Submitted by prehistoric_knight t3_10358xf in technology
HanaBothWays t1_j2wy26r wrote
I am actually very uneasy about all these pushes to ban specific Chinese companies from doing business in the U.S. (ZTE, Huwaei, and now TikTok). Our supply chains, trade, and overall economy are so deeply enmeshed and interdependent by now. You can’t really put that toothpaste back in the tube.
On the one hand, if one country bans some of the other’s businesses, that’s just a drop in the bucket really. It also creates incentives for workarounds, smuggling, counterfeits, etc. which are already problems in the supply chain.
On the other hand, if one country decides to really screw and/or cut off the other…that would be devastating for both. And historically trade wars are often followed by wars of the more conventional kind. In a war between us and China, nobody would really win and the whole world would lose.
While China does do a lot of espionage and influence stuff we should be concerned about (stealing intellectual property, state-sponsored hacking, doing business with more openly hostile nation-states with Russia and North Korea), it would be really monumentally stupid to treat them like they’re, I don’t know, actually Russia or Iran or something. We already foreclosed on that option a long time ago. Again, we’re too enmeshed and we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Craterdome t1_j2x7xvc wrote
How do you feel about China disallowing companies like Google from operating freely within its country? They wouldn't allow our media companies to dominate their landscape and we shouldn't allow the reverse.
jaam01 t1_j313hi9 wrote
The problem is that a widespread ban offer Tik Tok could be considered a violation of the first amendment subject to lawsuits.
HanaBothWays t1_j2x8cit wrote
Two wrongs don’t make a right and the whole idea of talking about “dominating” each other’s media landscape is bizarre is what I think.
Craterdome t1_j2x9itg wrote
You may think it's fine that TikTok has abused their power to spy on journalists who report on them, but I'm glad the US government does not find that OK.
The_frozen_one t1_j2xnqt4 wrote
Then why not generalize this? Why is it ok for any number of companies to collect data on US citizens, well beyond what is necessary to operate, with little to no oversight or accountability? The solution isn’t adhoc. Make all tech companies accountable. Require any company that meets a size threshold to have a regular external audit of their practices, with big enough repercussions for violations that companies can’t just pay a small fine and change nothing.
TikTok is low hanging fruit, but what’s the point if data brokers can legally resell mountains of information about you? The truth is TikTok isn’t breaking the law in most instances, we just don’t have any law that prevents what they are doing. National security arguments can’t be where this is fought, because we’ve seen over and over that countries will claim everything they don’t like is a national security issue.
HanaBothWays t1_j2xam4p wrote
ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, fired the employees who inappropriately accessed user data including the data of journalists. Seems like those employees were doing on their own in violation of company rules and ByteDance was not okay with it!
Lawmakers’ stated concerns about TikTok are not related to that issue specifically, and are mostly speculation about what the Chinese government might do with that data if they compel ByteDance to hand it over.
Congress also did not need to pass a law banning TikTok from being installed on Federal government devices (AKA Government Furnished Equipment or GFE). The White House or certain offices within Executive Branch agencies can prohibit certain software from being installed on GFE, without a bill being passed. If you know that, you know passing a bill to make that happen is a bunch of jingoistic chest-thumping nonsense.
Craterdome t1_j2xb1yu wrote
Hey look they found some scapegoats to fire. Look I don’t trust them and you do, not much more to argue about here.
HanaBothWays t1_j2xcbxv wrote
You can be a conspiracy theorist about it or man up and apply the Occam’s Razor principle, maybe.
WeatherMonster t1_j2xhzcf wrote
Occam's Razor says China is using Tik Tok to spy on everyone.
[deleted] t1_j2xcpos wrote
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StrangerThanGene t1_j2xd0da wrote
>The internal ByteDance report, as first reported by the New York Times, found that the employees accessed IP addresses and other data of two U.S.-based reporters via their TikTok accounts — one for BuzzFeed News and one at the Financial Times — along with several individuals connected to the reporters.
This should be even more concerning. ByteDance is a company that allows employees user-access to database entries.
This is... wildly unsecure. Screw the employees, how in the hell did they even have access to client IP information? It's literally not something any employee would ever have cause to access. This is why we write functions to handle traffic.
The fact that this happened at all should be setting off every alarm bell and red flag you have about data security.
Photos99999 t1_j2xdhdx wrote
You don’t mind your personal information being compromised I guess. Man the stupidity on here
HanaBothWays t1_j2xfw0a wrote
> You don’t mind your personal information being compromised I guess.
Bro your entire life history and sensitive financial information is held by Experian, which is one of the credit reporting bureaus, which you cannot opt out of. Chinese state-sponsored hackers got all their stuff in 2015. Your medical records and your financial records have probably also been compromised multiple times (sometimes those hacks make the news, sometimes they don’t, freeze your credit).
Facebook can track your stuff even if you don’t have an account with them because they have scripts on all the most popular Web sites. You are actually safer from them if you have an account with them and don’t use if for anything except to max out your privacy settings - it’s the only way to opt out.
The ISP you are using to connect to this website, and most of the services you use online, collect and collate information on you, and sell it to data brokers (which the Chinese government can purchase from by the way, like anyone else).
That horse has left the barn for all of us.
[deleted] t1_j2xg8xh wrote
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bigguccisofa_ t1_j2xpvh6 wrote
No I think he knows that he’s just saying ur protections from them are futile bc of what he’s stated
you’d get that if you weren’t just racist against the Chinese but masquerading it as a privacy concern. As a private American citizen what can the CCP even do to you?
Photos99999 t1_j2xvxuu wrote
What’s that old line about don’t argue with stupid pigs because they love the dirt or something
bigguccisofa_ t1_j2yimuk wrote
ur as bright as I expected
[deleted] t1_j2yjosf wrote
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rocklee8 t1_j2xkjhu wrote
Found the China official PR accoutn
HanaBothWays t1_j2xlndw wrote
Stick to sports.
RogueNarc t1_j2xt0i0 wrote
>it would be really monumentally stupid to treat them like they’re, I don’t know, actually Russia or Iran or something. We already foreclosed on that option a long time ago. Again, we’re too enmeshed and we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
China is worse than Iran or Russia. They have greater economic strength, stronger international relations, a seemingly competent military and strong internal cohesion. They want to be top dog and that position inherently cannot be shared.
HanaBothWays t1_j2xtudn wrote
> They want to be top dog and that position inherently cannot be shared.
IMAX-level projection
[deleted] t1_j2yccax wrote
Boy, wait until I tell you about the American companies that China has banned
HanaBothWays t1_j2yczdr wrote
Does that mean we should do it when we aren’t in active hostilities with them? I thought they weren’t a free country but we were? Did I misunderstand?
[deleted] t1_j2ydxcr wrote
It’s just ridiculous that you have China specific blinders on and you’re getting called out for swallowing the Kool Aid ✨
HanaBothWays t1_j2yeits wrote
Yeah okay sure
Last time we had your kind of attitude about another county we wasted 20 years, trillions of dollars, and a lot of American lives on a military misadventure that destabilized a whole region and they didn’t even have a comparable military force or nukes but I’m the one drinking Kool-Aid. Right.
xynix_ie t1_j2yndq4 wrote
The only companies interested in doing business in China are greedy companies that don't mind when China allows it's technology to be ripped off and copied. Many of these companies STILL think that somehow China's 80 billion people are somehow going to magically purchase their gear.
No. They're not. They're going to purchase the stolen gear for much less and despite every company like Apple getting their teeth kicked in every single year they line up for a fresh kicking to the face every single year.
Smart companies have already left, having had too many teeth gone missing the past decade.
So we're not tied to China. In fact if the borders closed this very second the only thing that would happen is Americans would have to figure out how to manufacture a fucking bag of screws again. For that we have 3D printers - time to end this relationship entirely.
Bunch of thieves and their government is ran by a dictator professing to be a damned emperor of all things. Ridiculous. Good riddance.
HanaBothWays t1_j2yow2b wrote
> The only companies interested in doing business in China are greedy companies that don’t mind when China allows it’s technology to be ripped off and copied.
This is laughably incorrect. Most of the manufactured products in your home have components that were fabricated or assembled in China. Whatever you typed that on? Partly if not completely assembled in China. Same for the routing equipment of your ISP that put it on the internet.
> Smart companies have already left, having had too many teeth gone missing the past decade.
No, a good chunk of the world’s global manufacturing is still there.
> So we’re not tied to China. In fact if the borders closed this very second the only thing that would happen is Americans would have to figure out how to manufacture a fucking bag of screws again.
Our economy would melt down overnight before we figured that out (so would theirs). We might not even have the means to build our own domestic production capacity for a century or so if we did that. Ask anyone who works in a statewide factory or a shipping or logistics company.
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