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halcyoncmdr ,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

Legitimate countries don’t need to ban communications platforms.

Korkki ,

Is tiktok ok?

neuracnu ,
@neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Does ByteDance publish TikTok’s transmission protocol to demonstrate transparency?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

eldavi ,

bytedance offered the government unfettered access and moved their entire infrastructure to the united states; it was more transparent than anything else out there.

neuracnu ,
@neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Do you have any citation for that?

eldavi ,

it was in their initial filing when they started the lawsuit to defend themselves.

i’ve been sealioned too much on the lemmyverse so you’re going to have to do your own googling.

neuracnu ,
@neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Asking the person you’re debating to look up your own citations is certainly one way to converse. But ok, let’s go for it.

In Aug 2023, Forbes published an article describing the proposal of “unfettered access” you referred to:

www.forbes.com/…/draft-tiktok-cfius-agreement/

In June 2024, the Washington Post reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) turned down the proposal and includes some broad reporting as to why:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/…/ar-BB1nfAcE

The article isn’t very technical, but it mentions some interesting responsibility angles that the US wouldn’t want to back themselves into:

  • throwing open some, but not all, doors to server operations and source code creates a mountain of work for the government to inspect, which would be a workload nightmare
  • the US government’s deepest concerns seem to be about what data is going out (usage insights on the virtuous side and clipboard/mic/camera monitoring on the ultra shady side) and data coming in (bespoke content intended to influence US residents of China-aligned goals). Usage insights are relatively benign from national security perspective (especially when you can just mandate that people in important roles aren’t permitted to use it). Shady monitoring should be discoverable through app source code monitoring, which you can put the app platforms (Apple, Google, whoever else) on the hook for if they continue to insist on having walled app gardens (and if you trust them at all). The content shaping is harder to put your finger on though, since it’s super easy to abstract logic as far out as you need to avoid detection. “Here, look at these 50M lines of code that run stateside, and yeah, there are some API calls to stuff outside the sandbox. Is that such a big deal?” Spoiler: it is a big deal.
  • the US can’t hold Byte Dance accountable so long as it remains in China. Let’s say the US agreed to all this, spent all the effort to uncover some hidden shady activity that they don’t like (after an untold amount of time has passed). What then? They can’t legally go after Byte Dance’s foreign entity. The US can prosecute the US employees, but it’s totally possible to organize in such a way that leaves those domestic employees free from misdeeds, leaving prosecutors unable to enforce misdeeds fairly. It’d be a mess.

The second article explains this somewhat, but I’m admittedly painting some conjecture on top regarding how a malicious actor could behave. I’ve got no evidence that Byte Dance is actually doing any of that.

But going back to the “influence the public” angle, I’m struggling to see how different TikTok is versus NHK America (Japan’s American broadcasts) or RT (American media from the Russian standpoint) aside from being wildly more successful and popular. But I guess that’s all there is to it.

I’d prefer our leaders also be transparent with us regarding their concerns about TikTok. The reductive “because China!!1!” argument is not compelling on its own.

Transporter_Room_3 ,
@Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website avatar

He said “communications platforms” not “misinformation, social engineering, and mass data collection platform masquerading as a social media platform”

halcyoncmdr ,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

I’d say social media platforms are an entire different beast.

Facebook is not the same as Facebook Messenger for instance.

carotte ,
@carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

tiktok is a platform to share information and communicate, yes

which is why the french government banned it in Kanaky (“new caledonia”) during the protests there, as it was a tool of communication used by the protesters

fubo ,

Show me what Stalinism looks like
This is what Stalinism looks like

comfy ,
@comfy@lemmy.ml avatar

How is that Stalinist? Censorship isn’t some unique rare policy, even 5EYES countries regularly challenge the legality of E2EE.

InfiniWheel ,

Stalinism is when thing bad.

davidagain ,

I take that as a compelling recommendation for Signal.

overload ,

Agreed. Clearly it must do simply what is said on the tin, otherwise why ban it?

crawancon ,

hexbear users will prob say some dumbass take like “yes! block that American pig dog shit! it frees us up to focus on telegram!”

Buelldozer ,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

I’ve already read several comments just like that over on .ml.

communism ,
@communism@lemmy.ml avatar

Making up a guy to be mad at. Meanwhile the US is a bastion of privacy of course

eldavi ,

you should let that strawman get out of your head; he’s living rent-free there.

communism ,
@communism@lemmy.ml avatar

Glad it at least seems easy to circumvent with a VPN

eager_eagle ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

oh they’re working on it too

bitwolf ,

Time to run some proxies for these oppressed people.

refalo ,

There are already many signal proxies available, plus an unlimited number of VPNs to choose from (or self-host yourself on a VPS)

eager_eagle ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

Worth highlighting that Telegram in Russia and WhatsApp in Venezuela - both with vastly larger user bases than Signal - are not blocked…

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