Senator Urges Apple, Google To Remove TikTok From App Stores (axios.com) 61
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) wrote to Google and Apple on Thursday, urging both companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. From a report: In a letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Bennet urges both leaders to boot TikTok immediately, calling the popular video-sharing app "an unacceptable threat to the national security of the United States." Bennet's letter marks the first time a member of Congress has suggested TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, should not be available for download via the Google Play or Apple App store. "No company subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population," Bennet wrote in the letter.
Re: remove rsilvergun from Slashdead! (Score:2)
Is drinking out of a menstrual cup really the best insult you can come up with? I don't know where you're from but most places that's the equivalent of calling someone a poopy head.
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Why in the living fuck would anyone with a functioning reasoning center in their brain "check a link" from a copy-and-paste juvenile dipshit post like that?
May as well voluntarily click on goatse links. And no, I didn't look at it either, because I couldn't give less of a shit about interpersonal squabbles between Slashdot users - it's like trying to referee a slap fight between teenage girls; it's a pointless waste of time that makes everyone involved dumber for participating.
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GDPR (Score:4, Insightful)
"No company subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population," Bennet wrote in the letter.
If this guy were serious then the thing to do wouldn't be to pick individual companies to beg people to boycot, it would be to introduce a General Data Protection Regulation of some kind. If you don't like the EU one for whatever reason then that's great, make your own (with blackjack and hookers) that works the way you want. But as long as you haven't got any rules that prevent other companies collecting the same data and doing whatever they like with it you can't possibly keep it out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party or anyone else. I mean you can't anyway but uniform regulation can at least try to. Begging Google and Apple to kick a particular app out of the store just means there'll be another app by another company based in whatever company or even they'll just buy it from Facebook. A unfiform regulation that applies to everyone at least gives you a toolkit to use against any Chinese company or European or even American that breaks the rules (collects data they don't need, sends it to banned countries etc).
No company subject to [Chinese Communist Party]... (Score:3)
Apple and Google are subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates, so the argument is specious.
The real reason is that [Chinese Communist Party] is getting access to surveillance data that the US isn't.
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This is modern politician 101 right here. Virtue signal over a single suspicious actor when there are dozens of the same actors everywhere. It gives the illusion of doing something while actually doing nothing. Politics in a nutshell.
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I have dealt with Senator Bennet's amin last year over other items for National Security.
NONE of his ppl have any National Intelligence or Cyber security background. Basically, this is just pandering to make himself look good.
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Rep Adam Schiff (D) California [washingtonexaminer.com]
Of course, like all politicians looking for money for his Senate campaign.
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Yes (Score:2)
If you can get past the crap, and train their profile of what you want to see, there is a good bit of content on TikTok from Makers, demonstrating / teaching some techniques and there are some decent chef's showing off some decent ideas.
It is mostly trash, but i've discovered some gems that i've been able to take and apply in the real world in cooking, wood working, modeling, etc ... I was introduced to some new books, such as the Murder Bot series, and the Poppy wars which were fantastic reads. Got some bo
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... and a lot of self-absorbed attention whores. #FTFY
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If you can get past the crap, and train their profile of what you want to see, there is a good bit of content on TikTok
Yeah...it's that initial hurdle of "training".
My 12 year old son wanted to check out TikTok. So I approved it and installed it on his phone, and we both sat down to take a look.
I'd roughly estimate 40% of the first 100 videos were all women wearing whore-clothing and dancing provocatively.
I uninstalled it from his phone. Then I tried on my phone. Same shit, except it was nearly 100% whores trying to get me to go to their onlyfans site.
Uninstalled it, and put it on my wife's phone. Nothing but vide
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I watch way more Maker stuff on there than anything else. I've been inspired and learned some techniques that have made me a better Maker. I've even learned a bit about history that required further reading. Not to mention some new recipes that I may not have discovered otherwise.
Plus whatever China knows about me, I'm sure AT&T, Google, Apple, and other companies know even more.
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Over 15 (IQ or age) use TikTok?
Sure. People interested in people under 16.
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Yes, I've seen plenty of smart adults use it. It's designed to hook people in and keep using it.
Brushing it off as "that dang thing the kids are using" is underestimating the influence it could have if not kept in check.
If only (Score:4, Insightful)
If only there were a way for these members of congress to somehow fix this issue. I mean if they could write some sort of rule or if you will legislation and get it signed into law somehow. Can you imagine how powerful that would be in solving the problem of applications that spy on us? It may even go as far as reaffirming our right to privacy. Is it too much to ask or would it be hypocritical since all members of congress are wealthy on Meta, Google, and military stocks?
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But that would mean that the US government can't spy on people.
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If only there were a way for these members of congress to somehow fix this issue. I mean if they could write some sort of rule or if you will legislation and get it signed into law somehow. Can you imagine how powerful that would be in solving the problem of applications that spy on us?
I bet if they started with legislation, they'd get feedback "Why go for a heavy-handed legislative solution when industry self-regulation will solve the problem more easily, cheaply and with less red tape". I think it's a standard practice to lean on industry to self-regulate, and only step in with laws when self-regulation has been seen to have failed.
Put controls on the data (Score:1)
Companies that collect the same data but are not subject to the dictates of the CCP have no constraints on what they do with that data including giving it to the CCP. The U.S. Government is not serious about any of the reasons they claim are motivating them if they aren't moving to put legal controls on the data.
Get off my lawn (Score:1)
More freedom of the press even if you donâ(TM)t own them. Less ability to define Truth and social norms.
Can you imagine Reagan being president if the stories of him raping 15 year old girls could not be squashed? How about Trump if he had to buy off more than the national enquirer?
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If you're looking for groomers, visit your local catholic church.
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LibsofTikTok is a public service.
Yeah, no possibility that folks with an axe to grind against the left could be posting false flag stuff on TikTok in the hopes it gets picked up by that Twitter account. /s
Bill or GTFO (Score:5, Insightful)
Present legislation or shut the fuck up. If it's such a big risk, then why isn't it banned?
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If it's such a big risk, then why isn't it banned?
Because we have a First Amendment.
Sure, you might have a case that it doesn't apply to a Chinese social media company, but it absolutely applies to all the Americans who would be booted from the service by Uncle Sam. Plus, as Trump managed to demonstrate (by getting himself banned from Twitter, which as the decision of a private company, was not a 1A violation), it's not quite so easy to rebuild your original following on a new platform.
So, there's certainly a case to made that a TikTok ban by an action of
Re: Bill or GTFO (Score:2)
Free speech doesn't give you the cart blanche right to say anything. You can't yell fire in a theater. You can't share trade secrets from your employer. You can't share classified information. And - as a general rule - national security trumps all other laws.
If TikTok is undermining national security then the government gets to invoke all their special emergency powers. For example, they could just seize the company and shut it down.
Slippery Slope (Score:4, Informative)
> "No company subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population," Bennet wrote in the letter.
This is a slippery slope. I don't want the government dictating what I can and cannot watch.
The Chinese government has an agenda, yes, but so does MSNBC and Fox news. Both of which are curating content for us. They are protected by the 1st amendment, but that doesn't lessen their influence.
TikTok is curating, mostly, dance trends and girls in swimming pools. There are companies in the USA doing worse with our data, and curating real agendas ...
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Every fascist regime begins with the belief that what they're doing is in the best interest of the people they lead. No matter how much you may agree that TikTok should be banned, it is giving the government the power to ban social networks itself that is the bigger problem, because they will not stop with just one. It's not a fallacy, it's a historical pattern of human leadership behavior.
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I don't want the government dictating what I can and cannot watch.
But you are fine with the CCP tracking every thing you've watched and monitoring your actvities through your phone?
Data privacy should be a right.
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But you are fine with the CCP tracking every thing you've watched and monitoring your actvities through your phone?
If the creators of South Park can mock China as much as they did and are still here, I really don't think it's something us Americans should be overly concerned about. Plus, I think the Chinese government has their hands full spying on their own citizens.
Good video from an infosec guy explaining it (Score:5, Interesting)
Source here [youtu.be].
Two major points that are not discussed much in mainstream news:
* The algorithms are under CCP control which is why you see such batshit crazy content in the West and TikTok is "wholesome" back home.
* TikTok's app has some disturbing potential to be used as a malware payload delivery system that doesn't necessarily apply to other companies.
Re: Good video from an infosec guy explaining it (Score:2)
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Ok, then how about we make TikTok Adult ONLY with penalties with real teeth....as a start?
Hell, let's do that with FB and Twitter too, eh?
oh no, the Revolution is immanent! (Score:1)
Time to crack open the old Mandarin dictionary again...
yo, Senator (Score:2)
They will not (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the senators want it removed they need to
read the First Amendment.
There, fixed that for you.
So today, gatekeepers and walled gardens are good? (Score:2)
Just yesterday, there was a story here on slashdot about the government condemning the App Store and Play store and Apple and Google as "gatekeepers" who were causing "real potential harm for consumers." Said story included the usual advocation for new antitrust legislation to break up Apple and Google and do away with the "walled garden" App and Play stores and force iOS and Android to be fully-open free-for-alls like Cydia was back in the days of jailbreaking.
And now, today, that very same government is
Not going to happen (Score:2)
How would people get their dose of TikTokThots otherwise? The only thing that would happen is that people go tho 3td party app-stores and neither Apple nor Google can really prevent that.
Apple and Google do worse (Score:2)
This is why we need mandated sideloading (Score:2)
Target them all (Score:2)
No company [s]subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates[/s] should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people...
FTFY
On a side note, Slashdot HTML doesn't accommodate the strike tag? "s" in greater than less than brackets.
Translation (Score:2)
Translation: I know the government can't ban software so I want you to do it for me.
I don't like these people and want Google/Apple to spend their money obeying my principles.
It's not a threat when people I like, do this.
Law (Score:2)
Remove senators (Score:2)
Not TikTok
Can't control the message (Score:2)