FBI is 'Extremely Concerned' about China's Influence Through TikTok on US Users (cnbc.com) 97
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Tuesday that he is "extremely concerned" about TikTok's operations in the U.S. From a report: "We do have national security concerns at least from the FBI's end about TikTok," Wray told members of the House Homeland Security Committee in a hearing about worldwide threats. "They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users. Or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose. Or to control software on millions of devices, which gives it opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices."
Wray's remarks build on those from other government officials and members of Congress who have expressed deep skepticism about the ability of the Chinese-owned video platform to protect U.S. user information from an adversarial government. TikTok has maintained it doesn't store U.S. user data in China, where the law allows the government to force companies to hand over internal information. Wray said that law alone was "plenty of reason by itself to be extremely concerned."
Wray's remarks build on those from other government officials and members of Congress who have expressed deep skepticism about the ability of the Chinese-owned video platform to protect U.S. user information from an adversarial government. TikTok has maintained it doesn't store U.S. user data in China, where the law allows the government to force companies to hand over internal information. Wray said that law alone was "plenty of reason by itself to be extremely concerned."
Admission of guilt (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Admission of guilt (Score:5, Insightful)
It's well known that the US has data harvesting operations embedded within large companies. While I haven't heard of the US using American social media companies to influence opinion, I wouldn't be surprised. Not in the slightest. Psyops is a legit part of intelligence and spy craft.
The bigger question - which would you prefer to be influencing you?
A) An imperfect government that is democratically elected by a society that at least tries to make sure everyone must follow the law, no matter how rich or powerful.
b) A government run by an unaccountable emperor-for-life who is bound by no laws and restrained by no one?
This is NOT a rhetorical question. There are two models of civilization competing for dominance, and those two options are pretty good descriptions of the choice.
Re:Admission of guilt (Score:4, Interesting)
Trumpers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Once they imprint on their dictator figure, there's not reasoning with them.
You're talking about Trumpers right?
Re:Admission of guilt (Score:4, Insightful)
While I haven't heard of the US using American social media companies to influence opinion
US used Hollywood to influence world opinion for decades. There is no doubt, social media help to spread american culture...
The bigger question - which would you prefer to be influencing you?
The answer is none. I play Civilization, I am aware of the Culture victory.
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The bigger question - which would you prefer to be influencing you?
I make up my own damn mind about politics. It's pretty easy too, with one of our two major political parties taking a position that I'm unworthy of equal rights due to my being gay.
Now, if you wanted to rephrase the question in regards to which country you'd prefer to be snooping on to everything you do online, I'd prefer it be the one that's separated from me by national borders and an ocean.
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if you wanted to rephrase the question in regards to which country you'd prefer to be snooping on to everything you do online, I'd prefer it be the one that's separated from me by national borders and an ocean.
What makes you think they won't just sell your info to your government?
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An imperfect government that is democratically elected
Eh. Kinda. Except for the gerrymandering affecting some positions, and the president who is selected and not elected...
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As long as you are equally indignant about the gerrymandering that BOTH parties engage in....fine.
As for the electoral college....I'm happy with how it is. We need to make sure that the 2-3 largest states do not pick the president, and that ALL states have more of a say in the president.
Going by full on popular vote basically says NY and CA will always pick the president and that the res
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Going by full on popular vote basically says NY and CA will always pick the president and that the rest of the states outside of TX have absolutely no say in the matter.
1. That's not how it would work. CA + NY do not have sufficient population to go against the rest of the states.
2. The idea that the President should be picked by a majority of the population is obviously repugnant to you. Why is that? Is it that the present setup gives an excessive amount of power to people who agree with your point of view?
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A) An imperfect government that is democratically elected by a society that at least tries to make sure everyone must follow the law, no matter how rich or powerful.
b) A government run by an unaccountable emperor-for-life who is bound by no laws and restrained by no one?
Do you seriously believe that? Do you only watch Fox News? Have you not seen the depth & breadth of corruption, regulatory capture, & dominance that corporations have over the US political system? The US is as democratic as corporations allow it to be.
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The USA's problems are systemic, other countries' meddlings have little to do with it. If anything, they're just try to exploit the systemic contradictions that are already there. There's a lot of denial going on in, "The Greatest Country on God's Earth." You can't have the world's biggest empire & the world's biggest military & still have a functioning democracy. Yeah, you can vote for some things, you can even put a rapey ora
And If The American Government Doesn't Do This.... (Score:1)
...to Chinese citizens using social media, the question would be: why the hell not?
Monopoly trial still unregulated (Score:2)
Re:Admission of guilt (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, that sounds like a pretty clear admission by the FBI that the US govt uses American social media companies to do the exact same thing. No wonder China, among other countries, bans them.
I wouldn't be shocked if the US government has some backdoors into social media companies to get data that most people (including the executives at the companies) don't know about.
But the recommendation algorithms aren't just some magic black box. A lot of people inside those companies know how they work and are responsible for maintaining them. In China, the Party has enough influence and representatives inside the company that they can probably direct those kinds of things. In Western Democracies? I don't think you could get away with the same kind of influence. There's too many people involved and too much expectation that it's wrong so someone would blow the whistle.
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In Western Democracies? I don't think you could get away with the same kind of influence.
Spoiler alert: all social media snoops on you.
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Is not that the entire point of social media? To broadcast to the world your awesomeness? /s
Re:Admission of guilt (Score:5, Interesting)
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I forgot the exact quote, but someone once said "He that can get you to believe absurdities can also get you to commit atrocities"
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Influence on users...
They're using Tiktok to turn the US population into a bunch of drooling retards?
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we have two parties that succeeded at that, w00t!
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They're using Tiktok to turn the US population into a bunch of drooling retards?
Fox News already beat 'em to it.
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Influence on users...
They're using Tiktok to turn the US population into a bunch of drooling retards?
It's all a bit chicken and egg...
DId the US population instead turn to TikTok because they were a bunch of drooling retards?
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FBI lost the mind-control game on the American people....
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reveling.
the f b i is now seeing all americans as myoptic information gathering economic competitors
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If you doubt this, get on TikTok and try posting some more-or-less accurate videos about the history of Taiwan or Tibet.
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The concerns sound real, but I'm not really sure that the FBI should be the one presenting them. It would seem to be much more reasonably an argument from any of the intelligence communities. E.g., no particular crime is being alleged to be in action in the scenarios as described (though of course various crimes could be used to facilitate them).
The most appropriate agency to make the argument would probably (from my view) be the NSA. Army intelligence would also be a reasonable group.
Note that I think t
Funny (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? You're still suffering from TDS?
Yes, we still suffer from Trumpist Dipshit Syndrome, where wannabe Nazis are still carrying water for a racist tangerine.
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...and I remember the geniuses around here bagging on him for it.
It's weird; for a place full of supposed nerds, their opinions sure are easily controlled, aren't they?
Because, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Most people can agree that online discourse works better with a high signal-to-noise ratio, so we trash the spam and off-topic posts. But then, someone gets the idea that perhaps we can improve things further by fostering a higher quality of discussion, so we also trash posts that are inflammatory, redundant, or trolling. Unfortunately, at this point we've entered into a realm where what qualifies as a garbage post can be rather
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
quite a few people missed or chose to ignore the sarcasm in orange guy comments and preferred to use them against him the left has no humour just look at comedians these days everything is cancelled
I am pretty sure I can recognize sarcasm. The videos of his statements are widely available.
The funny thing is that whenever he is criticized, it's always, "but Hillary and her emails, but the woke, but the cancel" - I do not remember mentioning anything about it.
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That's not true. It can be quite reasonable to ban foreign control over things that have massive internal influence. That's different from saying that those applications shouldn't exist, which is the appropriate analog to what you were asserting.
OTOH, insisting that communications be local *is* quite against the general spirit of the web. So is the GDPR, yet I find myself quite in sympathy with that regulation.
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It can be quite reasonable to ban foreign control over things that have massive internal influence.
No, it's not reasonable. Reasonable is your own government putting out their own public awareness campaign and letting its citizens make their own decisions. The second you ban something, you've taken that choice away and that's the antithesis of freedom.
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I think they mean ban tiktokUSA from being run by a Chinese company with servers (data) in China.
My impression was they wanted TikTok to run on servers based in the USA and run by at subsidiary of ChinaTikTok (or whatever the company name is) that would be based entirely in the USA.
You are not banning tiktok so much as laying out new rules to play by that protect our data a bit more. Not a terrible idea given how toxic and influential social media has become.
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He also said that Germany was making itself dependent on Russian natural gas, to which I agreed.
If Trump said 1+1=2, why would I disagree with it? Still a fucking moron in most other regards though.
The bigger issue that I see has been all the knee-jerking people whatabouting other countries, which do the same with their respective social media companies. Acting all like we're hypocrites for complaining about spying from foreign entities while he willingly throw our information at our own govern
Huh? (Score:1)
TikTok has maintained it doesn't store U.S. user data in China, where the law allows the government to force companies to hand over internal information. Wray said that law alone was "plenty of reason by itself to be extremely concerned.
What does this exactly mean? It reads like _if_ the U.S. data was stored in China then the Chinese government is allowed by law to force TikTok's internal data to be handed over. But if the U.S. data isn't being stored in China, why is Wray concerned? Director Wray should be more concerned about how he looked when being questioned by Congress about there being undercover FBI agents present within the crazy mob. Before and during the January 6th shitstorm --> https://www.themainewire.com/2... [themainewire.com].
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TikTok has maintained it doesn't store U.S. user data in China, where the law allows the government to force companies to hand over internal information. Wray said that law alone was "plenty of reason by itself to be extremely concerned.
What does this exactly mean? It reads like _if_ the U.S. data was stored in China then the Chinese government is allowed by law to force TikTok's internal data to be handed over. But if the U.S. data isn't being stored in China, why is Wray concerned?
Perhaps it's because TikTok may not have given a good enough answer as to exactly where U.S. data IS being stored? If there are American users on that platform, there's American data on that platform. If they don't hold in in country, then where the hell is it held.
Your assumption that the Chinese government can force data to be handed over is likely 100% correct. Why do you think US Government demands the same from certain American companies? Within CONUS data restrictions has been a known requirement
They may be clueless, but ... (Score:2)
In a crowd that size, in Washington DC, if the FBI did NOT have some confidential informants there they completely failed at their job.
With 100,000 people there, and every extremist group in the country represented, the FBI damn well SHOULD have had some folks walking around, milling with the crowds.
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TikTok is the threat, so let's investigate Twitter (Score:1)
Yes, and that's why we must investigate Twitter [nypost.com], now that it belongs to the guy not as friendly [nytimes.com] to the Party of Government [npr.org].
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Probably because of Elon's involvement with SpaceX.
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Musk has had a security clearance for how long? SpaceX has been launching classified payloads for how long? It's only a cause for alarm when he buys Twitter?
You expect people to believe that?
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Yes, yes. Most of the political prisoners in the USSR were officially convicted of non-political crimes too.... Still are in today's Russia [imrussia.org]...
Suddenly a change no one saw coming... (Score:5, Funny)
Americans start thinking puppy videos are actually cuter than kitty videos! Enough of this madness and manipulation! I'm moving to Japan.
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No debate.
Is Tick Tock a Black Swan Event? (Score:2, Funny)
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We all know what the effects are. Just a look at the Z gen's finest specimens should tell you all you need to know. There was plenty of research done on suicide and mental health relationship with social media and such. That and there was that recent survey where most young chinese kids wanted to be scientists or engineers, while most americans wanted to be streamers or youtubers.
I guess that an autocratic government can say "I want the next generation to be made of scientists" and they can more or less ste
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... We don't know what we don't know about the long term effects of the electronic brain entrainment we have subjected our children to. But the Chinese might. They've performed the experiments on mice. Is the U.S.A. just a data set in one of their stage 3 trials?...
If this guy's information and analysis [youtube.com] are anywhere close to correct and accurate, then your speculation is right on the money.
The video is a bit over-the-top and it uses some of the kind of manipulation that it's condemning. But with that in mind it's still worth watching, or at least skimming - not least because it and similar arguments may have influenced policy makers.
Our moron population is a gift... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Look at the bright side: then China is only able to influence morons through TikTok. People with an IQ worth influencing don't do TikTok.
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Look at the bright side: then China is only able to influence morons through TikTok. People with an IQ worth influencing don't do TikTok.
Speaking of influence, a shitload of American parents don't mind addicting their own children. You'll call those IQ-enhanced geniuses leaders in the future.
Some adult children already hold that title.
What's the bright side again?
Tired of seeing this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What are people talking about? (Score:4, Insightful)
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content of a 6-second entertainment video
It's not a SINGLE six second video, and it's not all entertainment videos. If you've spent any time on any social media it doesn't take long to figure out people can be idiots, and a lot of them aren't all that hard to fool into believing just about anything.
psy-ops 101 (Score:1)
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And rightfully so. He wanted to do it via a presidential order rather than by going through Congress. He *should* have forbidden it on devices present in US military bases or government offices, which he COULD have legally done via a presidential order. He didn't. Those weren't the TicTok users he wanted off TicTok.
Making use of that Twitter purchase (Score:3)
Let's get Elon to bring back Vine, then we can kick TikTok to the curb.
Assuming Twitter doesn't collapse under Elon's hubris, anyway.
Re:Burn foreign books (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan (Score:2)
Unicorns, the truth (Score:2)
Of course, the US government doesn't have this and security letters aren't real, pinky-promise. In other news, unicorns are real and very good at hide and seek.
Only TikTok does this, not Facebook, not Twitter, not Instagram. Look, a unicorn, I found one.
It's telling that television wasn't criticized: Many election-year party announcements, Fox and [very rich] friends, Info Wars, Tucker Carlson all spout propaganda and falsehoods that influence how people vote.
This is about politicians losing control of