Majority of Americans Say TikTok Is a Threat to U.S. National Security
variety.com
About 59% of Americans say TikTok a threat to the national security of the United States, according to a new survey of U.S. adults.
About 59% of Americans say TikTok a threat to the national security of the United States, according to a new survey of U.S. adults.
I absolutely refuse to use TikTok but let's be honest here in that our own politicians and the decisions that they make that are anti-working class and anti-poor are more of a national security threat than TikTok.
Not to mention the data mining being done is an issue with Google and Meta too. And this isn't to excuse tiktok. It's to say that Google and Meta have to start being put in check too, since it's all getting so out of hand that isn't no longer just concerns of specific nations. It's an international concern that we are all in together regardless of where we are from and what international or domestic company we are dealing with.
You can't even pay for YouTube premium to stop treating you like the product for example, since your viewing and browsing habits will be data mined anyways. The phrase if you don't pay you are the product has ceased to be relevant. We are the product no matter how much we pay and no true opt out. Even just the contact lists people keep and use with messenger apps are uploaded exposing our personal numbers and names to services of companies we don't even use.
I get that you aren't excusing TikTok. You rightly point out the double standard. It's okay if an Amurican (misspelling intentional) company mines data and sells out its own citizens? I think not.
It’s not great, but no public company has the ability to start a war with the US and utilize that data for that purpose.
Mining data is a good thing.
Yeah I mean, I downloaded my reddit data and uh... wow. I was surprised to see how much you could learn about someone when it's all bundled up like that 👀
Which is why I find the whole banning TikTok concept absurd.
It’s picking one easy scapegoat company to rally around, completely ignores the thousands upon thousands of other applications that collect data on us.
It’s not security, it’s security theater. It’s lazy and designed to distract us. It’s to keep us from not asking questions about any company’s practices that might hurt someone politically or financially.
We don’t need to ban TikTok. We need to ban Tik Tok and thousands of others like it. We need to have real conversations and put forth real solutions with regards to privacy, globally. It won’t happen though. Because it’s going to cost somebody money.
I've come to the conclusion that it is algorithms that have become evil. There was a thread where someone was asking for help stoppinh YouTube from radicalizing their mother due to the videos it would suggest to her.
I use stuff like newpipe and freetube to try and get away from these personalized attempts at content, since there is still good content on YouTube. It's just that so many sites try and keep you there as long as possible and then start feeding you content that can warp people. But, algorithms don't understand the impact of it, since it's either a 0 or 1 of user stays or user leaves.
algorithms can't "become evil" any more than your toaster can. It's being directed and programmed by people who know exactly what they're intending to achieve.
It's to say algorithms despite no intent to be evil have led to negative impact due to no care for the context of the recommendation. So someone can go in searching up health information then go down a rabbit hole of being recommended pseudo health advice then flat earth and so on. Not because the algorithm wants to turn people a certain way, but because it's just recommending videos that users that liked similar videos might find of interest. It's just broad categories.
Wasn't implying algorithms are sentient. At least not yet until AI integration happens.
If you can be radicalized by videos from YouTube, it isn't the algorithm, it's you
https://lemmy.world/post/1184403
Yeah that's entirely on her.
World doesn't exist in an individual vacuum. The people negatively influenced by disinformation go onto to take a role in society and interact with others to either negatively or positively affect the people they encounter. Congratulations on your individual resilience, but the world is not a population consisting of only you with you alone determining the impact other people have on the world.
Yeah and, once again, those people are the problem.
Unless you want to ban any food that isn't fruits and vegetables, cars, not sleeping enough, not getting enough exercise etc, at some point you have to accept that people do in fact make their own choices.
I'm not for banning things because some people are idiots.
I feel bad that you've been radicalized into thinking this way.
Im not concerned with your feelings.
It's not just all you or all youtube. Both matter. It's harmfully reductionist to act like it, not both.
Both really don't matter, since adults have a right to chose to consume any content they'd like.
If your grandma finds Q fascinating, that's on your grandma
It's also the fault of those producing Q content.
No it isn't. Every demand will find a seller. That's just how reality works.
The overwhelming majority of "radical" content creators are just riding a grift train.
It's not a company, it is the CCP. There's is a massive difference, both in terms of what the organizations can access and the warrant requirements at the governmental level. I'm getting really tired of having to explain the difference in privacy rights concerning governments and private institutions. It's just like freedom of speech or religion. It has everything to do with private vs public institutions.
You don't think Meta, Google etc are passing data to the American government?
They will comply with any court order. They won’t hand over unfettered access like TikTok has to in China.
You think the American government is as bad as the CCP in this regard?
Considering the CCP can't arrest Americans but the US government can, it makes no sense to be more afraid of china on a personal level.
And that is exactly what the Ukrainians thought about Russia. These are all actions intended to gain an edge to enable a potential future conflict. They are acting like it. We should too. War in the South China Sea is something everyone should be afraid of.
That would be a very convincing arguement if China bordered the US.
Very American of you. Americans felt the same way about the Japanese until 1941. Then it was about control of the newly important resource of oil.
Lmao no japanese soldier set foot on the continent of north America dude
Not only is that factually false with them invading Alaska, it's like you're saying that you'd be okay with another world war because we would win in the end. I would personally prefer to deter one which this effort is a part of.
I'd be OK with another World War against Russia, sure. They can't even beat Ukraine lol
China will not engage in war with the US because it would obliterate their economy.
Yes, yes I do. Also the CCP can't ruin my life, unlike Uncle Sam. Deciding which one is more evil is irrelevant.
Well, the majority of Americans disagree with you per this article. A world war with China absolutely would ruin a lot of lives. I cannot even comprehend how you could come to the conclusion otherwise.
The majority of americans are fuckin stupid and believe whatever their TV programming tells them to believe.
Who said anything about war?? I'm staying "in this regard", which is about privacy and data being taken and used by a government. Outside of that context yes I think the CCP is absolutely worse than the US in just about every category. There's no question there.
Read the title of this thread again. This thread is about if TikTok is a threat to national security. This thread is about war.
That's not what I was responding to but in any case, no, I don't think tiktok is a threat to national security or going to cause a war. This is FUD.
It's not about the CCP. It's because kids watch TikTok and then don't like conservatives
I am not inherently conservative but I am involved in the defense space and I could not disagree with this take more strongly. It 100% is about the CCP. Don't try to make this a partisan issue. It is not.
It is absolutely a partisan issue because that's why Republicans brought it up in the first place. The CCP gathering metadata on users has no bearing on our ability to beat them at sea, which is the only sphere of influence that matters with Chinese aggression.
Should US military bases ban TikTok? Sure. Should the government block the app on all government phones, also sure. Banning social media wholesale is a disgusting precedent to set, and is fundamentally anti-American.
There is precedent in banning spyware. So, what is your reason for why the current administration wants to ban it? You cannot provide any proof for your claim outside of conjecture. There are no records and it doesn't even make sense in the current political climate.
Unless you can prove TikTok is spyware and not just gathering user data per already accepted guidelines then you have no leg to stand on here.
They have the access to the data on your device and the CCP has been accessing it at scale according to former employees. You are not going to find a government record out of the CCP like you would in the US.
ByteDance has lied on multiple occasions about their security protocols and only fess up when they are caught.
The CCP according to their own bylaws do not see chinese companies as private. It is literally the definition of a fascist government system.
This is not including what the intelligence services know which is undoubtedly more extensive. Something tells me you wouldn't believe them one way or another but they do not come out with things as specific as this without cause and it certainly is not partisan.
Not a problem for me or any other sane person
As for the CCP bylaws, I'm all for the Chinese overthrowing their hell-gov and instituting liberal democracy but until they do, it's a non-factor.
Folks just won't get it until it hurts you and your families. By then it will be too late and they will have already invaded Taiwan. They want to generate video and audio models of you. They want to use those against your family and for propaganda purposes. They want to ensure they know where you are at all times to gain maximum impact when they do. It's not insanity. It's what they are actively trying to do.
Lmao well if they're trying to feed me propaganda they're fucking up because all I'm seeing is standup comedians, thicc goth girls, and Taylor swift clips, along with some of the best old-school-youtube content still on the internet.
Are you even on TikTok?
Edit: also China won't invade Taiwan because the Chinese armed forces are as embarrassing as the Russian armed forces.
It's not a distraction. It's a justification. The bill behind it in Congress is so broadly worded that the government can effectively shut down any Internet business with little to no warning.
You keep trying and failing to ban all social media while China continues to gain a foothold under the current unchanged rules. We'll all be doing on the front lines of the next world war but at least in the end you can hold your head up high and say that it was worth it to take a stand.
It's like saying that you shouldn't ban murder because all weapons should be banned. How they use it matters.
In that analogy Facebook has been murdering people for a decade but we refuse to do anything about it.
In that analogy, Facebook is armed but not even brandishing. People aren't doing anything because Facebook isn't waving their weapon around and threatening their families but instead was using their knives to cut up more food to sell you. Sorry, I'll use a more clear analogy next time.
We are talking about the preparation of the battlefield for the next conflict. It is pretty well documented in cyber warfare circles. conflicts are won and lost before they are fought. conflicts are mitigated when the chances of success are lower.
Facebook has been giving data to the CCP for over a decade. If that's the big bad, then that's it. It doesn't matter who owns the company. If you want to talk about battlefield shaping I can speak to that. I was in the military. When comes down to it I don't care how the minefield got breached. It's breached and there's a hole that can be exploited. I don't care if company A did it or company B.
There's giving data through API, and then there's complete access to everything your device sees. It's the difference between taking a trench and allowing your enemy to build a complete logistical hub behind your lines. It's an order of magnitude worse.
Have you looked at the permissions Meta requires to run an app on your phone these days?
There is no difference. They're taking everything.
Meta is not the government. That's the difference.
Neither is TikTok. Both of them are companies giving data to China. Why are you so invested in defending Meta?
I'm not defending Meta. The level of access is an order of magnitude greater for China with TikTok. It's not even comparable.
Aggregated data is always scary.
Aggregated data is the reason for modern living in its entirety so no.
You're literally on a data aggregation site now.
How did you do this? Log in through the website? I will have to do password recovery as I haven't used the web interface in ages.
Would be very curious what that data set looks like.
Yeah, has to be through a web browser. Here's a link: https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request
FWIW, I never got notified that the download was ready, so make sure you check back for reddit mail every few days if you request yours. It took about a month for mine.
Eighty one percent of Americans think God will save them, so why would you care about any of their other opinions?
I think 81% agree to say they aren't non believers because many don't want the questions of saying they might be an atheist/agnostic. ~30k different Christian sects in the U.S. and none of them can tell me why they are in their own group, so if you just say oh yeah I believe everyone shuts up. Being raised a catholic, I like to remind my mother that all 30k of them are anti catholic and they believe catholics are going to hell. They don't know what for, but they damn sure know they aren't catholic.
In truth I think ~30% of Americans are religious. The rest just keep covering for themselves. If we really wanted the truth we could instate taxes like they have in some EU countries. Pay an extra 5% taxes to your church. *poof, 50% gone in a year and claiming they paid it, while the others wondering why they didn't think to check a mon religious box.
I live in a location where a Christian belief system is straight up expected at a near Texas level. It is to my absolute glee to answer people that I am unwilling to pray over your computer (💯 happened) as it is against my religion.
Have people ask what church I go to roughly biweekly.
Main reason I have satanic temple cards to distribute when asked.
If we legalize taxing churches it just means no non-christian religions are allowed in red states. They'll just jack up taxes on churches they don't agree with
Freedom to religion would likely protect taxes being diffferent. It shouldn't protect against the largest land owner in Florida being a tax free money maker
That's a very charitable view of the current SCOTUS and I admire your optimism
Fun fact about SCOTUS. They don't have any way of enforcing their rulings. And we can add judges all day long. That's why they keep not going full conservative except on key cases. They know if the Democrats see them as a totally lost cause then they'll pack the court. (Which could effectively kill it when the GOP gets power and does the same exact thing) So in preserving their own power they're forced to maintain a status quo for now.
Not sure they think God will save them. That's quite the leap from "God exists" to "God will save me".
Good. It pretty clearly is. It's not the only one by any stretch, but "a threat" is a low bar. Would a single one of you stand confidently by it being "no threat"?
Hell, facebook is a threat to national security, and it's an American company.
Yes but so are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
I'm not here to defend tiktok but I really don't care what the average person thinks is a national security threat.
This is only because of republican propaganda, which they only did because young people did political coordination on ticktok.
I think there are both real and performative concerns being raised about Tik Tok as a platform.
Ideally the federal government shouldn't be deciding this sort of thing on a per-case basis at all. Pass actual data privacy legislation and force data collection to be transparent and potentially housed in US datacenters that are subject to US regulation. Then if Tik Tok can prove it's behaving responsibly it can continue to compete on an even playing field with other platforms.
Oh the actual bill behind banning TikTok is a comprehensive platform. It's complete with super broad language that effectively gives the government the power to shut down any Internet business with little to no warning.
As a hard core liberal, I promptly uninstalled that shit as soon as I saw my first Chinese military propaganda.
So you went looking for it? Because it's all clowns and musicians for me. The algorithm reflects what you go looking for and what you hit the like button on.
Lol nice troll
No true Scotsman, as they say
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that same 59% completed the poll on TikTok
Seeing how many people rushed to use threads and people are just excited that X is there too wouldn't surprise me. I don't understand why the average person is fear mongering tiktok when the official social media apps choose to use have so many sketchy permissions. Reddit too now set to try to become the next Meta with their IPO.
I can understand privacy focused people who try to avoid them due not liking them for the same reasons they don't like meta, but the average person singling out tiktok as they use Facebook, Instagram, and threads is not one that makes sense to me.
Kinda proud I've never installed/used Tiktok ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
If you're not involved in anything sensitive then the CCP could give two shits about you. Also if you've ever used any META product they already have your info. Zuckerberg has been called out for selling data to the Chinese government multiple times over the last decade.
Yeah, I’m not involved in anything like that, but coming from a country heavily manipulated by the CCP, I simply choose not to install TikTok or anything directly related to them (on my own choice). I once tried to apply for a Hong Kong visa at a Chinese embassy in the US. Ever since then, I’ve been receiving hundreds of Chinese calls and random Chinese messages out of nowhere. It's been 3 years -__-, I still can't figure out ways to get my number off of their lists, freaking ridiculous.
So people are complaining if the CCP censors western social media like Facebook etc. but then discuss to censor chinese social media. Isn't there freedom of speech in America? I mean nobody is forced to use TikTok.
This is why I can't wrap my head around any of the tiktok hate. I don't trust tiktok with my data so guess what? I don't use it. I don't see how my coworker using it is going to be the downfall of America. We've already banned it from government networks, that's plenty.
And to be honest there shouldn't be any social media on government networks. Unless it's "Civil Service R US" or something run by the government. But yeah no reason to have social media on 99% of official devices. (The 1% are the PR people putting stuff out and IT can wall them off)
If someone else wants to censor America social media it is extremely wrong, bad and against freedom of speech.
If America wants to censor someone else's social media it is the correct and good thing to do, because it protects people.
Had tiktok been American it would have been wrong to try to censor it, but no it is not so then it is good to censor it.
I don’t even have it and I clicked a link my friend sent and my vpn blocked 6 trackers. Can’t imagine what the app has access to
Majority of Americans don't understand national security, cyber security, or privacy.
Well of course they're going to percieve a place where alternative ideas and organisation takes place as a threat
Nothing there is all that alternative.
I'm not american. My country had basically built out a strangle hold on traditional media, facebook and is building it on other sites like instagram and twitter. The only platform that not been affected at all is tiktok. Instagram and Twitter is tankfully heavily fighting back the government propaganda but on tiktok, there is just none. Not sure if it's because of the algorithm it uses or simply they don't consider it a threat but there is a ton of liberal counter-culture which I'm sure the government would not be happy about if they found them.
As an avid user of both TT and Reddit (now lemmy obv), I can say the content and perspectives between the two have some parallels (both lean left) but also some very stark differences (TT leans younger and has a more early internet style chaotic energy).
I’m not saying the security concerns aren’t warranted. But the idea that so many people on here are so onboard with sacrificing a platform because they don’t get it is kinda disheartening. Especially given how concentrated social media is getting under the Meta umbrella.
I feel like many people on here still view the platform as the app where people dance to music, which isn’t representative of what the app is at the moment.
This can vary greatly. As a Canadian, I get served a bunch of conservative content on a fresh TikTok account.
I get a lot of content about socialism, communism, guerilla gardening, permaculture. Not very mainstream imo
The algorithm is very good at sending you more of what you've liked or searched for. If you're not mainstream then neither will your content be.
The US exports social media platforms all over the world.
Beyond that, many mostly older folks don't understand TikTok, even more than most social media, and because they don't understand the culture of it, they have decreed it a bad influence out of ignorant fear.
Yes, I'm sure China does mine the data, as do we. If my government wanted its citizens to "rah rah murica" in the global powers dick measuring contest, it shouldn't have legislated civic buy in away for the last 50 years to make the owner class richer at everyone else's expense.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html
Patriotism is for societies.
TikTok is a threat to my productivity if anything. That app will ruin me if I download it again.
It probably is, but holy fuck I'm hooked on the swiping to the point where I'd miss it a lot
The TikTok algorithm is magical and I love it
Easily the best social media app (sorry Lemmy, you’re a close second)
Deleted it a few months back and didn't really miss it after a couple weeks, but now that my reddit app is dead I'm contemplating 🥲
For once a majority agree and are correct.
So are the rest of the "social media" companies too though.
Threat to national security? Who could know besides the higher ups.
Threat to society? Again I don't know but god, most of TikTok is extremely cringe and has people wasting so, so much of their time either viewing stupid videos or filming them.
Idk, I just think turning society into a popularity contest/mediocre talent show is.. weird. Collectively, how many billions of hours have been wasted by people staging, viewing and filming simplistic dances due to apps like this?
When we could be doing.. anything of significance.
Sure, there's some informational stuff on there no need to remind me but let's be honest how much of it is basically "Look what I can do!"
Even if it's Chinese spyware, how would they ban it? You can always install the apk from a third-party source if you're on Android.
They can ban it through other means that would involve your arrest, prosecution, and potential incarceration. If they catch your device with TikTok installed you could face those kinds of criminal penalties. Remember that your mobile phone is identifiable by IMEI to you the owner. I know that it's incredibly fascist, dystopian, and authoritarian all rolled into one but the potential does exist for this to happen. If it's banned, I don't know that I am ready to be a martyr for the cause of free speech because I don't know that I will get any help and I am just a poor working class guy that is almost always about 2 or 3 paychecks from homelessness.
Imagine doing this for TikTok but not ar-15s lol
There are bigger fires to throw yourself upon in defence of free speech than a Chinese Spyware app.
Which is why I don't defend it. I merely point out the irony and hypocrisy of those we elect to run our government for us. I'd much sooner spend time trying to rid our government of authoritarian wanna bees and advocates. I think I am good just simply choosing not to use it and washing my hands of the whole matter altogether.
Yeah, don't have accounts for Tiktok, Twitter, or Instagram. Not installing their apps any time soon. It's more privacy laws that need updating that is allowing these type of data collection to exist in the first place. So it's the laws that need changing if these politicians truly cared about how invasive these apps can be as opposed it really just being about only wanting their domestic apps to be the ones collecting data.
Privacy laws are only as good as the amount they're enforced.
Yeah and the penalties are so trivial it's nothing but a business expense.
It’s not hypocrisy. There’s no obligation to treat companies or people outside of the US the same as in the US. National security is a different beast all together.
A solution would be to create a proxy app of some kind. As for the poor working class guy thing, I feel you man. Things ain't getting easier.
A proxy app would still leak metadata though. Metadata would be enough to meet the legal reasonable personal standard to show that one intended to thwart the ban. I have the advantage of having both a Criminal Justice degree and significant technical background.
Remove it from app stores, end any dependencies with US partners etc.
I'm going to guess a large percentage cannot fully explain why the think that.
Well it has access to the wifi soooooo
So ban it already…
Well at least we know selling the next war will be easy. Americans still haven't learned to look past the surface of what the talking heads get paid to say.
Meanwhile the historically significant markers like wealth gap and political divide keep growing. Education, housing, and health get worse. But noooo, look at the shiny!
I don't use tiktok because it's bad for me and makes my older phone heat up, but it's a great app that leads you to your very niche interests if you guide the algorithm to do so - that's even despite the 'heating button' that their employees use to make favoured (creators/corps) content go viral.
People truly get so nuts about stuff that just doesn't matter. People who don't even use tiktok are scared of it? Goodness gracious.
It's become acceptable and at times encouraged to react to things with the utmost drama and volume. I really hope this trend goes away.
I mean.... If you're scared of something, why would you use it?
My point was that we need to stop encouraging this sensationalist nonsense. Not feed fear for fun.
I don't get it. Either China is getting all my data or the US is getting all my data. I don't see a substantive difference.
Since I'm not in the CCCP debate at all, I'd rather China have it.