I want to point out something extremely important. Bytedance is incorporated in the cayman islands (probably because of taxes), but it's headquarters are in Beijing (You can confirm this on wikipedia). One of it's founders are also mainland Chinese and the founders HAVE issued an apology in accordance to the CCP's wishes talking about how it had a weak interpretation of Xi Jinping's thoughts (explicitly named Xi Jinping's thought, again, you can see this on wikipedia and it named it's source). It's a lot more complicated, but that's not to say that the generalized idea of CCP's influence on Bytedance is extremely or even moderately inaccurate. 21:06: "3 out of the 5 are westerners" Key players in Bytedance: Liang Rubo (CEO) Erich Andersen (global GC)[2] Kelly Zhang (CEO of ByteDance China)[3] Lidong Zhang (Chairman of ByteDance China)[3] Shou Zi Chew (CEO of TikTok) Nope 1 out of the 5. And yes, Bytedance has western capital. HSBC had also sent funds or launder funds for Iran and Mexican drug cartels. Western capital is everywhere where it thinks it can make money. That doesn't dilute CCP's influence any. "CEO of Tiktok is Singaporean" True, but... "In May 2021, TikTok appointed Shou Zi Chew as their new CEO" Less than 2 years ago. Saying the buck stops with him is ignoring Bytedance and Tiktok's conception. TIktok started because: "ByteDance planned on Douyin expanding overseas. The founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, stated that "China is home to only one-fifth of Internet users globally. If we don't expand on a global scale, we are bound to lose to peers eyeing the four-fifths. So, going global is a must."" Zhang Yiming is that founder of Bytedance that apologized in accordance to the CCP's wishes and talked about Xi Jinping thought. So... yeah.
Yeah I had to stop watching when being incorporated in the Caymans was supposed to be a reason the CCP isn't in control? They literally make a joke in The Office about companies incorporating in the Caymans. It is such an obvious move that companies use to avoid tax liabilities that it is a trope in pop culture to talk about it, but the guest seems to think the incorporation of TikTok in the Caymans means that the Caymans call the shots? WTF??!!???
@@LoLo1k2k3k I'll even go one step further. The Whois for bytedance's domain says the registrant's location is Beijing China. Is that good enough for you? The registrar is a mainland Chinese domain registrar. Like will you listen to the programmer who can read Chinese or the person who doesn't know programming and doesn't read Chinese? Oh look, the contact phone number for the domain has a +86 country code. You know, the country code for China? What's that? The registrant and admin contact (and tech) for the domain needs to go through a mainland Chinese domain registrar and their contact form? But no, keep telling me that they're incorporated in the Cayman Island, the place known for making sure corporations can't held accountable for sh*t.
I was looking if someone had mentioned exactly this! 👍🏻 I was shocked how naive this supposedly academically researching woman spoke regarding the CCP influence. Being registered in Cayman means *nothing* when it comes to China's party politics! There have been massive interferences in globally operating Chinese companies by the CCP. Yes, American data kraken are just as malignant and overreaching, I agree. But the other topic - Chinese state direct direction of company policy - is a very different topic. And it's verified. CCP is literally making public examples out of companies and individual CEOs and owners! It's *not* a rumour nor a speculation: it's law in China and many of these interferences are used as propaganda within China! The fact that TikTok is *completely* different in China as to it's *topics* (she acted like Douyin having the same interface as TikTok means it's the same app with the same content pushed by their algorithm: I found this downright disingenuous) is very telling! Douyin is much more learning-orientated and much less wannabe sexy dances, sexy lipsynching by minors, stupid-dangerous challenges and toxic misogyny. Why is that so? What interest has the Chinese government that Western kids and young adults get *that* content but not their own citizens?! Notice I didn't even mention policy, censoring or social values. Just the non-politics topics.
At 53:00 ish Abbie asserts that no one can really say what "altering the algorithm" means or would look like, but there's absolutely precedent for that. Social media companies alter their algorithms to promote different content all the time, and even within this podcast Abbie talks about how they censored and downplayed content from certain groups, (poor, unattractive, minority, etc.). It's no stretch of the imagination to think that the same tactics could simply reduce the amount of information, or reach of certain political ideals, and bolster others. Facebook namely has been under fire multiple times for boosting content containing misinformation, or that generates more outrage, particularly during election times. I somewhat agree with evaluating tiktok as more of a capitalist machine than anything else, but I think it's a little silly to assert that it's not possible, or unheard of that they could alter cultural discourse with tweaks to what is shown to who.
That is why Facebook is in a class action lawsuit, hopefully we can get some money from that. Of course, they influence election votes. And people got mad about Twitter/X getting all the far right conspiracy material off their app, but now its back. But it's still misinformation and propaganda.
That would mean fewer bribes go to your political class. So it won't happen. Better to blame the spooky china for the things your corporate overlords have been doing to you for years.
Instagram is like 90% as bad. Thing is with TikTok, that last 10% that they're taking off of people's phones is bonkers and incredibly invasive. Rather than ban these apps, we ought to be establishing privacy rights for our citizens. But, in the meantime, I would urge people to not have the TikTok app on their phones, unless they want to give up EVERYTHING on your phone. Credit cards, banking info, biometrics, etc.
I admire and love Abbey's nuanced understanding of Human reality and perception. It reminds me of my studies at university where I asked myself tons of questions about what is reality, what is intelligence, etc. We certainly need to promote wiser people on the Internet!
The scam your grandmother experienced was tried on my grandma too. A guy called her pretending to be my brother, saying that he needed $500 to get out of jail, and not to tell my mom. The "don't tell mom" thing is what kept her from falling for it. My mother has always had a strict "don't lie to me" policy that made whatever you did completely secondary to whether you told the truth about it. If one of us got arrested, she'd be pretty mad, but if we got arrested and tried to weasel our way out of it without calling her that would have been unimaginably worse. The fact that the guy was more scared of our mom finding out he was in jail than he was of her finding out he called my grandmother before he called her tipped her off that it wasn't my brother.
Can't confirm, but I heard a similar story from a police officer about another officer who "got the call" his kid was arrested, he believed he was communicating with his son and send cash for his release..... needless to say it was a total scam.
Yeah, being a cybersecurity professional and seeing how poorly researched this is kinda casts a lot of doubt on Adam's credibility for me going forward. 1) the topic is really about RESTRICT act being ineffective at addressing legitimate concerns that experts have with TikTok while hurting civil liberties/do nothing to protect user data 2) TikTok is undoubtedly a Chinese collections app, and this "you don't need to worry if you're not the target" is about the same logic as "you don't need to worry if you're young and healthy, don't get vaccinated " and doesn't address the underlying issue that an adversarial nation is collecting all of this data to engineer the perform psy-op and opportunity to achieve their goals, often by sowing discord in our system. The profit motive of a us based company harvesting data is pretty badly aligned with our social wellness, but a nation state that exclusively benefits from our demise goes from badly aligned to straight up hostile. 3) Instead of saying TikTok is fine, we should be having the conversation of reforming our data privacy laws that prevent foreign or domestic government from being able to gain all of this data to build patterns of life on groups of or specific people, and offer sensible ways for individuals to reduce their digital footprint should they choose.
1. The real issue isn’t that the RESTRICT act is ineffective. The issue is that it’s **very** effective at stripping Americans of their civil liberties. 2. The proposition that China will benefit from our demise may be true, but the means to the purported victory aren’t going to be through collecting consumer affinity data. (Although this has terrible consequences, of course, which is why we should take it more seriously with **our own** stateside data collection companies.) China is the largest holder of U.S. debt, and we’ve willfully-gleefully even-relocated our own means of production to their country. The argument that they’re a unique global threat when it comes to propaganda and hegemony is the result of western propaganda intended to distract you from the world’s largest propaganda system. (As a side note, if we don’t want to fall to purported Chinese economic dominance-because we are talking about economics here-we might want to stop sinking our resources into the MIC and forever wars. RESTRICT is just a more digitally upgraded Patriot Act.) 3. Yup. Good idea. But I would prefer they not be hypocritical. If we want our privacy respected-and I know this sounds bonkers to those Americans who think we rule the world-maybe we should respect the privacy of other sovereign nations in turn.
I feel that a lot of your statements here are either disingenuous or strawmanning what was said. No one on here said anything close to, "TikTok is fine." They simply pointed out that it's doing the same harms as our other big social media platforms but those ones just aren't 'Chinese owned.' Also, you state that TikTok is "undoubtedly a Chinese collections app" without any citation or source that it is in a way that differs from Meta or Twitter. If you're going to throw out these kinds of comments as if they were facts then we need more than, "trust me, bro."
To build on what @@RyanWattersRyanWatters said, the video is about debunking conspiracy theories about tiktok in particular. Aggregate data is extremely potent and useful and I'm also disappointed in how quickly she dismissed concerns about it just because She doesn't know the effects of it, but this fear of China is meant to distract us from the much more real fear we should have of our own government. A tiktok hearing like this is the digital & state equivalent of going out into the street and beating up a random Chinese person because your grandma died of covid, the problem isn't China it's our own government bowing to corporate interests over our own. American people (and Chinese people in China and most people in most modern governments) are being stripped and gutted of their rights and freedoms in order to funnel more capital to the owning class. If you look at tiktok yes it sells your data to China but like the researcher said in the episode it's decisions make much more sense broadly when you interpret their actions as being a big corporation trying to make money. Yes they sell user data to China but they'd sell it to the US too, they probably are already selling it to everyone they can get away with. And if you take the same broad perspective on the US government you see the interests of capital: we overwhelmingly Fight wars instead of stopping them so we can buy and sell weapons at the expense of the working class. We keep wages low and keep housing a commodity to force the vast majority of people to work to survive no matter the conditions while gutting social services and hiding the homeless who die on the street. We keep funding and allowing to grow nonsense tech startups or surveillance social media apps with no consideration to the volatility they introduce into the economy and into people's lives and safety. The American voter is so disillusioned with the system because again and again and again and again we see Democrats and Republicans alike giving cakes to corporations and crumbs to the worker and in so doing failing to represent their constituents. So forgive me if I see tiktok as a non threat in the face of that
I worked in intelligence and counterintelligence for ten years as a war fighter. I'm not 100 percent sure that your guest, while extremely well informed, is qualified to determine what level of usefulness persistent surveillance would be to China against the US. I don't have all the answers, but I'm more inclined to think TikTok is a Trojan horse from a foreign adversary.
I dont think the takeaway from the video is that Tiktok has no threat potential, it's that our need for data security exceeds the threat that Tiktok poses. For example, the Marriott leak is very alarming.
Spot on! A self-appointed 'Tik Tok expert' is hardly an authority on the serious geopolitical strategies of the authoritarian regime of China and their openly stated objective to bring down the U.S.A. and replace them as global hegemon. This entire video is whataboutism at it's worst.
My question is how is their concern about Tiktok when our government and American based companies does the exact same thing when using our data? Am I missing something?
Consider how gangs react if someone from another gang tries to do business in their territory. Not all that different. You could technically say the gang is preventing crime but that is just a side effect, what they are really doing is preventing the wrong people from committing the crime.
Very nuanced discussion, thank you! As someone who's had a lot of concerns and wasn't certain what was actually valid, this helped clarify quite a lot.
From a cyber security perspective: How was random apps like TikTok or even Instagram, allowed on government worker's phones in the first place? Which apps can be installed, should be limited to decrease risk of different kinds of attacks, including social engineering, information gathering and possibly data breaches.
Your guest lost credibility the moment she claimed that since Bytedance is incorporated in the Caymen Islands, it falls outside CCP influence. Where a company is incorporated and where it is headquartered can be different. Bytedance is headquartered in Beijing, and this brings it under the business rules imposed by the CCP. The CCP has taken action against the company and is subsidiaries in the past. They also have a board seat in Douyin (the Chinese domestic version of TikTok), so the main question is really whether Tiktok and Douyin share any resources and data centers that fall directly under CCP control.
@@cs5384 It sounds a bit like how some assert that CCP soft influences non-Chinese people in positions of influence to take advantage of the "They're nice to me" attitude to help counter anyone who is concerned with their actions.
umm, think this one is a stretch. Kind of like saying standard oil ltd registered out of the Caimans is a subsidiary of standard oil USA and has nothing to do with the American establishment when it is operating out of the Suez Canal. It is a very very hard stretch.
Ok, so now we have to go back to the vid's main point of contention: US companies park their corporations in tax havens all the time. Why is only Tiktok being demonized?
Pretty disappointed in this one. As others have commented, the expertise required was not about how misinformation spreads on TikTok, but rather the specific cybersecurity issues it poses. Hand waving 'all these apps do the same thing, so why target this one?' misses the point. It's not about the content on the platform, it's about the power of compromising the security of millions of devices. And yes, asking a TikTok creator if it's a good idea to ban TikTok was an especially poor choice.
And it ignores that CCP owns a stake in Tiktok, and they have members on the board for other companies. People need to be afraid of China’s influence. And slow colonization. Buying up resources globally, buying real estate and companies. In Canada Chinese companies (with ties to CCP) own care homes and resource extraction companies. Also mining companies globally. They’re buying up resources that will be limited in the near future, as wars will be fought for basic resources (including water and food). It’s terrifying. Countries need to localize economies and have less foreign influence and trade. Not just security, mostly for climate change. We need to slow things down.
so then what is the difference to all of these US apps that compromise our data and route them directly to the NSA and data aggregators? why is tiktok suddenly different than them? i am of the opinion that none of them should do this... but singling out tiktok is kind of pointless and nothing more than xenophobic propaganda
@@yat282 I think anyone looking at this issue in good faith knows very well that, for US citizens, there's a large difference between the pervasive data collection on behalf of a US-sanctioned social media company and pervasive data collection on behalf of a Chinese-sanctioned social media company. It's geopolitical. There's also a reason China blocks US-sanctioned social media behind the Great Firewall.
Exactly. They're accusing Tiktok of a vulnerability that any and all companies in the United States are vulnerable to. Room 641A should ring a bell. The NSA warrantless surveillance of everyone in the US.
Does she not know companies incorporate in countries like the Cayman islands to circumvent their local laws? Almost every cruise ship is registered out of certain countries known to have lax incorporation law..
Being incorporated outside of China doesn't mean that the CCP doesn't have its fingers in it. Being founded by a Chinese national doesn't mean they necessarily do though either
Thank you! I'm confused on why he has a Tiktok influencer as his expert here. A cybersecurity expert would have provided real information. This is a most basic mistake she's passed on, acting like it's not really Chinese because they're incorporated elsewhere. She's been doing this a week and a half, in her own words. So what she's done is read a bunch of articles. I've been in cybersecurity since 2014. It's a threat. Waving it away saying others do it so it's okay sounds like something a middle schooler would say to explain why they have chlamydia to their mom.
@@truckerdave8465 I spend about fifty hours a week working in this field. I have no interest in content creation but when I do sit down and enjoy others' creations I like to see it done right. My suggestion is that he get a cyber security expert to tackle this because a week and a half study means his expert read some articles and likely embraced the ones that confirmed her bias as a person who relies on TikTok herself.
@@cs5384 I'm still halfway the video but I feel she didn't say "others do it so it's okay". It sounded more like pointing out the hypocrisy of blaming all the dangers of the internet to one specific platform. To stay in your analogy, "I have chlamydia because that girl is a whore".
The body that governs what can be broadcast in China is callee SARFT which is the The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. Usually people that run CCTV end up in SARFT after they move upwards politically.
I actually used a Public information service to track down a friend who disappeared, to find out if he was alive or dead after a mutual friend put me up to it - but he was someone that I saw almost every week for months who just ... left town in the middle of the night one night. Confirmed he was alive, and that was it. There really wasn't anything to say after that. He changed cities overnight without telling anyone, and that was his right.
Besides the obvious point here that these services are creepy and invasive. If this person was your friend why didn't he tell you about his impending move in the first place?
@@Madaboutmada That is their business and their prerrogative. Sucks to be left behind, but it aint your right, you are not in fact owed an explanation. You can dislike it, you can hate the person now, that is you right, but you are still not owed shit.
I think you need a cyber security expert guest as a counterpoint for this topic. Not just a user of the platform. The danger of these applications is largely invisible to the average user.
She's a researcher, not just a "user of the platform". What would the "counterpoint" to this discussion even be? It's not a black and white issue, there are multiple perspectives being discussed.
@@PrettyGuardian Her "research" into TikTok may as well be a hobby. She has clearly spent a lot of time studying this topic, but she has no background in cybersecurity, business, international politics, or any other relevant field. She has a degree in environmental science and a career making viral TikTok videos. The opinions that she shares in this interview are very sparse on technical insight or verifiable facts. She said it's "difficult to imagine" what the CCP would want with aggregate user data from TikTok... that's the sort of half-baked opinion you come up with when all you have to rely on is your own intuition.
@@PrettyGuardian anyone can be a "researcher" That's literally what everyone watching this video is doing but no one in the comment section of youtube is qualified for shit lol
Is there any info on the censorship of LGBTQ+ voices? Because that's been something that is being discussed a lot recently over on LGBTQ+ TikTok (especially when LGBTQ+ people calling out transphobia/homophobia are getting those videos taken down for "bullying" yet not the cis people making videos of them as "takedowns")
@@Iaotle if using caps lock/shift is too difficulty for ya, you can always not capitalize, or use control c, control v... come to think of it, it is so trivial, did you skip typing classes?
Letting a tiktoc influencer change your outlook on said platform is like asking Zuckerburg what he thinks of the metaverse and basing your decision to invest in Meta real estate based on that alone.
The difference is stark when you compare the version they allow in China. That's all about national history, engineering, life skills and financial management. But fire up American Tiktok and it's wall to wall dancing teenage girls in bikinis or weird cat ladies crying in their cars.
45:34 So the question was, do they censor. And your answer is "They have in the past, they don't now." And that's somehow suppose to equate to "They don't censor more than other platforms?" Going back to cyber security. Once chain of trust is broken, it's nearly impossible to re-establish. They already broke that trust. They've also done nothing to say they that they can't do it again. This is NOT a reassurance. "They were doing it for profit motive." Right... you know that profit strategy, avoiding outrage? Avoiding doom scrolling? So profitable. That's why other media platform does it either. Certain not fox news. Nope. They never promote outrage because they know calm, rational viewers gets them ratings. I can disprove this with one example. How often do they censor vaccine misinformation versus tiananmen square massacre?
Let's not mention that the western version of Tik Tok is actually banned in China, along with almost all other western social media. Their Chinese version uses radically different algorithms which push positive content to promote social conformity and passivity, while the western version can be easily altered at a command from the CCP to push divisive and destructive misinformation as well as pro-Chinese content.
Oh a partial re-watch and re-going over the comment, I think the real issue here is that this one was a tad too long, should have left some more on the cutting floor. There are four main points here: TikTok is not really an exception, all the worries being raised against it specifically literally apply to all other popular enough platforms currently available; the accusations are raised without evidence to back them up; the algorithm suggestions do seem to match content previously watched by far and large, which has been good for users; and that whatever is done about it (and other social media) should not harm the user. These points on themselves are imo pretty solid. But the extra fat distract from them, and confuses the message. Every bit that wasn't about those 4 points could have been edited shorter or out. Particularly when it gets to specifics of cybersecurity and technical topics. I understand that when talking with Abbie that might have helped the both of you make the conversation, but for an audience who is only passively listening to the two of you rather than having any agency, it feels meandering and sucks the attention alway from those relatively short mainpoints. And as others pointed out, Abbie isn't an expert in cyber security or computer science, but she is being presented just as "an expert" but not on what, and this combination gets read wrong very easily when there are such lengthy sections on those topics, which also negatively impacts how people take the whole and how they read the situation.
As a quick note from an Australian, a reason that she would have been seeing so many reports coming out of Australia is because we have only recently come out from a deeply conservative government that has utilised China as a fear mongering distraction. Because we are geographically "close" to China, it has become the perfect target for our politicians to point to as a distraction. Particularly the shadier things that we have been seeing them do over the last decade.
TikTok views are different. People don’t choose to view these videos, they are shoved down your throat. So what better way to get people hooked is that their first video goes super viral (by simply forcing it to 2 million people at the same time) and then hooking that person to reach that “high” again but never quite getting there for the large majority of users. The first hit is free, then you gotta chase that high until you think of nothing else. These apps need to be banned for no other reason than they are mental nicotine.
I don't understand why they want to have, 15 minutes of internet fame, in the first place? Why would you want to be famous to complete strangers, for nothing noteworthy. Musicians, actors, and athletes are all being abused in the limelight, why would anyone want to be famous, in this day and age? Especially, young impressionable kids, who could get shot at school or sold into sex trafficking.
31:04 "There's no evidence they're tracking your GPS location" *faceplam* it doesn't matter! They can location you depending on a) cell tower (and with triangulation, they can get within, according to at&t when I worked for them, within a few yards. Like 3.), b)geo ip location. Which, granted, isn't as accurate as GPS or cell tower triangulation, but can still place you within a city and/or part of the city depending on how many hubs there are.
okay and? that's literally every app and companies all sell your data to anyone anyway for the benefit of advertising including Chinese ones. china can't hurt you.
@@FranciscoJG She poo-pooed it like it's not big deal. But having worked in at&t wireless in late 2000's, I spoke with an engineer that helped make the triangulation software. The accuracy is good enough that they have literally found missing people with it. Like, someone reported missing, they petition at&t wireless to use cell tower triangulation, at&t approved, they gave a location, police went to that location looked around with their naked eye and found the missing person. And again, this was back in the 2000's. When I worked with Trend Micro, there's a PII standard that all logs containing PII stored for perpetuity that goes to other departments, shared, used for anonymous analysis or stored on a remote infrastructure need to have PII anonymized. That includes names, email addresses AND IP addresses. If there's an industry standard for anonymizing IP addresses on logs, it's a big f*cking deal.
You're missing the most important part, no one cares. No one other than friends and a few family will ever want to know where you are. Maybe the occasional jealous ex? Otherwise it's junk data that no one wants. Like google, they want to know which shop you went that, and that's it. You're a product to them, but don't think big brother actually cares about your whereabouts at all.
@@D64nz You say that but, again, I worked at at&t wireless. If they didn't care, why would they spend hundreds of thousands on making that technology? I talked with the person that worked on that. If they don't care, why would that spend so much money on it? Hint: It's because they do care. This is at&t we're talking about. They don't do ANYTHING that that doesn't potentially make them profit.
So IG what my question is, have we had this same level of scrutiny towards Chinese phone manufacturers? Because every brand has its own slightly different version of Android OS. So couldn't they, in theory, program the OS to track data? Because then, you don't even need people downloading apps really, you can gather alot just from people's gps data and what messages they text back and forth and who they call. And unless you're a coder who can go into it and look, nobody would probably notice.
There are brands like Huawei that can no longer do business with US based companies. There's a fair bit of concern over how much manufacturing is done in China as well, although nobody seems to really be doing much about it because the labor is cheaper. At this point, I think the only way anything is ever done is if a politician happens to hear about something on the news more than like 1000 times.
This is an absolutely valid question, and for the most part, one most people don't consider. I think part of the reason that many phones are "assembled" in the US is in part to reduce this possibility. That said, with the complexity of today's electronics, it seems at least remotely possible that security issues for those who care exist with Chinese manufactured electronics. In a practical way, unless you're someone of interest to the CCP, you're likely not in danger of being observed. However, there is little reason to believe that Chinese manufactured electronics couldn't have the ability to "phone home" and do the same kinds of herd monitoring that many online services do. To me, the concerning thing isn't so much that I would specifically be targeted (although over time my comments about this might get me there), but that we can't predict how herd data can be used to predict US and EU citizen activity. Reports suggest that the CCP is already exploring how to use big data to monitor and manage their own population. And the CCP is working diligently to take advantage of dislike and distrust of the US and EU in southeast Asia and Africa through the new Silk Road initiative. I can't imagine they won't eventually try and leverage that into any software or hardware they have influence over, and all it might take is a software/firmware update on coordinated platforms to change the nature of the data they receive.
20:54 The legal "business structure" is completely irrelevant, especially when we are talking about the CCP. If you want to operate in China, you have to play by the CCP's rules. If you live in China, you have to play by the CCP's rules if your family's safety (or your safety) is important to you If the hardware is located in China, code is written by people in China, or someone from China is in a leadership role; the CCP has control
The problem is the tool (marketing platforms that dishonestly appear to be social media platforms) not who controls it. As an American, the Chinese government having these tools is less of a risk to me than my own government having these tools.
Yes. To you, your own government is a bigger threat. To the US government, TikTok is a bigger threat as they could turn any consumer of their product into a spy or useful idiot (this is their fear). Whether it be via propaganda, blackmail, or directly stealing state secrets, that is what Congress fears. Is it overblown? Yes. Is there a different threat than a domestically owned company? Yes.
As a Cyber Threat Intel analyst cybersecurity is defined as the protection of computer systems, networks, and electronic devices to ensure that the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of data is maintained.
As someone who works in cybersecurity and under DOD I gotta say this guest has no qualifications to assert anything regarding national security threats as they relate to an app with ties to America’s and the free worlds most powerful adversary. I love Adam’s stuff but this is full of so much nonsense. Why with byte dance would anyone start believing what a corporation tells you? You don’t even touch upon implications of software on Americans phones as it relates to things like back doors. I’m sorry Adam you really needed a second guest on here who is an expert on counterintelligence and cybersecurity not just an influencer who researches things. It’s sucks that republicans definitely want to punish a generation that doesn’t vote for them by banning this but it can simultaneously be true that there is a legitimate threat with this software.
Many of the most damaging cyber attacks have been the result of Zero Day exploits, vulnerabilities not yet discovered. In all security, but especially cybersecurity, you plan for threats you haven’t yet identified or confirmed. Those are honestly the scariest. Look up the solar winds zero day or as they talk about stuxnet. That stuff keeps IT pros up at night.
You're not just talking about a zero day exploit though... you're talking about a self replicating and undetectable zero day exploit. Is it feasible that they intentionally made their software insecure in only a way they know about? Perhaps... many believe the NSA did this exact thing with elliptic curve based encryption. The government can (and definitely should) not allow anything like tiktok on government devices... I can't really even imagine an argument for why a government device would have anything other than the software required to do the job that whatever government employee uses said device for. Maybe you can make the argument that people tend to bring their personal devices near enough to their government issued devices that it could be a problem. An example of this perhaps would be using fitness trackers to see troop movements around military bases. Regardless though, I just don't see how these scenarios are anything other than the government's problem. And I don't think the government should have the authority to ban X application solely to make their day to day operations more convenient. Otherwise I think you are dangerously close to making the argument that things like E2E messaging should be banned/backdoored because it would make it more convenient for the government. But once you give the government the authority to ban something like tiktok or any other app without being able to clearly articulate why it presents a clear and present danger to the average person using it... let people make their own choices. Even if it means using crappy tiktok.
@@benice2cats198 I guess my question is if TikTok should be banned for not just government employees but everyone because the Chinese communist party could introduce a presently undetectable backdoor... what software shouldn't be banned for that same reason...? Is it not just as feasible that any software engineer at any major social media platform... or any widely used app for that matter... could be tricked, bribed, or coerced into doing something similar...? If we are operating under the premise that this is an unacceptable risk then I don't really see what the solution is other than greater state control of the availability of software... and I'm not really sure how much more I trust the state.
I was disappointed that there wasn't discussion of the other major concerns I've heard about the RESTRICT Act, such as how much it would bind American citizens.
REMEMBER- The chinese get constantly caught doing industrial & classified espionage via american companies on american soil using american workers by the FBI/NSA/CIA all the time (and in Australia too)...but somehow... they are too dumb to do that with TikTok. Magically...somehow TikTok isn't a part of that CCP machine. They totally would just completely ignore TikTok as "just a fad" and not farm data, and would never use it for propaganda subversion. People who are too slow to understand how intelligence agencies like the Russians and Chinese have operated, including shell corporations for the last 100 years, shouldn't be in charge of nation-state governments or have a say in how intelligence agencies work. I pay the CIA, NSA and FBI to bust these people out at the table. That includes hurting the feelings of half-wit teenagers and youtube rubes by banning TikTok. Chinese nationals do not have a right to access the american population. Not individually. Not in a corporation. Not in a shell corporation. Not with the help of other US citizens. Not in US corporations they invest in. Not in corporations that american corporations invest in. None. Not thru websites, not thru apps, not thru video games, not thru media of any kind.
@@sleepingkirby Then it is nto a Venn diagram, but an Euler Diagram. And the Euler Diagram is not a circle. It has a fat overlap, but it is not a pure circle. Thetre is also other bullshit, like bigotry against gender/sexual minorities (because tiktok became huge with some of those communities) so people target the platform so that they harm demographics like lgbt more than others but under the "noble" pretense of national security, even at the cost of giving sino-/xenophobic vibes because that angle still sounds far better than "just want to silence dem gays and trans" outright.
@@louisvictor3473 "The venn diagram is a circle" is a meme. I was using it to say that the set of A and B is identical. On harming the LGBT community though, on that aspect, last I checked, the rate of censorship for LGBTQ+ contect on other social media sites compared to tiktok is about the same. Even here on youtube where some LGBTQ+ content is rated as "mature".
@@sleepingkirby I know it is a meme, a boring made by prople who didn't know what they were talking about. Not a fan. I think you're misunderstanding what I meant. I wasn't talking about censorship by the platform itself harming people. Exactly because such voices (but not only) found fewer issues with the algorithm and censorship there (or at because ut got popular with such communities), the act of exclusively targeting tiktok disproportionately harms communities that for a reason or another have found more success there than in other platforms.
The guest is downplaying the possible value of a kind of data that TikTok gathers, but that belies some of the issues that have already occurred even with just the kind of data that she mentions. In other words, people may have forgotten about the way that target accidentally outed a young woman to her family because they started advertising pregnancy related products Because her pattern of interests coincided with a predictive ability to know if somebody was likely to be pregnant. This kind of emergent information, tracking the patterns of people, already has somewhat nefarious or harmful results under a capitalist corporation. Now imagine that you are the Chinese communist party, and while you may be very interested in specific information about specific people doing things that you don’t like, and I’m not as convinced that TikTok is not able to provide a conduit for this information, even if it doesn’t directly gather it. But, the Jane’s comment is party is not just interested in gathering specific security information, although they are very interested in that. They also appear to be extremely interested in undermining their opposition. So, for instance, the Giants come, his party might see a video such as this one which talks down capitalism as being something that benefits them since they are not capitalist. Or at least claim not to be. And so why wouldn’t the Chinese communist party want to tilt their algorithm in certain ways at certain times in order to ensure that not only miss information gets out there, but specific kinds of Nebulously true information becomes popular in certain regions. The other thing that I think is worth pointing out, is that if you have a platform like Tik Tok that is this popular, it would be very easy to wait until the exact moment where it was most beneficial, and then force the company to release a patch that everyone hast to use in order to continue to use the platform which then provides access to data That even you would find concerning for the Chinese communist party to have. This is already happened several times with corporations. LG had the issue of sending camera information from their televisions when nobody new, Amazon has been accused, and I think, credibly proven that it stores information from Alexa devices in ways that are Challenging to want to agree to. Who’s to say that TikTok will not do that at some point, and do it in a way, which is hard to discern at first? And again, because of how much leverage the Chinese communist party has on Chinese corporations, And the patients that is demonstrated by their intelligence agencies, who’s to say that they would not exert that leverage at a key time? Again, I’m not sure that this legislation solves that problem. But I am not as willing to giggle away, the possibility that a country that appears to have used its localized zoom corporation to find, and either arrest or silence, those who practice religion in parts of their country would not use the same kind of tactics for other strategic choices through an app like TikTok.
And I make the distinction because China also has corporations, which resemble capitalist corporations, but are not exactly that since the CCP and the Chinese government can make sweeping changes or even dissolve Chinese based companies in a way that can't happen in the US or EU.
@@truckerdave8465 it’s true, they could, but that would cost money, whereas the structure of the CCP versus Chinese corporations insist that any company provide whatever data the government of China wants from those companies. Additionally, while anybody essentially can buy data from Facebook and process it, it is more difficult to influence how Facebook algorithm works. That is not necessarily the case with the CCP and Baick dance. It is very possible that the CCP could leverage their legal structures and to tell Terrian nature to force by dance to make changes, and if by dance refuses, the CCP has a history of removing heads of companies and replacing them with people who are, more in line with what they’re trying to accomplish. The double edge, sword of a company based in China, working other countries is that inevitably you will have broken some line, Chyna, and when the CCP looks away, you might think you’re safe. But then, when it becomes convenient, the CCP will simply look back and enforce that law putting him in jail, or in a reeducation camp. a lot of leading Chinese company management has been removed in this way.
The internet IS a series of tubes. That quote is always misrepresented or inappropriately attributed to cluelessness when the reality is that the people who made fun of that Senator (?) were clueless about the basic physical infrastructure that comprises the internet
I love this podcast so much. Have been listening to tons of episodes. Would love to see this in the format of however long an interview takes. Like 2-4 hour episodes. Thank you for making this pod. It helped me discover you and your comedy hopefully you will come to Denver soon.
Why was anybody putting any entertainment apps on government devices? That should be grounds for termination. As for whether people use tick tock, who cares.
Would love to have the Too Long Didn't Watch versions of these videos for the people who can't commit to long videos. At least you'd also get the views from people who would not click otherwise and we get to still be informed about the essentials of your always interesting subjects.
I would think that if you want to discuss concerns about TikTok you'd speak to a cybersecurity expert, not a person who might just have a bias considering she banks on keeping TikTok available. She dismisses the real concerns here and that concerns me. I work in cybersecurity and we are definitely talking about concerns that far surpass what was done with Cambridge Analytica. Yes American companies do this. They do not funnel their data to the US government. And I'm sure conspiracies abound regarding that, but there are good reasons why so many countries have lawsuits against TikTok's owners and why they have banned the platform. I don't think people realize how serious cybersecurity threats are. You mention major damage, well you may not know just how often municipal water supplies are hit. In Israel someone hacked in to their public water supply and if they hadn't had a robust quality control the minor adjustment to the water treatment could have killed a whole lot of living things very fast. There have been hundreds, HUNDREDS of hacks on water supply systems in the past five years. All over the world. And it's not just water, they are bringing entire countries to a halt. Like what is happening right NOW in Italy, one of the companies that just banned TikTok. But of course that's being blamed on Russian groups. However we already know that the top hacking group in China hacked in to our voting systems in 2020. The most prolific hacking group in the world is Chinese. It's not "anti-Chinese sentiment" it's real concern. We can't just dismiss the real threats of TikTok by waving it away with "aw lots of companies do it!". That isn't helpful to anyone. And joking about how our government asked silly questions doesn't fly when you are making some questionable statements yourself. I mean no offense. I'm a huge fan and so are my kids, I just think now you need to follow up with a cybersecurity expert who wouldn't have any investment in keeping people clicking on her TikToks.
Since you have info: is there evidence of TikTok allowing for a current direct security vector? Or is it more that with such a large installed base that they could leverage it through a network-wide update that would cause damage before anyone could notice? Also, I have been asserting (based on what I watch and read) that China is using (or could use) herd based big data to evaluate policies and PR so that opposition to their actions would be minimized, by posting on TikTok to see how people react to various videos, much like how Google used to do AB testing of ads. Does that seem plausible? Finally, the video seems to assert that the algorithm is the algorithm, and ByteDance/TikTok is unlikely to change for the benefit of the CCP. To me, this seems naive. If I understand the one law that requires Chinese companies to have CCP members in key positions, is it reasonable to assume that the CCP could change their policies on a dime and TikTok would have to comply? Thus, they could make changes to their algorithm with enough time to do damage without watchdogs getting to it in time? Assuming that we actually can see the algorithm (which I assume we actually can't)?
So. There's one issue I hold here and that is the mention of geographic incorporation of a business/llc/ltc. The domain or region in which you incorporate a business, does not directly relate to the geographic region in which you conduct business. The Cayman Islands are a well known offshore location for incorporated business that are used a shell incorporation or tax haven. This does not mean I conduct all my business out of tye cayman, it just means I have registered my business in the cayman. Either for tax benefits or to shell my actual business from direct exposure to the laws of a nation in which I do conduct business. So (and I'm not saying this is true, but theoretically) Tik-Tok's parent company can infact be registered in the cayman, earn revenue un the US, avoid US laws and tax liabilities, and still be required by its parent company, physically located in China to report all data to the CCP. Now again, whether or not this is true is not something we will ever actually know, but it is very much possible.
@@magnamaduin I’ve seen people claim some wild stuff when they have no idea how some stuff works. If they don’t know, of course it’ll look scary. They don’t give any evidence or citations, no proof to support their claims. I’ll try looking again. In my opinion it’s just another panic created by racist old men, it is about profits to them, obviously, but racism wounds up so many people that lack critical thinking skills.
To be factual, TikTok is not an entity of a "foreign enemy", it is literally based in Texas. "The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel."
Okay but if they want the information they'll just buy it from facebook. This is silly unless we ban domestic companies from collecting and selling our data as well.
@@phoebemoon6952 right but their ability to use that data is limited as long as they don't have a super popular platform. Our propaganda is bad, their propaganda is worse.
@@MaximillianGreil what are you talking about? The United States currently has one of its political parties perpetrating an actual genocide against trans people and has an absolutely ASTRONOMICAL murder rate that the government has no political will to stop. Chinese propaganda is the least of our fucking worries.
In any sphere of capitalism where companies are largely unregulated there is strong reasons to be concerned. That those who are ultimately are responsible for regulation are incredibly ignorant of social media and how it works is another reason to be concerned.
As far as the urban myths going viral, I am baffled by the gullibility of people & their inability or disinclination to fact check. It seems almost like seeing a horror movie that on some level they enjoy being scared.
Yeah... No, thanks. A TikTok content creator is probably not going to have some tiny conflict of interest when talking about this. This is one of those things you should research for yourself. You don't seem to do that much, but you eventually do it, and well. It took you like a decade for you to realize Elon Musk is a con man who happens to be just slightly brighter than his average fan.
1:08:00 yep, most of the suggestion algorithms are designed to give you more of the same with variety novel randomness thrown in. Creates positive feedback loops (you get more and more of the same) which is actually bad. I've turned off Google's recommendations and discover feeds because of that. I wish I could do the same to TH-cam and only have a search bar interface with no suggestions, or if there are suggestions, they're largely random. I have heard from several people that they like TikTok BECAUSE it drops in more variety much better than these other services' algorithms.
I think a ban of TikTok or any social media app for the general public in the United States is a violation of the First Amendment. I'm not even a TikTok user, my bias is purely based on being concerned about government overreach.
@@Psyshimmer because I live in the United States and I am frankly tired as hell about my rights being eroded in the name of national security, especially since we also end up less secure every time
@@RealSaintB When, recently, were your rights eroded in the name of national security? And couldn't you argue that you're hastening the process of having your rights eroded by granting an unfriendly nigh-hostile foreign nation unprecedented access to US citizen data?
@@Psyshimmer the PATRIOT act for starters. The destruction of net neutrality for another. Uncle Sam has way more data than TikTok would ever collect because of those two things.
1:12:32 What sort of change are we talking about? Any change to section 230 that requires too much effort will result in an acceleration of corporate censorship because they're going to err on the side of caution and just allow 'safe' content i.e. nothing that will challenge anything hegemonic. This solution isn't concrete enough to be implemented without disastrous consequences.
I am so much less concerned about targeting or propaganda from a country on the other side of the globe than from the one I live in and am inundated by every day. And even then I feel more concerned by corporate than government propaganda, but nobody's going to congress about ads. Even though they really should. Probably because ad laws might mean the military would have to stop advertising on random Twitch channels and in campuses, and that would be terrible.
I am 8 minutes in... So you are bringing in a guest to talk about how problematic tik tok is and from the start she said is a user and she uploads videos, actually went viral. This discussion point know can only go in one direction.
At 47 minutes and it's not THAT off, but she does mention her virality a few times.... Generally I think the same, it's a bit too biased if you're a user, but I also know that in the realm of social media, you kinda have to use it to understand it.
"Open source intelligence... it doesn't matter..." Right... because readily available database, pre-indexed and marked is not that different from searching for someone via facebook. By that logic, an abacus is not that different than a graphing calculator...
I am from Hong Kong , I am a hundred times more scared of Comminist China than Australia! It has nothing to do with race ! But the communist China is pure evil !
Eh, it's been too late, even before technology ruled the world. It has already been said and done, all we can do is sit by and watch the show. Luckily, we aren't duped by this kind of charade. We see through the b.s., but there is nothing we can do.
The main issue is we know for a fact, as China confessed to it, that Tiktok takes more than your user data. The fact that to fully delete all parts of the app you have to manually go in and delete a second folder that isn't removed with the app; this file being the element that takes everything. All password keychains, keylogging, text convos, photos, videos, bank info, literally every element on your device gets recorded and sent back. China confirmed this and tried to play it off like what facebook or google does. However those apps only take your surface level info like browser history, not your literally bank info and passwords, plus whatever you send to anyone on everything else.
Considering the fact that both Google and Apple would get sued, lose money, and lose reputation if they allowed such an app on the app store, as well as the fact that there would be widespread reports of emptied banked accounts if what you are saying was true, along with the fact that the uploading all of that data would noticeably throttle your internet connection and there would be some notification about how much data you've been using... I'd say you clearly didn't watch this video at all.
We have more to fear about how Trump and Pelosi reshaped the Patriot Act in 2017 in Ring doorbell cameras and phone records access. No need to have due process if you signed it away to your service providers.
YOU"RE COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO! I bought tickets even before I finished watching this video. Smart pitch. The man who took the reason people hate me and turned it into a profession... damn straight I'll pay to see you live. Woohooo! Gonna love this.
I can't claim to know what Abbie Richards knows and I don't have the experience that she has. However, the simple fact is that ByteDance, while they may be incorporated somewhere other than China, are absolutely a Chinese company and will be subject to Chinese oversight, while companies from countries with more ethical laws and governments will be subject to the consequences of their respective countries. All social media can be misinformation and security nightmares but TikTok being controlled by a hostile authoritarian nation is doubly problematic from the perspectives of security and misinformation.
If anyone is already familiar with Abbie Richards and knows what that artwork is on the wall behind her, I'd love to know! Looks very intriguing. Should mention I'm talking about the one of the left
Reverse image search did not come up with anything. It appears to be the hands of ET using a smart phone with a chart of the Solar System. I would title it "Smartphone home" or such.
31:49 "Is this information valuable to..." Seriously? Say that to Uyghurs or Chinese dissidents IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES that were found and/or targeted and/or harassed by people working or with the CCP. Just because YOU can't think of how it's valuable, doesn't mean it is. If you give me all that info and enough of it, I can literally ruin a person's life.
Life in Fresno California sucks, our board of supervisors is angry that it can't be mean to the Yokut and Mono tribes and suing the State of California
The main reason why the outrage over Facebook was performative, and the outrage over TikTok is real, is all about their user bases and have nothing to do with the business practices. The Republican base overwhelmingly does not use TikTok. Its the platform where a majority of young people go to voice their opinion and young people are largely liberal. For Republicans it's an end-run around the first amendment to squelch the speech of their political opposition.
It's always so upsetting when I listen to a discussion between intelligent people and one of them refers to my country in a way that hasn't been accurate for at least 22 years, if ever (which is especially weird when people in question are too young to have the boomer excuse of "I'm just used to it"). Saying "the" Ukraine implies that it's a part of something, a territory instead of a country. Notice how you don't use it to ANY other country with a singular name? In current political climate it's not just offensive to use that form, but it also subconciously feeds into the ruzzian narrative that we're not *really* an independent state, but a confused subject that can be either brought back to heel or exterminated.
Unfortunately that kind of usage is still ingrained in many people, not just boomers, I appreciate that you took the time to explain why it’s wrong though as I didn’t know myself (I’m not a native English speaker, and my native language never used a “the” for Ukraine as far as I know). Hope things improve for you all
I believe that your understanding of the issue between China and Taiwan needs some more nuance in detail. China considers Taiwan, a part of China, well, Taiwan considers itself to be independent for married reasons. There is an ongoing political and military dynamic equilibrium that happens between China, the United States and Taiwan. There is a constant fear, on the part of Taiwan and those who support Taiwan that China will follow Russia’s example and annexed Taiwan. The US government works very carefully not to push China about this, which is why it was such a big deal when Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan and recognized it as its own nation. This isn’t just some complicated nuanced difference of opinion between two places. The Chinese communist party does not want Thai want to be recognized as a nation, because they expect that eventually Taiwan will be reabsorbed into China. As far as we can tell, Taiwan does not want this. The only new ones here is that Taiwan generally speaking is also not interested in changing the status quo because it would cause their people suffering even if such a conflict were to resolve and tie one’s favor. But it is definitely a significant indication of what the Chinese communist party is willing to do an leverage in order to maintain its propaganda. They have leveraged international airlines to remove the Taiwanese flag From any of their in-flight or printed documents. They have leverage removing the Taiwanese flag from video games and television shows and movies. If you have any financial interest in China, and you show any support for Taiwan in name or in its existence, you will find yourself at the other end of a strongly worded letter from the Chinese communist party. What you do next will determine whether or not you are allowed to make any money from China. In other words, China is leveraging the capitalist system against us, for what would otherwise seem like a somewhat petty issue. But the Chinese communist party is willing to wield its power for that, what else might they be willing to wielder power for?
Taiwanese government themselves has a " One China Policy" since 1992 which they agreed with the mainland. Chiang Kai Shek, the longest running and first ruler of Taiwan after the WWII himself repeatedly refused to even entertain the idea of an independent " Taiwan." For decades, Taiwan’s government claimed to be the sole legitimate ruler of whole China, including the mainland. Even when Japan surrendered after the WWII, Taiwan was given to China as it was always considered part of China. The only thing that has changed that the mainland China is too powerful now to ignore and the CCP has the economic and military upper hand. Otherwise, everyone was cool with the idea of Taiwan being part of China until a decade earlier.
@@MOTU320 While I know at some point Taiwan probably did want to be the only China, it's my understanding that that is not true today. And the current government has very little to do with CKS, who was, for all intents and purposes, a dictator. Additionally, Taiwan couldn't be "given to China" in the sense that most who moved there were fleeing Mao. I also don't think "Everyone was cool" with Taiwan being a part of China. You are buying into China's consistent policy of erasing any sovereignty that Taiwan has attempted to assert. Their goal of erasing any reference to Taiwan as an independent entity has worked on you. When the Taiwanese people are asked what they want, they would prefer nothing changes. Note that they *aren't* asking to be recognized as independent; nor do they want to become officially a part of China. They are not stupid, they know that their nation is in a precarious position, and so rather than challenge the status quo, they are happy to live as is unless something happens to change it. I would imagine if China became a democracy, Taiwan might have a different attitude. The people seem to know that the freedoms they currently enjoy would go away under the CCP, but would also likely be destroyed if they asserted independence ahead of any significant societal change in China.
TDLR: There are better people/ways of discussing TikTok. Try again.... I really wish people stop using What About Ism when it comes to foreign policy such as banning TikTok. Yes, US tech companies are scummy, but at least, we can regulate or correct those companies when push comes shove (Facebook had to change its data collection policies when the government and Apple began to scrutinize their Facebook) Also, China has its own history and reasons for adopting authoritarian rule. Thus, you cannot compare US companies with Chinese companies because they follow different rules. Lastly, really? Bringing a TikToker "expert" to talk about banning a platform she regularly uses? Also, her defense of TikTok are pretty weak when a simple Wikipedia search contradicts her narrative.
"Yes, US tech companies are scummy, but at least, we can regulate or correct those companies when push comes shove (Facebook had to change its data collection policies when the government and Apple began to scrutinize their Facebook)" scrutinize but apparently didn't bother to make any regulation changes? Otherwise TikTok should be penalized for violations of those regulations and there should be no need for all the discussions. This is not whataboutism. It is "why are we trying to play whack-a-mole instead of fixing the problem?"
Imagine a TikTok expert without any experience with TikTok. An "impartial person" doesn't exist. You might not have any vested interest in TikTok, but doesn't mean you won't have any bias for or against it. I have never used it, because I don't like it and I think it's stupid and makes people stupid. Am I impartial? hardly. So you'd rather interview a non TikTok user? What about a twitter/instagram/douyin/facebook/whatever user? That would mean no conflict of interest? At least Adam got someone with some knowledge to have a real conversation with instead of sitting the CEO down and asking stupid irrelevant questions and disregard his answers.
@@hajimesaigo6112 There's a major difference between "user" and "content creator". A content creator gets paid by the platform. If a content creator gets paid by the platform, they have a conflict of interest when speaking about whether the platform that pays them should exist.
What did she mean when she said that checking the TikTok algorithm for pushing propaganda isn't falsifiable? It most certainly is. All we need is TikTok's source code.
It's doable with statistical analysis also, but you need to be generating content as well as consuming it, and in large quantities that would likely be detected
The source code for the ml model they're using is probably 100gbs of human-opaque vectors and matricies. You can't just look at it and know what's going on. You can look at configs, at how it was trained, and at the outputs, and you MIGHT find something there, but the source code will be "Here are some inputs, ML model. Thank you for the output".
Thank you for all the effort you put in to bring this info to people, Adam. I love the podcast! I'm curious what platforms you use to do you interviews, as i would like to do the same.
I want to point out something extremely important. Bytedance is incorporated in the cayman islands (probably because of taxes), but it's headquarters are in Beijing (You can confirm this on wikipedia). One of it's founders are also mainland Chinese and the founders HAVE issued an apology in accordance to the CCP's wishes talking about how it had a weak interpretation of Xi Jinping's thoughts (explicitly named Xi Jinping's thought, again, you can see this on wikipedia and it named it's source). It's a lot more complicated, but that's not to say that the generalized idea of CCP's influence on Bytedance is extremely or even moderately inaccurate.
21:06: "3 out of the 5 are westerners"
Key players in Bytedance:
Liang Rubo (CEO)
Erich Andersen (global GC)[2]
Kelly Zhang (CEO of ByteDance China)[3]
Lidong Zhang (Chairman of ByteDance China)[3]
Shou Zi Chew (CEO of TikTok)
Nope 1 out of the 5.
And yes, Bytedance has western capital. HSBC had also sent funds or launder funds for Iran and Mexican drug cartels. Western capital is everywhere where it thinks it can make money. That doesn't dilute CCP's influence any.
"CEO of Tiktok is Singaporean"
True, but...
"In May 2021, TikTok appointed Shou Zi Chew as their new CEO"
Less than 2 years ago. Saying the buck stops with him is ignoring Bytedance and Tiktok's conception.
TIktok started because:
"ByteDance planned on Douyin expanding overseas. The founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, stated that "China is home to only one-fifth of Internet users globally. If we don't expand on a global scale, we are bound to lose to peers eyeing the four-fifths. So, going global is a must.""
Zhang Yiming is that founder of Bytedance that apologized in accordance to the CCP's wishes and talked about Xi Jinping thought.
So... yeah.
Yeah I had to stop watching when being incorporated in the Caymans was supposed to be a reason the CCP isn't in control? They literally make a joke in The Office about companies incorporating in the Caymans. It is such an obvious move that companies use to avoid tax liabilities that it is a trope in pop culture to talk about it, but the guest seems to think the incorporation of TikTok in the Caymans means that the Caymans call the shots? WTF??!!???
“you can confirm this on wikipedia” LMAO pls say sike.
@@LoLo1k2k3k I'll even go one step further. The Whois for bytedance's domain says the registrant's location is Beijing China. Is that good enough for you? The registrar is a mainland Chinese domain registrar. Like will you listen to the programmer who can read Chinese or the person who doesn't know programming and doesn't read Chinese?
Oh look, the contact phone number for the domain has a +86 country code. You know, the country code for China? What's that? The registrant and admin contact (and tech) for the domain needs to go through a mainland Chinese domain registrar and their contact form? But no, keep telling me that they're incorporated in the Cayman Island, the place known for making sure corporations can't held accountable for sh*t.
I was looking if someone had mentioned exactly this! 👍🏻
I was shocked how naive this supposedly academically researching woman spoke regarding the CCP influence. Being registered in Cayman means *nothing* when it comes to China's party politics! There have been massive interferences in globally operating Chinese companies by the CCP.
Yes, American data kraken are just as malignant and overreaching, I agree.
But the other topic - Chinese state direct direction of company policy - is a very different topic. And it's verified. CCP is literally making public examples out of companies and individual CEOs and owners! It's *not* a rumour nor a speculation: it's law in China and many of these interferences are used as propaganda within China!
The fact that TikTok is *completely* different in China as to it's *topics* (she acted like Douyin having the same interface as TikTok means it's the same app with the same content pushed by their algorithm: I found this downright disingenuous) is very telling!
Douyin is much more learning-orientated and much less wannabe sexy dances, sexy lipsynching by minors, stupid-dangerous challenges and toxic misogyny.
Why is that so? What interest has the Chinese government that Western kids and young adults get *that* content but not their own citizens?! Notice I didn't even mention policy, censoring or social values. Just the non-politics topics.
@@LoLo1k2k3k think you meant "psych" Lol
At 53:00 ish Abbie asserts that no one can really say what "altering the algorithm" means or would look like, but there's absolutely precedent for that. Social media companies alter their algorithms to promote different content all the time, and even within this podcast Abbie talks about how they censored and downplayed content from certain groups, (poor, unattractive, minority, etc.). It's no stretch of the imagination to think that the same tactics could simply reduce the amount of information, or reach of certain political ideals, and bolster others. Facebook namely has been under fire multiple times for boosting content containing misinformation, or that generates more outrage, particularly during election times.
I somewhat agree with evaluating tiktok as more of a capitalist machine than anything else, but I think it's a little silly to assert that it's not possible, or unheard of that they could alter cultural discourse with tweaks to what is shown to who.
Yea her flippant disregard for manipulation of the algorithm reveals she has no clue wtf an algorithm is.
That is why Facebook is in a class action lawsuit, hopefully we can get some money from that.
Of course, they influence election votes. And people got mad about Twitter/X getting all the far right conspiracy material off their app, but now its back. But it's still misinformation and propaganda.
These same concerns should be with all social media.
That would mean fewer bribes go to your political class. So it won't happen.
Better to blame the spooky china for the things your corporate overlords have been doing to you for years.
Instagram is like 90% as bad. Thing is with TikTok, that last 10% that they're taking off of people's phones is bonkers and incredibly invasive. Rather than ban these apps, we ought to be establishing privacy rights for our citizens. But, in the meantime, I would urge people to not have the TikTok app on their phones, unless they want to give up EVERYTHING on your phone. Credit cards, banking info, biometrics, etc.
Yes, but when Biden said he was gonna take Facebook to task, he had to openly apologize to moneybag zeckerburg the next day.
You don't know what the CCP is, then.
@@BuildinWings you know they aren't worse than your local government if you are outside China, right?
If a social media company can push advertising into your feed, they're capable of pushing anything.
Advertising is corporate propaganda.
drugs... can they push drugs.....cause i need some
That's illogical nonsense. Did you finish high school?
You're just mad about that Biden campaign fund ad lmao
Yeah it was dumb, but this is Adam's channel. Don't you think most viewers are liberal? Lmao
@@richsackett3423No, he's right. So, I guess a guy who didn't graduate, is smarter than you.
I admire and love Abbey's nuanced understanding of Human reality and perception. It reminds me of my studies at university where I asked myself tons of questions about what is reality, what is intelligence, etc. We certainly need to promote wiser people on the Internet!
Agree she demonstrates good wisdom
is she a spy? her ignorance of the golden share alone is criminal
The scam your grandmother experienced was tried on my grandma too. A guy called her pretending to be my brother, saying that he needed $500 to get out of jail, and not to tell my mom. The "don't tell mom" thing is what kept her from falling for it. My mother has always had a strict "don't lie to me" policy that made whatever you did completely secondary to whether you told the truth about it. If one of us got arrested, she'd be pretty mad, but if we got arrested and tried to weasel our way out of it without calling her that would have been unimaginably worse. The fact that the guy was more scared of our mom finding out he was in jail than he was of her finding out he called my grandmother before he called her tipped her off that it wasn't my brother.
Now, guys in jail just steal and hack others free calls. Then, use it to call every girl they slept with, to bail them out.
Can't confirm, but I heard a similar story from a police officer about another officer who "got the call" his kid was arrested, he believed he was communicating with his son and send cash for his release..... needless to say it was a total scam.
Happened to my gran too
Yeah, being a cybersecurity professional and seeing how poorly researched this is kinda casts a lot of doubt on Adam's credibility for me going forward.
1) the topic is really about RESTRICT act being ineffective at addressing legitimate concerns that experts have with TikTok while hurting civil liberties/do nothing to protect user data
2) TikTok is undoubtedly a Chinese collections app, and this "you don't need to worry if you're not the target" is about the same logic as "you don't need to worry if you're young and healthy, don't get vaccinated " and doesn't address the underlying issue that an adversarial nation is collecting all of this data to engineer the perform psy-op and opportunity to achieve their goals, often by sowing discord in our system. The profit motive of a us based company harvesting data is pretty badly aligned with our social wellness, but a nation state that exclusively benefits from our demise goes from badly aligned to straight up hostile.
3) Instead of saying TikTok is fine, we should be having the conversation of reforming our data privacy laws that prevent foreign or domestic government from being able to gain all of this data to build patterns of life on groups of or specific people, and offer sensible ways for individuals to reduce their digital footprint should they choose.
1. The real issue isn’t that the RESTRICT act is ineffective. The issue is that it’s **very** effective at stripping Americans of their civil liberties.
2. The proposition that China will benefit from our demise may be true, but the means to the purported victory aren’t going to be through collecting consumer affinity data. (Although this has terrible consequences, of course, which is why we should take it more seriously with **our own** stateside data collection companies.)
China is the largest holder of U.S. debt, and we’ve willfully-gleefully even-relocated our own means of production to their country. The argument that they’re a unique global threat when it comes to propaganda and hegemony is the result of western propaganda intended to distract you from the world’s largest propaganda system.
(As a side note, if we don’t want to fall to purported Chinese economic dominance-because we are talking about economics here-we might want to stop sinking our resources into the MIC and forever wars. RESTRICT is just a more digitally upgraded Patriot Act.)
3. Yup. Good idea. But I would prefer they not be hypocritical. If we want our privacy respected-and I know this sounds bonkers to those Americans who think we rule the world-maybe we should respect the privacy of other sovereign nations in turn.
I feel that a lot of your statements here are either disingenuous or strawmanning what was said. No one on here said anything close to, "TikTok is fine." They simply pointed out that it's doing the same harms as our other big social media platforms but those ones just aren't 'Chinese owned.' Also, you state that TikTok is "undoubtedly a Chinese collections app" without any citation or source that it is in a way that differs from Meta or Twitter. If you're going to throw out these kinds of comments as if they were facts then we need more than, "trust me, bro."
You're just repeating what was said in the video.
To build on what @@RyanWattersRyanWatters said, the video is about debunking conspiracy theories about tiktok in particular. Aggregate data is extremely potent and useful and I'm also disappointed in how quickly she dismissed concerns about it just because She doesn't know the effects of it, but this fear of China is meant to distract us from the much more real fear we should have of our own government.
A tiktok hearing like this is the digital & state equivalent of going out into the street and beating up a random Chinese person because your grandma died of covid, the problem isn't China it's our own government bowing to corporate interests over our own. American people (and Chinese people in China and most people in most modern governments) are being stripped and gutted of their rights and freedoms in order to funnel more capital to the owning class. If you look at tiktok yes it sells your data to China but like the researcher said in the episode it's decisions make much more sense broadly when you interpret their actions as being a big corporation trying to make money. Yes they sell user data to China but they'd sell it to the US too, they probably are already selling it to everyone they can get away with.
And if you take the same broad perspective on the US government you see the interests of capital: we overwhelmingly Fight wars instead of stopping them so we can buy and sell weapons at the expense of the working class. We keep wages low and keep housing a commodity to force the vast majority of people to work to survive no matter the conditions while gutting social services and hiding the homeless who die on the street. We keep funding and allowing to grow nonsense tech startups or surveillance social media apps with no consideration to the volatility they introduce into the economy and into people's lives and safety. The American voter is so disillusioned with the system because again and again and again and again we see Democrats and Republicans alike giving cakes to corporations and crumbs to the worker and in so doing failing to represent their constituents. So forgive me if I see tiktok as a non threat in the face of that
@@mattg6106 Yeah, that's called 'whataboutism' and it's one of the biggest and most common logical fallacies.
I worked in intelligence and counterintelligence for ten years as a war fighter. I'm not 100 percent sure that your guest, while extremely well informed, is qualified to determine what level of usefulness persistent surveillance would be to China against the US.
I don't have all the answers, but I'm more inclined to think TikTok is a Trojan horse from a foreign adversary.
I dont think the takeaway from the video is that Tiktok has no threat potential, it's that our need for data security exceeds the threat that Tiktok poses. For example, the Marriott leak is very alarming.
@@PrettyGuardian Understandable. There are many things to consider and many factors at play here...
Go figure, you agree with your "former" employer
The bitch is a literal tiktoc influencer. She is anything but unbiased.
Spot on! A self-appointed 'Tik Tok expert' is hardly an authority on the serious geopolitical strategies of the authoritarian regime of China and their openly stated objective to bring down the U.S.A. and replace them as global hegemon. This entire video is whataboutism at it's worst.
My question is how is their concern about Tiktok when our government and American based companies does the exact same thing when using our data? Am I missing something?
It's really short-sighted. They should be focusing on data privacy across the entire internet.
@@amandagarcia2848 it's precisely what we should expect from the Imperialist capitalist country
Consider how gangs react if someone from another gang tries to do business in their territory. Not all that different. You could technically say the gang is preventing crime but that is just a side effect, what they are really doing is preventing the wrong people from committing the crime.
@@adamthethird4753China is the same way
Very nuanced discussion, thank you! As someone who's had a lot of concerns and wasn't certain what was actually valid, this helped clarify quite a lot.
From a cyber security perspective: How was random apps like TikTok or even Instagram, allowed on government worker's phones in the first place? Which apps can be installed, should be limited to decrease risk of different kinds of attacks, including social engineering, information gathering and possibly data breaches.
Your guest lost credibility the moment she claimed that since Bytedance is incorporated in the Caymen Islands, it falls outside CCP influence. Where a company is incorporated and where it is headquartered can be different. Bytedance is headquartered in Beijing, and this brings it under the business rules imposed by the CCP. The CCP has taken action against the company and is subsidiaries in the past. They also have a board seat in Douyin (the Chinese domestic version of TikTok), so the main question is really whether Tiktok and Douyin share any resources and data centers that fall directly under CCP control.
It's one of many errors. Quite disappointing. Worries me how these influencers are trying to push the notion that there's nothing to worry about.
@@cs5384 It sounds a bit like how some assert that CCP soft influences non-Chinese people in positions of influence to take advantage of the "They're nice to me" attitude to help counter anyone who is concerned with their actions.
She literally pointed that out right after. She noted how "US" companies are incorporated in Ireland and Denmark, etc.
"Hello I went ViRaL on TikTok and I'm here to tell you why it's actually fine."
umm, think this one is a stretch. Kind of like saying standard oil ltd registered out of the Caimans is a subsidiary of standard oil USA and has nothing to do with the American establishment when it is operating out of the Suez Canal. It is a very very hard stretch.
Incorporation in cayman Islands is legal sleight of hand
Ok, so now we have to go back to the vid's main point of contention: US companies park their corporations in tax havens all the time. Why is only Tiktok being demonized?
@@krejados1
Because the CCP is a hostile foreign power, and they own it.
@@krejados1 We trust our companies more than we trust China's gov't
I'm more worried about my own government using my data against me.
The CCP IS what you fear your government MIGHT BE.
Pretty disappointed in this one. As others have commented, the expertise required was not about how misinformation spreads on TikTok, but rather the specific cybersecurity issues it poses. Hand waving 'all these apps do the same thing, so why target this one?' misses the point. It's not about the content on the platform, it's about the power of compromising the security of millions of devices.
And yes, asking a TikTok creator if it's a good idea to ban TikTok was an especially poor choice.
And it ignores that CCP owns a stake in Tiktok, and they have members on the board for other companies.
People need to be afraid of China’s influence. And slow colonization.
Buying up resources globally, buying real estate and companies. In Canada Chinese companies (with ties to CCP) own care homes and resource extraction companies. Also mining companies globally. They’re buying up resources that will be limited in the near future, as wars will be fought for basic resources (including water and food).
It’s terrifying.
Countries need to localize economies and have less foreign influence and trade. Not just security, mostly for climate change. We need to slow things down.
so then what is the difference to all of these US apps that compromise our data and route them directly to the NSA and data aggregators?
why is tiktok suddenly different than them?
i am of the opinion that none of them should do this... but singling out tiktok is kind of pointless and nothing more than xenophobic propaganda
If you only care about this one app, that's not aside from the point. That IS the point. It's proof that it has nothing to do with Cyber security
@@yat282 I think anyone looking at this issue in good faith knows very well that, for US citizens, there's a large difference between the pervasive data collection on behalf of a US-sanctioned social media company and pervasive data collection on behalf of a Chinese-sanctioned social media company. It's geopolitical. There's also a reason China blocks US-sanctioned social media behind the Great Firewall.
The opener nicely sums it up.
It's the US government's good old "We're afraid someone else might be doing what we'd love to do!".
Exactly. They're accusing Tiktok of a vulnerability that any and all companies in the United States are vulnerable to. Room 641A should ring a bell. The NSA warrantless surveillance of everyone in the US.
Does she not know companies incorporate in countries like the Cayman islands to circumvent their local laws? Almost every cruise ship is registered out of certain countries known to have lax incorporation law..
Being incorporated outside of China doesn't mean that the CCP doesn't have its fingers in it. Being founded by a Chinese national doesn't mean they necessarily do though either
Thank you! I'm confused on why he has a Tiktok influencer as his expert here. A cybersecurity expert would have provided real information. This is a most basic mistake she's passed on, acting like it's not really Chinese because they're incorporated elsewhere.
She's been doing this a week and a half, in her own words. So what she's done is read a bunch of articles. I've been in cybersecurity since 2014.
It's a threat. Waving it away saying others do it so it's okay sounds like something a middle schooler would say to explain why they have chlamydia to their mom.
@@cs5384 Sounds like you should make a video explaining it?
@@truckerdave8465 I spend about fifty hours a week working in this field. I have no interest in content creation but when I do sit down and enjoy others' creations I like to see it done right. My suggestion is that he get a cyber security expert to tackle this because a week and a half study means his expert read some articles and likely embraced the ones that confirmed her bias as a person who relies on TikTok herself.
@@cs5384 I'm still halfway the video but I feel she didn't say "others do it so it's okay". It sounded more like pointing out the hypocrisy of blaming all the dangers of the internet to one specific platform. To stay in your analogy, "I have chlamydia because that girl is a whore".
The body that governs what can be broadcast in China is callee SARFT which is the The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. Usually people that run CCTV end up in SARFT after they move upwards politically.
I actually used a Public information service to track down a friend who disappeared, to find out if he was alive or dead after a mutual friend put me up to it - but he was someone that I saw almost every week for months who just ... left town in the middle of the night one night. Confirmed he was alive, and that was it. There really wasn't anything to say after that. He changed cities overnight without telling anyone, and that was his right.
Respectfully what does that have to do with Tik Tok?
@Denise Engle I might go as far as to say this an example of data harvesting is doing a good thing.
Besides the obvious point here that these services are creepy and invasive. If this person was your friend why didn't he tell you about his impending move in the first place?
@@Madaboutmada That is their business and their prerrogative. Sucks to be left behind, but it aint your right, you are not in fact owed an explanation. You can dislike it, you can hate the person now, that is you right, but you are still not owed shit.
@@deniseengle4269 The conversation sidetracked into OSINT for a while and this is a good example of OSINT
I'm shocked conservatives haven't tried to change the First Amendment to "Free speech for me and not for thee."
I think you need a cyber security expert guest as a counterpoint for this topic. Not just a user of the platform. The danger of these applications is largely invisible to the average user.
She's a researcher, not just a "user of the platform". What would the "counterpoint" to this discussion even be? It's not a black and white issue, there are multiple perspectives being discussed.
@@PrettyGuardian Her "research" into TikTok may as well be a hobby. She has clearly spent a lot of time studying this topic, but she has no background in cybersecurity, business, international politics, or any other relevant field. She has a degree in environmental science and a career making viral TikTok videos. The opinions that she shares in this interview are very sparse on technical insight or verifiable facts. She said it's "difficult to imagine" what the CCP would want with aggregate user data from TikTok... that's the sort of half-baked opinion you come up with when all you have to rely on is your own intuition.
@@PrettyGuardian anyone can be a "researcher" That's literally what everyone watching this video is doing but no one in the comment section of youtube is qualified for shit lol
Translation: You should invite on a US intelligence agent to spread sinophobic propaganda to manufacture consent for war with China.
This bitch is anything but unbiased.
Is there any info on the censorship of LGBTQ+ voices? Because that's been something that is being discussed a lot recently over on LGBTQ+ TikTok (especially when LGBTQ+ people calling out transphobia/homophobia are getting those videos taken down for "bullying" yet not the cis people making videos of them as "takedowns")
Isn't it really annoying to write the whole acronym like three times
@@Iaotle Not in the slightest? Why?
@@Iaotle if using caps lock/shift is too difficulty for ya, you can always not capitalize, or use control c, control v... come to think of it, it is so trivial, did you skip typing classes?
Examples?
Nah FK the groomers
This has certainly changed my outlook on the platform.
I still refuse to download it because I hate the endless scroll that it's built around
I'm a gen z and I am with you 🤝🏽
Letting a tiktoc influencer change your outlook on said platform is like asking Zuckerburg what he thinks of the metaverse and basing your decision to invest in Meta real estate based on that alone.
@@6thface You said it.
@@6thface Not quite. Zuck owns and runs Meta, Abbie might a little money from TikTok but she doesn't own or run shit.
The difference is stark when you compare the version they allow in China. That's all about national history, engineering, life skills and financial management. But fire up American Tiktok and it's wall to wall dancing teenage girls in bikinis or weird cat ladies crying in their cars.
I remember hearing the "series of tubes" quote in high school, so it was over 20 years ago now. We're old, Adam.
Congrats on 500k adam, ive been such a fan of every show you have been apart of. Im glad you are regularly posting on this youtube channel.
Its still at 499k :3
Thank you - about to cross that threshold!
45:34
So the question was, do they censor. And your answer is "They have in the past, they don't now." And that's somehow suppose to equate to "They don't censor more than other platforms?"
Going back to cyber security. Once chain of trust is broken, it's nearly impossible to re-establish. They already broke that trust. They've also done nothing to say they that they can't do it again. This is NOT a reassurance.
"They were doing it for profit motive."
Right... you know that profit strategy, avoiding outrage? Avoiding doom scrolling? So profitable. That's why other media platform does it either. Certain not fox news. Nope. They never promote outrage because they know calm, rational viewers gets them ratings.
I can disprove this with one example. How often do they censor vaccine misinformation versus tiananmen square massacre?
Let's not mention that the western version of Tik Tok is actually banned in China, along with almost all other western social media. Their Chinese version uses radically different algorithms which push positive content to promote social conformity and passivity, while the western version can be easily altered at a command from the CCP to push divisive and destructive misinformation as well as pro-Chinese content.
Oh a partial re-watch and re-going over the comment, I think the real issue here is that this one was a tad too long, should have left some more on the cutting floor. There are four main points here: TikTok is not really an exception, all the worries being raised against it specifically literally apply to all other popular enough platforms currently available; the accusations are raised without evidence to back them up; the algorithm suggestions do seem to match content previously watched by far and large, which has been good for users; and that whatever is done about it (and other social media) should not harm the user. These points on themselves are imo pretty solid. But the extra fat distract from them, and confuses the message.
Every bit that wasn't about those 4 points could have been edited shorter or out. Particularly when it gets to specifics of cybersecurity and technical topics. I understand that when talking with Abbie that might have helped the both of you make the conversation, but for an audience who is only passively listening to the two of you rather than having any agency, it feels meandering and sucks the attention alway from those relatively short mainpoints. And as others pointed out, Abbie isn't an expert in cyber security or computer science, but she is being presented just as "an expert" but not on what, and this combination gets read wrong very easily when there are such lengthy sections on those topics, which also negatively impacts how people take the whole and how they read the situation.
As a quick note from an Australian, a reason that she would have been seeing so many reports coming out of Australia is because we have only recently come out from a deeply conservative government that has utilised China as a fear mongering distraction. Because we are geographically "close" to China, it has become the perfect target for our politicians to point to as a distraction. Particularly the shadier things that we have been seeing them do over the last decade.
Also Rupert Murdoch and fox news are from Australia technically.
@Adam Conover
Dear god, please talk to an ACTUAL expert on tech stuff. Contact the EFF. They literally had a podcast about this type of stuff.
TikTok views are different. People don’t choose to view these videos, they are shoved down your throat. So what better way to get people hooked is that their first video goes super viral (by simply forcing it to 2 million people at the same time) and then hooking that person to reach that “high” again but never quite getting there for the large majority of users. The first hit is free, then you gotta chase that high until you think of nothing else. These apps need to be banned for no other reason than they are mental nicotine.
I don't understand why they want to have, 15 minutes of internet fame, in the first place? Why would you want to be famous to complete strangers, for nothing noteworthy. Musicians, actors, and athletes are all being abused in the limelight, why would anyone want to be famous, in this day and age? Especially, young impressionable kids, who could get shot at school or sold into sex trafficking.
31:04 "There's no evidence they're tracking your GPS location"
*faceplam* it doesn't matter! They can location you depending on a) cell tower (and with triangulation, they can get within, according to at&t when I worked for them, within a few yards. Like 3.), b)geo ip location. Which, granted, isn't as accurate as GPS or cell tower triangulation, but can still place you within a city and/or part of the city depending on how many hubs there are.
okay and? that's literally every app and companies all sell your data to anyone anyway for the benefit of advertising including Chinese ones. china can't hurt you.
Isn't that addressed when they confirmed the regional location?
@@FranciscoJG She poo-pooed it like it's not big deal. But having worked in at&t wireless in late 2000's, I spoke with an engineer that helped make the triangulation software. The accuracy is good enough that they have literally found missing people with it. Like, someone reported missing, they petition at&t wireless to use cell tower triangulation, at&t approved, they gave a location, police went to that location looked around with their naked eye and found the missing person. And again, this was back in the 2000's.
When I worked with Trend Micro, there's a PII standard that all logs containing PII stored for perpetuity that goes to other departments, shared, used for anonymous analysis or stored on a remote infrastructure need to have PII anonymized. That includes names, email addresses AND IP addresses. If there's an industry standard for anonymizing IP addresses on logs, it's a big f*cking deal.
You're missing the most important part, no one cares. No one other than friends and a few family will ever want to know where you are. Maybe the occasional jealous ex? Otherwise it's junk data that no one wants. Like google, they want to know which shop you went that, and that's it. You're a product to them, but don't think big brother actually cares about your whereabouts at all.
@@D64nz You say that but, again, I worked at at&t wireless. If they didn't care, why would they spend hundreds of thousands on making that technology? I talked with the person that worked on that. If they don't care, why would that spend so much money on it? Hint: It's because they do care. This is at&t we're talking about. They don't do ANYTHING that that doesn't potentially make them profit.
So IG what my question is, have we had this same level of scrutiny towards Chinese phone manufacturers? Because every brand has its own slightly different version of Android OS. So couldn't they, in theory, program the OS to track data? Because then, you don't even need people downloading apps really, you can gather alot just from people's gps data and what messages they text back and forth and who they call. And unless you're a coder who can go into it and look, nobody would probably notice.
There are brands like Huawei that can no longer do business with US based companies. There's a fair bit of concern over how much manufacturing is done in China as well, although nobody seems to really be doing much about it because the labor is cheaper.
At this point, I think the only way anything is ever done is if a politician happens to hear about something on the news more than like 1000 times.
Yes and they have most definitely been subject to even more scrutiny.
This is an absolutely valid question, and for the most part, one most people don't consider. I think part of the reason that many phones are "assembled" in the US is in part to reduce this possibility. That said, with the complexity of today's electronics, it seems at least remotely possible that security issues for those who care exist with Chinese manufactured electronics.
In a practical way, unless you're someone of interest to the CCP, you're likely not in danger of being observed. However, there is little reason to believe that Chinese manufactured electronics couldn't have the ability to "phone home" and do the same kinds of herd monitoring that many online services do.
To me, the concerning thing isn't so much that I would specifically be targeted (although over time my comments about this might get me there), but that we can't predict how herd data can be used to predict US and EU citizen activity.
Reports suggest that the CCP is already exploring how to use big data to monitor and manage their own population. And the CCP is working diligently to take advantage of dislike and distrust of the US and EU in southeast Asia and Africa through the new Silk Road initiative. I can't imagine they won't eventually try and leverage that into any software or hardware they have influence over, and all it might take is a software/firmware update on coordinated platforms to change the nature of the data they receive.
Please remember the Apple phones are make "over there". Better ban those as well...
The Chinese state can literally just buy our data from the five American corporations that own the majority of the internet.
20:54 The legal "business structure" is completely irrelevant, especially when we are talking about the CCP.
If you want to operate in China, you have to play by the CCP's rules. If you live in China, you have to play by the CCP's rules if your family's safety (or your safety) is important to you
If the hardware is located in China, code is written by people in China, or someone from China is in a leadership role; the CCP has control
The problem is the tool (marketing platforms that dishonestly appear to be social media platforms) not who controls it. As an American, the Chinese government having these tools is less of a risk to me than my own government having these tools.
Yes. To you, your own government is a bigger threat. To the US government, TikTok is a bigger threat as they could turn any consumer of their product into a spy or useful idiot (this is their fear). Whether it be via propaganda, blackmail, or directly stealing state secrets, that is what Congress fears. Is it overblown? Yes. Is there a different threat than a domestically owned company? Yes.
Why do you think so?
As a Cyber Threat Intel analyst cybersecurity is defined as the protection of computer systems, networks, and electronic devices to ensure that the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of data is maintained.
As someone who works in cybersecurity and under DOD I gotta say this guest has no qualifications to assert anything regarding national security threats as they relate to an app with ties to America’s and the free worlds most powerful adversary. I love Adam’s stuff but this is full of so much nonsense.
Why with byte dance would anyone start believing what a corporation tells you? You don’t even touch upon implications of software on Americans phones as it relates to things like back doors. I’m sorry Adam you really needed a second guest on here who is an expert on counterintelligence and cybersecurity not just an influencer who researches things.
It’s sucks that republicans definitely want to punish a generation that doesn’t vote for them by banning this but it can simultaneously be true that there is a legitimate threat with this software.
Source that TikTok has back doors installed?
Many of the most damaging cyber attacks have been the result of Zero Day exploits, vulnerabilities not yet discovered. In all security, but especially cybersecurity, you plan for threats you haven’t yet identified or confirmed. Those are honestly the scariest. Look up the solar winds zero day or as they talk about stuxnet. That stuff keeps IT pros up at night.
You're not just talking about a zero day exploit though... you're talking about a self replicating and undetectable zero day exploit. Is it feasible that they intentionally made their software insecure in only a way they know about? Perhaps... many believe the NSA did this exact thing with elliptic curve based encryption. The government can (and definitely should) not allow anything like tiktok on government devices... I can't really even imagine an argument for why a government device would have anything other than the software required to do the job that whatever government employee uses said device for. Maybe you can make the argument that people tend to bring their personal devices near enough to their government issued devices that it could be a problem. An example of this perhaps would be using fitness trackers to see troop movements around military bases. Regardless though, I just don't see how these scenarios are anything other than the government's problem. And I don't think the government should have the authority to ban X application solely to make their day to day operations more convenient. Otherwise I think you are dangerously close to making the argument that things like E2E messaging should be banned/backdoored because it would make it more convenient for the government. But once you give the government the authority to ban something like tiktok or any other app without being able to clearly articulate why it presents a clear and present danger to the average person using it... let people make their own choices. Even if it means using crappy tiktok.
Yes, it is feasible and yes the NSA has almost certainly done the same. It has absolutely been done before as well.
@@benice2cats198 I guess my question is if TikTok should be banned for not just government employees but everyone because the Chinese communist party could introduce a presently undetectable backdoor... what software shouldn't be banned for that same reason...? Is it not just as feasible that any software engineer at any major social media platform... or any widely used app for that matter... could be tricked, bribed, or coerced into doing something similar...? If we are operating under the premise that this is an unacceptable risk then I don't really see what the solution is other than greater state control of the availability of software... and I'm not really sure how much more I trust the state.
I was disappointed that there wasn't discussion of the other major concerns I've heard about the RESTRICT Act, such as how much it would bind American citizens.
The Australian government is also banning TikTok. Because we like making sure we do the same as America....
It’s called white supremacy.
Oh good, please accept our donald trump for the next 6 years. Make Australia Great Again.
Only for government workers
REMEMBER- The chinese get constantly caught doing industrial & classified espionage via american companies on american soil using american workers by the FBI/NSA/CIA all the time (and in Australia too)...but somehow...
they are too dumb to do that with TikTok.
Magically...somehow TikTok isn't a part of that CCP machine.
They totally would just completely ignore TikTok as "just a fad" and not farm data, and would never use it for propaganda subversion.
People who are too slow to understand how intelligence agencies like the Russians and Chinese have operated, including shell corporations for the last 100 years, shouldn't be in charge of nation-state governments or have a say in how intelligence agencies work. I pay the CIA, NSA and FBI to bust these people out at the table. That includes hurting the feelings of half-wit teenagers and youtube rubes by banning TikTok.
Chinese nationals do not have a right to access the american population. Not individually. Not in a corporation. Not in a shell corporation. Not with the help of other US citizens. Not in US corporations they invest in. Not in corporations that american corporations invest in.
None. Not thru websites, not thru apps, not thru video games, not thru media of any kind.
2:09 "Is the ban on tik tok anti-Chinese xenophobia or is there some truth to the idea we should be wary of?"
Me: Yes.
The real challenge is ascertaining how much is xenophobia, how much is truth, and how much is the two converged.
@@divinedemonj That venn diagram is a circle.
@@sleepingkirby Then it is nto a Venn diagram, but an Euler Diagram. And the Euler Diagram is not a circle. It has a fat overlap, but it is not a pure circle. Thetre is also other bullshit, like bigotry against gender/sexual minorities (because tiktok became huge with some of those communities) so people target the platform so that they harm demographics like lgbt more than others but under the "noble" pretense of national security, even at the cost of giving sino-/xenophobic vibes because that angle still sounds far better than "just want to silence dem gays and trans" outright.
@@louisvictor3473 "The venn diagram is a circle" is a meme. I was using it to say that the set of A and B is identical.
On harming the LGBT community though, on that aspect, last I checked, the rate of censorship for LGBTQ+ contect on other social media sites compared to tiktok is about the same. Even here on youtube where some LGBTQ+ content is rated as "mature".
@@sleepingkirby I know it is a meme, a boring made by prople who didn't know what they were talking about. Not a fan.
I think you're misunderstanding what I meant. I wasn't talking about censorship by the platform itself harming people. Exactly because such voices (but not only) found fewer issues with the algorithm and censorship there (or at because ut got popular with such communities), the act of exclusively targeting tiktok disproportionately harms communities that for a reason or another have found more success there than in other platforms.
The guest is downplaying the possible value of a kind of data that TikTok gathers, but that belies some of the issues that have already occurred even with just the kind of data that she mentions. In other words, people may have forgotten about the way that target accidentally outed a young woman to her family because they started advertising pregnancy related products Because her pattern of interests coincided with a predictive ability to know if somebody was likely to be pregnant. This kind of emergent information, tracking the patterns of people, already has somewhat nefarious or harmful results under a capitalist corporation.
Now imagine that you are the Chinese communist party, and while you may be very interested in specific information about specific people doing things that you don’t like, and I’m not as convinced that TikTok is not able to provide a conduit for this information, even if it doesn’t directly gather it. But, the Jane’s comment is party is not just interested in gathering specific security information, although they are very interested in that. They also appear to be extremely interested in undermining their opposition. So, for instance, the Giants come, his party might see a video such as this one which talks down capitalism as being something that benefits them since they are not capitalist. Or at least claim not to be. And so why wouldn’t the Chinese communist party want to tilt their algorithm in certain ways at certain times in order to ensure that not only miss information gets out there, but specific kinds of Nebulously true information becomes popular in certain regions.
The other thing that I think is worth pointing out, is that if you have a platform like Tik Tok that is this popular, it would be very easy to wait until the exact moment where it was most beneficial, and then force the company to release a patch that everyone hast to use in order to continue to use the platform which then provides access to data That even you would find concerning for the Chinese communist party to have.
This is already happened several times with corporations. LG had the issue of sending camera information from their televisions when nobody new, Amazon has been accused, and I think, credibly proven that it stores information from Alexa devices in ways that are Challenging to want to agree to.
Who’s to say that TikTok will not do that at some point, and do it in a way, which is hard to discern at first? And again, because of how much leverage the Chinese communist party has on Chinese corporations, And the patients that is demonstrated by their intelligence agencies, who’s to say that they would not exert that leverage at a key time?
Again, I’m not sure that this legislation solves that problem. But I am not as willing to giggle away, the possibility that a country that appears to have used its localized zoom corporation to find, and either arrest or silence, those who practice religion in parts of their country would not use the same kind of tactics for other strategic choices through an app like TikTok.
What is a capital S corporation?
@@clrbrk9108 Sorry, that was a grammar error. Should have been "capitalist"
And I make the distinction because China also has corporations, which resemble capitalist corporations, but are not exactly that since the CCP and the Chinese government can make sweeping changes or even dissolve Chinese based companies in a way that can't happen in the US or EU.
I mean, they could just buy the data from Facebook.
@@truckerdave8465 it’s true, they could, but that would cost money, whereas the structure of the CCP versus Chinese corporations insist that any company provide whatever data the government of China wants from those companies.
Additionally, while anybody essentially can buy data from Facebook and process it, it is more difficult to influence how Facebook algorithm works. That is not necessarily the case with the CCP and Baick dance. It is very possible that the CCP could leverage their legal structures and to tell Terrian nature to force by dance to make changes, and if by dance refuses, the CCP has a history of removing heads of companies and replacing them with people who are, more in line with what they’re trying to accomplish.
The double edge, sword of a company based in China, working other countries is that inevitably you will have broken some line, Chyna, and when the CCP looks away, you might think you’re safe. But then, when it becomes convenient, the CCP will simply look back and enforce that law putting him in jail, or in a reeducation camp. a lot of leading Chinese company management has been removed in this way.
The internet IS a series of tubes. That quote is always misrepresented or inappropriately attributed to cluelessness when the reality is that the people who made fun of that Senator (?) were clueless about the basic physical infrastructure that comprises the internet
Well it's mostly made out of servers, routers, and devices. The tubes just connect everything.
I love this podcast so much. Have been listening to tons of episodes. Would love to see this in the format of however long an interview takes. Like 2-4 hour episodes. Thank you for making this pod. It helped me discover you and your comedy hopefully you will come to Denver soon.
Why was anybody putting any entertainment apps on government devices? That should be grounds for termination. As for whether people use tick tock, who cares.
Alternatively why aren't those devices locked down? Putting out fires is not as good as preventing them.
My grandma got scammed using my voice 2 months before she died. She left the world thinking I was a bad person who needed bailing out.
Would love to have the Too Long Didn't Watch versions of these videos for the people who can't commit to long videos. At least you'd also get the views from people who would not click otherwise and we get to still be informed about the essentials of your always interesting subjects.
Wow, both Adam and Abbie blew me away today. well done
I would think that if you want to discuss concerns about TikTok you'd speak to a cybersecurity expert, not a person who might just have a bias considering she banks on keeping TikTok available.
She dismisses the real concerns here and that concerns me. I work in cybersecurity and we are definitely talking about concerns that far surpass what was done with Cambridge Analytica. Yes American companies do this. They do not funnel their data to the US government. And I'm sure conspiracies abound regarding that, but there are good reasons why so many countries have lawsuits against TikTok's owners and why they have banned the platform.
I don't think people realize how serious cybersecurity threats are. You mention major damage, well you may not know just how often municipal water supplies are hit. In Israel someone hacked in to their public water supply and if they hadn't had a robust quality control the minor adjustment to the water treatment could have killed a whole lot of living things very fast. There have been hundreds, HUNDREDS of hacks on water supply systems in the past five years. All over the world. And it's not just water, they are bringing entire countries to a halt. Like what is happening right NOW in Italy, one of the companies that just banned TikTok.
But of course that's being blamed on Russian groups. However we already know that the top hacking group in China hacked in to our voting systems in 2020. The most prolific hacking group in the world is Chinese. It's not "anti-Chinese sentiment" it's real concern.
We can't just dismiss the real threats of TikTok by waving it away with "aw lots of companies do it!". That isn't helpful to anyone. And joking about how our government asked silly questions doesn't fly when you are making some questionable statements yourself.
I mean no offense. I'm a huge fan and so are my kids, I just think now you need to follow up with a cybersecurity expert who wouldn't have any investment in keeping people clicking on her TikToks.
Since you have info: is there evidence of TikTok allowing for a current direct security vector? Or is it more that with such a large installed base that they could leverage it through a network-wide update that would cause damage before anyone could notice?
Also, I have been asserting (based on what I watch and read) that China is using (or could use) herd based big data to evaluate policies and PR so that opposition to their actions would be minimized, by posting on TikTok to see how people react to various videos, much like how Google used to do AB testing of ads. Does that seem plausible?
Finally, the video seems to assert that the algorithm is the algorithm, and ByteDance/TikTok is unlikely to change for the benefit of the CCP. To me, this seems naive. If I understand the one law that requires Chinese companies to have CCP members in key positions, is it reasonable to assume that the CCP could change their policies on a dime and TikTok would have to comply? Thus, they could make changes to their algorithm with enough time to do damage without watchdogs getting to it in time? Assuming that we actually can see the algorithm (which I assume we actually can't)?
So. There's one issue I hold here and that is the mention of geographic incorporation of a business/llc/ltc.
The domain or region in which you incorporate a business, does not directly relate to the geographic region in which you conduct business.
The Cayman Islands are a well known offshore location for incorporated business that are used a shell incorporation or tax haven. This does not mean I conduct all my business out of tye cayman, it just means I have registered my business in the cayman. Either for tax benefits or to shell my actual business from direct exposure to the laws of a nation in which I do conduct business.
So (and I'm not saying this is true, but theoretically) Tik-Tok's parent company can infact be registered in the cayman, earn revenue un the US, avoid US laws and tax liabilities, and still be required by its parent company, physically located in China to report all data to the CCP.
Now again, whether or not this is true is not something we will ever actually know, but it is very much possible.
Thank you Adam for what you're doing and for giving a wider platform for these amazing people! Greetings from Poland!
Adam shit the bed here. This woman is an expert in nothing. No cyber security or counter intelligence background. She is a literal tictok influencer.
Disappointed in your very real lack of any pushback on the specific cyber security issues tik tok poses.
Maybe the evidence points to you overreacting 😅
@@magnamaduin I’ve seen people claim some wild stuff when they have no idea how some stuff works. If they don’t know, of course it’ll look scary. They don’t give any evidence or citations, no proof to support their claims. I’ll try looking again. In my opinion it’s just another panic created by racist old men, it is about profits to them, obviously, but racism wounds up so many people that lack critical thinking skills.
Left shill
Data privacy is the important topic here. It's bad when we do it, it's worse when foreign enemies do it.
To be factual, TikTok is not an entity of a "foreign enemy", it is literally based in Texas. "The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel."
Okay but if they want the information they'll just buy it from facebook. This is silly unless we ban domestic companies from collecting and selling our data as well.
@@phoebemoon6952 right but their ability to use that data is limited as long as they don't have a super popular platform. Our propaganda is bad, their propaganda is worse.
@@timothyrockwell2638 if it is linked in any way at all to China, that's enough.
@@MaximillianGreil what are you talking about? The United States currently has one of its political parties perpetrating an actual genocide against trans people and has an absolutely ASTRONOMICAL murder rate that the government has no political will to stop. Chinese propaganda is the least of our fucking worries.
In any sphere of capitalism where companies are largely unregulated there is strong reasons to be concerned. That those who are ultimately are responsible for regulation are incredibly ignorant of social media and how it works is another reason to be concerned.
As far as the urban myths going viral, I am baffled by the gullibility of people & their inability or disinclination to fact check. It seems almost like seeing a horror movie that on some level they enjoy being scared.
No it's not just Tiktok but Tiktok is certainly part of the problem.
Yeah... No, thanks. A TikTok content creator is probably not going to have some tiny conflict of interest when talking about this. This is one of those things you should research for yourself. You don't seem to do that much, but you eventually do it, and well. It took you like a decade for you to realize Elon Musk is a con man who happens to be just slightly brighter than his average fan.
1:08:00 yep, most of the suggestion algorithms are designed to give you more of the same with variety novel randomness thrown in. Creates positive feedback loops (you get more and more of the same) which is actually bad. I've turned off Google's recommendations and discover feeds because of that. I wish I could do the same to TH-cam and only have a search bar interface with no suggestions, or if there are suggestions, they're largely random.
I have heard from several people that they like TikTok BECAUSE it drops in more variety much better than these other services' algorithms.
Loving this type of content. 10/10 very useful!
I think a ban of TikTok or any social media app for the general public in the United States is a violation of the First Amendment. I'm not even a TikTok user, my bias is purely based on being concerned about government overreach.
I agree, though I will always have a bad gut feeling about Tiktok. (30 years later this comment gets me in trouble with the CCP 😛)
Why are you more concerned about US government overreach than Chinese government overreach?
@@Psyshimmer because I live in the United States and I am frankly tired as hell about my rights being eroded in the name of national security, especially since we also end up less secure every time
@@RealSaintB When, recently, were your rights eroded in the name of national security?
And couldn't you argue that you're hastening the process of having your rights eroded by granting an unfriendly nigh-hostile foreign nation unprecedented access to US citizen data?
@@Psyshimmer the PATRIOT act for starters. The destruction of net neutrality for another. Uncle Sam has way more data than TikTok would ever collect because of those two things.
Love the energy and nuanced thoughtful conversation.
1:12:32 What sort of change are we talking about? Any change to section 230 that requires too much effort will result in an acceleration of corporate censorship because they're going to err on the side of caution and just allow 'safe' content i.e. nothing that will challenge anything hegemonic. This solution isn't concrete enough to be implemented without disastrous consequences.
I despise TT for causing the massive increase in vertical videos.
Zero discussion about the vapid/depraved content on American TikTok vs the wholesome/educational content on Chinese TikTok.
I am so much less concerned about targeting or propaganda from a country on the other side of the globe than from the one I live in and am inundated by every day. And even then I feel more concerned by corporate than government propaganda, but nobody's going to congress about ads. Even though they really should. Probably because ad laws might mean the military would have to stop advertising on random Twitch channels and in campuses, and that would be terrible.
Children are easily brainwashd that's why leftists promot child mutlilation
I'd love to get an update on this topic!
I am 8 minutes in...
So you are bringing in a guest to talk about how problematic tik tok is and from the start she said is a user and she uploads videos, actually went viral.
This discussion point know can only go in one direction.
Finally someone said it.
Love that you are 8 minutes in on an hr 16 minute video and know it all. Too bad you missed out on the solutions at 1:13..
At 47 minutes and it's not THAT off, but she does mention her virality a few times....
Generally I think the same, it's a bit too biased if you're a user, but I also know that in the realm of social media, you kinda have to use it to understand it.
@@Madaboutmada
Conflicts of interest don't vanish via ratio or video length. Lazy thinking on your part.
"Open source intelligence... it doesn't matter..."
Right... because readily available database, pre-indexed and marked is not that different from searching for someone via facebook. By that logic, an abacus is not that different than a graphing calculator...
42:18
Australia's sinophobia is pretty intense, especially about the idea of Chinese companies buying Australian companies.
I am from Hong Kong , I am a hundred times more scared of Comminist China than Australia! It has nothing to do with race ! But the communist China is pure evil !
There wouldn’t be sinophobia if China would smarten up for once.
Yes, all social media should be held accountable. That is fair, the bare minimum lol
Have you looked into the released Twitter algorithm? It has lots of knobs to promote or kill specific types of content.
This blew my mind like your videos and hope you keep it up we all need to wake up and smell the reality and act before its to late
Eh, it's been too late, even before technology ruled the world. It has already been said and done, all we can do is sit by and watch the show. Luckily, we aren't duped by this kind of charade. We see through the b.s., but there is nothing we can do.
The main issue is we know for a fact, as China confessed to it, that Tiktok takes more than your user data. The fact that to fully delete all parts of the app you have to manually go in and delete a second folder that isn't removed with the app; this file being the element that takes everything. All password keychains, keylogging, text convos, photos, videos, bank info, literally every element on your device gets recorded and sent back. China confirmed this and tried to play it off like what facebook or google does. However those apps only take your surface level info like browser history, not your literally bank info and passwords, plus whatever you send to anyone on everything else.
Source, pls
This is just paranoid ignorance, "China" doesn't have access to any of your personal info through TikTok.
Lol. You tripping, bro. If it were that easy, everyone would do it.
citation fucking needed.
Considering the fact that both Google and Apple would get sued, lose money, and lose reputation if they allowed such an app on the app store, as well as the fact that there would be widespread reports of emptied banked accounts if what you are saying was true, along with the fact that the uploading all of that data would noticeably throttle your internet connection and there would be some notification about how much data you've been using... I'd say you clearly didn't watch this video at all.
It was so wild to hear you say Fresno. That's where I live right now and grew up.
Thank you for the continued work adam!~ i’m soo much more worried and distrustful of my own government.
The real reason to avoid TikTok is because it’s a dopamine-machine that’ll weaken your ability to sustain focus… 😂
Hmm, two people who extensively rely on TikTok are going to tell me the truth about it?
Reminds me a lot of the PATRIOT act but this time there's no bad guy to 'protect' us from so they are making a scapegoat out of Tik-Tok.
We have more to fear about how Trump and Pelosi reshaped the Patriot Act in 2017 in Ring doorbell cameras and phone records access.
No need to have due process if you signed it away to your service providers.
On point, exactly
Well, the bad guy is China.
The CCP
@@BuildinWings CPC.
If it's so freckin awesome, why is it banned in China?
YOU"RE COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO! I bought tickets even before I finished watching this video. Smart pitch. The man who took the reason people hate me and turned it into a profession... damn straight I'll pay to see you live. Woohooo! Gonna love this.
I can't claim to know what Abbie Richards knows and I don't have the experience that she has. However, the simple fact is that ByteDance, while they may be incorporated somewhere other than China, are absolutely a Chinese company and will be subject to Chinese oversight, while companies from countries with more ethical laws and governments will be subject to the consequences of their respective countries. All social media can be misinformation and security nightmares but TikTok being controlled by a hostile authoritarian nation is doubly problematic from the perspectives of security and misinformation.
If anyone is already familiar with Abbie Richards and knows what that artwork is on the wall behind her, I'd love to know! Looks very intriguing. Should mention I'm talking about the one of the left
Reverse image search did not come up with anything.
It appears to be the hands of ET using a smart phone with a chart of the Solar System.
I would title it "Smartphone home" or such.
31:49 "Is this information valuable to..."
Seriously? Say that to Uyghurs or Chinese dissidents IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES that were found and/or targeted and/or harassed by people working or with the CCP.
Just because YOU can't think of how it's valuable, doesn't mean it is. If you give me all that info and enough of it, I can literally ruin a person's life.
Life in Fresno California sucks, our board of supervisors is angry that it can't be mean to the Yokut and Mono tribes and suing the State of California
The main reason why the outrage over Facebook was performative, and the outrage over TikTok is real, is all about their user bases and have nothing to do with the business practices. The Republican base overwhelmingly does not use TikTok. Its the platform where a majority of young people go to voice their opinion and young people are largely liberal. For Republicans it's an end-run around the first amendment to squelch the speech of their political opposition.
No, the main reason is that Facebook donates shitloads of money to US campaigns. Period. It is that simple.
Hank Green for president
thank you for pushing back at 1:04:40
It's always so upsetting when I listen to a discussion between intelligent people and one of them refers to my country in a way that hasn't been accurate for at least 22 years, if ever (which is especially weird when people in question are too young to have the boomer excuse of "I'm just used to it").
Saying "the" Ukraine implies that it's a part of something, a territory instead of a country. Notice how you don't use it to ANY other country with a singular name?
In current political climate it's not just offensive to use that form, but it also subconciously feeds into the ruzzian narrative that we're not *really* an independent state, but a confused subject that can be either brought back to heel or exterminated.
Calling it “the” Ukraine has been the biggest victory for Russian propaganda yet, and it’s terrifying.
Unfortunately that kind of usage is still ingrained in many people, not just boomers, I appreciate that you took the time to explain why it’s wrong though as I didn’t know myself (I’m not a native English speaker, and my native language never used a “the” for Ukraine as far as I know).
Hope things improve for you all
I believe that your understanding of the issue between China and Taiwan needs some more nuance in detail.
China considers Taiwan, a part of China, well, Taiwan considers itself to be independent for married reasons. There is an ongoing political and military dynamic equilibrium that happens between China, the United States and Taiwan. There is a constant fear, on the part of Taiwan and those who support Taiwan that China will follow Russia’s example and annexed Taiwan. The US government works very carefully not to push China about this, which is why it was such a big deal when Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan and recognized it as its own nation. This isn’t just some complicated nuanced difference of opinion between two places. The Chinese communist party does not want Thai want to be recognized as a nation, because they expect that eventually Taiwan will be reabsorbed into China. As far as we can tell, Taiwan does not want this. The only new ones here is that Taiwan generally speaking is also not interested in changing the status quo because it would cause their people suffering even if such a conflict were to resolve and tie one’s favor.
But it is definitely a significant indication of what the Chinese communist party is willing to do an leverage in order to maintain its propaganda. They have leveraged international airlines to remove the Taiwanese flag From any of their in-flight or printed documents. They have leverage removing the Taiwanese flag from video games and television shows and movies. If you have any financial interest in China, and you show any support for Taiwan in name or in its existence, you will find yourself at the other end of a strongly worded letter from the Chinese communist party. What you do next will determine whether or not you are allowed to make any money from China.
In other words, China is leveraging the capitalist system against us, for what would otherwise seem like a somewhat petty issue. But the Chinese communist party is willing to wield its power for that, what else might they be willing to wielder power for?
Taiwanese government themselves has a " One China Policy" since 1992 which they agreed with the mainland. Chiang Kai Shek, the longest running and first ruler of Taiwan after the WWII himself repeatedly refused to even entertain the idea of an independent " Taiwan." For decades, Taiwan’s government claimed to be the sole legitimate ruler of whole China, including the mainland. Even when Japan surrendered after the WWII, Taiwan was given to China as it was always considered part of China. The only thing that has changed that the mainland China is too powerful now to ignore and the CCP has the economic and military upper hand. Otherwise, everyone was cool with the idea of Taiwan being part of China until a decade earlier.
@@MOTU320 While I know at some point Taiwan probably did want to be the only China, it's my understanding that that is not true today. And the current government has very little to do with CKS, who was, for all intents and purposes, a dictator.
Additionally, Taiwan couldn't be "given to China" in the sense that most who moved there were fleeing Mao.
I also don't think "Everyone was cool" with Taiwan being a part of China.
You are buying into China's consistent policy of erasing any sovereignty that Taiwan has attempted to assert. Their goal of erasing any reference to Taiwan as an independent entity has worked on you.
When the Taiwanese people are asked what they want, they would prefer nothing changes. Note that they *aren't* asking to be recognized as independent; nor do they want to become officially a part of China. They are not stupid, they know that their nation is in a precarious position, and so rather than challenge the status quo, they are happy to live as is unless something happens to change it.
I would imagine if China became a democracy, Taiwan might have a different attitude. The people seem to know that the freedoms they currently enjoy would go away under the CCP, but would also likely be destroyed if they asserted independence ahead of any significant societal change in China.
TDLR: There are better people/ways of discussing TikTok. Try again....
I really wish people stop using What About Ism when it comes to foreign policy such as banning TikTok. Yes, US tech companies are scummy, but at least, we can regulate or correct those companies when push comes shove (Facebook had to change its data collection policies when the government and Apple began to scrutinize their Facebook)
Also, China has its own history and reasons for adopting authoritarian rule. Thus, you cannot compare US companies with Chinese companies because they follow different rules.
Lastly, really? Bringing a TikToker "expert" to talk about banning a platform she regularly uses? Also, her defense of TikTok are pretty weak when a simple Wikipedia search contradicts her narrative.
"Yes, US tech companies are scummy, but at least, we can regulate or correct those companies when push comes shove (Facebook had to change its data collection policies when the government and Apple began to scrutinize their Facebook)" scrutinize but apparently didn't bother to make any regulation changes? Otherwise TikTok should be penalized for violations of those regulations and there should be no need for all the discussions.
This is not whataboutism. It is "why are we trying to play whack-a-mole instead of fixing the problem?"
One concern not addressed was those who obtain part or all of their income through Tiktok. It does provide income for many artists.
I appreciate this a lot. I was really concerned but feel like I have some better perspective now.
I just moved out of one of the cities on the tour list 😭 whyyyy
Talk about the Bytedance executives who own Tiktok and with whom they have ties.
Sorry, but interviewing a TikTok content creator about whether TikTok should be banned creates the impression of a conflict of interest
I agree. I think he should interview an impartial person who is an expert without any TikTok association. This conflict of interest is disappointing.
Imagine a TikTok expert without any experience with TikTok. An "impartial person" doesn't exist. You might not have any vested interest in TikTok, but doesn't mean you won't have any bias for or against it. I have never used it, because I don't like it and I think it's stupid and makes people stupid. Am I impartial? hardly. So you'd rather interview a non TikTok user? What about a twitter/instagram/douyin/facebook/whatever user? That would mean no conflict of interest? At least Adam got someone with some knowledge to have a real conversation with instead of sitting the CEO down and asking stupid irrelevant questions and disregard his answers.
@@hajimesaigo6112
Cybersecurity doesn't require use. You just want a sympathetic voice in the room, regardless of whether it's called for or not.
You just want to keep worrying about imaginary problems. She’s great at what she does.
@@hajimesaigo6112 There's a major difference between "user" and "content creator". A content creator gets paid by the platform. If a content creator gets paid by the platform, they have a conflict of interest when speaking about whether the platform that pays them should exist.
49:50 No, Ticktock was proclaiming to everyone, "Exactly, Shirley!"
I don't think she is an expert on national security - that should be left to the CIA and the FBI etc.
She's an expert on misinformation.
Ah, the people with absolutely no history of manipulating people.
@@BebbaDubbs If you say so.
@@BebbaDubbs"Expert on misinformation"😂 This is a self-proclaimed title
What did she mean when she said that checking the TikTok algorithm for pushing propaganda isn't falsifiable? It most certainly is. All we need is TikTok's source code.
It's doable with statistical analysis also, but you need to be generating content as well as consuming it, and in large quantities that would likely be detected
The source code for the ml model they're using is probably 100gbs of human-opaque vectors and matricies. You can't just look at it and know what's going on. You can look at configs, at how it was trained, and at the outputs, and you MIGHT find something there, but the source code will be "Here are some inputs, ML model. Thank you for the output".
Ironically TH-cam wants to be the next TikTok.
Everyone does.
It's been 10+ years that all social media has been copying the most growing one.
Thank you for all the effort you put in to bring this info to people, Adam. I love the podcast! I'm curious what platforms you use to do you interviews, as i would like to do the same.