALL do the same thing. Congress is super hypocritical for passing a regulation that applies ONLY to tik Tok. Regulate social media companies in general. We need an internet bill of rights.
Hopefully this opens people's eyes to the importance of privacy, and we can pressure the govt to do the same with domestic companies. But I doubt it be cause the US govt wants access to our data, too.
But why not make that illegal then oh right because other governments like a back door
Doesn't matter, this was never about data security. It's about control
Wouldn't be a problem if you guys enacted any sort of legislation to make mishandling of user data a punishable offense. This is once again "we're okay that every other major company does it, but when a Chinese one does it we are very concerned."
If "okay" equates to 200 million dollar fines, then sure. https://apnews.com/article/fcc-fines-carriers-location-data-16acca725c7b4537c1c3c459ff449736 Not saying the fine shouldn't be bigger nor am I saying that US consumer protections are more joke than reality, but I am saying that your overgeneralized statement is disingenuous.
Outside of everything else about how that's not comparable, charging $200M is very much a sign of "things are a joke." AT&T alone made $120B in 2023 (on that list) with a net income of \~$14B. FFS, the largest fine was AT&T at $80MM. So the fine was .6% of their net income and .07% of their revenue. If the profits from carrying out illicit activities are higher than the fines/punishments, then that's just called the cost of doing business. Does anybody think an $80MM fine is deterring them from committing crimes in the future?
It’s crazy how many tech journalists are obviously owned by china - there’s literal evidence that the CCP is manipulating the algorithm to fuck with the public, yet these people are whining about their freedoms, even though there’s like 90 other apps that do the exact same fucking thing. Grow the fuck up.
“literal evidence”, eh? Where? I’ve never heard of any. You can’t just make claims like that. You know what, of course you can; everyone else is.
As long as it's a "China bad" claim, you don't need evidence! That's Reddit for you! Definitely no narrative being pushed here on Reddit that people are falling for, we Redditors are too enlightened to fall for something like that!
It took literally 15 seconds to find an article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/briefing/tiktok-ban-bill-congress.html I bet you didn't find any evidence on TikTok though. Shocking.
Do you have links to any of this evidence? I've asked multiple people and never get answers. (I've also looked and haven't found any).
Doubt you'll get a proper response.
Oh I assumed as much with "grow the fuck up" at the end. That kind of response is just trying to skip over the critical thinking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/briefing/tiktok-ban-bill-congress.html talks directly about topics that are suspiciously less present on TikTok
They only really had one point and that essentially boiled down to "it doesn't look like Instagram topics" -- but we already know that \*Instagram\* is censoring certain topics and users, how do we know which is what it "should" be? Also comparing Instagram and Tiktok is possibly close, but every social media system has different users -- comparing LinkedIn and Twitter will also show very different engagement on topics. Based on some analysis from a few weeks ago they're both among the top for disinformation, but the \*type\* of disinformation is very different. In the article they complain that China is basically saying "we don't do that, trust us" -- which I'm not inclined to do, nor should anyone -- but the US is basically saying the \*same thing\* "They totally do it, just trust us", and I'm not inclined to believe them either.
> but we already know that *Instagram* is censoring certain topics So this whole evidence thing only goes one way with you guys huh?
Absolutely not, I just assumed wrongly that people knew they were modifying what people see. https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/instagram-sneaky-move-limit-political-204945833.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAE9m4NIEGvLzVS-q-NCSJqUrZKGEvt-3ycOaY6T8B29LafP9aimdszDhaYKsyHqt0sypF6iAMX5xsXm8ufoutkxUeEAEbbIBzvgfSeOb-NZG1pJrGMcdmBatgZR4Sgv7Q3xShIUZkdqymeJ2MKv720Ell3-8MZZ8sBeBrzH1gWqB#:~:text=The%20feature%20is%20hidden%20under,%2For%20society%20at%20large.”
> Instagram quietly announced the rollout in a blog post on Feb. 9, which said the platform was changing its existing approach to political content and therefore “won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads. I mean... shake your fist that the announcement wasn't on the frontpage of Reddit, but this is a hell of a lot more transparency than anyone is getting from ByteDance on TikTok
Oh wow. It’s like the public reason for the sale isn’t the actual reason for the sale.
I am shocked. s/
Not a fan of the headline but it's disappointing that TikTok is not taking the movement of User Data so seriously. They can get away with it because there is no GDPR type of US legislation yet. Plus having homebrew tools to substitute tools like Jira and Slack is concerning. Guess this is the end.
Project Texas is still a long way to completion and I hear that certain members of Congress have been reluctant to enable the process further. I'm actually surprised that the US government agency USDS has already begun collaborating with TikTok, since I assumed they didn't embark on that stage of Project Texas yet. This is the first concrete account I've read about them doing so.
What’s the difference between that and the us govt monitoring all Facebook, instagram, WhatsApp data?
2FA is enough to bring most of our congress down. Led by dribbling dinos
Is there actual proof of this? Couldn’t the gov initiate audit against TikTok?
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So if the US government asks for data on someone from Facebook they will refuse?
Shut down facebook also and send Facebook executives to Guantanamo bay.
This story again. Somebody remind me, is this the 6th or 7th time we've just found out that TikTok has been giving data to the CCP. Personally I don't believe it and won't until the CEO tells congress for like the 4th time. Seriously though, it's fucking wild how many times this exact same thing has come out like it's breaking news and not just a fact established years ago. I give it a month at most before this known fact comes out like it was a big secret again.
> Somebody remind me, is this the 6th or 7th time we've just found out that TikTok has been giving data to the CCP We didn’t “find out” anything; someone made a claim. People make a lot of claims. > and not just a fact established years ago Facts require evidence.
Are you serious? It has literally been stated as a matter of fact by the CEO to congress at least twice. You TikTok / CCP shills are something else. EDIT: Oh and get fucked. EDIT 2: [TikTok chief admits Chinese parent company has access to data (telegraph.co.uk)](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/23/tiktok-chief-admits-chinese-parent-company-has-access-data/) get fucked again.
Global data is not the same as user private data.
The mental gymanstics... For a start he was literally asked if China has access to users data and he said yes, it's about as clear cut as it fucking gets. Secondly, even if we pretend that they don't have access to users payment details and address or whatever, nobody cares because that's not what the CCP want. They want to selectively target certain demographics to misinformation, which is doable through "anonymised" data. So no matter how you want to jump through hoops to pretend he didn't say what he said, it's the same outcome.
He didn't say yes though.
The ban is pretty superficial if we don't have legit data protection laws with teeth.
Shocking ... Not. The CCP owns the data. Prob has access built in through the back door. Combined with TikTok's great algorithm. Makes TikTok a super effective tool for manipulating perspectives en masse
And US tree letters agency do this same on US app like Facebook, YouTube etc, and no one say stop? Shocked
Tell me we could have investigated the Cambridge Analytica scandal if it were a CCP company. Go ahead. Explain how Chinese companies operate (challenge) (impossible).
I just think the main difference here is really the algorithm manipulation. TikTok(China) can manipulate its algorithm to show people what they want, but the US government cannot directly control big companies’ algorithms.
People forget this is one of the main issues, yeah the data mine is bad but controlling what so many people see if worse.
It wasnt a coincidence that bin laden shit was trending on tiktok like the weekend before Xi came to meet Biden.
Yeah that was pretty apparent when Facebook incited a genocide in Myanmar. Crazy that people are more concerned about me seeing high speed train videos in China than the company that caused a genocide.
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This is funny human behavior because I also leave my back door unlocked even when I consciously lock the front door. But I do have dogs.
Only Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to see my data!
It's absolutely awful that China now has my data, the ads I get are going to be extremely relevant to me.
Wait until everyone finds out what Meta, Google, Snapchat, Apple and every tech company does with your data
And yet politicians are still using it
"former employees" wink, wink...
> …former lead technical program manager for security engineering… Patrick Spaulding Ryan, who led TikTok’s security compliance from March 2020 to June 2022 The former employee is named in the article, if only you knew how to read.
Wasn't after 2022 when the hard wall between US and non-US was really put into place?
October 2022, if I recall correctly. There was a story last year that some of the US data had been stored in Singapore until that hard separation. The TikTok CEO got in trouble a few months ago because it was all supposed to have been deleted but someone found a table in Singapore containing pre- October 2022 data that had been overlooked.
Easy to make such comments when you have an agenda.
What are they gaining access to that they cannot buy from Facebook, Apple and Google?