Submitted by A powerful House committee advanced a bill on Thursday that could lead to a nationwide ban against TikTok on all electronic devices, renewing lawmakers’ challenge to one of the world’s most popular social media apps and highlighting unresolved fears that TikTok may pose a Chinese government spying risk.
The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance.
↫ Brian Fung at CNN
TikTok obviously needs to be banned. It’s an extension of a genocidal, totalitarian government that has no place on our our phones. Yes, I understand Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft also collect vast amounts of data, but at least they are (nominally) beholden to our legal systems, and while there is, of course, a vast power imbalance between us as individuals and them as megacorporations, it’s still nowhere even close as to being an arm of a totalitarian government – they’re just not comparable.
China’s state surveillance tools have no place on our devices.
It’s not clear to me that TikTok in particular “obviously” needs to be banned. I think there’s a legitimate argument to be made that this has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with protectionism.
Rather I think legislative time would be better spent on a root and branch reform of data protection. Attack the root of the problem that these apps are collecting too much data and processing it in different jurisdictions from where it was collected. There’s absolutely no legitimate reason Facebook, Google or ByteDance should be collecting any data at all beyond what is needed for a commercial relationship with their customers.
Lax data protection laws exist for one reason only: to enable credit reference agencies to operate legally. We now live in a connected enough world that credit reference bureaus are obsolete. All data is stored online and can be pulled from source when needed. It’s not like the old days when an actual file clerk would have to dig it out from a file room. We can live in a world where the default expectation is that no data transfers happen without explicit, written approval. Lets make that happen.
While I agree it’s far too entwined with the Chinese government, I’m not sure how being under American ownership will change the risk model. We all know how slow big orgs are to change and how many “legacy” systems they have floating around. Especially at this scale. If the current owners wanted to ensure spying potential or other nefarious access, it’s already there and would take a top to bottom replacement of systems to eliminate them. Which is totally unreasonable and unrealistic. It also requires no continuity of employees who put these back doors in place.. Again near impossible.
To be clear they are not banning TikTok, but they are planning to force a divestiture. (Yes the summary touches it).
What it means is, as a media company targeting millions of American teenagers, US congress will be asking them to be subject to American laws.
They tried first with something called Project Texas, but that failed. Even with the best effort of engineers here, the “mothership” was still able to access user data, pretty much illegally.
And since they are not playing within the rules, the rules will be stricter.
sukru,
I’ve heard that as well, but it is a ban on certain sensitive foreign owned companies including tiktok. While it’s true they could sell assets to western owned companies to avoid the ban, it’s still technically accurate to call it a “ban” and legislators need to own what they’re doing.
Just to make a point: A government can ban nude sunbathing at a beach. The fact that actions could be taken to avoid the ban does not make it not a ban. “See after you put on clothes you weren’t banned after all” That would be silly.
I wasn’t up to speed on Project Texas, here’s some more information…
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/project-texas-the-details-of-tiktok-s-plan-to-remain-operational-in-the-united-states
Even with tictok aside, I don’t think there’s any way to effectively police things like this. There’s no way to provide guarantees that data cant’ be passed to parent companies. The exact same privacy problems arose in the EU-US data sharing deal…
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/10/tech/eu-us-data-sharing-deal/index.html
Even though they came to an agreement, when push comes to shove, I highly doubt our governments intend to stay true to their word. They say one thing in public while planning ways to siphon the data in secret. They’re notorious for it and there’s no credibility left. They would break the terms without even flinching.
Personally I’d rather see data be decentralized away from massive corporations that control everything regardless of who owns them.
Alfman,
One difference between US and China ownership is that US companies are separate entities, and they usually push back against government control.
When US Government basically tried to pull the same thing on Microsoft, for example, they divested all the EU cloud data into a separate legal entity:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy/eudb/eu-data-boundary-learn. And basically told the government to pound sand.
Whereas, when a large company owner dared to criticize the government, they were “lost” for many months: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56448688
That is why there is still some trust in Western institutions, at least there is accountability when caught publicly,
(Whether that trust is eroding is another question).
Yes, there are benefits to using “someone else’s computer”. But at other times, you just want to host your own cloud.
sukru,
I appreciate your insight, but honestly it seems equivalent to “Project Texas” for tiktok.
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/project-texas-tiktok-plan-stay-america-oracle-security/
On paper this seems far more stringent than what microsoft did to satisfy the EU, but obviously it comes down to a matter of having trust. The problem isn’t in what the companies say they will do, it’s how it can actually be enforced.
I’m not even insisting on everyone hosting their own cloud, but society shouldn’t collectively have all our eggs in the same giant basket. Federated services would be an option. The privacy issues gets that much worse when technology is so heavily consolidated.
“TikTok obviously needs to be banned. It’s an extension of a genocidal, totalitarian government that has no place on our our phones. ” Really? All our phones are spying on us on a very low level and you’re worried about TikTok spying on people? At least we all have the option of not installing the app – can’t say the same about having both Google and Apple spying on people. As for supporting a genocidal, totalitarian government – yeah, let’s have a look at Israel.
All our phones are spying on us on a very low level and you’re worried about TikTok spying on people? At least we all have the option of not installing the app – can’t say the same about having both Google and Apple spying on people. As for supporting a genocidal, totalitarian government – yeah, let’s have a look at Israel.
MeTitus,
“Whataboutism” aside, this is more of an FCC issue. Meaning, ownership of news and radio stations are already restricted in the USA, with good reason, and they want to extend this to online channels as well.
Not many people will care if your entertainment is coming from overseas. But if you want to open a TV or Radio station in the USA, it cannot be foreign owned after a certain size. So, if you cannot open a local news outlet for a town of 50,000 (making this number up), how can you be the primary news source of teens that are numbered in millions?
I agree with the “fuck the CCP” sentiment, but this stinks of protectionism. Can’t have anything that’s not controlled by the American tech-government megacomplex!
At least 3 (out of 7) comments here simply engage in whataboutism, failing to address Alfman’s point:
“Yes, I understand Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft also collect vast amounts of data, but at least they are (nominally) beholden to our legal systems, and while there is, of course, a vast power imbalance between us as individuals and them as megacorporations, it’s still nowhere even close as to being an arm of a totalitarian government – they’re just not comparable.”
100% correct. It makes no sense to complain about the privacy shenanigans and public opinion manipulation that Western tech companies engage in, only to then argue that geopolitical competitors should have equal access to the Western public.
No, they should not. These are not abstract theoretical questions where one can be impartial, they are real life policy questions with practical implications in a dangerous world.
Ha ha, we once tried with GNU/Linux, a total no-brainer on when it comes to most sensible solution for PC usage in regards to general population. It failed miserably and it turned out general population just doesn’t care. At all. So good luck banning TikTok as it will never happen and even if somebody proves TikTok sole purpose is to gather information for CCP, that wouldn’t change much and people would not stop using TikTok. Argument likely being well i don’t have anything to hide from CCP, or some shit like that. And making a distinction in between usage of TikTok and other similar western services shows that people will always go in defensive mode if you woudl try to take this away from them. If you would for example be a politician you wouldn’t get elected any more.
Geck,
I have absolutely no clue what you are referring to…? Link please.
It could fail in the senate, but you should be aware that our politicians already passed it in the house of congress. And they really wanted to give the legislation teeth, the penalties are pretty darn severe…. both google and apple would be affected if they didn’t comply with the bans.
If passed into law, it would be up to the supreme court to decide whether it is constitutional. Given it’s current make up, the supreme court today doesn’t care if their rulings are polarizing and they’ve demonstrated a willingness to snub the constitution. I honestly don’t know how they would rule, but I don’t think they’d have a problem with laws that punish china.
Personally I think banning open source code, as the bill does, is a huge overreach that could prove to be a disaster.
Basically what this is about is not about banning TikTok but forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok. Basically communism at it’s best.
Geck,
You didn’t really answer the question at all.
Anyway, we can argue the ban is a means to another end, but I still feel it’s important to cover the ban itself and not just the predicted end result.
chinese spy astroturfing. Go ahead and aim your laser guided missile at my house.
Troll.
Unless i misunderstood you and you were being sarcastic. That is i am not a Chinese spy aiming laser guided missiles at your house.
This opinion is deeply misguided, and it only reveals the extent of indoctrination. No government or company, be it Chinese or American, should have the right to any personal data. Yet, they all engage in such practices. There is no gray area in this regard. Moreover, from my perspective, it is much more problematic for Americans to have access to my data and share it with my ‘friendly’ government than the Chinese, as the latter is unlikely to share it, given their apparent indifference to my activities and thoughts. Conversely, my government does care. Additionally, the TikTok question is rooted in Western fears of losing hegemony over the world and technology.
Agree with this.
As an individual, the biggest risk to me and my family is my local government (whichever it is at the time), because that government is in a position to retaliate if they find something they don’t like in my data. No foreign government can do this directly. Because data is effectively permanent but governments change, the risk is not limited to violating any laws at a specific point in time.
This is rooted in an asymmetry around data – there are plenty of harmful things that a government can do from digging through data, but there is no chance of an individual gaining some right, privilege or fortune from government surveillance.
Of the foreign governments who might collect my data, the lowest risk government is the one least likely to share it with my local government.
Every time I hear the US government comment on the risks of sharing data with governments, I can’t help but wonder what they’re up to with data that we should be so concerned about.
Hrm… I understand the concerns with Tik Tock. And yes they may actively be trying to do bad. But you also have to look at the capabilities of the systems and what they allow third parties to do. IE Facebook around 2016. And well still Facebook 2024. I think the real problem is a real lack of regulation in general and a real problem with the US government and really populace not understanding the first amendment. I guess until we get that sorted out we could force a divestiture of tiktock. I’m not really sure what good it will do. If the CCP wants information, well they have sufficient hackers to get it I guess this would just make them try slightly harder to get it form one company.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
That’s obviously a concern too. Both sides of the argument have real fears and justifications, but they’re in conflict and personally I don’t know how best to resolve it. Even if the tiktok ban is justified to stop CCP spying and manipulation, how do we know this law won’t slip into more Orwellian censorship roles with different apps that the government doesn’t like for purely political reasons? I don’t have an answer here.
Traditionally the supreme court could be counted on for staying more or less apolitical, but today it sure feels like the supreme court is transforming into a politically driven institution. Hypothetically, given a conflicting case between the first amendment their party goals, would they seek to protect the constitution, or their own party? I honestly don’t know which would win.