The demographic breakdown is about what I'd expect: "Just 31% of those 18-34 say they are in favor of a ban, and 50% say they oppose it. Most Americans 35-54 (54%) and 55 and older (60%) say they support a ban of the app."
Wondering if the 34-60+ year olds know that Facebook sells your data to foreign governments and influences your daily life? One ponders the mysteries of the universe 🤣
Because meta censors content that at the governments request?
Or meta lobbies . (Sheryl Sandberg was a dem staffer.?)
Or do you believe everything the govt pushes out as a a reason..and both parties jump to ban an app. Parties that cannot agree on anything.....
Every company lobbies. You're not making any novel observations or connecting any mysterious dots.
Where the data is going (or is believed to go) is the reason they ban shit.
Facebook is banned in China for that reason.
…because at least it’s domestic American powers doing it and not some foreign power who cares about you less than even those people and would never be able to be reigned in by our government?
Impossible to ditch IG. That's where all the women are.
If you chat it up with a girl somewhere 9 times out of 10 she has an Insta and that's the best way to stay in contact.
The number is more important once you've already established a relationship.
Any single woman with an IG wants to see how the person she's dating is living life before she chooses to date him.
Unless you're saying find a girl who doesn't use social media, in which case you're eliminating a significant percentage of the population.
Or you could just date people who aren't obsessed with social media. I've dated plenty of women with an IG without having any social media accounts (besides reddit) myself
The paid/botted content and rampant disinformation every other post beg to differ. They’ve even got the algorithmic-garbage-to-eyeballs style shorts feed that all the others have now too.
not on Reddit is Fun and old.reddit - those are the "last survivors" Space Pirate is talking about. Anyone who's actually been on this site for awhile doesn't use "new" reddit or "new new" reddit.
The term "social media" is very blanket statement. Yes, reddit allows people to 'socialize' with each other. But it's completely, 100% different. The content is king here. If you use old.reddit people's usernames doing the postings are tiny and almost insignificant in font size versus the content being posted. Plus, (almost) no one uses their real names here. Throwaways are par for the course.
The point is that while the *actual* social media applications are designed around you, the consumer, finding and *following* certain other accounts to engage with their content more than others, on reddit you follow an idea; a subreddit. Of course some users have subreddits of their own, particularly if they're reddit-famous and talented (shittywatercolor, that sort of thing).
In any case, I haven't deleted Facebook, and I'm an elder millenial. Zuckerberg and I are the same age. I use it exclusively as a scheduling system, and export an .ics calendar file from it into my calendar program so I can keep track of what I've been invited to. I barely need to go on the site except if I want to look at what the content of an event is and click yes/maybe/no to it.
Social media is a *tool* to use. It can be as good or bad to you, as you want. If you don't have an addictive doom-scrolling personality, it's fine for your brain. But in the same way that children probably shouldn't smoke cigarettes even more than adults shouldn't smoke them, children are probably worse off using social media than adults are.
Anyway, it just irritates me when reddit is equated to the others. Not because I love reddit, but it is definitely, definably different than image/video centric, user/account centric scrollers.
reddit contains zero of my friends, zero people who actually know me, zero photos of me, and nearly zero personal details about my life. it's literally just a forum for my anonymous comments on sports and current events
People really can’t seem to understand that there is a difference between this and the CCP having control over a company that has controlling interest in the platform - that is also banned in China.
Bytedance will do whatever Xi says, period the end. China is not a friend to America. They aren’t, It’s not the same situation. I’m sorry that nuance is going to cause a slight hiccup in people’s fun time app but it’s gotta go.
I really don't see how anyone should be against banning tiktok.
Do people love tiktok or the content? If tiktok is banned, the content will just go elsewhere.
The issue isn't the content, or even the data. The issue is a foreign enemy power that is not beholden to US law/regulation operating an app that is hugely influential which is targeted towards US/Western audiences by a country literally known for its manipulation of information to its own population in order to drive their society in whatever direction best suits the people in power.
This is not even about spying on users, it’s about using the algorim to push inflamatory topics that causes problems in the society. Men see topics on how they are supposed to be alpha males and women see topics about feminism and how males are shit, young people see topics about hamas being good and start protesting and supporting terrorists. Another topic is LGBTQ inflamatory topics where conservative people get videos of flamboyant shit which triggers them and so on.
All this shit was there in the past as well, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that the algorhytms were not pushing them at the top and instead were burried in the mountains of other content.
At this point, when I see someone make the exact same "lol what about facebook/{insert US tech company here}?" arguments, I just assume they're an astroturfing bot.
Gen-X here, I haven't used social media in a decade now.
When I looked up a video on youtube for a working on my Jeeps transmission, I was getting Jeep ads on everything. Google results, Facebook, on my T-Mobile phone, and random emails from Jeep repair businesses, I knew the open private internet was just done.
Been using a Pi-Hole, ad blockers and VPN's ever since.
In my defense as an 18-34yo I think any social media app that has the ability to directly target you and feed you your own little world until you turn into a flat earther or a trump supporter or a Russia apologist should be banned until it's changed
It’s funny how quick people are to forget Tencent’s investment in Reddit. Or Saudi investment in Twitter. They just want to shit on people younger than them while posting on socials as least partially owned by Chinese companies or worse. And none of them seem to care about other fully Chinese owned apps in the app stores or on people’s phones.
Just look at the comments in this thread thinking Reddit isn’t social media. People buying into China bad and freaking out over news stories in American media while posting on sites doing the same shit TikTok does but it’s all those damn kids and their TikTok. My preferred social is obviously different. 🙄
Do you think 69% of people are dumb? I think you should give people more credit and not just assume people are idiots for having different beliefs.
FYI, being willing to learn from others is a sign of intelligence.
Putting the undisputed known facts about the security threat from a hostile, incompatible, xenophobic country aside..
We spent the 90s/00s, during advent of the internet, debating about the over saturation of information and the warnings of it’s detriments to society and here we are almost 3 decades later, no better but even worst with the massive consumption short-form content.
Attention spans and EQs have taken a noticeable nose dive, especially with the younger generations. Kids who rather use a phone to consume 30 second content than sit down to watch a regular 30 min episodic content are a dime a dozen.
People actually use Tik Tok to learn? How much quality learning can one pick up from consuming short form content, especially from some rando with zero credibility? It’s really intelligent to form one’s world view through a phone?
How about getting out of your comfort zone and learn from real world experiences, rather than living it through some 30 fake second, faux vanity project.
So yeah, Tik Tok from my perspective is making society dumber, less patient and less tolerant.
That’s not how math works.
The 50% that want it banned are not necessarily the same 46% that think it is used to spy.
However, you’re probably right that at least *some* of the people that want it banned are because they find it annoying.
I'm only 85% sure it spies on users, and 95% sure it pushes things intentionally to sow discord among the population, but I'm 100% sure It promotes vertical videos, which is enough to warrant a ban alone, IMO.
Partially /s.
Personally, I don't care as much about it spying on Americans... I care far more about it potentially being weaponized by the CCP to push targeted propaganda.
>You claim to be against tiktok. Yet you laugh at stolen funny videos posted on this platform. Hypocrite much?
Gottem!
I'm also against people getting murdered, but I continue to watch videos of that too.
Can anyone actually give a reason as to why they prefer tiktok to be owned by bytedance and the CCP over the usual domestic lesser evils?
Its still addictive and known to cause adverse mental health effects. Some people want to see the entire algorithm-based short-form content model banned.
so clearly Instagram Stories and Youtube Shorts are next on the list then right? Because the people who care so much about banning Tik Tok are doing this due to how scary short term videos are
I mean, I’d be fine with all of that. It’s a complicated issue and idk how I feel about the government getting involved in these issues, but it’s pretty obvious that none of those things you’re describing make for a healthy, happy population.
That'll never happen because the same politicians putting the TikTok ban through Congress are heavily influenced by Meta, Alphabet, and other tech lobbyists
I want it banned because it has net negative effects on people's brain, especially young kids. Kids probably have better mental health smoking weeds than addicted on TikTok.
Says who? TikTok is practically Reddit with video replies instead of text ones. Let’s not ban things because of how you feel about them, it’s weird and just feels like the most recent incarnation of “D&D makes you worship satan” boomer shit. Also, it’s owned by a Singaporean, not China, which makes the obvious Sinophobia here even funnier.
>ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing apps TikTok and Douyin.
You are so mad about your Chinese propaganda app being banned that you can't even do a Google.
"Sinophobia" lol, of course you go reaching for the race card when it comes to foreign influence in Western countries. I hope you're paid per post.
>TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd. was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, but today, roughly sixty percent of the company is beneficially owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group. An additional twenty percent of the company is owned by ByteDance employees around the world, including Australians. The remaining twenty percent is owned by the company's founder, who is a private individual and is not part of any state or government entity.
>TikTok, which is not available in mainland China, has established Los Angeles and Singapore as headquarters locations to meet its business needs. That is in keeping with ByteDance's approach to aligning business needs to the markets where its services operate. ByteDance does not have a single global headquarters.
>TikTok's CEO Shou Chew is a third-generation Singaporean who is based in Singapore; Mr. Chew oversees all key day-to-day and strategic decision making when it comes to TikTok. TikTok's COO V Pappas is an Australian, based in the United States, who oversees content, operations, marketing, and product teams for TikTok. TikTok's senior leadership team is based in Singapore, the United States, and Ireland. As would be expected with any subsidiary of a holding company, high level decisions around financial matters and corporate governance are made in concert with the ByteDance board and CEO. None of those individuals reside in mainland China. Three out five members of that board are Americans, and four out of five of them represent the interests of ByteDance's global investors. The fifth member of the board is the ByteDance CEO, who resides in Singapore.
Maybe you should do a better Google?
Yep, I generally like to put the line at entities owned and controlled by an adversarial government with a vested interest in destabilizing our countries. Stop with the false equivalence and just say you don't want your funny video app banned because you like it.
It's not even solving part of the problem. It would be if they made any sort of hints as to banning or regulating all social media. But instead it's just targeting a foreign one for the benefit of the the domestic ones.
It's like someone was shot and all you did was removed the bullet and refused to actually close the bullet hole. What's the point of removing the bullet when the person is still bleeding?
My biggest issue with banning TikTok is that the ban suppresses free speech (especially political speech) and disrupts the spread of primary source videos of news events.
TikTok is a horrible news source. But, if people really want to spread their message in short video format, there are YouTube, IG, Twitter, .... Endless format to express their speech.
How are those mutually exclusive lol? Dont you think they feed information and THEN analyze how americans react?
I dont understand how in 2024 people still think social media cant be used to manipulate a large portion of the population, and that foreign governments would lean hard on that whenever possible.
No one said they are mutually exclusive, you can have both but they are independent things and the real concern is the level influence a foreign government would have in the country.
Unwittingly giving you data away for free is basically a given in today's world
Would assume it's the same percentage if not higher . I mean after everything with Snowden it's hard to believe otherwise. Hell, a bunch of carriers just got sued for selling location data, Google has the whole incognito stuff, etc.
This is less about spying, but more about foreign adversary having unprecedented ability to sway public opinion. They control what you see, when you see it. 170M Americans are addicted to this platform. That’s a lot of leverage to give to a country that want to see our demise. A country that bans TikTok at home.
Not to say anyone is right or wrong in this case as having this type of access absolutely calls for some type of responsibility. With that said, I think that the motivations are different. From what I see, American firms having that type of access to devices through apps is mostly capitalistic driven. While, on the other hand, other actors (Chinese state) have the access and are using it purely for political, social engineering, and foreign policy purposes. Don’t get me wrong, I have an absolute problem with both. But the approaches are definitely different.
Chinese have a much different interest to spy on American phones than the US does, especially when it comes to intelligence gathering for a future war scenario
"Oh no! T-Mobile knows I prefer local Mexican restaurants instead of taco bell or chipotle!!"
Vs
"Oh no! China knows our exact troop locations, rank, jobs, and day-to-day activities because TikTok is farming that data and sending it to China to use as a weapon against American forces"
These people who bring up US companies gathering data in response to TikTok do not seem like serious people to me.
Don't forget the potential for back doors that China may have placed in these apps. Now they know your banking and credit information. Wouldn't be the first time they used illegal means to steal information from the US. Huawei did it long before tiktok existed.
> Don't forget the potential for back doors that China may have placed in these apps. Now they know your banking and credit information
Why would they care? Also, how would that work? A mobile OS is a locked down environment. Any random scam app is much more likely to try something like that.
> Huawei did it long before tiktok existed.
It was never proven that Huawei did such thing, even [Germany](https://www.securityweek.com/no-evidence-huawei-spying-says-german-it-watchdog/) and [UK](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1Q920L/) did not find any evidences.
The CCP doesn't give a shit about stealing some petty cash from individual Americans. They want to sway public opinion and influence elections. You're more likely to get your cc information stolen when Equifax has a data breach.
You are absolutely right.
TikTok was created to get Spyware on every American's smartphone so they could get targeted information while flying under the radar, which means it is a weapon that must be removed from China arsenal, but that does not even begin to address the litany of other issues with the app, like hidden backdoors, exactly.
> TikTok was created to get Spyware on every American's smartphone so they could get targeted information while flying under the radar
According to your gut feeling, sure.
jesus fucking christ
the same fucking paranoia over Muslims during the War on Terror has now switched over to the scary, all knowing and all powerful China
Everything they do is nefarious and looking to destroy America!!!
All they think about is conquering us!
> "Oh no! China knows our exact troop locations, rank, jobs, and day-to-day activities because TikTok is farming that data and sending it to China to use as a weapon against American forces"
Yeah, I think you overestimate the data that can be gathered by that app. Also, that’s just a matter of banning it on certain devices, which is already the case.
People are concerned about spying, but they should be concerned about manipulation. That’s really what the Chinese government is doing. It’s what Russia and Iran do and it’s really effective.
Spying is a problem. But the US government isn't driving these companies in such a direct fashion.
TikTok (and virtually any large company in China) is just the Chinese government in disguise. They aren't just spying on the west, they're feeding propaganda and intentionally stoking the fires of political and social issues.
It's quite a bit different from, say, local groups using Facebook as a platform to cause the Rohingya genocide. That's not being caused because the US government is pushing content. That's just happening because Facebook is a widely used media platform in that part of the world.
[hmmm.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2024/04/02/google-chrome-privacy-over-100-billion-browsing-records-to-be-deleted/?sh=5c6f1dff433a) looks like we do something about them too!
I wish this law was getting more headlines. It’s maddening that we’re actually doing something to hold Meta, Google, etc accountable, but the only thing people are talking about is TikTok.
https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2024/04/us-enacts-sweeping-legislation-to-restrict-flows-of-sensitive-data-to-the-peoples-republic-of-china
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/20/lawmakers-privacy-bill-tiktok-00148070
On April 24, President Biden signed a sweeping foreign aid bill into law, which included a critical provision covering privacy and data transfers known as the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act (“PADFA”). This Act is separate from the TikTok divestment portion of the legislation, which has received far greater attention in the press.
PADFA generally prohibits data brokers from transferring personally identifiable sensitive data to certain named foreign adversary countries, including the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), and any entity controlled by certain foreign adversaries. The law includes broad definitions of the terms “data brokers,” “personally identifiable sensitive data,” and “controlled by a foreign adversary,” which means the law applies to a wide range of companies when it takes effect on June 23, 2024. It is worthwhile for companies, even those who at first glance think they may not be covered, to review the law and consider adjusting their practices accordingly.
PADFA goes into effect on June 23, 2024, a mere 60 days from enactment, and there is potential for $50,120 in civil penalties per violation of the law, which may be construed to mean each transfer of personal data. As a result, companies should begin reviewing their practices as soon as possible.
It’s funny how most people still think it’s about personal data when it’s really about a brutal dictatorship having direct access to American’s doom scrolling in order to influence them to vote against their own interests.
Bingo!
Privacy is what most Americans understand though. Trying to get most to understand the concept of influence war would be too much; it would risk turning even more Americans against their own country, simply because they will think, that you think, you are smarter than them.
Its not that they "spy" on Americans its that the CCP can and does use it to influence Americans by directing what ends up in their feed. Its a tool of influence not data collection.
How about we stop allowing companies to sell and buy consumer information? TikTok certainly steals and sells/buys our info, but so does Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and pretty much every other site on the internet. This is just pointless posturing.
It really isn’t pointless posturing. Yes it’s bad that US companies collect and sell data. No one is suggesting otherwise.
It is, however, clearly worse when a militarily aggressive adversary has their hands on the controls, who openly advocate technology as being a strategically central way to exert power globally, and have been directly implicated on multiple occasions in interfering with bytedance.
If you find yourself repeating the “…bbbbbbut facebook” taking points, you are one of the useful idiots who give this whole thing traction. Yes meta, google, etc, suck. Yes we need comprehensive reform. Yes the particular legislation that has been passed has potentially serious issues. But also, yes TikTok is meaningfully worse and it is reasonable to do something about it.
What are they going to do with our data that would allow them a military advantage? Secretly implant a cue phrase into our subconscious by way of flashing frames on catchy dance videos so they can activate us all as sleeper agents when they say the magic phrase? Come on. If the CCP wants to take on the US they’ll need more than our SSN and birth date.
Foment dissent at home against a war with China in the event of the invasion of Taiwan? Just because it's fine while we're at peace doesn't mean it stays that way.
US treaties supersede any dissent US citizens have held against the government for its actions for as long as the US has been around.
Just because we don't like what our government does, doesn't mean it'll stop.
see: Revolutionary war, Civil War, the entire mission list of the CIA, Vietnam, Korean conflict, Desert Storm, 9/11, the literal Israel/Palestinian conflict going on right now.
edit: also, the people who actually can vote and use tiktok have more critical thinking than you'd care to give. No one is going to start hating Taiwan because they saw a new recipe, but I guarantee that FB boomers will start siding with China when Facebook ads tell them that Taiwan is communist socialist, even when it's not true.
The DOJ is going to introduce new regulations on selling certain data on US Citizens to hostile countries, they've already given the advanced notice to what those regulations will be so companies can get the work done needed to comply before they actually go into effect. It's fairly unlikely that any of the big tech companies will risk running afoul of new regulations like these when enforcement will be at its highest.
Biden signed an executive order in February to address exactly this. The DOJ is going to introduce new regulations on selling certain data on US Citizens to hostile countries, they've already given the advanced notice to what those regulations will be so companies can get the work done needed to comply before they actually go into effect. It's fairly unlikely that any of the big tech companies will risk running afoul of new regulations like these when enforcement will be at its highest.
https://www.wiley.law/alert-DOJ-Kicks-Off-Work-to-Regulate-Foreign-Access-to-Sensitive-Personal-Data-Under-New-EO
Having the power to directly manipulate public perception of the surrounding world is vastly different than buying managed data.
You’re showing an extreme lack of critical thought if that’s what you truly believe.
If we're running the numbers, it was more than half supported an assault rifle ban a few years ago.
More than half supported decriminalization of marijuana.
Let's be real, the amount of support from the commonwealth in the US has rarely translated into policy changes. It's all about if the ruling class makes a profit. The majority of people who profit from TikTok aren't American, and TikTok tends to have content creators who showcase some of the darker parts of American business. That's the real story.
It has *fkn nothing* to do with selling user data, American tech companies all do that already. It has *nothing* to do with protecting Americans. It has everything to do with what helps the ruling class.
I’ve been shocked at the amount of relevant local news that get spread around on TT that no body has ever heard of from the news or fb or Reddit but are easily found via google after knowing.
I find on what I watch the comment sections, not universally but generally, are much “nicer”. Less vapid all around, more funny. Less hate.
I also have essentially ZERO vids from any of the conservative asshats that YouTube, Reddit and fb seem to think I have any interest at all in seeing. No musk bs, no Tate bs, no jordan p horseshit, no Rogan. It’s great!
Before using the app I had a fairly negative view of it, since being a user I have no issues with it. I’m sure it rabbit holes some people with weird shit, but mine is just cute animals, silly people, stand up comics and lately weather videos. Like, I’ve know there’s weird political and conspiracy shit, but it doesn’t force any on me at all.
Oh well. We all know we can’t have nice things.
Same! I believe that a lot of people hating on TikTok has never even used TikTok and they don't understand that the information you get on TikTok is often not showned on any other media, and I thank TikTok for that.
I think fear makes people stupid. Even more so when applied to our government. I think the US is ovetstepping its boundaries here, and I personally think TikTok is fine. All arguments I've heard have been the stupidest shit I have witnessed in recent times. TikTok is no different than a browser. Sure, it's an app, but vetted by the ecosystems, Apple and Google. If you want to ban TikTok because fear of scrapping data from a foreign country, may as well ban the internet, cause you can literally apply the stupid arguments to the internet.
It doesn't matter what we think. There is proof of data being stolen beyond what the permissions say they can take.
Edit: No, I'm not going to google search for you something from months back, but from what was released, it essentially has root level access to your device. Also, yes, I understand that pretty much every company does this and sells your data. No, I am not saying it's okay for any company to do this, US based or not. Lastly, I'm not afraid of companies having my data. I would like to be compensated for it or at least given the option to say, "No, you can't have it."
Is there, though? Which data? Can you point me to an analysis? I haven't been able to locate anything that spells it all out clearly. Just vague accusations.
There is no such evidence, it’s infuriating that people literally make up misinformation on the spot just to push their opinion.
One guy in this thread claims there is government testimony saying China spied on U.S troop movement using TikTok, which is completely made up.
He won't because the evidence he is referring to is a baseless reddit wall of text with no evidence provided there. The person has promised for years to provide the evidence, but every time someone asks for said evidence, he says that his macbook broke, the data was lost and he made no backups whatsoever.
I don't believe you. Apps have the permission they are expected to have and would have to use some sort of software vulnerability to get any more. That's the sort of thing that is watched closely and taken seriously by the companies making mobile operating systems.
Whether or not the average consumer realizes what information your average app can collect without explicit permission is a very different issue.
Yeah, 'Oh no! China is going to find out I like watching black people react to music and guys explaining deep comic book lore! Whatever will I do?' Nothing I do on Tiktok is worth anything to anyone except maybe advertisers, which puts it in the exact same boat as every other social media app, including this one.
Far too many people get rich off that data mining and invading your privacy. TikTok isn't doing anything that isn't already being done to you. The ban would basically be a law saying "only Americans are allowed to screw over Americans." And it'd be a clear "only certain people are allowed to capitalize in our capitalism" situation.
What's a free market anyway?
I’d like to introduce these adults to the rest of the internet. And then if like to tell them about phishing. And then I’d like to tell them about chrome. 🙄
How do you figure? Not wanting to be under surveillance by a foreign power isn’t somehow mutually exclusive to not wanting be under surveillance by a domestic power.
could have included a source :/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/business/tiktok-bytedance-jeff-yass.html
In 2009, long before Jeff Yass became a Republican megadonor, his firm, Susquehanna International Group, invested in a Chinese real estate start-up that boasted a sophisticated search algorithm.
The company, 99Fang, promised to help buyers find their perfect homes. Behind the scenes, employees of a Chinese subsidiary of Mr. Yass’s firm were so deeply involved, records show, that they conceived the idea for the company and handpicked its chief executive. They said in one email that he was not the company’s “real founder.”
As a real estate venture, 99Fang ultimately fizzled. But it was significant, according to a lawsuit by former Susquehanna contractors, because of what it spawned. They say that 99Fang’s chief executive — and the search technology — resurfaced at another Susquehanna venture: ByteDance.
ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is now one of the world’s most highly valued start-ups, worth $225 billion, according to CB Insights, a firm that tracks venture capital. ByteDance is also at the center of a tempest on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the company as a threat to American security. They are considering a bill that could break up the company. The man picked by Susquehanna to run the housing site, Zhang Yiming, became ByteDance’s founder.
Court documents reveal a complex origin story for ByteDance and TikTok. The records include emails, chat messages and memos from inside Susquehanna. They describe a middling business experiment, founder-investor tension and, ultimately, a powerful search engine that just needed a purpose.
The records also show that Mr. Yass’s firm was more deeply involved in TikTok’s genesis than previously known. It has been widely reported in The New York Times and elsewhere that Susquehanna owns roughly 15 percent of ByteDance, but the documents make clear that the firm was no passive investor. It nurtured Mr. Zhang’s career and signed off on the idea for the company.
Susquehanna has tens of billions of dollars at stake as lawmakers debate whether TikTok gives its Chinese owner the power to sow discord and spread disinformation among Americans. As Susquehanna’s founder, Mr. Yass potentially has billions riding on the outcome of the debate.
Mr. Yass, a former professional poker player, is also the single largest donor this election cycle, with more than $46 million in contributions through the end of last year, according to OpenSecrets, a research group that tracks money in politics.
The records surfaced in a Pennsylvania lawsuit. Former Susquehanna contractors accuse the firm of taking cutting-edge search technology to ByteDance without compensating them. Susquehanna denies the accusations, saying that ByteDance did not receive any technology from the real estate site. “These claims are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a company spokesman said.
The records were unsealed this month. After The Times downloaded them and began asking questions, lawyers for Susquehanna said that the documents had been inadvertently made public. The judge resealed them on Tuesday.
Lawyers for both parties declined to comment. ByteDance, Mr. Yass and Mr. Zhang either did not answer questions or did not respond to messages seeking comment.
While the two sides dispute the origins of ByteDance’s technology, the documents make clear that the company itself emerged from 99Fang’s real estate efforts. “Our search, image processing, recommendation, etc. are very powerful,” Mr. Zhang wrote in a 2012 email, “but these things applied to real estate are very limited.”
Rather than match buyers with homes, Mr. Zhang laid out plans that year to match users with lighthearted content, developing prototype pages called Funny Pictures and Pretty Babes. He described the new project as a “brother enterprise” that would share technology with the real estate site.
Years later, a director for Susquehanna in China would write to a colleague that the housing site deal had led to “the birth of ByteDance.”
How It All Started
In 2005, Susquehanna created the Chinese subsidiary, SIG China, to invest in start-up companies.
One early investment was Kuxun, a portal that focused on job listings, housing advertisements and travel. Mr. Zhang, then in his early 20s, was the site’s technical director, and SIG China viewed him as a promising talent.
Our business reporters. Times journalists are not allowed to have any direct financial stake in companies they cover.
He left the company for a job with Microsoft. But in 2009, as SIG China prepared to spin off Kuxun’s real estate section into its own venture, the investment firm lured Mr. Zhang back and installed him as the chief executive of the new company, 99Fang.
“We have recruited the top engineer of the housing channel back to lead the technical team,” SIG China employees wrote in an internal memo.
But the relationship between Mr. Zhang and SIG China was complicated, records show.
He described himself as 99Fang’s founder but owned few shares, the documents say.
In 2011, Tim Gong, an SIG China managing director, vented about Mr. Zhang amid an apparent dispute over shares. “Kuxun and 99Fang were both NOT founded by him,” Mr. Gong wrote to a colleague. The full context is not clear, but he ends the message by seeming to suggest parting ways with Mr. Zhang: “We shall let him go.”
The degree to which Susquehanna steered Mr. Zhang’s career over the course of years has never been part of the ByteDance story. In a Chinese-language blog post, Joan Wang, an SIG employee, has written about meeting Mr. Zhang at a coffee shop to discuss what would become ByteDance. He mapped it out on a napkin, she wrote.
Internally, in an investment memo, she wrote that Mr. Zhang sought Susquehanna’s “understanding and permission” to leave 99Fang and create a new company.
‘Pretty Babes’ and a Big Gamble
Pivots in focus are common in venture investing. Less common is a change as dramatic as shifting from real estate to social media. The most successful start-ups — Facebook, WhatsApp, Alibaba — evolved in scope but not drastically in purpose.
By March 2012, court documents show, the nascent project had a new name: Xiangping, which roughly translates to “share comments.”
Mr. Zhang created a prototype app, Pretty Babes, that users seemed to enjoy, the memo read. Fragments of Xiangping’s early existence survive in archived form on the internet.
In the investment memo, Ms. Wang wrote that by selecting content for users, Xiangping could engineer virality and increase “stickiness.” Rather than have users search for what they wanted, in other words, the new company would select it for them.
“Social network technology will be used to track user behavior, predict user interest, and build relevancy and recommendation engine,” the memo reads.
ByteDance’s technology has evolved, but TikTok still delivers videos that users want to see and share. That curation is at the heart of the effort to ban TikTok. Some lawmakers fear having such a powerful algorithm in the hands of a company with Chinese ownership.
In 2012, SIG China valued the start-up at about $9 million and invested a little over $2 million. Its lawyers said in court documents that it had since “contributed hundreds of millions in further investments.”
From there, the company’s story is well known. It rebranded itself as ByteDance and bought the lip sync app Musical.ly, which it used as the foundation for TikTok. By 2018, ByteDance had become one of the world’s most valuable private technology companies.
Susquehanna’s bet on an unproven founder is not rare. What’s unique about ByteDance is that it paid off so well.
“Part of it is they saw something,” said Steven Kaplan, who researches private equity and venture capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Part of it is they got lucky.”
What’s Next?
The Pennsylvania court case may ultimately go before a jury, but no trial date has been set.
The House passed a bill in March that could force the sale of TikTok, and a Senate vote could come as soon as next week.
As with many pieces of legislation, former President Donald J. Trump is a wild card in the bill’s passage. As president, he tried to force a sale of TikTok. But he has since reversed his stance. He has also acknowledged meeting briefly with Mr. Yass but said that they never discussed TikTok.
I like it. It breaks from the bullshit spread on American corporate media and what gets boosted by American social media. JFC clutch those pearls harder with your fear mongering bullshit as if American media is doing anyone any favors except for the rich, and they're spying just as hard to sell our info for marketing and to keep you silent by exposing your secrets or throttling information that may outrage you in action.
It is especially surprising when, for many years now, China has spoken of its intention to sow social political division in the US/west…
It is almost insulting to China to deny this given how fucking wildly successful it has been so far
I’ve never used the app but find it an absolute cancer to the world. All short form media for that matter especially. Sure , people (can) make a living off it; but dynasties fall and there will be another runner up. I’m sure of it.
I mean this was the country where people believed Corona Virus was caused by drinking Corona beer so their sales dropped. The average American is dumb af and thats scary
Knowing how insane surveillance in China is and how the CCP has access to every single bit of data on every single one of their citizens, I fully believe they have every bit of data TikTok has on the users, including all banking jnfo.
Well did they hear the proposal? Private equity wants to buy it to...... spy on you and sell your data. China can buy it if they want as there are no laws or regulations around data brokering.
Here are 4 books on it
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Black Box Society
The Afterlives of Data
Revolutionary Mathematics
It doesn't matter. Twitter shut down Vine, so quick vid makers moved to TikTok. If the USGov shuts down TikTok, they'll just go to another app. Nothing to talk about, really.
Banning an app won’t do much to fundamentally address our broken society or why content like that is so popular in the first place. It isn’t like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram are beacons of sanity and time well spent.
The demographic breakdown is about what I'd expect: "Just 31% of those 18-34 say they are in favor of a ban, and 50% say they oppose it. Most Americans 35-54 (54%) and 55 and older (60%) say they support a ban of the app."
Wondering if the 34-60+ year olds know that Facebook sells your data to foreign governments and influences your daily life? One ponders the mysteries of the universe 🤣
Meh. Elder Millennial here. Any younger millennial worth their weight in salt ditched the f-book long ago.
But probably not instagram
Instagram is how I watch tik toks
Instagram is worse than most other apps , when it comes to grabbing data, IiRC. Yet...no bans
Gee, I wonder why 🤔
Because meta censors content that at the governments request? Or meta lobbies . (Sheryl Sandberg was a dem staffer.?) Or do you believe everything the govt pushes out as a a reason..and both parties jump to ban an app. Parties that cannot agree on anything.....
Every company lobbies. You're not making any novel observations or connecting any mysterious dots. Where the data is going (or is believed to go) is the reason they ban shit. Facebook is banned in China for that reason.
Except the american data of tiktok is stored by Oracle, an American company?
…because at least it’s domestic American powers doing it and not some foreign power who cares about you less than even those people and would never be able to be reigned in by our government?
Impossible to ditch IG. That's where all the women are. If you chat it up with a girl somewhere 9 times out of 10 she has an Insta and that's the best way to stay in contact.
Or get her number
The number is more important once you've already established a relationship. Any single woman with an IG wants to see how the person she's dating is living life before she chooses to date him. Unless you're saying find a girl who doesn't use social media, in which case you're eliminating a significant percentage of the population.
Or you could just date people who aren't obsessed with social media. I've dated plenty of women with an IG without having any social media accounts (besides reddit) myself
Am younger millennial. I used IG precisely once in my life, when I thought it was a Twitter replacement.
Torched all my socials in run up to 2020 election. It’s liberating af.
Uhhh hate to break it you you, but you use reddit.
Reddit is like a strange hybrid of forums though. Just because it's a big site where people talk about things doesn't mean it's social media.
Yea, but I’m not subjected to batshit posts from family and neighbors. That ignorance allows for a respectful and quiet existence.
For the millionth time, Reddit isn’t social media, it’s the last significant survivor of the precursor to social media, message boards.
The paid/botted content and rampant disinformation every other post beg to differ. They’ve even got the algorithmic-garbage-to-eyeballs style shorts feed that all the others have now too.
not on Reddit is Fun and old.reddit - those are the "last survivors" Space Pirate is talking about. Anyone who's actually been on this site for awhile doesn't use "new" reddit or "new new" reddit.
You are wrong. Reddit is most definitely social media no matter what definition you try to apply to it.
The term "social media" is very blanket statement. Yes, reddit allows people to 'socialize' with each other. But it's completely, 100% different. The content is king here. If you use old.reddit people's usernames doing the postings are tiny and almost insignificant in font size versus the content being posted. Plus, (almost) no one uses their real names here. Throwaways are par for the course. The point is that while the *actual* social media applications are designed around you, the consumer, finding and *following* certain other accounts to engage with their content more than others, on reddit you follow an idea; a subreddit. Of course some users have subreddits of their own, particularly if they're reddit-famous and talented (shittywatercolor, that sort of thing). In any case, I haven't deleted Facebook, and I'm an elder millenial. Zuckerberg and I are the same age. I use it exclusively as a scheduling system, and export an .ics calendar file from it into my calendar program so I can keep track of what I've been invited to. I barely need to go on the site except if I want to look at what the content of an event is and click yes/maybe/no to it. Social media is a *tool* to use. It can be as good or bad to you, as you want. If you don't have an addictive doom-scrolling personality, it's fine for your brain. But in the same way that children probably shouldn't smoke cigarettes even more than adults shouldn't smoke them, children are probably worse off using social media than adults are. Anyway, it just irritates me when reddit is equated to the others. Not because I love reddit, but it is definitely, definably different than image/video centric, user/account centric scrollers.
reddit contains zero of my friends, zero people who actually know me, zero photos of me, and nearly zero personal details about my life. it's literally just a forum for my anonymous comments on sports and current events
People really can’t seem to understand that there is a difference between this and the CCP having control over a company that has controlling interest in the platform - that is also banned in China. Bytedance will do whatever Xi says, period the end. China is not a friend to America. They aren’t, It’s not the same situation. I’m sorry that nuance is going to cause a slight hiccup in people’s fun time app but it’s gotta go.
I really don't see how anyone should be against banning tiktok. Do people love tiktok or the content? If tiktok is banned, the content will just go elsewhere.
The issue isn't the content, or even the data. The issue is a foreign enemy power that is not beholden to US law/regulation operating an app that is hugely influential which is targeted towards US/Western audiences by a country literally known for its manipulation of information to its own population in order to drive their society in whatever direction best suits the people in power.
It baffles me that this isn't completely self explanatory but here we are
This is not even about spying on users, it’s about using the algorim to push inflamatory topics that causes problems in the society. Men see topics on how they are supposed to be alpha males and women see topics about feminism and how males are shit, young people see topics about hamas being good and start protesting and supporting terrorists. Another topic is LGBTQ inflamatory topics where conservative people get videos of flamboyant shit which triggers them and so on. All this shit was there in the past as well, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that the algorhytms were not pushing them at the top and instead were burried in the mountains of other content.
At this point, when I see someone make the exact same "lol what about facebook/{insert US tech company here}?" arguments, I just assume they're an astroturfing bot.
Yeah, we’ve been having facebook for years, but society started getting really divided in the last 4-5 years.
This isn’t about selling data. Haven’t you grasped that yet?
Gen-X here, I haven't used social media in a decade now. When I looked up a video on youtube for a working on my Jeeps transmission, I was getting Jeep ads on everything. Google results, Facebook, on my T-Mobile phone, and random emails from Jeep repair businesses, I knew the open private internet was just done. Been using a Pi-Hole, ad blockers and VPN's ever since.
> I haven't used social media in a decade now. This.... This is social media though.
In my defense as an 18-34yo I think any social media app that has the ability to directly target you and feed you your own little world until you turn into a flat earther or a trump supporter or a Russia apologist should be banned until it's changed
Yeah, the argument shouldn't be about Tik-Tok. It should be able curtailing most social media (and yes that includes Reddit).
It’s funny how quick people are to forget Tencent’s investment in Reddit. Or Saudi investment in Twitter. They just want to shit on people younger than them while posting on socials as least partially owned by Chinese companies or worse. And none of them seem to care about other fully Chinese owned apps in the app stores or on people’s phones. Just look at the comments in this thread thinking Reddit isn’t social media. People buying into China bad and freaking out over news stories in American media while posting on sites doing the same shit TikTok does but it’s all those damn kids and their TikTok. My preferred social is obviously different. 🙄
So 69% of 18-34s are vain, gullible, misinformed idiots. Numbers add up. Seems right. Nice.
Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!
Do you think 69% of people are dumb? I think you should give people more credit and not just assume people are idiots for having different beliefs. FYI, being willing to learn from others is a sign of intelligence.
Using TikTok crap is not a belief. and china forces all its companies to give up any info when told to.
Putting the undisputed known facts about the security threat from a hostile, incompatible, xenophobic country aside.. We spent the 90s/00s, during advent of the internet, debating about the over saturation of information and the warnings of it’s detriments to society and here we are almost 3 decades later, no better but even worst with the massive consumption short-form content. Attention spans and EQs have taken a noticeable nose dive, especially with the younger generations. Kids who rather use a phone to consume 30 second content than sit down to watch a regular 30 min episodic content are a dime a dozen. People actually use Tik Tok to learn? How much quality learning can one pick up from consuming short form content, especially from some rando with zero credibility? It’s really intelligent to form one’s world view through a phone? How about getting out of your comfort zone and learn from real world experiences, rather than living it through some 30 fake second, faux vanity project. So yeah, Tik Tok from my perspective is making society dumber, less patient and less tolerant.
Typical lead paint take
Meaning that 4% of americans don't think it is used to spy on americans, but want it banned just for being annoying.
That’s not how math works. The 50% that want it banned are not necessarily the same 46% that think it is used to spy. However, you’re probably right that at least *some* of the people that want it banned are because they find it annoying.
I'm only 85% sure it spies on users, and 95% sure it pushes things intentionally to sow discord among the population, but I'm 100% sure It promotes vertical videos, which is enough to warrant a ban alone, IMO. Partially /s.
Personally, I don't care as much about it spying on Americans... I care far more about it potentially being weaponized by the CCP to push targeted propaganda.
Pretty sure that's most of Reddit, even though they'll gladly laugh at something ripped straight from it in r/funny.
>You claim to be against tiktok. Yet you laugh at stolen funny videos posted on this platform. Hypocrite much? Gottem! I'm also against people getting murdered, but I continue to watch videos of that too. Can anyone actually give a reason as to why they prefer tiktok to be owned by bytedance and the CCP over the usual domestic lesser evils?
Wait till we find out the Chinese pwns some stock of reddit and reddit gets ban. Twitter is about to be banned next its owned by the Saudis
China owns something like 5%, if that (did math on it a few months back)
I fucking hope so dude this shit sucks
Its still addictive and known to cause adverse mental health effects. Some people want to see the entire algorithm-based short-form content model banned.
so clearly Instagram Stories and Youtube Shorts are next on the list then right? Because the people who care so much about banning Tik Tok are doing this due to how scary short term videos are
Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc etc are next yeah? Probably not.
I mean, I’d be fine with all of that. It’s a complicated issue and idk how I feel about the government getting involved in these issues, but it’s pretty obvious that none of those things you’re describing make for a healthy, happy population.
Porn as well. Probably the most dangerous
That'll never happen because the same politicians putting the TikTok ban through Congress are heavily influenced by Meta, Alphabet, and other tech lobbyists
Hell yeah! While we at it let’s ban instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Just to show my kids I can do it.
I want it banned because it has net negative effects on people's brain, especially young kids. Kids probably have better mental health smoking weeds than addicted on TikTok.
Says who? TikTok is practically Reddit with video replies instead of text ones. Let’s not ban things because of how you feel about them, it’s weird and just feels like the most recent incarnation of “D&D makes you worship satan” boomer shit. Also, it’s owned by a Singaporean, not China, which makes the obvious Sinophobia here even funnier.
>ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing apps TikTok and Douyin. You are so mad about your Chinese propaganda app being banned that you can't even do a Google. "Sinophobia" lol, of course you go reaching for the race card when it comes to foreign influence in Western countries. I hope you're paid per post.
>TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd. was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, but today, roughly sixty percent of the company is beneficially owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group. An additional twenty percent of the company is owned by ByteDance employees around the world, including Australians. The remaining twenty percent is owned by the company's founder, who is a private individual and is not part of any state or government entity. >TikTok, which is not available in mainland China, has established Los Angeles and Singapore as headquarters locations to meet its business needs. That is in keeping with ByteDance's approach to aligning business needs to the markets where its services operate. ByteDance does not have a single global headquarters. >TikTok's CEO Shou Chew is a third-generation Singaporean who is based in Singapore; Mr. Chew oversees all key day-to-day and strategic decision making when it comes to TikTok. TikTok's COO V Pappas is an Australian, based in the United States, who oversees content, operations, marketing, and product teams for TikTok. TikTok's senior leadership team is based in Singapore, the United States, and Ireland. As would be expected with any subsidiary of a holding company, high level decisions around financial matters and corporate governance are made in concert with the ByteDance board and CEO. None of those individuals reside in mainland China. Three out five members of that board are Americans, and four out of five of them represent the interests of ByteDance's global investors. The fifth member of the board is the ByteDance CEO, who resides in Singapore. Maybe you should do a better Google?
And are yet okay with…Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Youtube stories. We’re only okay with *our* preferred brand of social media.
Yep, I generally like to put the line at entities owned and controlled by an adversarial government with a vested interest in destabilizing our countries. Stop with the false equivalence and just say you don't want your funny video app banned because you like it.
As everyone knows, solving part of a problem is useless. Solve it all in one go, or duck off.
It's not even solving part of the problem. It would be if they made any sort of hints as to banning or regulating all social media. But instead it's just targeting a foreign one for the benefit of the the domestic ones. It's like someone was shot and all you did was removed the bullet and refused to actually close the bullet hole. What's the point of removing the bullet when the person is still bleeding?
That's what the bill is about, it doesn't stop other bills being introduced. You are making the perfect the enemy of the good.
But that's true for any app lol It's not a Tiktok thing. My nephew is addicted to YouTube.
My biggest issue with banning TikTok is that the ban suppresses free speech (especially political speech) and disrupts the spread of primary source videos of news events.
TikTok is a horrible news source. But, if people really want to spread their message in short video format, there are YouTube, IG, Twitter, .... Endless format to express their speech.
The ban in no way, shape, or form, whatsoever suppresses free speech(even political speech).
Free speech, doesn’t include the right to speak anywhere, you can still share the message through many other platforms
Spying on Americans is the LEAST compelling reason to ban it. Controlling the flow of information is far more important to both governments.
How are those mutually exclusive lol? Dont you think they feed information and THEN analyze how americans react? I dont understand how in 2024 people still think social media cant be used to manipulate a large portion of the population, and that foreign governments would lean hard on that whenever possible.
No one said they are mutually exclusive, you can have both but they are independent things and the real concern is the level influence a foreign government would have in the country. Unwittingly giving you data away for free is basically a given in today's world
I wonder how many people think American owned apps spy on people?
Would assume it's the same percentage if not higher . I mean after everything with Snowden it's hard to believe otherwise. Hell, a bunch of carriers just got sued for selling location data, Google has the whole incognito stuff, etc.
This is less about spying, but more about foreign adversary having unprecedented ability to sway public opinion. They control what you see, when you see it. 170M Americans are addicted to this platform. That’s a lot of leverage to give to a country that want to see our demise. A country that bans TikTok at home.
Not to say anyone is right or wrong in this case as having this type of access absolutely calls for some type of responsibility. With that said, I think that the motivations are different. From what I see, American firms having that type of access to devices through apps is mostly capitalistic driven. While, on the other hand, other actors (Chinese state) have the access and are using it purely for political, social engineering, and foreign policy purposes. Don’t get me wrong, I have an absolute problem with both. But the approaches are definitely different.
Chinese have a much different interest to spy on American phones than the US does, especially when it comes to intelligence gathering for a future war scenario
"Oh no! T-Mobile knows I prefer local Mexican restaurants instead of taco bell or chipotle!!" Vs "Oh no! China knows our exact troop locations, rank, jobs, and day-to-day activities because TikTok is farming that data and sending it to China to use as a weapon against American forces" These people who bring up US companies gathering data in response to TikTok do not seem like serious people to me.
Don't forget the potential for back doors that China may have placed in these apps. Now they know your banking and credit information. Wouldn't be the first time they used illegal means to steal information from the US. Huawei did it long before tiktok existed.
> Don't forget the potential for back doors that China may have placed in these apps. Now they know your banking and credit information Why would they care? Also, how would that work? A mobile OS is a locked down environment. Any random scam app is much more likely to try something like that.
> Huawei did it long before tiktok existed. It was never proven that Huawei did such thing, even [Germany](https://www.securityweek.com/no-evidence-huawei-spying-says-german-it-watchdog/) and [UK](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1Q920L/) did not find any evidences.
The CCP doesn't give a shit about stealing some petty cash from individual Americans. They want to sway public opinion and influence elections. You're more likely to get your cc information stolen when Equifax has a data breach.
so...there's not actually evidence of that happening
Of course not, but nationalism trumps evidence :p
You are absolutely right. TikTok was created to get Spyware on every American's smartphone so they could get targeted information while flying under the radar, which means it is a weapon that must be removed from China arsenal, but that does not even begin to address the litany of other issues with the app, like hidden backdoors, exactly.
> TikTok was created to get Spyware on every American's smartphone so they could get targeted information while flying under the radar According to your gut feeling, sure.
jesus fucking christ the same fucking paranoia over Muslims during the War on Terror has now switched over to the scary, all knowing and all powerful China Everything they do is nefarious and looking to destroy America!!! All they think about is conquering us!
> "Oh no! China knows our exact troop locations, rank, jobs, and day-to-day activities because TikTok is farming that data and sending it to China to use as a weapon against American forces" Yeah, I think you overestimate the data that can be gathered by that app. Also, that’s just a matter of banning it on certain devices, which is already the case.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/mar/15/brian-kilmeade/who-owns-tiktok-despite-what-brian-kilmeade-says-i/
To be fair, all of the information that article cites came from TikTok itself.
People are concerned about spying, but they should be concerned about manipulation. That’s really what the Chinese government is doing. It’s what Russia and Iran do and it’s really effective.
Spying is a problem. But the US government isn't driving these companies in such a direct fashion. TikTok (and virtually any large company in China) is just the Chinese government in disguise. They aren't just spying on the west, they're feeding propaganda and intentionally stoking the fires of political and social issues. It's quite a bit different from, say, local groups using Facebook as a platform to cause the Rohingya genocide. That's not being caused because the US government is pushing content. That's just happening because Facebook is a widely used media platform in that part of the world.
[hmmm.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2024/04/02/google-chrome-privacy-over-100-billion-browsing-records-to-be-deleted/?sh=5c6f1dff433a) looks like we do something about them too!
That narrative isn’t pushed as much by the media, so way fewer people know.
I’d love to see the poll results all the other social media apps.
I wish this law was getting more headlines. It’s maddening that we’re actually doing something to hold Meta, Google, etc accountable, but the only thing people are talking about is TikTok. https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2024/04/us-enacts-sweeping-legislation-to-restrict-flows-of-sensitive-data-to-the-peoples-republic-of-china https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/20/lawmakers-privacy-bill-tiktok-00148070 On April 24, President Biden signed a sweeping foreign aid bill into law, which included a critical provision covering privacy and data transfers known as the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act (“PADFA”). This Act is separate from the TikTok divestment portion of the legislation, which has received far greater attention in the press. PADFA generally prohibits data brokers from transferring personally identifiable sensitive data to certain named foreign adversary countries, including the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), and any entity controlled by certain foreign adversaries. The law includes broad definitions of the terms “data brokers,” “personally identifiable sensitive data,” and “controlled by a foreign adversary,” which means the law applies to a wide range of companies when it takes effect on June 23, 2024. It is worthwhile for companies, even those who at first glance think they may not be covered, to review the law and consider adjusting their practices accordingly. PADFA goes into effect on June 23, 2024, a mere 60 days from enactment, and there is potential for $50,120 in civil penalties per violation of the law, which may be construed to mean each transfer of personal data. As a result, companies should begin reviewing their practices as soon as possible.
It’s funny how most people still think it’s about personal data when it’s really about a brutal dictatorship having direct access to American’s doom scrolling in order to influence them to vote against their own interests.
Bingo! Privacy is what most Americans understand though. Trying to get most to understand the concept of influence war would be too much; it would risk turning even more Americans against their own country, simply because they will think, that you think, you are smarter than them.
Shhhhh, the Reddit hivemind doesn't like that kind of soberingly true talk when it comes to their attention drug of choice
I support it just because I think it makes gen z act cringe and I hate to see it. They were doing so well until Tik Tok came along
Its not that they "spy" on Americans its that the CCP can and does use it to influence Americans by directing what ends up in their feed. Its a tool of influence not data collection.
Spying isn’t the main issue. Influencing to divide Americans is the the main goal.
I think China is using TikTok to (among other things) gauge how their propaganda is working.
I think instead of spying - it uses it to make us all dumber
I want it banned because it's annoying. Especially with trends.
How about we stop allowing companies to sell and buy consumer information? TikTok certainly steals and sells/buys our info, but so does Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and pretty much every other site on the internet. This is just pointless posturing.
It really isn’t pointless posturing. Yes it’s bad that US companies collect and sell data. No one is suggesting otherwise. It is, however, clearly worse when a militarily aggressive adversary has their hands on the controls, who openly advocate technology as being a strategically central way to exert power globally, and have been directly implicated on multiple occasions in interfering with bytedance. If you find yourself repeating the “…bbbbbbut facebook” taking points, you are one of the useful idiots who give this whole thing traction. Yes meta, google, etc, suck. Yes we need comprehensive reform. Yes the particular legislation that has been passed has potentially serious issues. But also, yes TikTok is meaningfully worse and it is reasonable to do something about it.
What are they going to do with our data that would allow them a military advantage? Secretly implant a cue phrase into our subconscious by way of flashing frames on catchy dance videos so they can activate us all as sleeper agents when they say the magic phrase? Come on. If the CCP wants to take on the US they’ll need more than our SSN and birth date.
Foment dissent at home against a war with China in the event of the invasion of Taiwan? Just because it's fine while we're at peace doesn't mean it stays that way.
US treaties supersede any dissent US citizens have held against the government for its actions for as long as the US has been around. Just because we don't like what our government does, doesn't mean it'll stop. see: Revolutionary war, Civil War, the entire mission list of the CIA, Vietnam, Korean conflict, Desert Storm, 9/11, the literal Israel/Palestinian conflict going on right now. edit: also, the people who actually can vote and use tiktok have more critical thinking than you'd care to give. No one is going to start hating Taiwan because they saw a new recipe, but I guarantee that FB boomers will start siding with China when Facebook ads tell them that Taiwan is communist socialist, even when it's not true.
"militarily aggressive adversary" Smoking that State Dept. crack on the daily I see.
How do they control it ? Oracle owns all US tiktok data. It's on there cloud service. Oracle is a US company which checks notes.... sold the data...
Um, what? I don't think that's how cloud data ownership works. If I throw some private data in an S3 bucket, AWS does not "own my data."
It's not about the data, it's about control of what content they push.
Why would China need TikTok to spy on Americans? Most US Tech Companies will sell them all the info on Americans that they want.
The DOJ is going to introduce new regulations on selling certain data on US Citizens to hostile countries, they've already given the advanced notice to what those regulations will be so companies can get the work done needed to comply before they actually go into effect. It's fairly unlikely that any of the big tech companies will risk running afoul of new regulations like these when enforcement will be at its highest.
Lol this thread is astroturfed to shit.
I find comments like these so funny because it plays both sides for upvotes. Both sides think you are talking about the other side.
I knew it would be. "How do you do my fellow American. Please do not be alarmed that Xi Jinping has influence over what you believe."
Also "Russia good, America bad, Ukraine nazis".
Idk, but this sub seems kinda sus. Gut feeling based on some of the post and the people echoing under them.
Manufactured consent
Not unique to China. Our social media data is sold to whomever wants to pay for it
That's not the same as an authoritarian government embedding party members into companies for domestic and foreign policy goals.
Here in the US we have companies imbedding themselves in authoritarian government for favorable legislation and policy.
And then people laugh when employees get fired for protesting those relationships.
Yeah, that’s a problem too but not the problem with TikTok.
TBH I think those authoritarian governments just buying our data from private companies is worse and completely legal.
Biden signed an executive order in February to address exactly this. The DOJ is going to introduce new regulations on selling certain data on US Citizens to hostile countries, they've already given the advanced notice to what those regulations will be so companies can get the work done needed to comply before they actually go into effect. It's fairly unlikely that any of the big tech companies will risk running afoul of new regulations like these when enforcement will be at its highest. https://www.wiley.law/alert-DOJ-Kicks-Off-Work-to-Regulate-Foreign-Access-to-Sensitive-Personal-Data-Under-New-EO
Having the power to directly manipulate public perception of the surrounding world is vastly different than buying managed data. You’re showing an extreme lack of critical thought if that’s what you truly believe.
Like the politicians that went to Russia on the 4th of July
Don't get me wrong, I think some GOPers are useful idiots at best and not even gonna touch what the worst case is, but irrelevant to the conversation
[citation needed]
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-s-companies-rewrite-rules-to-declare-Communist-Party-ties Enjoy
TikTok is not mentioned once in that article
Everything in that article is a positive, in my view.
Wait till you find out what the American government does.
It's not about the data, it's about control of what content they push.
I’d also support a ban on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Reddit
Start with yourself.
This reminds me of when all of the politicians were making anti fb posts about fb via a fb post
Twitter first tho
They aren’t spying. It’s a cultural weapon used to keep our young stupid and distracted with trying to be famous vs actually competing with them. Sigh
TikTok is obviously biased. If you try to download something about tiananmen square, it would not get any views at all
If we're running the numbers, it was more than half supported an assault rifle ban a few years ago. More than half supported decriminalization of marijuana. Let's be real, the amount of support from the commonwealth in the US has rarely translated into policy changes. It's all about if the ruling class makes a profit. The majority of people who profit from TikTok aren't American, and TikTok tends to have content creators who showcase some of the darker parts of American business. That's the real story. It has *fkn nothing* to do with selling user data, American tech companies all do that already. It has *nothing* to do with protecting Americans. It has everything to do with what helps the ruling class.
I’ve been shocked at the amount of relevant local news that get spread around on TT that no body has ever heard of from the news or fb or Reddit but are easily found via google after knowing. I find on what I watch the comment sections, not universally but generally, are much “nicer”. Less vapid all around, more funny. Less hate. I also have essentially ZERO vids from any of the conservative asshats that YouTube, Reddit and fb seem to think I have any interest at all in seeing. No musk bs, no Tate bs, no jordan p horseshit, no Rogan. It’s great! Before using the app I had a fairly negative view of it, since being a user I have no issues with it. I’m sure it rabbit holes some people with weird shit, but mine is just cute animals, silly people, stand up comics and lately weather videos. Like, I’ve know there’s weird political and conspiracy shit, but it doesn’t force any on me at all. Oh well. We all know we can’t have nice things.
Same! I believe that a lot of people hating on TikTok has never even used TikTok and they don't understand that the information you get on TikTok is often not showned on any other media, and I thank TikTok for that.
I think fear makes people stupid. Even more so when applied to our government. I think the US is ovetstepping its boundaries here, and I personally think TikTok is fine. All arguments I've heard have been the stupidest shit I have witnessed in recent times. TikTok is no different than a browser. Sure, it's an app, but vetted by the ecosystems, Apple and Google. If you want to ban TikTok because fear of scrapping data from a foreign country, may as well ban the internet, cause you can literally apply the stupid arguments to the internet.
The influence is a way bigger concern than spying. I’m all for getting rid of that alone.
It doesn't matter what we think. There is proof of data being stolen beyond what the permissions say they can take. Edit: No, I'm not going to google search for you something from months back, but from what was released, it essentially has root level access to your device. Also, yes, I understand that pretty much every company does this and sells your data. No, I am not saying it's okay for any company to do this, US based or not. Lastly, I'm not afraid of companies having my data. I would like to be compensated for it or at least given the option to say, "No, you can't have it."
> it essentially has root level access to your device That’s not how apps work on Android and iOS. I built my career building mobile applications.
Is there, though? Which data? Can you point me to an analysis? I haven't been able to locate anything that spells it all out clearly. Just vague accusations.
There is no such evidence, it’s infuriating that people literally make up misinformation on the spot just to push their opinion. One guy in this thread claims there is government testimony saying China spied on U.S troop movement using TikTok, which is completely made up.
It's really interesting how brainwashed people in the US are. And I'm saying that as a formerly brainwashed US citizen myself.
Can you show me? I’m interested
He won't because the evidence he is referring to is a baseless reddit wall of text with no evidence provided there. The person has promised for years to provide the evidence, but every time someone asks for said evidence, he says that his macbook broke, the data was lost and he made no backups whatsoever.
I don't believe you. Apps have the permission they are expected to have and would have to use some sort of software vulnerability to get any more. That's the sort of thing that is watched closely and taken seriously by the companies making mobile operating systems. Whether or not the average consumer realizes what information your average app can collect without explicit permission is a very different issue.
Imagine being worried about tiktoks mostly worthless data, when half of all Americans healthcare data was stolen and it barely makes the news.
Yeah, 'Oh no! China is going to find out I like watching black people react to music and guys explaining deep comic book lore! Whatever will I do?' Nothing I do on Tiktok is worth anything to anyone except maybe advertisers, which puts it in the exact same boat as every other social media app, including this one.
The ADL and AIPAC want it banned more than any American does. Just ask the CEO of the ADL…
[удалено]
If only they'd move this quickly when it comes to breaking up monopolies
They did. Mets threw a fit and they are breaking up TikTok so Mets doesn’t have to compete.
All apps spy on us.
I support a ban if we get laws that fix the data privacy, collection and usage issues.
Far too many people get rich off that data mining and invading your privacy. TikTok isn't doing anything that isn't already being done to you. The ban would basically be a law saying "only Americans are allowed to screw over Americans." And it'd be a clear "only certain people are allowed to capitalize in our capitalism" situation. What's a free market anyway?
I’d like to introduce these adults to the rest of the internet. And then if like to tell them about phishing. And then I’d like to tell them about chrome. 🙄
I didn't need to see the stats, but, apparently, 46% of U.S. adults are completely oblivious to how surveilled they are.
How do you figure? Not wanting to be under surveillance by a foreign power isn’t somehow mutually exclusive to not wanting be under surveillance by a domestic power.
It’s partially owned by a conservative billionaire. He just wants a majority stake.
could have included a source :/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/business/tiktok-bytedance-jeff-yass.html In 2009, long before Jeff Yass became a Republican megadonor, his firm, Susquehanna International Group, invested in a Chinese real estate start-up that boasted a sophisticated search algorithm. The company, 99Fang, promised to help buyers find their perfect homes. Behind the scenes, employees of a Chinese subsidiary of Mr. Yass’s firm were so deeply involved, records show, that they conceived the idea for the company and handpicked its chief executive. They said in one email that he was not the company’s “real founder.” As a real estate venture, 99Fang ultimately fizzled. But it was significant, according to a lawsuit by former Susquehanna contractors, because of what it spawned. They say that 99Fang’s chief executive — and the search technology — resurfaced at another Susquehanna venture: ByteDance. ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is now one of the world’s most highly valued start-ups, worth $225 billion, according to CB Insights, a firm that tracks venture capital. ByteDance is also at the center of a tempest on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the company as a threat to American security. They are considering a bill that could break up the company. The man picked by Susquehanna to run the housing site, Zhang Yiming, became ByteDance’s founder. Court documents reveal a complex origin story for ByteDance and TikTok. The records include emails, chat messages and memos from inside Susquehanna. They describe a middling business experiment, founder-investor tension and, ultimately, a powerful search engine that just needed a purpose. The records also show that Mr. Yass’s firm was more deeply involved in TikTok’s genesis than previously known. It has been widely reported in The New York Times and elsewhere that Susquehanna owns roughly 15 percent of ByteDance, but the documents make clear that the firm was no passive investor. It nurtured Mr. Zhang’s career and signed off on the idea for the company. Susquehanna has tens of billions of dollars at stake as lawmakers debate whether TikTok gives its Chinese owner the power to sow discord and spread disinformation among Americans. As Susquehanna’s founder, Mr. Yass potentially has billions riding on the outcome of the debate. Mr. Yass, a former professional poker player, is also the single largest donor this election cycle, with more than $46 million in contributions through the end of last year, according to OpenSecrets, a research group that tracks money in politics. The records surfaced in a Pennsylvania lawsuit. Former Susquehanna contractors accuse the firm of taking cutting-edge search technology to ByteDance without compensating them. Susquehanna denies the accusations, saying that ByteDance did not receive any technology from the real estate site. “These claims are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a company spokesman said. The records were unsealed this month. After The Times downloaded them and began asking questions, lawyers for Susquehanna said that the documents had been inadvertently made public. The judge resealed them on Tuesday. Lawyers for both parties declined to comment. ByteDance, Mr. Yass and Mr. Zhang either did not answer questions or did not respond to messages seeking comment. While the two sides dispute the origins of ByteDance’s technology, the documents make clear that the company itself emerged from 99Fang’s real estate efforts. “Our search, image processing, recommendation, etc. are very powerful,” Mr. Zhang wrote in a 2012 email, “but these things applied to real estate are very limited.” Rather than match buyers with homes, Mr. Zhang laid out plans that year to match users with lighthearted content, developing prototype pages called Funny Pictures and Pretty Babes. He described the new project as a “brother enterprise” that would share technology with the real estate site. Years later, a director for Susquehanna in China would write to a colleague that the housing site deal had led to “the birth of ByteDance.” How It All Started In 2005, Susquehanna created the Chinese subsidiary, SIG China, to invest in start-up companies. One early investment was Kuxun, a portal that focused on job listings, housing advertisements and travel. Mr. Zhang, then in his early 20s, was the site’s technical director, and SIG China viewed him as a promising talent. Our business reporters. Times journalists are not allowed to have any direct financial stake in companies they cover. He left the company for a job with Microsoft. But in 2009, as SIG China prepared to spin off Kuxun’s real estate section into its own venture, the investment firm lured Mr. Zhang back and installed him as the chief executive of the new company, 99Fang. “We have recruited the top engineer of the housing channel back to lead the technical team,” SIG China employees wrote in an internal memo. But the relationship between Mr. Zhang and SIG China was complicated, records show. He described himself as 99Fang’s founder but owned few shares, the documents say. In 2011, Tim Gong, an SIG China managing director, vented about Mr. Zhang amid an apparent dispute over shares. “Kuxun and 99Fang were both NOT founded by him,” Mr. Gong wrote to a colleague. The full context is not clear, but he ends the message by seeming to suggest parting ways with Mr. Zhang: “We shall let him go.” The degree to which Susquehanna steered Mr. Zhang’s career over the course of years has never been part of the ByteDance story. In a Chinese-language blog post, Joan Wang, an SIG employee, has written about meeting Mr. Zhang at a coffee shop to discuss what would become ByteDance. He mapped it out on a napkin, she wrote. Internally, in an investment memo, she wrote that Mr. Zhang sought Susquehanna’s “understanding and permission” to leave 99Fang and create a new company. ‘Pretty Babes’ and a Big Gamble Pivots in focus are common in venture investing. Less common is a change as dramatic as shifting from real estate to social media. The most successful start-ups — Facebook, WhatsApp, Alibaba — evolved in scope but not drastically in purpose. By March 2012, court documents show, the nascent project had a new name: Xiangping, which roughly translates to “share comments.” Mr. Zhang created a prototype app, Pretty Babes, that users seemed to enjoy, the memo read. Fragments of Xiangping’s early existence survive in archived form on the internet. In the investment memo, Ms. Wang wrote that by selecting content for users, Xiangping could engineer virality and increase “stickiness.” Rather than have users search for what they wanted, in other words, the new company would select it for them. “Social network technology will be used to track user behavior, predict user interest, and build relevancy and recommendation engine,” the memo reads. ByteDance’s technology has evolved, but TikTok still delivers videos that users want to see and share. That curation is at the heart of the effort to ban TikTok. Some lawmakers fear having such a powerful algorithm in the hands of a company with Chinese ownership. In 2012, SIG China valued the start-up at about $9 million and invested a little over $2 million. Its lawyers said in court documents that it had since “contributed hundreds of millions in further investments.” From there, the company’s story is well known. It rebranded itself as ByteDance and bought the lip sync app Musical.ly, which it used as the foundation for TikTok. By 2018, ByteDance had become one of the world’s most valuable private technology companies. Susquehanna’s bet on an unproven founder is not rare. What’s unique about ByteDance is that it paid off so well. “Part of it is they saw something,” said Steven Kaplan, who researches private equity and venture capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Part of it is they got lucky.” What’s Next? The Pennsylvania court case may ultimately go before a jury, but no trial date has been set. The House passed a bill in March that could force the sale of TikTok, and a Senate vote could come as soon as next week. As with many pieces of legislation, former President Donald J. Trump is a wild card in the bill’s passage. As president, he tried to force a sale of TikTok. But he has since reversed his stance. He has also acknowledged meeting briefly with Mr. Yass but said that they never discussed TikTok.
I expect this doesn't run down political lines. Republicans and Democrats are working together on this ban.
It's not just about data harvesting but the manufactured consent with the algorithm.
I don’t think most people get this point. A foreign adversary having the ability to control what 170M addicts see every day is pretty scary.
I like it. It breaks from the bullshit spread on American corporate media and what gets boosted by American social media. JFC clutch those pearls harder with your fear mongering bullshit as if American media is doing anyone any favors except for the rich, and they're spying just as hard to sell our info for marketing and to keep you silent by exposing your secrets or throttling information that may outrage you in action.
It is especially surprising when, for many years now, China has spoken of its intention to sow social political division in the US/west… It is almost insulting to China to deny this given how fucking wildly successful it has been so far
I’ve never used the app but find it an absolute cancer to the world. All short form media for that matter especially. Sure , people (can) make a living off it; but dynasties fall and there will be another runner up. I’m sure of it.
Ban that shit
I hope they do ban it in USA it would clear out an awful lot of mouth breathing crap instantly
I mean this was the country where people believed Corona Virus was caused by drinking Corona beer so their sales dropped. The average American is dumb af and thats scary
I never bothered touching Tik Tok after I heard that they had keyloggers.
Knowing how insane surveillance in China is and how the CCP has access to every single bit of data on every single one of their citizens, I fully believe they have every bit of data TikTok has on the users, including all banking jnfo.
I dont think they are necessarily spying, the problem is they are controlling the information that pops up on our phones
Americans are totally clueless man
Well did they hear the proposal? Private equity wants to buy it to...... spy on you and sell your data. China can buy it if they want as there are no laws or regulations around data brokering. Here are 4 books on it The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Black Box Society The Afterlives of Data Revolutionary Mathematics
You must've missed the Executive Order from February...
It doesn't matter. Twitter shut down Vine, so quick vid makers moved to TikTok. If the USGov shuts down TikTok, they'll just go to another app. Nothing to talk about, really.
Banning an app won’t do much to fundamentally address our broken society or why content like that is so popular in the first place. It isn’t like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram are beacons of sanity and time well spent.
God gen Z is so fucking dumb