TikTok confirms it offered US government a 'kill switch'
2 years ago by IndustryStandard to c/news
TikTok says it offered the US government the power to shut the platform down in an attempt to address lawmakers' data protection and national security concerns.
It disclosed the "kill switch" offer, which it made in 2022, as it began its legal fight against legislation that will ban the app in America unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it.
The law has been introduced because of concerns TikTok might share US user data with the Chinese government - claims it and ByteDance have always denied.
TikTok and ByteDance are urging the courts to strike the legislation down.
"This law is a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," they argued in their legal submission.
They also claimed the US government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022, and pointed to the "kill switch" offer as evidence of the lengths they had been prepared to go.
Yes, good thing all our data is now perfectly private. No corporations sucking it up and selling it to databrokers who then launder it to the CCP. Now that tik tok is gone, our privacy is completely protected!
Hell if it isn't being sold, it's being hacked. How many major data beaches have there been? My identity keeps getting stolen, accounts hacked. Did you know that entirely too many major CC companies will reset your account password and security question over the phone using data that is in those leaks?
This is like when people complain that measures directed to lessen global warming don't solve it and say they're useless.
Isn't US tiktok data hosted on US servers only?
Yeah, I remember reading an article that said the data wasn't necessarily directly accessible by the mothership overseas, but there isn't anything stopping employees from sending the info themselves, which IIRC is what happened.
I thought that was happening. But I might be mistaken.
Yes the source code was disclosed too.
I did a quick search to make sure I am not crazy people sure make me feel that way
The law has been introduced because of concerns TikTok might share US user data with the Chinese government - claims it and ByteDance have always denied.
That was never the major issue.
It's about the Chinese Government tweaking the algorithm to very subtly shift public opinion. Something we know they're doing already.
No they don't care about that. They know foreign governments do that all the time on Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, etc. This is about protecting lobbyists' business interests, and right now the biggest lobbyists and campain contributors are also tik tok's competitors.
Posting things to a site, is fundamentally different from actually owning the site; And adjusting the algorithm to promote or suppress specific ideas. Foreign governments don't have that ability. Not in the domestic US versions anyway.
There are several reasons to do it. Lobbyist are another.
Even if tik tok was nakedly controlled by the Chinese government, who gives a shit? I can go over to RT (Russia Today) right now and get fed Russian propaganda. Hell, until 2022 I could add it to my cable package. I can to this day still get it as a satellite TV option. If the concern is "foreign government may influence public opinion on a platform they control" then the US has a lot of banning to do.
But we don't because free speech is a thing and we're free to consume whatever propaganda we want.
We gave up that principle because "China bad" (and the CCP is, to be clear). But instead of passing laws around data privacy, or algorithmic transparency, or a public information campaign to get kids off of tik tok, the US government went straight to "The government will decide what information your allowed to consume, we know what's best for you" and far too many people are cheering.
Besides, the point your making is bullshit anyway given the kill switch mechanism Tik Tok offered.
TikTok was banned because 1) China bad, and 2) Tik Tok is eating US social media companies lunch. Facebook and Twitter and Google throw some campaign donations at the politicians that killed their biggest rival, and the politicians calculate that more people hate tik tok than like it (or care about preventing government censorship if the thing being censored is something they don't like). It's honestly one of the grossest things I seen dems support lately.
It was always about butthurt Trump opening the floodgates on the idea of banning it after TikTokers kept attacks on him trending.
It's brainwashed lunacy to the point of propaganda to continually claim it's over China using the platform to sway public opinion. They can and do use EVERY platform to do that.
You think even Lemmy is immune?
There is a substantial difference between posting content to a platform trying to influence people, and actually changing the platform algorithm to surface or suppress ideas a foreign (or even domestic) state likes or doesn't.
Lemmy certainly doesn't have the second type. And even american commercial social media sites don't really do it for a specific political agenda; For them it's only about whatever's more profitable.
Lemmy is an open system in and of itself, and the resultant platform algorithms are open by design, it's just wishful nonsense to think a state actor can't 'surface or suppress' ideas even here with a little effort.
And even american commercial social media sites don’t really do it for a specific political agenda
Oh my sweet summer child, we're at the coercion of news media redux for social media...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/...
How could you post so many links about social media influence on politics and miss the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal?
And all of those examples are about parts of the US government stopping other parts of the same government from trying to get our corporations to do what they want. China has no system to control itself like that. It doesn't have to ask BiteDance anything; They own it and would shut it down in a heartbeat if they couldn't absolutely control it.
If I had a choice between U.S. Constitutional law versus Chinese Politburo arbitration about what consequences can happen if my life gets destroyed by using TikTok, I can at least talk to the fucking elected U.S. official face-to-face to complain without going to jail.
The idea is that with the "kill switch" the US Government would take any blame for the shutdown. Right now the Biden Admin and Congress have successfully switched that around so TikTok looks more unreasonable. There's no demand that they "shut down", just that ownership be located where they are subject to US law.
We embedded third party auditors in that crypto exchange so I'm curious exactly how inscrutable tiktok really are.
I mean the accusations are that they're too beyond oversight and we can't confidently audit the data, so giving us a button to stop them when we can't see what they're doing would be a joke. But I'm skeptical that it's as difficult to lock down their data as we make it seem.
Didn't they already reveal their source code to American companies, like Oracle ? If people say they're worried China can manipulate the algorithms, then Oracle will let the US know. What else can they do?
Imagine the president walking around with 2 buttons now, one for nucular weapons and one for tiktok.
"Fire ze missilee"
"But I am Le Tired"
"OK. Turn off tiktok. Then fire ze MISSILES"
Jibjab!
The government is so fucking stupid sometimes. I think both ideas are bad, but a kill switch would be so much better strategically than selling it to a third party who could just send the data to China anyway and still be influenced by CCP demands.
I feel like from the beginig forcing sale was the goal so a US entity has a chance to pick up part of the number one social media for cheaepr than the open market because when a sale is forced sellers lose leverage.
It’s not about sending the data to China it’s about not allowing a hostile power maintain control of a major lever that directly impacts a huge swath of the us demographics.
Hate it or love it but TikTok algorithms hold an insane amount of power to influence a gigantic age range and the goal here is to get those in control of said algorithms under US law so it can be regulated properly.
Yes, us bad, but there is logic and value here. No it’s not the perfect solution but we can’t do nothing either. TikTok showing oracle the source code doesn’t do shit to address these issues.
And a kill switch wouldn't have made that not an issue?
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But a "kill switch" doesn't address the issue. I mean while it's "killed" it does but whenever it's not, the data privacy concerns are in full swing.
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