Can you point out in the article or describe what you feel is the actual, explicit issue? I read the article, and I didn’t catch any concrete description of why TikTok is dangerous aside from the typically general descriptions, or at a minimum, how TikTok is any different from Facebook or YouTube or Twitter Instagram or whatever else, all of which have essentially black box recommendation algorithms.
The article never hones in on anything specific to TikTok or makes a claim. From what I can tell, the two potential issues are concern of data collection with what that feeds and then a concept of influence.
The former feeds a learning algorithm that shows what people find entertaining, funny, interesting. Could this be weaponized? Potentially. My best guess how is that it simply shows what people in various regions like and dislike, providing food for propaganda and policies. So the app is just a vacuum that feeds some external process that may or may not feedback through the app. No doubt this very thing with Facebook’s data was weaponized in the 2016 U.S. election by Cambridge Analytica and other entities.
The latter possibility is one of influence. However, I do not see how TikTok is unique in this. In a different timeline, Facebook or Twitter or a multitude of other sites could have easily been used to hijack the rally, so that example is weak. If anything, the example is damning since there is a large possibility that Trump’s war on TikTok is one of personal vendetta that has been hypernormalized in the context of actual concerns between the U.S. and China and general concerns of the influence of social media. Further, there is factual evidence of Facebook being weaponized by organized groups to start protests and riots and people being influenced by foreign efforts.
From my stance, the question is why is just TikTok a concern? If it is a legitimate concern, which it probably is at least in theory, then these same concerns apply to other social networks. The other question is where does this all stop?
I'm in China and I did stop using facebook because it felt like a stupid data sinkhole from an hostile power...
I agree it's a bit paranoid to block Tik Tok, but maybe if these company found a business model that didn't require my name, age, graph of all my acquaitance and pictures of all of this, maybe that would be better for the worlds ? Maybe we SHOULD ban social media on the principle that the risk of abuse outweighs any advantage ?
"and I didn’t catch any concrete description of why TikTok is dangerous aside from the typically general descriptions"
It's sadly, poorly communicated.
The CCP has entities within all Chinese corps to ensure they follow CCP policy which includes censoring individuals for all sorts of reasons. They will flag individuals for speaking out, possibly having them face arbitrary incarceration - all sorts of dystopian stuff.
This is well documented, and it's why 'WeChat' is getting banned outright.
TikTok is a slightly special case, because it's not an overt tool of CCP control, that said, anything and everything grabbed by TT can be used by the CCP for any and every reason.
Imagine if Donald Trump could order FB to provide detailed data on any Chinese user at any time, for whatever purposes.
I've referenced here several times how China literally has CCP entities within every company, this is 'normal' there I'm loathing to have to look up the reference yet again, but it's public information.
New information has come to light about ByteDance that's rather scary, from NPR:
"ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming has made public statements showing he is "committed to promoting" the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party."
"ByteDance, according to the document, employs 130 Chinese Communist Party members at ByteDance's Beijing office."
"ByteDance employees organized a party in which they faced a Chinese Communist Party flag, "raised their right hand, clenched their fists, and reiterated their guarantee as a party member and vowed to never betray the party.""
This is pretty serious stuff in an autocratic nation with no judiciary etc.. The CCP is effectively forcing control of the entity, even on the basis of morale.
It would be one thing for Trump to be able to legally order FB for data, can you imagine the farce of him requiring FB employees to 'Pledge their fealty and loyalty to the GOP'?.
It would be better for the US Gov. - probably in concert with other nations to make some 'new rules' on this, because it's simply not going to work to have Chinese media apps in the 'rest of the world'. I would say the same for Russia and some other states.
Finally - there are simply issues of trade, on the basis alone, China wouldn't allow an American TikTok in China without censorship, and frankly, I suggest they just wouldn't allow it no matter what.
The article never hones in on anything specific to TikTok or makes a claim. From what I can tell, the two potential issues are concern of data collection with what that feeds and then a concept of influence.
The former feeds a learning algorithm that shows what people find entertaining, funny, interesting. Could this be weaponized? Potentially. My best guess how is that it simply shows what people in various regions like and dislike, providing food for propaganda and policies. So the app is just a vacuum that feeds some external process that may or may not feedback through the app. No doubt this very thing with Facebook’s data was weaponized in the 2016 U.S. election by Cambridge Analytica and other entities.
The latter possibility is one of influence. However, I do not see how TikTok is unique in this. In a different timeline, Facebook or Twitter or a multitude of other sites could have easily been used to hijack the rally, so that example is weak. If anything, the example is damning since there is a large possibility that Trump’s war on TikTok is one of personal vendetta that has been hypernormalized in the context of actual concerns between the U.S. and China and general concerns of the influence of social media. Further, there is factual evidence of Facebook being weaponized by organized groups to start protests and riots and people being influenced by foreign efforts.
From my stance, the question is why is just TikTok a concern? If it is a legitimate concern, which it probably is at least in theory, then these same concerns apply to other social networks. The other question is where does this all stop?