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Government China Social Networks

Did the US Government Ignore a Chance to Make TikTok Safer? (yahoo.com) 59

Posted by EditorDavid from the social-goods dept.
"To save itself, TikTok in 2022 offered the U.S. government an extraordinary deal," reports the Washington Post. The video app, owned by a Chinese company, said it would let federal officials pick its U.S. operation's board of directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire and would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code, according to a copy of the company's proposal. It even offered to give federal officials a kill switch that would shut the app down in the United States if they felt it remained a threat.

The Biden administration, however, went its own way. Officials declined the proposal, forfeiting potential influence over one of the world's most popular apps in favor of a blunter option: a forced-sale law signed last month by President Biden that could lead to TikTok's nationwide ban. The government has never publicly explained why it rejected TikTok's proposal, opting instead for a potentially protracted constitutional battle that many expect to end up before the Supreme Court... But the extent to which the United States evaluated or disregarded TikTok's proposal, known as Project Texas, is likely to be a core point of dispute in court, where TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, are challenging the sale-or-ban law as an "unconstitutional assertion of power."

The episode raises questions over whether the government, when presented with a way to address its concerns, chose instead to back an effort that would see the company sold to an American buyer, even though some of the issues officials have warned about — the opaque influence of its recommendation algorithm, the privacy of user data — probably would still be unresolved under new ownership...

A senior Biden administration official said in a statement that the administration "determined more than a year ago that the solution proposed by the parties at the time would be insufficient to address the serious national security risks presented. While we have consistently engaged with the company about our concerns and potential solutions, it became clear that divestment from its foreign ownership was and remains necessary."
"Since federal officials announced an investigation into TikTok in 2019, the app's user base has doubled to more than 170 million U.S. accounts," according to the article.

It also includes this assessment from Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University law professor who researches international tech policy. "The government had a complete absence of faith in [its] ability to regulate technology platforms, because there might be some vulnerability that might exist somewhere down the line."
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Did the US Government Ignore a Chance to Make TikTok Safer? More

Did the US Government Ignore a Chance to Make TikTok Safer?

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  • The U.S. government doesn't have the kind of control that would have allowed such a thing. Maybe TikTok was working under Chinese law, and felt American law was the same?

    • I agree that governments shouldn't have that kind of influence. Including chinas. But I don't think the US government should be able to force them to sell it either. I guess I'd say I half agree with you. In my opinion, I would like to see everyone butt out of the business and raise awareness of the users that perhaps everything they are reading shouldn't be treated as the truth.

      • In my opinion, I would like to see everyone butt out of the business and raise awareness of the users that perhaps everything they are reading shouldn't be treated as the truth.

        You must have just woken from a coma. Had you been awake in 2020-2021, you'd know no amount of telling people what they were reading and being told was false had any effect.

    • The U.S. government doesn't have the kind of control that would have allowed such a thing. Maybe TikTok was working under Chinese law, and felt American law was the same?

      There are special agreements called "consent decrees" which allow you to agree almost anything as long as the two parties are happy with that. Lots of things could be agreed and written down in such an agreement. Probably what Bytedance was proposing could fit within such a scheme.

      I think the problem is different. If they were talking about "source code" instead of about administration then it sounds very much like an agreement which was designed to seem to address the issues that the US admin was talking a

      • The problem here is that the US government canâ(TM)t run a for-profit business as they proposed. Iâ(TM)m sure ByteDance is aware of this and the proposal was just a sham for some quick media influence and look, it worked.

        Had they operated ByteDance in the way proposed, the next question would be what branch of the government and what agency would run it, a special set of laws would have to be crafted. Would ByteDance, being a subsidiary of the federal government now be subject to FOIA requests as

  • I am not feeling any better about the US government having influence over tiktok than I am about China having it. Governments shouldn't have that kind of influence over anything. Including forcing sales.

  • Couple issues with this stories narrative (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday June 02, 2024 @11:15AM (#64517615)

    Firstly is if TikTok was expecting this deal to be done via Executive Order which seems to be the inference with talks of how the Biden Admin walked away from the deal but any EO can be superseded by Congress and if Congress is doing investigations and Congress is planning legislation then there's little incentive to work directly with TikTok when that is still on the table. If they make this deal for EO and then Congress passes a bill anyway that's not a good look and the Biden admin has shown it will give the greatest deference to something bipartisan from Congress.

    Second is the idea that government "lacks faith" in ability rather than the fact this this:

    The video app, owned by a Chinese company, said it would let federal officials pick its U.S. operation’s board of directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire and would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code, according to a copy of the company’s proposal. It even offered to give federal officials a kill switch that would shut the app down in the United States if they felt it remained a threat.

    Sounds like a hand grenade and the exact type of thing most American's would not want the government to engage in, this is exactly what many folks think happens with social media platforms today. Like the idea of having the DoD be the guardian of a social media content feed algorithm, I mean, to me this sounds like something the CCP would suggest so earnestly and innocently because this type of action is probably what they do with ByteDance and in their system of values this makes the most logical sense, like in their minds why would the government not want to do this?

    Or more likely as the article suggests this was never really a good faith offer and is calculated to give them an advantage in the upcoming legal case.

    • >> this type of action is probably what they do with ByteDance and in their system of values

      The Chinese government arbitrarily controls all the social media there, and then of course there is the Great Firewall. The agreement they proposed would have put the US federal government in the position of being the monitor of TikTok's actions and thereby responsible if there were any sort of transgressions. And then of course if there were a change of administration in the US the agreement could have been ar

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The Chinese government arbitrarily controls all the social media there

        This is misleading but often repeated. It's true in the sense that the US government "controls" all social media in the US because ultimately it creates laws and can apparently force the current owner to sell up if it is really unhappy. But that's different to what you seem to think where the government has a hand in actively directing how algorithms work and what content is promoted etc.

        The Chinese government does have things like a list of banned search terms. Western governments do too, but only put stuf

        • >> The Chinese government does have things like a list of banned search terms

          I don't know where you get your info on this and you provide no cites, so I'll assume its just your uninformed personal opinion.

          China has very considerable direct control of the internet there in the form of the Great Firewall and other mechanisms such as DNS hijackers. Western countries have no equivalent surveillance or control.
          "The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet t

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            "The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools (e.g. Google Search,[4] Facebook,[5] Twitter,[6] Wikipedia,[7][8] and others) and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations."

            Western democracies have all those powers too, and exercise them.

            The US is currently forcing the sale of TikTok, with the threat of a ban. The UK keeps threatening to block apps with end-to-end encryption. Streaming video apps are regularly blocked due to piracy, and the US maintains an official list of "notorious" websites. Access to knowledge is widely blocked too, with attacks on sites like SciHub. Gambling is another example of websites and apps that are widely regulated and blocked in Western countries

            • >> Western democracies have all those powers too, and exercise them.

              They don't block sites or apps except for criminal activity, which is not defined as information considered "harmful to public order, social stability, and Chinese morality". Western countries have no equivalent to the Great Firewall.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                So what is the reason TikTok is getting banned?

                • Actually it is "sell-or-be-banned", which is different from an outright ban. And you can easily see the purported reasons for yourself.

                  "classified and unclassified national security assessments show that the app is a threat to user privacy and that it's been used to target journalists and interfere in elections"
                    https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13... [npr.org]

    • Considering their verified opinions are "you're not allowed to even see the algorithm" and "we're spending a gazillion dollars to split the the secrets out of our code" they definitely weren't planning to go through with this.

  • Not about control (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Klivian ( 850755 ) on Sunday June 02, 2024 @11:18AM (#64517627)
    As this clearly show, it's not about control. Kind of been obvious from the start. It's about removing competition, using the "paid for" politicians (some of the dumber politicians obvious don't get it and thinks it about control). It's all about what Alphabet, Meta and other megadonors want.
    • That's what this clearly shows? I'm not sure that this clearly shows anything at all, but the notion that rejecting a proposal with a lot of obvious gotchas in it is demonstrative of bribery is quite a stretch.

      Nothing about that proposal really makes any sense. They were offering government oversight of a social media company, that's a political landmine. And a "kill switch"? It sounds dramatic, but actually using it would cause a cavalcade of accusations and lawsuits.

  • It also includes this assessment from Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University law professor who researches international tech policy. "The government had a complete absence of faith in [its] ability to regulate technology platforms, because there might be some vulnerability that might exist somewhere down the line."

    A far more provocative possibility is that they actually don't have the ability to regulate technology platforms. They are just floundering around in the political "we have to do something" mode. The new reality may be that we are moving into a world controlled by authoritarian structures such as corporations where democracy is a sideshow since elected government lacks any real capacity to enforce popular will.

    • don't have the ability to regulate technology platforms.

      In the US they actually really don't outside of what is legally authorized already which usually means you do in fact have to get some type of court order to obtain information about users or data. The government can ask (and they do) but if anything the Twitter files showed the government actually can't do much beyond that.

      The advertiser/PR implications seem to have far, far more influence over social media platforms than the state, when things get censored it's to protect ad revenue and platform reputati

  • Closing the door after the horses got out. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Sunday June 02, 2024 @11:37AM (#64517657)

    It's too late, social media has spread to the point that now everybody has to use it or they're not part of modern society. Want a new job? You must be on Linked-In so potential employers can see your recommendations. It's all about social credit and those who post more selfies and meaningless drivel on { your platform of choice here } wins. Of course, the feds want to control the message, the tone, and the outrage and censor things they don't like but that's too late. Our 1st amendment rights have been violated and curiously nobody is outraged about that as much as losing a potential outlet where idiots can post videos of themselves getting kicked in the balls.

  • it would let federal officials pick its U.S. operation's board of directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire and would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code, according to a copy of the company's proposal. It even offered to give federal officials a kill switch that would shut the app down in the United States if they felt it remained a threat.

    Personally that sounds like a recipe for a gong show.

    There's just so much minutia that

  • All that the Chinese government would require would be a hidden back door to enable it to continue to get the data it is no doubt getting now. The fact that non-techies fall for this sort of nonsense is a reminder of how little those mundanes know.

    My congratulations to the MSS for another misleading story successfully inserted into the media.

  • It's not about source code, it's about the entire organization being absolutely serious about protecting the data. If a crew working in a location just happens to be all Chinese expats and they see another expat they suspect works for the CCP use an USB key and walk out with it, will they know what is expected of them or rock the boat? They aren't going to get a bonus from management for rocking the boat ...

    In an American company what is expected of them is to call security, in the Chinese company what is e

  • Evidence China understands nothing about the US (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TimelordQ ( 8197200 ) on Sunday June 02, 2024 @01:37PM (#64517921)
    With this, it's been made clear that the Chinese government doesn't understand the distinction between a government and corporate entity, making it clear that Tiktok is a pawn of their government. This isn't an 'extraordinary' deal. It's a demonstration of how little the Chinese government respects a market based economy and market/individually controlled corporate entities. You can bet your ass that if the US had been foolish enough to 'install' officials in charge of Tiktok, that they too would become pawns.

  • Chinese PsyOp (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Darren Hiebert ( 626456 ) on Sunday June 02, 2024 @02:04PM (#64517977) Homepage
    TikTok is a Chinese psy-op. How could it possibly be made safer?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Ironically you sound like the CCP. They created the Great Firewall to stop foreign political interference. You want to ban TikTok because people organize against Israeli genocide and rampant capitalism on there... Which you think is directed by foreign political interference.

      Just say you admire them and want the same control for your own government, which you trust will not abuse it because you happen to agree with them on this subject.

  • The strategy seems to be .. (Score:3)

    by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 ) on Sunday June 02, 2024 @03:57PM (#64518233)
    The strategy seems to be ..totally ban TikTok and take Xitter back into government control. Which is the last social media not under state control. Especially before the coming Nov 05 2024 Presidential election.

  • It makes perfect sense if you consider that Biden etc. don't actually care about privacy or control. What they actually want is to personally enrich themselves, meaning Biden and other politicians already have their fingers in the forced sale pie.

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