We now know that as a practical matter, American companies do cooperate with the US government in spying, influence operations, etc., and that the US government has a massive surveillance apparatus that is highly opaque and beyond the control of the American public.
That's why the sudden concern about TikTok theoretically being a problem comes across as an excuse for going after yet another Chinese company, as a way to pressure China and hamper its development.
It's surprising to see people in the US defend tiktok without realizing what's actually going on behind the scenes. Every company that does business in China, especially if hugely successful, will have the government step in to intervene and spy.
Because there are well-established mechanisms by which private entities with direct influence over what’s shown to Americans can (and actually do) push back against US government influence on themselves.
TikTok is a component of the Chinese government, like every large Chinese company. The Chinese state is engaged in hybrid warfare through all of its dimensions of influence, including its “private enterprise.” This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is the official legal foundation of what corporations are in China.
Corporations in every country operate with the permission of their governing states. China’s governing state is of the opinion — not secret, not conspiratorial, not subtle — that their permission is granted on the basis of those corporations’ alignment with state priorities.
It is totally fair to assume they are manipulating or at best will manipulate when requested.
My comment wasn't specific to TikTok, but rather OP's assertion that the U.S. is a hostile actor, whereas China is just being China.
Regarding TikTok, foreign-owned companies must follow U.S. laws, which are subject to due process. Additionally, they must not pose an imminent threat to national security. For better or worse, the government tends to be tight-lipped about matters of national security and isn't compelled to divulge details to the public. Normally, this is acceptable because we trust our government to act responsibility and in our best interest. Is TikTok a legitimate threat to security? I don't know, and with Trump's tendency to make everything look like a publicity stunt, my trust in the government to use its power responsibly is not very high.
I think there is also the impression that, even if china has not already been leaning on TikTok, if they ever did TikTok would necessarily relent. Whereas in the US we have examples of companies (e.g. apple) denying requests from the Feds.
Now I'm not saying this is necessarily true, but I think that is where the concern is coming from.
You are displaying a level of paranoia about the Chinese government that is clearly unhealthy. When US apps are facing legislation abroad that would ban them or regulate them
in unfavorable ways they also notify their users. Take a step back and ask yourselves what the multinational company TikTok would do when facing a ban in one of its most profitable markets. Probably rally their users to oppose it.
The Chinese government
and the US government exert their influence over companies in the same way -- regulation, backdoor conversations asking them to kill/mute stories, and NSL type requests. There's not some
government propagandist sitting at a switchboard. In fact it's the "West" that goes above and beyond with an entire technical apparatus to real-time mass censor social media to "protect democracy." If you don't consider every US company to be a direct arm of the US government but do for China then it's because your feeling about China than your feelings about social media manipulation.
It is in China's interest to avoid divestment because TikTok is a successful company making China money. And now it's in their interest to avoid divestment to not get bullied by the US gov't. If TikTok had the power you and others in this thread ascribe to them they would be more successful at swaying public opinion.
There's an important difference between a Chinese company and a company controlled by the CCP.
Unfortunately, as long as the CCP rules China all Chinese companies will fall under the supreme control of the CCP.
Note how the article doesn't mention the CCP, it talks about China and the Chinese "government" like if we are dealing with Canada or UK and not with an authoritarian regime, supporter of pariah states like Putin's regime and hostile to America and its allies.
The argument that TikTok is not doing anything worse than any other American social media app is tiresome.
We don't need to deny the fact that American social media companies are abusing loopholes in our justice system to harm American citizens, to recognize that a massive surveillance system deployed by a dictatorship, geopolitical adversary and military power like the CCP on American soil via social media platforms like TikTok represents a much greater thread to our institutions and national security than anything Meta, Google or any other American company could be acussed of doing.
I just don't see the issue. This isn't how US companies want to be treated, even when the US govt is acting badly. TikTok doesn't appear to be uniquely different.
I also struggle to view China as an adversary. US and China are each other's number one trading partners. We are allies. Why not try to build on that productive relationship?
TikTok specifically has ties to the Chinese state apparatus that are concerning, similarly to Huawei. This isn't a blanket statement about Chinese companies in general - just those companies in particular. Specifically, this means these companies' products are likely to be tools of PRC state intelligence and the PRC's foreign-policy directives. The same cannot be said about other Chinese companies and similarly positioned companies in other countries.
This wouldn't be as big an issue if the PRC was a NATO ally, or least had a reputation for government transparency and accountability - and wasn't asserting ridiculous territorial claims - and didn't have an egregious human-rights record - and wasn't actively suppressing freedom-of-expression - and so on. Take away a couple of these issues and TikTok's suspicious business conduct over the past few years would be about the same level as scummy American Freemium game makers. I stress that (and despite appearances) I'm trying not to make a Sinophobic argument.
At the same time, I recognize that companies in China need to integrate themselves with the CCP/PLA/etc in order to succeed in that market.
Your assertion that "Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary" is incomplete. Tiktok's policy of sharing user data allows the Chinese government all of the power they need, at least in terms of data collection.
Re: the influence argument your points are stronger, I think. Thompson's article felt a bit like scaremongering there.
Probably the issue then is that the US government trusts US companies more than Chinese companies, when they shouldn't. I agree with the parent company that if China wanted this data they could probably get it very easily and they most likely probably have it.
The frustration is that for years, privacy advocates have been trying to find the right set of words to make people understand that it is bad for US companies have so much data on so many Americans. The argument is always dismissed as not being an important issue, or that it's good for rooting out terrorists or pedophiles. But privacy advocates have also been saying this whole time, "what if this data falls into the wrong hands" on deaf ears.
In an ideal world we would ban TikTok but also regulate how user data is obtained, stored, and used by US companies.
China can and already has used tiktok to influence the U.S. population. Just because the US spies a bunch doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protect our best interests.
The stated issue is that TikTok may share American user data with China and that there’s not any real way for the US to prevent this possibility. So it’s seen as a national security issue that the Chinese govt could track Americans. TikTok has insisted that there’s no way that user data could be shared with the Chinese govt but I think US regulation bodies and intelligence do not buy it.
It's simple for me really. The threat of the nefarious and corrupted Chinese government lurking has caused the US government to react.
Call US government whatever you want in another conversation, but China has a direct line to every user of Tiktok, and we don't know they plan to leverage that against US interests. Their hail mary with Tiktok could cause a social collapse if they engineered it like how the Russians engineered English social media for the last 7 years.
Almost half of Americans are using TikTok. If the Chinese govt. can spy on Americans than this is definitely a national security concern. I understand that American companies like FB and Google are doing it too but hopefully they are not selling the data to Chinese companies.
After I typed that I feel FB and Google would sell data to highest bidder.
Maybe it is time to focus on privacy and clearly understanding what apps are gathering from users and how that data is being used/sold.
If TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place. It's mainland China that concerns people and governments.
The concerns about TikTok are that it's potentially Chinese government spyware because TikTok is owned by a mainland Chinese company which has legal obligations to the Chinese government.
Zoom is a US company that is not answerable to the Chinese government. Like many companies, Zoom has chosen to outsource some of its operations, and those overseas offices create various infosec risks. And given that Zoom infosec seems to be a total clown show, those infosec risks are probably more serious at Zoom. But that would be equally true of any other American company that is really lax about security and too cheap to employ American developers.
Speaking personally, here's why TikTok concerns me: TikTok is a Chinese business, and China has shown no limit to how much it will meddle in the affairs of and even take control of Chinese businesses for the furthering of the Chinese state's agenda.
Simultaneously, TikTok has captured the daily attention spans of millions of Americans, many of them especially young and impressionable. They've captured their attention in the form of a black box algorithm that promotes content in whichever way TikTok deems most appropriate.
These two facts mean that the Chinese government now has direct access to the brains of millions of young Americans, with zero oversight. Imagine China subtly promoting videos to create outrage and civil unrest in the US, or to feed anti-US propaganda to germinate terrorist groups in the US. These might sound like far flung possibilities, but I think it's hard to say what a country that views the US as its enemy (politically, economically, philosophically) might do with that kind of power, and I don't think we can wait to find out.
The issue with Chinese tech companies isn't really a matter of personal privacy -- it's a matter of national security.
Chinese tech companies can (and often are) required to work directly in conjunction with the Chinese military to further their goals and operations.
Also, the US has separate agencies and requirements for setting domestic policy vs foreign policy. The authorities that oversee what Facebook does is entirely different from the authorities that oversee what TikTok does -- so this is not a matter of a single group 'choosing' between the two. The laws of the US intentionally have more rigor for domestic issues.
That's why the sudden concern about TikTok theoretically being a problem comes across as an excuse for going after yet another Chinese company, as a way to pressure China and hamper its development.
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