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Instead of Banning TikTok, Should We Regulate It Aggressively? (msnbc.com) 88

Posted by EditorDavid from the social-justice dept.
"TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday about safety and national security concerns surrounding his social media behemoth," writes MSNBC, adding "He was not well received." Given what we know about how Big Tech abuses data, about how China's authoritarian government systematically embraces surveillance as a tool of social control, and about the increasingly adversarial geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China, it's not sinophobic to ask questions about how to guard against TikTok's misuse. It's common sense. While a ban is probably too drastic and may fail to solve all the issues at hand, regulating the company is sensible. Fortunately, one of the key ways to address some of the concerns posed by TikTok — restricting all companies' capacity to collect data on Americans — could help us solve problems with online life that extends well beyond this social media platform....

[Evan Greer, the director at Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization], believes members of Congress laser focused on TikTok are "on a sidequest" in the scheme of a bigger crisis of surveillance of online life; Greer points to the American Data Privacy and Protection Act as a potential solution. That law would put in place strong data minimization policies, strictly limiting how and how much data companies can collect on people online. It also would deal a huge blow to the power of the algorithms of TikTok and other social media apps because their content recommendation relies on collecting huge amounts of data about its users. The passage of that act would force any company operating in the U.S., not just TikTok, to collect far less data — and reduce all social media companies' capacities to shape the flow of information through algorithmic amplification.

In addition to privacy legislation, the Federal Trade Commission could play a more aggressive role in creating and enforcing rules around commercial surveillance, Greer pointed out. TikTok raises legitimately tricky questions about national security. But it's not the only social media company that does, and national security concerns aren't the only reason to rethink the freedom we've given to social media companies in our society. Any time a powerful actor has vast control over the flow of information, it should be scrutinized as a possible source of exploitation, censorship and manipulation — and, when appropriate, regulated. TikTok should serve as the springboard for that conversation, not the beginning and ending of it.
CNN points out that TikTok isn't the only Chinese-owned platform finding viral success in America. "Of the top 10 most popular free apps on Apple's U.S. app store, four were developed with Chinese technology." Besides TikTok, there's also shopping app Temu, fast fashion retailer Shein and video editing app CapCut, which is also owned by ByteDance.
Duncan Clark, chairman and founder of investment advisory BDA China, tells CNN that these apps could be next.

But writing in the New York Times, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia argues that "it's difficult to see how a ban could survive First Amendment review." The Supreme Court and lower courts have held repeatedly that the mere invocation of national security is insufficient to justify the suppression of First Amendment rights. In court, the government will have to introduce evidence that the threats it is addressing are real, not merely conjectural, and that the proposed ban would address those threats. The evidence assembled so far is not likely to be sufficient. All of this will no doubt be frustrating to some policymakers, including to some who are commendably focused on the very real risks that social media companies' practices pose to Americans' privacy and security. But the legitimacy of our democracy depends on the free trade of information and ideas, including across international borders.
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Instead of Banning TikTok, Should We Regulate It Aggressively? More

Instead of Banning TikTok, Should We Regulate It Aggressively?

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  • Betteridge's law of headlines be damned (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @12:41PM (#63400605) Homepage

    Yes.

    Let's not stop with TikTok either, how about all social media be subject to stringent privacy requirements? Crazy idea, I know.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 )
      Thats why they would rather ban it.

      In the US, if you create laws to regulate a company, but not a competing company, it wont last long in the courts as a law.

      If they regulate data gathering, then companies whos valuation relies on data gathering (Google, Apple, Facebook, Reddit, etc) will get wrecked over night.

      Removing that much value from the stock market will cause problems at the companies with a large amount of employees, and possibly a stock market issue. All of this can cascade into a reces

      • Re:Betteridge's law of headlines be damned (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @01:16PM (#63400691) Homepage Journal

        Just put a ban on third party data exchange without the explicit signed permit of the users for every sharing and a specification of which data that's shared at each time. Also make sure that users have the "never share" option for their profile and that it shall be a forever setting.

        • How many people read the EULA when they install a game or other software? Almost none. How many people think if they do t let the app have control of what it now asks for, it wont work? Damn near all of them. You cant leave this shit up to end users. They are too fucking stupid. If they werent i would not be getting SMS shit, from totally bullshit 128 random character domains, about my ATT/Amazon/Netflix account being suspended for payment glitches. End users are mindless sheep. The gene pool needs a massi

          • The law shouldn't prevent use of the service.
            TikTok already disallows under 13 year olds from signing up because laws on data collection make them unprofitable.

            Make entities under the jurisdiction of foreign adversaries treat EVERYONE as under 13 year olds. Enforce it the same way this law is enforced. No collecting personal information. No money nothing. You can have tik tok and people can view it but ban them from making a dime off it.

      • This bill is designed to fail by being struck down because they all want to vote to ban tik tok which should be done, but they don't actually want to ban anything.
        Users could face up to 20 years in jail for performing transactions with entities and people under the jurisdiction of foreign adversaries such as china and whoever they wish to declare as such.

        (17) TRANSACTION.—The term “transaction” means any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any informatio

    • "... how about all social media be subject to stringent privacy requirements? Crazy idea, I know."

      Not crazy. Extremely difficult to achieve.

      Let's identify social media rules that are easy to enforce.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Let's do clearly unconstitutional bans of various companies

        Pedantically: are corporations recognised in the constitution?

        Anyway, I agree that regulation is clearly the way to go. Including some reciprocal regulation. It's more or less impossible for foreign companies to operated independently in some countries so why do reciprocal regulations not exist with all countries like that? Like you know, China...

        • Yes. "Congress shall make no law" means just that. You don't lose your First Amendment rights simply by banding together with other people for business purposes.

          • Both are right, corporations are not in the Constitution so the free speech rights they have are secondary or as you said derived from the freedom of the individuals associated together, example is why corporations themselves are not allowed to make direct campaign political contributions but the people of those can.

            Although commercial speech is entitled to First Amendment protection, the Court has clearly held that it is different from other forms of expression; it has remarked on the commonsense differenc

          • you have no congressional right to limited liability protection. You can say what you want but you don't have the right to extra immunity above what that constitution grants if you do. You can lie as a private individual. That's fraud or false advertising as a corporation.

    • Youâ(TM)re only modded +1 right now, and this should be higher than +5. I know thatâ(TM)s not possible, but this is the exact right answer.

    • Let's not stop with TikTok either, how about all social media be subject to stringent privacy requirements? Crazy idea, I know.

      I'd be a lot more open to the "China is spying on us" argument if I wasn't convinced the US government and commercial interests are already spying on us through every other internet platform.

      To paraphrase Otter in Animal House: "They can't spy on our citizens. Only we can spy on our citizens."

      The only reasonable response is to assume everything you do online is being watched by many groups and you shouldn't do anything online you don't want to see published on the front page of the New York Times.

  • Then I'm all for it.

    Youtube shorts is literally destroying youtube as we knew it. Yes I know you can use the APP and sort of manipulate it to not suggest shorts, but in the web app (such as in your browser) you still can't.

    I'm kind of tired of the shorts, they are promoting vertical content, they're filling like 33 percent of the screen, and when you have a big screen (which most smart TVs are these days) it's kind of a limiting experience.

    And you can only pause, you can't mute (unless you use your PC's mut

  • Why just TikTok (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @12:48PM (#63400621)
    All Social Media platforms need more regulation. They have long since past the point of just being bulletin boards and become active participants in what they do. That said, would anyone really miss TikTok if it was banned? People would just migrate to some other platform.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You need general privacy laws protecting you from all corporations. Make the justify every bit of data they collect, like they have to in Europe. Kill cookies. Make it clear that you own your data.

      • GDPR? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Great idea and there are similar rules in California. If a company breaks the GDPR rules they can be fined 4 percent of global income. Not sure how that would effect a company with headquartered in Beijing though.
      • The cookie-walls are an American thing. There is no mention of cookie in the European Privacy Directive, but there is a lot about tracking. Everyone needs consent before tracking someone. The American companies do not like it, and as a form of malicious compliance they have built monstrous cookie walls, just so they can shout "It's a stupid law and it hurts you!". The law itself does off course not harm anyone except the privacy criminals. But it's these firms that harm everybody with their lies and dark pa
        • The European "Data Protection Directive" which regulated personal data was replaced by GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in 2018. Cookies are subjected to GDPR if they are used to identify people and personal data. There is also the ePrivacy Directive (EPD), or the "cookie law", from 2009 which sometimes complements or overrides the GDPR. They both regulate cookies. And for the future there is the replacement of EPD called the ePrivacy Regulation (EPR). It was supposed to be accepted in 2018 togeth
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • They should make it a law that every site must be usable over Tor and they must accept any email address including throwaway ones, and not verify any phone number or other thing to be able to be certain of your identity. You get as much privacy as you want then.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      All Social Media platforms need more regulation.

      Yes, but the problem with Tiktok is that it was not owned by Americans. US cannot tolerate any foreign company winning against their companies, so the whole purpose is to force Bytedance to sell Tiktok to Americans so it becomes an American owned company, and then the CIA, FBI, DHS will all get their hands on Tiktok's data, which is the ultimate purpose of the whole farce.

      The same thing had already played out for Alstrom in France, Toshiba in Japan in the past, and most recently unsuccessfully for the firs

    • Why just TikTok? Because it's nominally a wing of the MSS (Ministry of State Security), and thus used to target individual Americans with propaganda designed to weaken democracy.

      I agree that social media should be regulated into strict privacy, which would break their business model.

      Nonetheless, there's a world of difference between selling marketing data to advertisers, and a hostile foreign actor using such data in an attempt to tear the nation apart.
    • My social media apps have an uninstall option. All the regulation I need.

  • If you want to get rid of it, don't try to edge around it: ban it.
    "Restrictions" simply shift goalposts and allow gaming of the rules.

    To be clear, I don't believe we should ban tiktok because it's futile to try and banning is ultimately the tools of dictatorship, not democracy. People will find a way, and you'd be giving the people who want to use it an additional frisson of 'naughty'.

    There are so many more things wrong with social media and our society than this, ultimately this is a distraction, that's a

  • How well has trading with China worked out so far? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HnT ( 306652 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @12:51PM (#63400637)

    Over the past decades all the neoliberalist greed has enabled Chyna to run one of the worst regimes in the world, unchanged and unchallenged. And now they do not need the US all that much anymore.
    Why would you continue trading and dealing with them if the last decades brought nothing but misery and a worse geopolitical situation than ever before?

    Isolate them, and ban their spyware. They are already banning all the US software, and you still have to debate? It never was an honest, open market or real free trade.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Over the past decades all the neoliberalist greed has enabled Chyna to run one of the worst regimes in the world, unchanged and unchallenged. And now they do not need the US all that much anymore.
      Why would you continue trading and dealing with them if the last decades brought nothing but misery and a worse geopolitical situation than ever before?

      Isolate them, and ban their spyware. They are already banning all the US software, and you still have to debate? It never was an honest, open market or real free tr

    • Who will we go after next, Japan (again), Germany, India? Label me troll if you want, but I'm tired of people dying due to the lies of our government, that keeps blaming everyone else for the consequences of our bad decisions.

      • Iran, Russia. Oh wait we already have them sanctioned (though Iran needs further isolation, most likely).

    • China hasn't banned US software, but they must follow Chinese laws in order to provide services to the Chinese market. You know, like Tiktok do.
      If the USA wants a version of Tiktok that is more like the one available in China, then perhaps they should have similar regulations.

  • So yes, it needs to be banned. Mobile security on all current platforms (both iPhone and Android) treats the owner of the devices as if they are the thing that needs to be secured against and they give WAY too much control of the device to the creators of the operating system, hardware or apps. By the definition of malware being software that acts against the wishes of the owner, Apple, Google and app developers are absolutely making malware that is preloaded on the devices. Especially ones like TikTok wher

  • What exactly is the problem with just being "sinophobic"? This is America. China is a foreign adversary.

    • Re: sinophobic (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BytePusher ( 209961 )
      Aside from not being an ignorant racists, your racism is being used to justify setting legal precedent to end freedom of speech. This is similar to how the Patriot Act and later on the Freedom Act to take away your freedom to privacy, justified through ignorant fear of Muslims.

      • You gotta be able to delineate an US vs a Them to have a team. Race has been used, geography has been used, religion has been used. But one thing is sure, if you're a loner vs a bunch of teams one of the teams that IS able to delineate us vs them will win.

        Are you an organism, or a collection of cells working individualistically?

    • Sino is a prefix that means Chinese. It is a broad word that includes the Chinese people and culture, as well as the nation that governs mainland China. China likes to define any challenge to the Communist Party as an attack on the Chinese people.
    • Because the Chinese government and the Chinese people aren't coextensive? I know you super-want to have an excuse to be racist, but you're going to need to find a less stupid one.

  • Tik Tok is being made a punching bag because they are foreign so blame them instead of the US mega corporations who are collecting tons of data on us and selling to each other and the government. Typical US politicians find someone easy to convince others to hate, blame them and distract people from the looking up at the real problem the mega corporations and super rich that are pulling the puppet strings of the US politicians.

  • It reminds me of people trying to ban the internet itself. Of course you can find examples of bad stuff on the internet, but it doesn't mean you should ban the internet itself and TikTok is no different - its just a small piece of the internet with a large network of users, the same way the internet itself does. This was not an investigation, it was a prosecution with nearly every member of congress already having a preconceived notion of what they will do regardless of how he answered any question. The que
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Ban all of TikTok's *actions* that are objectionable, and make every company also follow the same rules.

  • Can't trust communists. Period. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Petr Blazek ( 8018844 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @02:56PM (#63400915)

    You can't effectively regulate a business that must obey ANY request from a communist government.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Oh I dunno.... Give me some lightsabers and I'll regulate them, aggressively.

      • Jokes and sci-fi aside, they will always fear their government more than you.
        Now, their government has no brakes. No Supreme Court, no elections... So no limits for the requirements, and no limits for the means to enforce them.
        That's a fundamental problem for us to deal with them.

        • lol ..to put it mildly. We are on the cusp of WW3 and we are hip-deep(or worse) in Axis. When it kicks off, does everyone just fight themselves? Russia and China nuking NA would be exceedingly petty since that would kill plenty of their own people and then they also can't have our stuff. Can't really say the same in reverse. Steven Seagall does not count.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • When has aggressive regulation helped anything? How about we neither ban nor attempt to regulate TikTok and instead let individuals decide for themselves whether or not they want the app. Its privacy issues are well known by now, so people can make an informed decision for themselves.

  • on all government devices seems fair to me. Government workers can use their personal phones for entertainment and their government issued device for government/work. Same goes for professional environments. Something something work/life balance. Your personal phone shouldn't really be intermingled with work for a variety of reasons. Maybe if you are your own boss and run your own company but outside of that, a clear separation should exist.

  • So, the idea is that the US government should issue rules to restrict a company that it already suspects to be non-compliant. So, if those companies continue to be non-compliant, would the consequence be more rules? Maybe there should also be a committee formed.

    The only way regulations might be effective is if there is a financial bite. For example, for each infraction there would be an escalating penalty that is a a percentage of US revenues, where both the determination of an infraction and the estimat

  • I'm still amazed that people are talking about TikTok as a technology or a company or something. They're completely, maybe willfully, blind to the reality of it.

    TikTok is a weapon. It operates under the direct and total control of the Chinese Communist Party, and its algorithms and policies and the second-order effects of those things are aimed towards advancing the goals of the CCP. They would not tolerate its existence in any other case.

    The algorithmic disparities between the Chinese mainland version o

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't think that's right. TikTok is a commercial entity, focused on making as much money as they can, like pretty much any other company. I suspect that the difference between the US and Chinese version of the app is because CCP regulation requires them to promote 'wholesome' topics. If their algorithm promoted videos featuring people eating laundry detergent in the Chinese version, there'd probably be senior executives going to jail or being disappeared in very short order. Outside of China, however, the

  • Before we do anything... (Score:3)

    by DulcetTone ( 601692 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @08:56PM (#63401911)

    we need to ensure that two honest ponderings occur:

    1. We need to understand that the EU objects to the privacy practices of American corporations in much the same way we appear to worry about China's practices

    2. We need China to grasp that while we are merely CONSIDERING reining in TikTok, China has long banned the use of YouTube and Facebook

  • China Has banned Thousands of Western Websites and not a peep from the Media about it, But the US wants to Ban ONE App and they wanna complain. China Think THEY Have ALL Rights to Do What they Want In the US Without repercussion, and they Need to Be Smacked down. the US Should Ban WEChat as well Cut Their access to China off.
  • Everybody already knows what FakeFuk is, just like Fakebook and the rest. They use them to the extent they are irresponsible and indifferent to reality. In which case, their opinions shouldn't matter in the least, since they've already declared that they don't even care about themselves.
  • When tiktok challenges result in emergency room visits, school absenteeism, denial of prescription drugs to diabetics, or stolen cars - if the platform doesn't squelch/censor the challenges, they should be liable for the damages.

  • Ban that puppy!

    The basic problem is the Chinese company that is involved with the app is under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party, who cannot be disobeyed when it requires it be given all the traffic on the whole app minute by minute. So, when some airhead in the states talks about their Dad or their Brother being deployed to BumF.... Thailand, then this country's greatest adversary's government knows it too. With enough listening, and especially with AI computers understanding, they may be able t

  • Deregulation is inevitably an industry scam (e.g. the prison industry, the removal of laws regarding media ownership, the removal of glass-Steagall, etc.).

    Government's job should be to *protect* capitalism by enforcing fairness (i.e. antitrust laws) and to protect against its excesses (making products like food, medicine and cars more dangerous because it's cheaper, private equity takeovers).

  • So, instead of singling out one company (the Yellow Peril scare again), set up privacy legislation that bans any company that collects personal data on individuals from passing that information on to any third party. So, if you can't monetize the data you collect, most companies will stop doing it. This will have the added advantage of putting those other scumbags - the 'Credit Reference Bureaus' - out of business.

  • The problem fundamentally is one of digital violation, and digital abuse. It doesn't matter if you're talking about ByteDance, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or the coffee store on the corner ran by your buddy. No company, of any size, should be allowed to collect, retain, analyze, examine, or perform any kind of analytic or run about analytic scan or use of your data, without explicit and exacting consent.

    The issue at hand has nothing to do with TikTok, the issue has to do with collection and misuse of data
  • Nah, don't REGULATE it, TAX it!

  • "If it moves, TAX it. If it keeps moving, REGULATE it. And if it stops moving, SUBSIDIZE it" - Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)

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