The Internet has been colonized by spies who work for corporations and governments, but it's been going on for well over a decade, as this article notes:
> "By the time ByteDance was founded in Beijing in 2012, Google had been reading our emails over our shoulders, Amazon had been watching us shop, and Twitter and Facebook had been mediating our messages to friends and foes for years. Indeed, Zhang Yiming, the millennial software engineer who set up ByteDance, modeled himself and aspects of his new company on Silicon Valley. Zhang, who briefly worked for Microsoft before going out on his own, was once fond of quoting Steve Jobs and Jack Welch."
It would be highly surprising if the ByteDance-Beijing relationship was all that different from the Google/Verizon-Washington relationship (2013):
> "Technology companies willingly provided information to U.S. government agencies to help the Obama administration snoop on reporters from the Associated Press (AP) and Fox news in order to ostensibly crack down on leaks that pose a "threat" to national security."
It's not the relationships of the parties in control that worries me. It's the arrests and abductions of the people that concerns me.
Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years.
The CCP is a completely different beast, it has no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings and much worse.
We're talking about millions of people (hundreds of millions over the last ~70 years) that have been sought out by the CCP for arrest and murder because of their non-violent views and ideals.
The problem is you’re judging based on different standards and ideals, but the violations are fundamentally the same. So China can imprison citizens, the US decided to make it harder to imprison citizens. We do arbitrary drone strikes on people we don’t like, on foreign sovereign territory. We have Guantanamo. The fact that we arbitrarily draw a line at “our own citizens” is frankly meaningless in the grand scale and not really a meaningful distinction in terms of human rights.
A best explanation by EFF here(https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/03/government-hasnt-justi...) is that it is not only for TikTok. A transparant system of regulating and even auditing what telemetry services can acquire is fundamentally and universally beneficial for whatever country the service is based in.
But it is not surprising that those laws are never passed so far. Google in their software realm is too strong to be combated as compared to their hardware realm with right to repair. The big names in hardware are replacable as they all buy stock solution (like fingerprint sensor), and those sensor manufacturers don't care about right to repair. But Instagram or Snapchat or WhatsApp or Tiktok or whatever are not that replacable and thus more addictive and better for the company. Google or Meta is definitely not giving up on these places, and considering their influence, the future ain't bright.
hundreds of millions people have been arrested and murdered because of "your reality", do you take into the consideration for the infrastructure to arrest and murder hundreds of millions people?
For these exact reasons, I'm more comfortable with Xi Jinping's cronies spying on my every movement than my own government. The Chinese only do that stuff to their own citizens and I'm a zero-value target to them. US authorities may feel like being petty one day.
Seriously. What happened to that whole philosophy that the founding fathers had about being wary of our own government and the tendency of governments to overreach to control its citizenry.
That entire sentiment seem to have disappeared especially in the last few years in favor of China-Russia-terrorism-whatever new bs hysteria.
"fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography" [0]
You mention only being concerned about US authorities, but have somehow failed to realize they can fabricate evidence and send it to US authorities in an attempt to reach you from across the pond.
However, China has 1.4 billion people, they will do whatever to collect resources, including information and user stats which powers the recommendation system behind TikTok, which is ruining your next generation.
Have I mentioned that China and Russia are deep allied and are probably sharing intelligence? I don't think the US government is worse than Russia's.
Macarthy was disgraced by 1954, and almost universally reviled for the lives he ruined with his slander. I think you can point to him as an example of what happens when demagogues go unopposed (even for a time) in the American system, but not as the normal or desired product of our political system.
> Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years.
Let me think of groups of people in the US and if they have been treated like this - C language programmers...we'll there is Julian Assange.
> no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings
China has more than four times the US population, yet the US incarcerates more people than China does. In that context it does not sound like much of a knock "China locks up less than a quarter of the people the US does!" Well - yes.
You are completely dodging the other poster's central point.
The US locks up more people, but not for wrong-think. Instead our country does it for consuming the wrong plants at the wrong time, because our systems are still racist in various ways, and because we have somehow allowed prison to become a for-profit institution.
Those are different problems and they need to be addressed. The war on drugs must end, policing culture and policies must be corrected, the US prison system must be corrected. Other options for dealing more effectively with various social and mental health problems must be instituted.
And none of that is the same as what China is doing to their people, nor does it absolve China of the wrongs it has committed. And it doesn't take the edge off of it either. Going to China can still get you locked up for reasons you don't understand because you said the wrong thing one time and forgot you even said it.
That actually is a more risky situation for most people than making sure they are not buying or carrying around the wrong plants. That is what comments such as the one you are responding to are actually worried about. It's not a raw numbers game for the individual, it's a question of "how easy is it for me or people I know to go to jail for what should be trivial actions?"
> The US locks up more people, but not for wrong-think. Instead our country does it for consuming the wrong plants at the wrong time, because our systems are still racist in various ways, and because we have somehow allowed prison to become a for-profit institution.
That's just the casus belli for the arrest - the real motivation changes over time. Drug laws have been used to target and disrupt various groups from Latinos and African Americans to hippies and anti-war protestors. First it was about racism and Hearst's economic interests, then about policing wrong think, then it was about the tough on crime wave, and now it's largely about protecting several lucrative industries.
I can go with the general feeling here, but to use that to put the US's behavior on par with China's, specifically with regard to each country's own citizens, that is definitely a point that would need some data to back it up. Data that is likely hard to get on both the US and China.
It seems that line of argument would get much deeper into how, how fairly, and on which groups, the various countries have tended to apply their laws.
For now I can fully grant that selective enforcement has and still does happen in the US. The legal system here definitely does leave that possibility open and prosecutors are elected officials, some of whom have provably gone after certain groups or individuals, hunting for a reason to put them in jail.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Agreed, Nixon was a moron, basically everything his administration did was truly awful. The war on drugs must end, the people put in jail for having or consuming the wrong plants must be released, and the US government should make amends with those people. Anyone still alive who provably participated in that should go to jail for the rest of their lives, ideally occupying the same cells as the people they unjustly locked away.
The process of repairing the damage that was done should include large payouts for unjustly taking away years of those people's lives, if nothing else. I'm not exactly holding my breath on these points, but if we take seriously the idea that the world should become more fair and just over time, we're going to have to square with the wrongs that were committed in the name of unjust laws.
In the post you are responding to, what you see is me acknowledging that, in order to answer the specific questions: "Is the US just as bad as China on this?" or "Is what China does to it's citizens in order to suppress wrong-think being unfairly criticized in light of what the US does to it's citizens in order to suppress drug use and generally be racist about it?"; one would require good data on just how many citizens are sent to jail for what should be trivial acts of speaking their mind or consuming weird plants, and that data is unlikely to be available or good data if it exists since both countries have rather large incentives to make sure it doesn't.
Please also note that I fully granted Akiselev's point that selective enforcement happens in the US even now. There should be genuine outrage over this until it is changed. However, I understand why people can't even keep up with the sheer scale of the bullshit modern governments get up to.
Chinas drug laws are way harsher than US ones. Do their citizens not partake in drug use? It is actually a pretty interesting question, did the war on drugs work in China? They have harsh drug laws but do not have mass incarceration of drug users.
"Nowadays, the penalties for being caught with cannabis are severe. Offenders run the risk of receiving the death penalty for being in possession of just five kilograms or more. Additionally, strict sentences are imposed; anything from five years imprisonment to a life sentence."
I don't agree with the death penalty or cannabis prohibition, but 'just five kilograms' is about a 27 year supply for someone who smokes a couple of joints every day. It's not an amount you could have casually, you're definitely in it as a business.
>how easy is it for me or people I know to go to jail for what should be trivial actions?
Yes and PRC wrong think 99% of time gets you an invite to the police station to "drink tea" and sign a paperwork not to do it again. Maybe occasionally a write self criticism letter. Consequences are about as trivial as it gets. It generally takes enormous repeat and public offenses that gains popular traction to get administratively punished let alone end up in jail for the simple reason that PRC doesn't have mass networks of for profit prison that incentive internment. It takes extraordinary bad luck (i.e. % of become a trending author in particularly sensitive times) and to get punished / arrested for wrong think on the same level as Americans carrying the wrong plant, which is statistically a much riskier situation due to how US racial prosecution and internment system is incentivized. Ask PRC citizen how many people they know has been formally punished, even mildly, for wrong think vs Americans who know someone jailed for drug offense and the numbers will be revealing. In both raw numbers and ease of getting fucked over "trivial" offenses, PRC wrong think is much less riskier than US drugs. Which is not to say PRC wrong think wouldn't stack up poorly compared to other "liberal" countries, rather US internment is just that messed up.
>wrong think 99% of time gets you an invite to the police station to "drink tea" and sign a paperwork not to do it again. Maybe occasionally a write self criticism letter.
That is good to know. And genuinely new information for me. Thank you for contributing it.
And the details you offer do help calibrate something of an answer to the question you are responding to. Thank you also for being a great participant in that conversation!
> Ask PRC citizen how many people they know has been formally punished, even mildly, for wrong think vs Americans who know someone jailed for drug offense and the numbers will be revealing.
We should definitely like to have real data on that for both countries. It seems difficult to find though. In the mean time I take your seemingly first hand experience as insightful. Thanks again!
>"we have somehow allowed prison to become a for-profit institution."
I personally do not see much difference. Holding person in prison for profit is a result of corporations buying government. It is as political as it gets. Those people in my view are just as bad scam of the Earth their political counterparts in China.
With you on that point for sure. It is just as important for the US to end it's for-profit prison system as it is for China to stop punishing people for thinking the wrong thing.
> The US locks up more people, but not for wrong-think. Instead our country does it for consuming the wrong plants at the wrong time, because our systems are still racist in various ways, and because we have somehow allowed prison to become a for-profit institution.
You completely ignored OP's example of Julian Assange, I guess?
There's a wide gap of a difference between "publishing something that is simply critical of the government" and "publishing classified / state communications", including massive information dumps of unredacted diplomatic cables.
Put it this way, if you can name a country that would not react in the exact same manner to the actions that the US did to Assange's actions, please let me know. I certainly can't think of any.
Wikileaks became very close to Russia in the end, anyways, not exactly a bastion of freedom and IMHO destroying any credibility Assange had. If Assange was on the "other side" and the classified stuff was from Russia, he'd probably have been "Novichoked" for what he did.
That's fine. The corrective for it is to name the bad conversational behavior where you see it, don't get too bothered about it, and demonstrate the kind of conversations you wish to have instead.
It's not terribly taxing to just say, "that's not the kind of conversation we want to have here" and go on to continue engaging with any specific points being made. And that's doable even when you suspect the post you are responding to might just be trolling. If there is an identifiable point, engage with that if you will, gently and patiently correct or ignore the rest. Kind of similar to being patient with a rowdy kid. Trolls don't get much out of it if they can't get your goat.
The sub-thread below still managed to take on a few people who just wanted to virtue signal with argumentative sniping but others showed up with good points and information, that part was good to see.
Is it? I believe every state, or its establishment, acts forcefully to protect against what they consider potential existential threats.
Given that the Western states and their establishment are atleast 2 centuries ahead of the curve of anyone else in terms of modern state apparatus, ideological basis (...), it is natural that we will observe distinct patterns of oppression and red lines. Most of the emerging powers are acutely sensitive to ideological challenges, challenges to the legitimacy of the establishment, precisely because they are the newly arrived and insecure in their position.
Someone mentioned Julian Assange. Why did US and UK come down so hard on this guy? Because he represents an existential threat: he represents dissident factions in their intelligence communities (5 eyes) and that layer of the system is central to their maintenance of power and they will -not- tolerate any challenges in that area.
So the equations defining the dynamic are identical. We just need to plug in the appropriate values for the equation's variables.
>>posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years.
I would not be so confident about that, at least until the US and other western countries wise up to the CCP's tactics, which may be starting. E.g., CCP is running overseas "police stations" to intimidate and harrass people oversead, and the US FBI finally just arrested two people doing so in New York City.
>>TikTok spied on me. Why?
Short answer, is that it, along with every other Chinese company, has no choice other than to bend to the will of the CCP. Plus, they have no ethical boundaries (other than crossing the CCP) in seeking absolute market position, and this journalist had done something to threaten that dominant position.
> Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years.
regretfully, being poor and in certain parts of the USA is sufficient to get sucked up by the system. no ideology necessary, just getting caught and loaning money for bail is enough to get swallowed by this beast.
i suppose the CCP pays for these systems directly? whereas the American way has a distributed system of crony 'entrepreneurs' (shoddy lawyers, loan sharks, court bureaucrats and so on) all keeping this system of private jails and other 'services' and industries built around people 'breaking the law'
While I don't think the US is on the same scale as the CCP, I also think you're being a little naive. Expressing the wrong ideas or misjudging the time/place to do so can absolutely land you behind bars.
I have very little to fear, on a personal level, from the CCP. They may or may not be collecting data on me, and I find that distasteful and somewhat scary, but they are not a direct threat to my personal liberty, safety or civil rights.
The NSA, CIA and the US intelligence-industrial complex, however, is a direct and credible threat to me. Perhaps not today, and hopefully not tomorrow, but as history has shown us, governments change, sometimes wildly so, in a short period of time while still holding the trappings and lip-service of their predecessors. If you dismiss the concerns about warrantless data collection, tracking, active suppression of free discourse and political targeting of people who ideologically threaten those in power (no matter the political background), well, you just haven't been paying attention.
You don't have to be a citizen of the nation that does the spying for the data they collect on you to be harmful. Following your logic, nobody outside of the US or China has reasons to be concerned, which is not the case.
Governments—particularly those of the world's greatest superpowers—have influence outside of their borders, and can make your life hell, no matter where you currently live. They can restrict your freedom to travel, censor your public speech, and target you electronically in many ways. This can happen if you fall on their radar for whatever reason, including by mistake. Good luck getting off that list, and getting your life back after that.
If I'm rating which government I'm more afraid of, it would be the one that has a totalitarian control over its citizens, and no regard for human life. Otherwise, they're all equally harmful to my wellbeing.
If you run a business, visit or know someone from China you will be targeted. If you try to publish an article against China and have a high profile your secrets will come out.
But if you are nobody why worry about the NSA, FBI, etc they have better people to target
> Just because you advocate programs that are not aligned with or approved by the U.S. government, siding with anti-racist, anti-colonial forces should not make you a target of U.S. cointelpro actions, raids on the homes of citizens, and humiliating arrests.
Your example is about what exactly? Yes Russia intervenes and China does too, you expect it to not be acted upon?
By the way in China as of this month saying something that is against national interest is punishable under espionage law. If they want they can jail you for using VPN to access something outside of great firewall.
> indicted on April 18 for allegedly working on behalf of the Russian government and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to conduct a “malign influence campaign” designed to “sow discord” and “advance Russian propaganda.”
> Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years.
Which parallel world are you living in ? I would like to migrate there to this utopian USA.
Not a state-sponsored and state-accredited propagandist, you mean?
It might be fair to say that Julian Assange encompassed the roles of journalist, editor and publisher in the same person, which is perhaps not the optimal setup although it's more or less what everyone publishing their work on substack does - but that's not a justification of state persecution.
It's undeniable that Wikileak's publication of the CableGate archive of State Department cables and the Vault7 archive of CIA hacking tool documentation was in the public interest. Some of the more important revelations include that the CIA has tools apparently designed for false-flag cyberattacks, that the State Department's claim to be concerned about human rights and democracy is not reflected in the content of their secret cables (which tend to focus on things like oil pipelines, arms deals, terrorist financing, economic deals, geopolitical maneuvering, etc.).
You might not like it, but it is legitimate journalism as the word is commonly defined.
So you're just going to assert, in drive-by fashion, that these journalists are government shills? Do you have any evidence that supports that claim? Do you say that about everyone that you disagree with?
It's kind of funny. At first I was going to say, what do you expect - a line on his CV 'worked as a medium for US propaganda'? But bizarrely enough, that's completely accurate. Michael Weiss is editor in chief at the 'Institute of Modern Russia.' It's part of Radio Free Europe [2], which is literally a propaganda outlet owned by the US government.
But the reason I decided to look this up is something much more simple than these facts. That Atlantic article reeks of state propaganda, and if it's not sending your propaganda detector to 11, you really need to get it tuned a bit - especially in this day and age. More often than not, you're not going to be able to find a link on somebody's CV or Wiki or whatever directly tying them to state interests, but I mean this just isn't how "normal" people think, behave, or write. It's like he's desperately trying to convince you of a position, by making you believe that thinking otherwise would be absurd. Note the stark similarities in style and rhetoric to something like this [3] piece from the NYtimes in the leadup to the Iraq War.
We don't license journalists in Western democracies (or Eastern ones, for that matter.) That's something that you see in places like Zimbabwe or Rwanda.
I do understand that neocons see limitations on domestic civil liberties as an arms race that they're losing to China and Russia, but this version of the Missile Gap is still largely a myth meant to secure the continual state financing of military and intelligence contractors.
Try calling yourself a journalist in Portugal (a western European democracy member of the EU and NATO) without being a part of the journalist trade association and see what happens if you get on the radar.
The first article says he wasn't a journalist because he wasn't accountable to anyone, and that he didn't filter what he published. I think he just didn't have the hubris to think he knows better then others what information should or shouldn't be free.
The 2nd article doesn't seem to claim he isn't a journalist at all. It even says "his own unique brand of journalism", which seems to be an acknowledgement that he is a journalist.
This has been debunked many times over. It's the Guardian journalists, David Leigh and Luke Harding, that published the password to the unredacted archives. Assange, on the other hand, was "meticulous about redacting names in the documents."
I don't think it's at all fair for you to demand high-effort rebuttals while putting in no effort on your own. You're asking people to respond to thousands of words that you didn't write, and you're not even engaging with the content of a 100-word reply that you specifically asked for.
They may indeed like to disagree, as I'm sure anyone who has broken the law would and is entitled to. Hence the existence of a fair trial and the possibility of a "not guilty" plea along with the opportunity to present a defense before a jury.
One could argue about the fairness of any trial or set of trials, of course, and we should definitely do that and work out what we the people think of those trials as well as what we want to see in a fair trial.
However, if you are trying to say that what those people did was just a protest or just speech, you will need to address the actual crimes the people going to jail were charged with and convicted of. Otherwise, your argument there is not convincing at all.
It's not just free speech when you destroy property, break into government buildings, assault cops and government employees, actually invade and interrupt a session of congress, trespass in government offices, and actually try to locate the vice-president with the loudly declared intent to hang him.
Jack Ma was essentially on house arrest for over a year after flying a little too close to the sun with his IPO plans. Peng Shuai was on house arrest for denouncing sexual abuse by a CCP member.
The psychological, widespread chilling effects of these high profile "vanishings" has absolutely no commonality with the Patriot act (bad as it is).
The vanishings like the sheriff who had three voter registration workers killed in Mississippi are not common, it tends to be straightforward extrajudicial executions like Fred Hampton. I wouldn't even include the car bombing of 25 year old Ronni Moffitt in 1976.
The US police are killing people all the time. In January police killed an environmentalist in January, Manuel Taran. The US kills and jails political prisoners all the time.
But that sort of thing is just murder, not anything legally sanctioned by the patriot act. Don't get me wrong, I think the patriot act is a travesty, but it doesn't go quite that far.
"The killings were part of a broader program of "targeted killing" by the United States outside the context of armed conflict and based on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts. "
Your comment sounds awfully disingenuous. I seriously doubt you do not see the huge difference between implementing official policies of extrajudicial imprisonments and having a random person murder people for their own personal reasons.
What are you talking about? OP did not mentioned any example remotely involving Guantanamo bay. Are you trying to move the goalpost out of ignorance or cynicism?
Any billionaire who thinks of themselves as indispensable to society and has a highly visible public presence. If Musk was behaving towards the CCP half as disrespectfully as he does towards the the US political caste, he'd have been stripped of his China holdings and locked out of that market long ago.
No, the equivalent in US wouldnt be a capitalist billionaire. It would be its opposite: a popular group with marxist or communist ideals that menaces the status quo and current order. Like the Black Panther Party. And, oh, they were disappeared, some of them still are in solitary confinenent because the government is afraid that they could spread their ideology to other inmates.
The only example you can find is from 40-50 years ago? Around the time that China (while we're at comparing with China) was having its military shoot protesters in Tiananmen square?
Just because the government here was so successful that there isn't any remotely threatening fundamental opposition doesn't mean they wouldn't do it again. Those people are still unjustly in prison and still haven't been released.
(R) party is left to exist as a group of useful idiots who never pass any meaningful legislation that isn't immediately dismantled by (D) establishment within a few years.
we are not a plutocracy at all, that's ridiculous. There are many places in the world where rich people hardly pay taxes. That is not at all true in the US where "the 1%" pay 40% of the income tax
if the rich controlled the government, don't you think they'd lower their taxes? or are we lucky to be ruled by the rich because they are so benevolent?
Rich people in America pay taxes, don't be ridiculous. Wealthy (D) supporters abroad don't file tax returns and don't get penalized for it unless they fall out of line with the party. Then suddenly they're audited every year. This also happened to Trump, even though he was filing in NY.
That's not the way things are done in the west. Lacking absolute rule, you need to achieve similar things with a little more subtlety.
Let's say a certain billionare enters politics, and is not a party favorite, and against the bipartisan elite consensus. Say, they are, god forbid, populist, and against job outsourcing, wars, and such.
Media, who loved him for decades, can suddenly start covering his every action as if describing the leader of the Axis in WWII. Suddenly his associates might start to get investigated for things all sides in DC did since time immemorial with impunity. Experts might appear day and night on TV to give a psychological assessment of him. Some high standing people might openly advocate for his elimination. Government agencies might join the "good fight". Mere tech corporations might decide to ban his (the active President's) account.
Others might pay some hack to come up with a bogus document binder hack job, a dossier if you will, that will feature day and night on the news. And inversely, his opponent's son might be news gold, be involved in all kinds of shady dealings, and even lose a certain computing device, and they're not covered, lest their parent is harmed.
Or let's say another billionaire lacks the good taste to not antagonize the consensus of the elites and their lapdogs in the aspirational classes. Perhaps their glowing "let's all kiss the ass of the billionaire tech god" coverage changes overnight...
The lack of verification of the claims made related to the "bogus document binder hack job" doesn't preclude the possibility of conspiracy, sedition, etc. actually occuring, and the dossier played essentially no role in subsequent investigations. He also wasn't exactly anti-war. On the campaign trail rhetorically he was, but aside from the (disastrous but did need to happen) withdrawal from Afghanistan mostly continued the imperialist status quo. Iran and Syria are high-profile examples. He is an authoritarian populist, yes. I'm not sure why only people with money would have a reason to oppose that. The main reason people oppose him is he is an ineffective, narcissistic leader who did his utmost to personally enrich himself, continue to fan the flames of division, and forcefully push through fiscal policy that was basically the opposite of what should have been implemented at the time. It was not all bad, but it is hard to find much good. The market does not like uncertainty, and a bombastic cult of personality ball of teenage angst is not who you want with the levers to the world's largest economy.
What does this have to do with mysterious vanishing?
The "media" includes Fox News - and it is, in audience terms, the most mainstream of them. It had absolutely glowing coverage of Trump throughout its presidency and continues heavy coverage of Biden's son. The "media" includes the Falun-affiliated Epoch Times, which is still widely available and continues along the same lines. The "media" includes Twitter, which its owner directed to get his own tweets significantly more audience.
None of these people can even remotely claim to have been vanished by the government.
>What does this have to do with mysterious vanishing?
Nothing. As the very first line of the comment goes: "That's not the way things are done in the west. Lacking absolute rule, you need to achieve similar things with a little more subtlety".
When establishment power is privitazed, distributed, and can be yielded more finely, you don't need to vanish people to shut them up or shut them down.
Bob Marley - needle with oncogenic viruses implanted into shoe
MLK Jr. - FBI–King suicide letter
Seth Rich - You should remember this one easily
Stephen Paddock - his life history was deleted from databases (4chan archived lots of it before it vanished) and he was hit with a character assassination to deflect from what actually happened in Vegas (failed firearms sale to would-be murderers of the Saudi royal family staying upstairs)
That's just off the top of my head. Bill Oxley claimed to do in 17 people for Uncle Sam but the "legitimate news sites" which are totally not compromised by Operation Mockingbird conveniently discredit that theory.
Oh yeah crazy effects of the Patriot act indeed...
Edit: your post kinda proves the point. You're evidently not afraid of posting stuff online that most people would consider crazy conspiracy BS ("Bill Oxley"?). In an actually oppressive regime, that shit would have landed you in jail already...
While, uh, no,
regardless, that has no bearing on my point, which is that your point claiming that [it is reasonable to treat A as evidence for B, but irrational/religious to treat B as evidence for A], is entirely wrong[1].
[1](... with the possible exception of observing something which one previously had assigned a probability of zero, but, this ideally should only ever happen for things where one at least had a positive probability density, in which case a similar argument should still work. I didn't feel like working out all the details in the case of continuous probability distributions, as it is finicky and in any case is irrelevant to the discrete events you mentioned.)
I remember thinking about this recently and coming to the same conclusion[0]. If Jack Ma was supposedly disappeared and placed under arrest while also denying that he was ever placed under an official arrest then there's some background shenanigans going on by the CCP. Not to say that can't happen, just that it's not more likely than Jack Ma realizing that he poked a very vengeful bear[1] and deciding to lay low. Peng Shuai might be different (I haven't encountered information on that case recently that comes to mind) but it's fair to assume the same thing from her.
Otherwise the CCP did disappear at least one of them, which, admittedly, might happen if the appropriate decision-makers were willing to put such an operation into motion. That just doesn't really seem so significantly more likely than people choosing to retreat from the spotlight.
You can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
There is a large set of past explanations about why we have this rule and why it's so important. You can find many by sifting through this history, if you (or anyone) wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... On China-related topics, which particularly give rise to this sort of attack, I put this list together for a user a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod. Nothing has changed since then.
Captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan in March 2002, al-Sharbi was transferred to Guantanamo Bay later that year. In 2006, al-Sharbi told a military commission that he was a member of al-Qaeda and proud of his actions against the United States. Serious war crimes charges were dropped against him in October 2008, as it had been found they were based on evidence gained through torture of Abu Zubaydah. Al-Sharbi had a habeas corpus petition which his father had initiated on his behalf; when it reached the court in March 2009, al-Sharbi requested that it be dismissed. He did not want to pursue it.
Al-Sharbi was held at Guantanamo for twenty years.
The rest of his wikipedia page is not particularly flattering. I don't know to what extent the quasi-justice system that applies to enemy combatants went off the rails here, but I do know that if you're being accused of waging war against the United States, maybe chanting "May God help me fight the infidels or the unfaithful ones" is a bad idea.
Say what you will, a lot of legal process (good and bad) was applied, and we're talking about a guy who sought out and attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. He spent 5 years in Gitmo. This is not someone who challenged a political leader by calling him a funny name.
The word "vanished" is a massive over-dramatization.
Not defending - but you know what happened to him.
That’s the opposite of vanished.
Vanished would be things like [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights] where many of the victims were never recorded, and literally no one from their lives knows what happened to them - and many of the perpetrators have taken the memories to their graves, or never knew the victims names to begin with.
I thought from the quotes that you were trying to show someone who was held without trial for 20 years based on accusations extracted through torture at a black site as an example of something bad. Instead, you seem to be saying that he asked for it because he was rude. Real twist ending.
I'd say that comment goes a bit beyond rude. When you're being interrogated, even in US domestic criminal cases, the rule is "everything you say can and will be used against you". If you're suspected of giving material aid to the enemy in wartime, saying "I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I'm proud of my actions against the United States, may God help me fight the infidels" is the kind of thing that will get you convicted - of something.
Did the guy deserve to spend 20 years in Gitmo? Maybe not. But if I look into my heart of hearts, I genuinely have a tough time feeling too much sympathy. The crazy guy off his meds who points a fake gun at police officers probably didn't deserve to get shot to death either, but that's just what happens.
Note that this does not apply to US citizens. US citizens, even those accused of terrorism, still retain their legal rights under US law. That is what citizenship in any country, is.
Can those rights be violated? Yes, governments do bad things all the time. But that is not the same as a foreign national participating in Al-Qaeda training camps and meeting with Osama bin Laden. No nation on Earth has a strong history of giving full citizenship legal rights to foreign nationals and/or enemy combatants captured in a warzone.
Hicks was also returned to Australia to be dealt with by his own government, where presumably he then did retain his legal rights as a citizen of Australia. And at that point it would indeed be a violation on part of Australia if they did not treat him as any citizen of their nation should be treated.
All of that said, Guantanamo has still been a completely broken and messed up situation. We the people of the US owe it to ourselves and the rest of the world to hold our government accountable for that and not allow it to happen again.
It's just if you are wanting to say that the US treatment of it's citizens has been on par with China's treatment of it's citizens, your case may be better served by finding a more direct example.
> Can those rights be violated? Yes, governments do bad things all the time. But that is not the same as a foreign national participating in Al-Qaeda training camps and meeting with Osama bin Laden. No nation on Earth has a strong history of giving full citizenship legal rights to foreign nationals and/or enemy combatants captured in a warzone.
You're aware that the US actually kidnapped random people because they had the misfortune of using the wrong watch type or having the same name as an alleged terrorist, right? They didn't "capture enemy combatants in a warzone".
> Note that this does not apply to US citizens. US citizens, even those accused of terrorism, still retain their legal rights under US law. That is what citizenship in any country, is.
And also murdered US citizens abroad that were alleged to have ties to terrorists, without due trial.
The specific people referenced in the post I was responding to were not US citizens and should not be expected to be granted legal rights equal to US citizens.
> Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 by the Afghan Northern Alliance
>He was captured in March 2002 by Pakistani forces during a raid at Faisalabad, Pakistan. He was held in Islamabad for two months before being turned over the United States forces.
As I said, they were captured as enemy combatants, in a warzone. The circumstances of Sharbi's capture are much more questionable. But from the US's perspective, an ally turned him over as a captured enemy combatant.
It's all questionable and stupid, of course. But the question of their status at the time is relevant to the question of whether the US "vanishes" it's own citizens. These two were not citizens, so what happened to them does not support the case that the US is just as bad as China on that point.
No nation on Earth has a history of treating such captives as full citizens entitled to the same legal rights as it's own people. But maybe that's what we all would want. That's a fair point to argue, separately.
However, that is not the point the person I was responding to was making. Which is part of why I say the examples they offered were ineffective as support for their point.
You may find it helpful to practice re-reading and making sure you understand the case a post is making before responding to it.
You and I clearly agree that what the US did in Guantanamo was bad. You and I also agree that the US can, has, and may yet still violate the rights of it's own citizens as well as the rights of people who are not it's citizens, even in situations where it has signed treaties with those people's nations.
And the US government should definitely be held accountable whenever it does something like that.
None of that changes the observation that the US's failure to give full citizen legal rights to Ghassan al Sharbi and David Matthew Hicks, people who were not US citizens, does not make a good supporting example to the case for the US being just as bad as China about "vanishing" it's own citizens.
You are, of course, free to offer concrete examples which would better make that case. That is essentially what I was opening the door for. But here you seem to be responding more to an emotion evoked by how I said something rather than the point I was actually making.
The majority of criminal cases in the USA result in a plea agreement. The majority of plea agreements take away a persons right to access to the Courts (taking away Constitutional protects. They claim that you CAN still access in certain constitutional situations but if you try both the lower court and Prosecutor will threaten you with revoking your plea if you pursue an appeal to higher courts. Source: that's how it went down in my situation). Plea agreements were unconstitutional for the majority of the existence of the USA but somehow later became constitutional (even though our system of law are required to respect precedence). While for appearance purposes some limited constitutional rights remain, for all practical purposes anyone convicted via plea has their constitutional rights to the courts removed. In addition, the Federal Court system only allows 14 days from sentencing to file an appeal. 14 days, including days being transferred from court to a Federal Detention Center to your final destination seems extremely unreasonable. Again, it was unlimited until recent history, but it was decided it needed to be 14 days for financial reasons (too many people were accessing their constitutional right to the court and clogging up the system).
We must pass the Restrict Act, because anyone arguing against the Restrict Act will have no evidence against the Restrict Act until we pass the Restrict Act. Sadly, the passage of the Restrict Act will require those arguing against the Restrict Act to be jailed for Misinformation on Behalf of a Foreign Power if they have no evidence. If they do have evidence, however, they will be jailed under the Espionage Act.
> No, the US is not as bad as the CCP. But it has its own issues you can easily find yourself on the wrong side of based off your skin color or ethnicity.
Or traditional religious and political views that do not agree with the failed doctrines of the regime [0].
The history [1,2] is interesting and sad. It's unfortunate that the US waited 45 years to officially apologize and pay reparations.
It's somewhat surprising that Hawaii didn't enact the same mass internment/incarceration as California, in spite of being the location of both Pearl Harbor and the Niihau incident [3], and being under martial law.
She's still alive because she was 4 at the time... you can't say the same about the perpetrators. There's nobody left to prosecute, they're all dead. Ancestral sin is not part of the justice system.
Bad things done 80 years ago do not excuse bad things done by someone else today. We're not all entitled to a turn at mass murder or genocide. That's now how morality works.
> There's nobody left to prosecute, they're all dead. Ancestral sin is not part of the justice system.
Perhaps, but the government can still do something: apologize for the original injustice, provide some compensation, and try to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
> And you don't have to look too many years back in time to find concentration camps for specific ethnicities.
Two things here.
First, 1945 was a long time ago.
Second, the interment of Japanese-Americans was shameful. It was a concentration camp. It was not intended to make them "un-Japanese" or to destroy their culture.
What's happening to the Uighurs is different on both fronts. It's right now. And it's not just "we'll round up these people and put them in a camp to keep them from maybe doing espionage for a country that we're currently at war with". It's "we're going to completely destroy their cultural identity". What China is doing meets the definition of genocide (even if they aren't killing people, they're killing their ability to be part of "a people"). What the US did was shameful and was falling far short of our ideals as a nation, but it was short of genocide.
The implicit claim that, "actually the US and China are the same regarding human rights, balance of power, authoritarianism, etc." is by far the weakest argument in this domain.
The only thing I pointed out was that the two 'Great Powers' have a curiously similar obsession with spying on domestic civilian populations. You added the other issues for some reason.
It is true that authoritarian control freaks are my least favorite people, regardless of what government they're affiliated with - but I don't doubt that the American version, given free rein, would rush to introduce the methods used in China to control the population.
Well, as a counterpoint to "America is the same" I would direct your attention to this handy map of how long the current national leader has been in power for each country - there are some pretty clear distinctions (https://preview.redd.it/gzqeeslcyez91.png?width=1024&auto=we...)
How relevant is it that Xi Jinping has gained an additional mandate, if he's basically continuing a long-term policy which started in the early 80s with Deng Xiaoping, who was also the head of the party that's been in power since 1949?
It's not, because dialectically the article furthers the framing of TikTok and China as uniquely perverse which is wrong (cf. the abundance of examples posted elsewhere in this thread) and plays into American imperialist/hegemonic anxieties
An exception used around 10,000 times per year as of 2005.
And congress hasn't done anything to reign them in.
And I'll freely admit that China is going to be worse, with less oversight. But not only is the comparison a fallacy, it's cold comfort for the rest of the world (not to mention many non-naturalized American citizens).
In the Feds, you have 14 days to appeal your sentence. That is not fair access to a check. That time includes transfer from the court to a Federal Detention Center (lots of holding cell time with no access to a law library), transfer from a Federal Detention Center to your final place of incarceration via diesel therapy, etc. The USA used to allow unlimited time for appeals but that was clogging up the courts, so a happy balance between 0 and unlimited time to exercise your rights to access to the courts was agreed to, which the American Federal justice system determined to be 14 days (fun fact, they actually originally tried for a shorter appeal period than 14 days).
Edit: Sorry, 14 days for the defendant to appeal. The Feds team gets longer (because they have less resources than a locked up person I guess, some animals have more rights than others in American courts)
I think that kind of argument is really muddying the waters. Google/Amazon/Facebook[1] have absolutely not been "reading our emails over our shoulders" in any kind of human sense. And all those companies have extensive policies and enforcement structures designed deliberately to prevent the kind of abuse detailed here with TikTok.
And it's been decades, and they've really been quite good about it. There are abstract arguments about whether that kind of data centralization is a good or bad thing, and I think that's fine.
But that's extremely different from "this company actively spied on its enemies". And I think we need to treat with that distinction and not muddy it. Because if your point becomes "Facebook and Google and Amazon are bad too" it becomes isomorphic to "oh well, nothing can be done", because in practice society is OK with the existing giants.
We shouldn't be OK with active spying!
[1] Twitter is more of an open question right now, certainly the promiscuous release of the "Twitter Files" nonsense didn't tend to exhibit an institutional inclination toward privacy.
Is this an attempt at being edgy? The relationships between the companies and their host governments is not the point, its the differences between those governments that matters. Just one example of the difference is the Chinese government has camps for ethnic groups it doesn't like.
What if I told you there is a higher percent of our African American population incarcerated than the percent China's Uighur population that is incarcerated?
Google can push back, US companies can do that, and do do that. That system isn't perfect but I'd rather go with apps from more free countries than those that are not free.
It's unclear to what extent such corporate pushback against the USG is genuine conflict as opposed to theater/PR cover. I don't think it's a safe assumption either way. The incentives to pretend industry has more independence than it does are there, and methods of such deception have been seen before.
I think it is unlikely we have a conspiracy so vast, across a ton of companies that they put up fake legal fights, have fake warrant canary notices ... and nobody ever leaks out that they're all fake.
There doesn't need to be any conspiracy. If it's good for PR reasons to show they are fighting, companies will do it anyway without the need to coordinate.
I find it hard to interpret such whataboutism as sincere.
If you care about these perceived abuses by US tech companies, why wouldn't you applaud the outcry against TikTok? At the very least, it moves the needle in the right direction. It increases the awareness of industry practices and helps flesh out some constraints. Even if you're of the mindset that there's no practical difference between the US government and an authoritarian communist dictatorship that murdered millions of its compatriots for having the wrong political views, why defend their right to do the things you hate?
It's because the pot is calling the kettle black and then getting annoyed when it is called out on it. It's not that complicated, and it doesn't call into question the legitimacy of the criticism. It just says: "you've had shit under your own shoe this whole time and only now that I got some under mine are you complaining about the smell"
I think people find it insincere because pointing out that both parties in question have a problem doesn't change anything about the situation or the problems.
It is most often used as an attempt at a defense by calling out other guilty parties. Yes, we should like to live in a world where anyone calling out a problem or injustice only does so from a place of unimpeachable moral authority. But we do not live in such a world so we are still left with the need to address problems where and when we can get the social and political will to do so. Using finger pointing as a defense has the effect of making the problem seem insurmountable and therefore sapping the will to fix it.
The more genuine admission might be to simply say, "I admit I have shit on my shoe, and it does stink; however, if you are to hold me to account for that, then I demand you also be held to account".
With that approach people have a much harder time seeing the complaint as merely a self-defense by way of finger pointing and it's much more likely to be taken seriously.
This is where many people in the US are probably at on, say, the Trump indictment. Can't really say it shouldn't happen, he has almost certainly broken a long list of laws for his whole career. But that also shouldn't be the end of it, more like "Great start getting a corrupt and lawless politician in jail! Who's next on that list? When does their indictment begin?".
"Whataboutism" is not a logical fallacy, in fact it is the opposite.
"We need to do X because A is bad because it does Y"
"But we also do Y, shouldn't we also do X for us?"
Logic says yes. "Whataboutism" was invented to kill basic logical inference, in the context of the bipolar Cold War era. Using that term to kill discussion and browbeat is anti-intellectualism, pure and simple.
whataboutism is simply another word for tu quoque, which, as previously indicated, is a logical fallacy
indeed, the whataboutism itself is intended to kill discussion of the initial topic (in your example, A doing Y, not simply Y), hence why it's a logical fallacy, too
you are absolutely, 100% right here, and whataboutism is the first one, not the second one
in this case, the goal was to stop people from talking about China's actions and instead deflect to someone else's actions
that might explain why Whataboutism, invented by russian propagandists, is explicitly described as a subtype of the tu quoque logical fallacy:
"From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin 'you too', term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument."[0]
as an example, look at whether, after the whataboutism, we're discussing the original topic (Tiktok & its actions) or something/someone else.
see? whataboutism deflection succeeded.
it should be clear now why whataboutism is indeed, as shown above, explicitly defined as a logical fallacy, despite the made-up claim that it isn't one.
It's good to have a broad overview of the subject, don't you think? Wouldn't you want to know whether or not the TikTok outrage is genuine, or perhaps engineered by other social media corporations worried about loss of market share? Maybe this is all about economics and 'national security concerns' are just the vehicle for expressing that concern (as market manipulation is a harder sell?).
P.S. Have you noticed that both Twitter and Youtube have adopted TikTok-type formats, in terms of Twitter video feeds and Youtube Shorts?
Except it’s not a broad overview of the subject, it’s little factoids that equate bad behavior with other bad behavior, except there are many substantial difference which are neglected in the conversation.
It is a relevant question to wonder what prompted the concerns and bills… is it national security of is it economics? That’s not what’s being questioned, and even then there’s no good basis to know so it’s hard to go anywhere other than conspiracy theory.
I actually fully buy that both are plausible and likely, but I have no basis for the economics other than Meta’s lobbying. But the whataboutism always shifts away the conversation from the moment at hand by dismissing it all as something that meta/google do. We can at face value look at the risks of TikTok doing it and understand that they’re maybe legitimate national security concerns. By broadening, we end up just ignoring this completely.
I have noticed the copy cats. The concern from congress has been what can the CCP know via TikTok; not what can TikTok know as an independent entity. I personally do see the control of information and the knowledge of attention being a national security risk, which is unfortunate as I think they have the better product.
What you call whataboutism is what many would call precedent, which is an essential concept in legal discussions. Crying whataboutism to shield your side only gets you so far.
That's definitely not you or your deflecting and derailing comment which rocketed to the top or the whatabout comrades who make it impossible to discuss this topic here.
It seems odd to me that short of the nuclear option (removing the app from stores), no one has suggested revocation of the device permissions that TikTok is shown to abuse. Following something like this, it feels entirely reasonable for Apple/Google to reply "Submit an update to your app that removes all use of location permissions within 30 days."
Privacy laws implemented now would undermine the profitability of "structurally significant" US companies and restrict the flow of data from these private entities to government entities, and thus would likely be seen as a threat to national security.
Privacy laws are dead almost before they're even conceived.
It would also create a very large spike in unemployment. I can't imagine how many jobs would be lost if the tech industry could no longer spy on the internet.
agreed, look at the top comment thread, its full of political discussions about why its okay for one country to do something but not the other...
The real solution is that we should all have privacy. Encoded in law, with serious penalties. and that no country should be able to do what is described.
How long do you think such a sweeping privacy law would take to plan, write, and pass? Do you think they'd get it right? What might the fallout of such a law be?
It will take couple years, but many global companies have already faced that with Europe's GDPR legislation. Only problem with GDPR is, that fines seems to be too low.
You need only watch one congressional hearing grilling Jack or Zuck or Sundar to know that you don't blame on malice, what you can blame on pure incompetence. Our geriatric leaders have little idea how the tech that dominates our lives function, let alone regulate them well.
I think journalists at this point would be wise to maintain separate devices for journalistic work / journalistic communication, personal life, and research.
That's a pain but I think inevitable:
>On a practical level, my old device was relegated to being a dummy phone only to be used for accessing TikTok for work.
Who knows what other apps on their other device are up to...
Right, we've never heard any news of employees of other social media apps targeting exes, reporters, or celebrities.
/s
We totally have.
EDIT: I worked for Amazon in customer service back in the early naughts. They had an explicit alert set up for most celebrities that would basically get a CS rep fired if they went in and snooped. It was put in place because people went in and snooped.
20 years later, and more information about our lives is entrusted to these sites. It's absolutely happening at all of these companies. If it isn't happening, it's because of new policies and procedures resulting from prior incidents.
If I were a TLA for any country of any magnitude (talking something larger than the Vatican) I’d have a number of agents working as CS reps for the various big companies. It’d be worth burning one to get info, and you’d likely not even need to burn if the target wasn’t on the short list of celebrities.
High rewards vs. risk, to be sure. And it's not as if CS reps are not in demand, so any "burned" asset could easily be re-used. It's not as if their reason for being fired would be communicated anywhere.
I think journalists at this point would be wise to maintain separate devices for journalistic work / journalistic communication, personal life, and research.
When I was a journalist back in the early part of this century, the company I worked for issued burner phones and laptops to anyone who left the country.
20 years later, it's probably become standard across the industry, and in more scenarios.
I think that's good advice for everyone. I tell new hires we own your phone when you add any of our accounts to it and recommend using work devices for anything work related if privacy means anything to them. Some listen, some listen later when they get wiped because they clicked a phishing email and IR has decided a purging fire is necessary.
It doesn’t literally, but many companies have policies that use of comopany accounts on devices is consent to physical inspection of the device, data on the device, and other things as determined necessary by the compnay for legal, security, compliance, or other reasons, making ownership a useful cautionary metaphor.
Outlook and Slack typically require you to enroll in your company's MDM which gives administrators the ability to remote-wipe your phone. You can see this if you read the fine print when you sign in.
I think journalists at this point should seriously consider living in a different country than they report on, working as anonymously as possible, and utilizing a network of unnamed sources. Aggressive states aren't going to be deterred by your amateur opsec. Your best chance to keep working is not to be noticed as an individual.
We barely get adequate perspective when people live in the country, I can't imagine trying to read some reporter talk about what's going on in Arizona as they write from Argentina.
When deepfakes become indistinguishable from reality, seeing events in person will be the only surefire way of verifying reality. The rest of the time you'll depend on trust chains, each link of which can be broken.
> Journalists shouldn't have to be cyberopsec experts.
I disagree. Especially if they are covering geopolitical or highly monetised industrial topics.
They are basically spies working for the public. Spycraft shouldn't be optional for them.
Sure, a journalist covering celeb fluff doesn't need it, but one covering China, Russia, big pharma etc are automatically a target. This article is an excellent example.
If you hate tiktok, I get it —- I really do. But please just know that you’re missing out on something wonderful, unique, and delightful; in fact, delightful in ways remarkably similar to the feeling that https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights gives you.
There’s a commonality between HN and TikTok that I haven’t yet been able to put into words. They’re both “bookish”. You feel like you’re exploring. Often times I’ll swipe past 6 or 7 memes in about 3 seconds, when something incredible catches my attention. And it’s often incredible in exactly the same way as HN: you feel like you’ve unearthed some fascinating gemstone. (And much like HN, it’s designed for entertainment, so you can waste arbitrary amounts of time if you fall under its spell too long.)
I wrote a comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34573893 showcasing the three lists I was particularly proud of: educational, physics, and math. But I have dozens more. There’s guitar tutorials, handyman repairs, a collection of 18 videos teaching you how to tie all kinds of useful knots, art tutorials, cute animals, hardcore ML discussions, and everything in between. Someday I’ll showcase them properly. (Theoretically you can view them on my TikTok profile, but I doubt it’s presented well: https://www.tiktok.com/@theshawwn)
Just know that if you stomp TikTok out of existence, it’ll be a real loss. It’ll feel to me like you’d feel if someone burned down HN. And the calls for banning TikTok sound to me how you’d feel if Reddit was urging everybody to ban HN.
Now imagine that politicians are seriously considering whether to ban HN. That’s how it feels to read through the comments here about TikTok. The outrage is deserved and understandable, but it’ll be a real loss if it disappears.
If this comment coaxes you into trying out TikTok, one tip: use the “not interested” button ruthlessly. (Long press on a video.) The algorithm will dial you in after around 45 minutes, which isn’t so long. The first experience can feel jarring the same way that YouTube in incognito mode looks like a weird dystopian universe filled with people screaming at each other.
It became clear really quickly that they have completely disrupted instagram and snap. The UX is much more communal and interactive than either of those, the algorithm lands you on your interests faster, and they have massively reduced the friction around becoming a content creator rather than just a consumer - so there's simply more STUFF there. The videos are more ephemeral and imperfect than what you usually see on IG, and there's a lot more joy in what's being captured. It really is a step change in the ability to build communities around shared interests.
Behind the scenes, it's a privacy nightmare and I understand the national security concerns that go with PRC tapping directly into the id of our electorate. I think PRC is much more skilled and subtle about online manipulation than Russia is. (I was working on media monitoring when social media became strangely fixated on trade deals for just long enough to get US involvement in TPP killed - a framework that was only significantly different from other trade deals in that it would sideline PRC. Once both candidates came out against it, popular concern over trade deal nuances disappeared and never returned)
But the hysteria is driven just as much by SV tech knowing that they've been lapped and finding common ground with congress for purely anti-competitive reasons, as it is by the government trying to thread the needle between free speech and ceding ground to adversary information ops.
> The videos are more ephemeral and imperfect than what you usually see on IG, and there's a lot more joy in what's being captured. It really is a step change in the ability to build communities around shared interests.
... so far. But with any technology it seems that, once the attention goes towards something, money and polish and 'Moloch' take over and the magic of amateurs and the joy of discovery are lessened. Perhaps TikTok will be different, however! It's not inevitable, but just a trend I've noticed.
Definitely been a trend that professional content creation outperforms once the pros figure out how to game the algorithm. TikTok seems pretty resistant, both culturally and technologically. The shelf life of any one piece of content is so short that it might not be economical to invest too much in it. Instead you get a lot of fake amateur content, which is at least amusing.
To be fair TikTok has been in the mainstream for a couple of years (if not more), and still gives that feeling. A lot around that seems to be due to the algorithm doing a better job of sharing non-high profile accounts (seeding videos with a few hundred views, even if the account is new).
The polish/money/influencers are there, but seems to coexist/not take over better.
Even if you think HN and Tiktok are similar in content, your point here totally glosses over that one is a small community of people working on startups and is not monetized and does not employ a variety of psychological tools to keep you engaged (it actually has anti-engagement features!) and the other is an enormous, psychologically abusive, basically state-affiliated monetization machine that also collects a shit ton of data on a much larger group of people!
Like I get it, you like TikTok, but don't pretend that the quality of the content is the thing under discussion here. That is a really weird thing to do.
I was on HN when it was around 50 users total. That was day two, just after pg made it public. That was small, and yo8 felt like you knew everyone.
That feeling lasted for a couple years. But inevitably it went away. I didn’t mean the “hehe” against you, but rather a “I wish HN was small.” It was a magical era.
Believe it or not, you are precisely as hypnotized by HN as you feel I am about TikTok. They’re both wonderfully entertaining titans.
Again, extremely weird rhetoric. Even at its current size, Hackernews is orders of magnitude smaller and radically different economically, socially and politically. It is absolutely bizarre to compare the two in terms of content in the context of a discussion explicitly about TikTok's relationship with political and economic forces.
So what? What’s wrong with being a little weird, eh? All the best people are weirdos.
If the idea that there are similarities is so unbelievable to you, then so be it. It says a lot more about you than about the comparison.
Ah, there I go, letting the angry replies drag down my quality. Let’s see, what would pg say…
It may feel surprising that there could be similarities. But it’s not as unlikely as you might think. It does however require an open mind, and a willingness to set aside the anger.
If you’re determined to hate it, no words will change your mind.
I mean weird as a polite way of saying apparently disingenuous. Your comments seem designed to deflect and divert the discussion away from its most salient points and into an arena which discussion is pointless (anyone can like any content they like, after all, no one could possibly dispute your interest in TikTok or that other people might find it interesting too). I feel relatively confident in suggesting that the issues the article points out are rather more important or at least important enough to warrant actual discussion.
I'm not angry about anything, nor do I dispute your thesis that from a content point of view there may be similarities. I just raise the question of how that contributes to a genuinely useful discussion about the sociopolitical implications of the app.
Ah, I see where we’re talking past one another. Yes, you’re right. My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why?
Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok. The only time it shows up here is when it’s done something newsworthy, and people are (rightly) upset or scared about it.
The missing context here is that top level comments aren’t required to be “on topic” in the sense you’re saying. Quite the opposite; as dang says, HN is consistently contrarian.
All I can say is that I’m never contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. That’d be lame, as well as boring. I’ve been a TikTok user for over three years now. This is simply a glimpse into that world — or at least, my poor attempt at giving one.
> My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why? … Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok.
I’d argue that “setting aside” the implications is a form of wishful thinking.
Everything you pointed out can be pointed out without discarding the implications or implying that having a stance regarding the risks is somehow equivalent to wishing HN would be banned.
TikTok is primarily an interesting topic here because of those implications and because many folks are quite willing to pretend the problem doesn’t exist as long as they get their dopamine hit.
But it is completely compatible with this reality to point out that the content can be joyful to experience, while acknowledging that the context of that experience is a serious issue.
And if TikTok is banned, people won’t stop creating the kinds of content found there. It’ll just move to the next big thing.
I hold no hatred for TikTok, but I don’t get your argument at all.
You’re comparing TikTok and HN in terms of entertainment value.
Parent comment is highlighting that there are more factors to consider if you want to seriously compare the two.
Wanting TikTok gone is not like wanting HN gone, unless you believe that the only thing that matters about TikTok is its entertainment value.
The entertainment value is what makes it a valuable strategic asset to the PRC. But judging it only on that entertainment value is the kind of logic that leads to acceptance of bills like the EARN IT act.
The underlying details matter, not just the entertainment value or supposed safety claims.
Entertainment value is the only thing that makes HN valuable to YC. Admitting that to yourself is important; I wasn’t able to set aside my feelings of “the community is gone” until realizing that it’s just a different kind of community. One that seeks a certain flavor of entertainment.
You keep coming back because HN makes you feel good. It’s both as simple and as complex as that.
EDIT: This topic is much more nuanced than my comment here. Entertainment doesn’t imply that it’s somehow a lesser endeavor. But if Dan stopped entertaining the community, it would fall apart. It’s a necessary step in order to get to the most gratifying aspects of HN, and it’s why incendiary topics are so tricky.
I think most people would agree that Reddit is less entertaining than HN. Entertainment doesn’t mean cheesy. I wouldn’t find most political discussions very entertaining, whereas someone explaining how they hunted down a subtle bug is one of the most entertaining types of comments.
The best commenters here “play for the audience” the same way street performers play for the crowd. It’s all about skill. And if it’s skill-based rather than something random, you’ll have to admit that there’s a target to aim for.
That target is “be entertaining.” It’s called intellectual gratification in the rules, but fundamentally, you come to HN instead of Reddit because you’re entertained here, not there.
It’s my job to write substantive comments here. And it’s one I do happily, because I get so much out of it in return. But I have to be keenly aware of whether you, the audience, are getting something out of it too. That’s the essence of being entertaining.
My point here was that TikTok is gratifying in addition to “entertaining,” in many of the same ways that HN is. This was shocking, since I was expecting something horrible when I tried it out. It’s quite the opposite; you just have to look past the horrors for the gems.
Think of it like being trapped on https://news.ycombinator.com/newest, except sometimes you get the front page, and occasionally you get /highlights. You’d think you were alternating between something apocalyptic, something great, and something astounding.
TikTok’s algorithm achieves that, somehow. I’ve curated almost 3,000 videos. Actually, I just checked: 4,644.
As an accomplished contributor to ML and a long time community member, trust me when I say that I wouldn’t do it unless there was something valuable there. I’d lose interest, just as you would in Reddit’s /r/politics.
Again, you're focusing on entertainment and ignoring other factors. I never claimed HN is not entertaining.
Simply put: HN is not a national security threat, and TikTok is. This statement is compatible with acknowledging that both provide value (of the entertainment sort and otherwise).
But when evaluating the risk associated with each platform, one is clearly in a category that the other is not.
Guns can be very entertaining. Learning to shoot and honing one's skills can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. People do it because it makes them feel good. It's as simple and as complex as that.
But if you were to evaluate the risks of using guns as entertainment, you could not conclude that guns are no different than guitars. Both can be used to satisfy deeply human desires to learn a skill and entertain oneself. But there is an appropriate difference in policy when it comes to the requirements imposed on a gun buyers vs. guitar shoppers.
I'm not saying you're doing this intentionally, but you continue to ignore and sidestep the nuance that I and others have tried to reintroduce.
Let me ask you this: is there something that would have to happen for you to change your opinion about TikTok? If we learned tomorrow that it has actively been used to manipulate the mental health of teens and could be causally linked to suicides, does the overall entertainment value make that not matter?
> Hackernews is orders of magnitude smaller and radically different economically, socially and politically.
This presupposes and operates as though TikTok isn't an enormous collection of tiny niches. Many parts of TikTok are exactly like tiny subreddits where everyone or most people know each other.
Equally, some places on TikTok have a whole lot of people, like the front page of Reddit.
HN is somewhere larger than small reddit and smaller than big reddit.
Welcome original HN crue. What was life like back then? Were the discussions like compared to today?
We've all had that feeling where we start off in a smaller group and as the place gets more popular you lose that original feeling. Not sure if HN today is comparable to Tiktok for many reasons: because this site hasn't really changed technology wise, controlled by another government superpower.
That thread is one of the most vivid examples of the difference of then vs now. But looking back on it, the delta isn’t as large as one might think. I was going to write “Imagine Dan giving an answer like that to the community unprompted,” and then realized that he has, many times now. He’s done a tremendous job preserving the spirit that pg imbued into HN.
The thread is nostalgic for other reasons too. Aaron Swartz gave a candid answer that stuck with me, and turned out to be really prescient for my life.
Sounds terrible, swiping through memes rapid fire until I find something that hooks me is textbook addictive behavior and I know it will lead me to have poor focus and anxiety in other parts of life.
The videos where you "learn" something are extra insidious because they convince you that it is a positive use of your time. The reality is you will forget 90% of it, it is formatted to be entertaining and not educational, and many are outright BS.
And yet, you swipe through 30 HN stories a day. The insidious part is that you think it’s a positive use of your time, or that you learn anything. You’ll forget most of it, and ultimately it’s just entertainment.
If you’re quick to point out all the reasons I’m mistaken, well… take all of those reasons, put them in a paint bucket labeled “tiktok”, and give it a stir till you can’t see the difference. Because as a three year TikTok user, I can’t.
We’re all addicts. It’s a matter of choosing your addictions wisely, and not letting their downsides outweigh their merits. Discipline tends to be the cure, though that never works for me; the only way out is to find a fascinating problem to go work on.
Make no mistake: the average TikTok viewer is a lot closer to the average HN reader in terms of addictive behaviors than we’d care to admit. All of the reasons you keep coming back are addictions in disguise. And if this argument sounds out of place, there’s a way out: it’s fine to be addicted to learning new things.
I refuse to believe you can't tell the difference between TikTok and HN. Just take your argument all the way and say that reading a book is the same thing as using TikTok.
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35837751 upthread. I wanted to give you a solid reply to this, so I put a lot of effort into it. Perhaps it’s still insufficient, but it’s closer.
I don't know who does that. I look at titles and decide which ones I want to look at. With tiktok, you don't know what's coming next, and normally it takes you at least one or two seconds to know if it's a video you want to watch. Also TikTok content is personalized and there is no end blah blah. It's designed to make you addicted.
By the way I have read a lot of interesting/helpful articles on HN, many of which are not easy read. Many people would agree with me. Also I have read a lot of articles with a critical eye and left critical comments (like this one), never did that on TikTok.
These are just some basic rebukes of your comment. I can go on and on. I think the difference between TikTok and HN is very clear. Not saying TikTok is better than HN, they are different products, but it's very disingenuous to draw parallels between them.
I'll say the opposite, and boldly. With HN, I can quickly scan 90 headlines where 50% of them are tech related and the other half, at least smart people find them interesting or something.
Imagine following a video for a recipe that you can't rewind...
I don't hate tiktok. I don't hate it's business model or the product, per se. I just don't trust any company with strong ties to China and the CCP. When a company has those ties it changes from a question of whether you trust the company to whether you trust the CCP. And I most emphatically do not trust the CCP. The intentions and desires of the people running the company are irrelevant. The CCP has absolutely no problems violating those intentions or desires. There is no world where you can live in relationship to the CCP and not have your reputation permanently entangled with theirs.
If HN was controlled by the CCP I would have the exact same concerns and wouldn't be using the platform. The CCP doesn't care how useful, delightful, unique, or wonderful your product is. They only care about whether they can leverage it usefully in some way.
I don't use TikTok but I don't know why this is being downvoted. It seems reasonable to hear from people in order to understand the reason an app is popular.
There is nothing downvote-worthy about this comment. I really appreciated reading this perspective, since pretty much all I ever hear are the reasons TikTok is bad.
The framing was not great. "If you hate tik tok, just know that it has only wonderful qualities that are impossible to hate." You might as well be arguing that nobody should hate chocolate ice cream.
---
If you hate chocolate ice cream, I get you. Just know that chocolate ice cream is one of the most popular ice cream flavors in the world, and for good reason. It's creamy, delicious, and versatile. But why is chocolate ice cream so good?
Here are a few reasons:
- Chocolate is a natural mood enhancer. Chocolate contains a compound called phenylethylamine, which is a stimulant that can boost your mood and make you feel happy.
- Chocolate is a source of antioxidants. Antioxidants are substances that help protect your cells from damage. Dark chocolate is a particularly good source of antioxidants.
- Chocolate is a source of calcium. Calcium is an important mineral for strong bones and teeth.
- Chocolate is a source of protein. Protein is essential for building and repairing tissues.
- Chocolate is a source of fiber. Fiber is important for digestive health.
In addition to all of these health benefits, chocolate ice cream is simply delicious. It's the perfect treat to enjoy on a hot day or to satisfy a sweet tooth. So next time you're in the mood for something sweet, reach for a bowl of chocolate ice cream. You won't be disappointed.
So what are you waiting for? Go out and buy a tub of chocolate ice cream today!
The fact that people feel TikTok is a bucket of chocolate ice cream was precisely why I spoke up. It’s a label that feels as out of place as calling HN a basket of Twinkies.
There’s a grain of truth to it. Both are addictive. HN does it so well that the psychological aspects are almost invisible, but they’re there. That karma counter in the upper right is suspiciously impossible to ignore.
If this is your takeaway then I picked the wrong metaphor. My intent was highlight that people have baseline preferences, but the post engages in arguing that their tastes are somehow _logically wrong_. I thought chocolate ice cream would be the least objectionable taste but I guess leave it to HN to find a way =)
It's being downvoted because it has no place in a discussion around TikTok surveilling journalists and people that give negative PR to the company. Extolling the virtues of TikTok in a thread like this is like saying 'Well, Nestle's chocolate is actually delicious don't you think?' in a discussion around Nestle using slave and child labour to create their chocolate products.
I was surprised too. But incendiary topics are often that way. All one can do is to try to be substantive and hope for the best.
Thank you for sticking up for me, but remember: our goal here is to write comments interesting to read. As much as I appreciate it, complaints about downvotes never do any good. They just stoke the fire.
Have a wonderful weekend, wherever you are. Cheers.
Google and Apple already have a huge amount of info on me that is almost certainly being shared with the US government. What's the diff between that and TikTok sharing my info with China?
I understand what you're saying though. But I think the answer should be to work harder at blocking Google and Apple, rather than capitulating to <new thing>.
What is going to happen, is that even if a ban goes through, they will end up just selling the US/international app to a US company, then that company will be completely separated from bytedance.
This almost happened during the Trump administration.
And this would be a positive result. We get to keep TikTok, and all it's "benefits", while the national security concerns are solved because it would be US owned, and no longer beholden to a foreign adversary.
(I’m just delighted my profile is working exactly as intended. Hopefully my tombstone will engrave something that makes people question whether I was a real person.)
I remember reading sillysaurusx comments years way back before chatgpt and I reckon it is not the kind of person who would get into undermining the community by posting generated comments :shrug:
The article seems less about China tracking journalists and more ByteDance employees tracking critics. So like the eBay stalking scandal, except less severe.
In lieu, they'll take TikTok's subservience in giving them access to the data, as with all the other social media companies. It's the one reason I think my data is SAFER in TikTok than in Facebook. If the NSA had a backdoor into it like all the others, they wouldn't care.
I'd argue you just ban apps from countries who wouldn't allow such an app in their region. US social media apps are not allowed in China... seems fair to do the same just on that basis.
Because like Facebook, it can do that, just because.
It is no better than Facebook and is in fact worse. Given the history of what TikTok has done and also has admitted to violating the privacy of its users [0] [1] [2] [3] in leaks and recordings, it needs to be fined for repeated offenses in the billions of dollars just like Facebook was once fined at.
Billion dollar fines for repeated offenses is much better than a outright ban and the regulators are never tired of collecting money from multi-billion dollar companies.
To be even more explicit, Facebook and Google collect info which the US government can and does request from them. See: Transparency Reports from both.
Exactly. So this whole talk of "let's ban TikTok" is nonsense that won't solve the problem. But America doesn't have the guts to do what must be done to protect the privacy of its citizens (also doesn't want to)
Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if advocates for the West could participate in Chinese forums, the way advocates for China flood into discussions like we see here.
A quick scan and most of the comments seem to be Chinese talking points in one form or another
These addictive apps need a warning from the Surgeon General. It's not censorship, just a warning label indicating the well-known and well-studied phenomena around threats to health and personal security.
Call me crazy, but I’d love to see Apple acquire ByteDance. They’re the only company that I feel the public trusts with privacy, have the same level of cachet, operate globally, and don’t have a social media arm.
I was surprised that when you share a TikTok video on whatsapp/anywhere, it generates unique URL link that can be traces back to your account. This company definitely has "we need more data" culture.
1. you can get around that by using the actual TikTok link on the
website, not the app
2. It's by design. People who know each other probably like similar
things, so it facilitates in the surprisingly effective, accurate
and narrow niches that people can find themselves in.
TikTok (and Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp (if they are really spying on our private WhatsApp conversations) knows I (my IP addresses/my device identifiers/my browser fingerprints) like memes.
I don't get the big deal?
They know my age and where I live, which is public information via sites indexed by Google for a large percentage of the population.
My phone knows where I go due to GPS + cell phone towers. This is published via a "location service" to every app asking for it (and given permission) on my phone.
Apple knows what I like because they run the operating system for both my phone and my laptop. Do they have some form of telemetry? Probably.
Google knows what I like because I use their browser and they run my Gmail/other services I use from them. Do they have some form of telemetry? Probably.
> The story claimed ByteDance employees accessed two reporters’ data through their TikTok accounts. Personal information, including their physical locations, had been used as part of an attempt to find the writers’ sources, after a series of damaging stories about ByteDance
This was a strange article. Why would a journalist at a major newspaper be so ignorant of appropriate cyber security and privacy practices and install a PRC app on their primary phone? Why would they assume that they _weren't_ being monitored? And why would the company, if they wanted to spy on her, use 'another iphone' rather than just pull the data from the backend? That was the weirdest part.
> "By the time ByteDance was founded in Beijing in 2012, Google had been reading our emails over our shoulders, Amazon had been watching us shop, and Twitter and Facebook had been mediating our messages to friends and foes for years. Indeed, Zhang Yiming, the millennial software engineer who set up ByteDance, modeled himself and aspects of his new company on Silicon Valley. Zhang, who briefly worked for Microsoft before going out on his own, was once fond of quoting Steve Jobs and Jack Welch."
It would be highly surprising if the ByteDance-Beijing relationship was all that different from the Google/Verizon-Washington relationship (2013):
https://www.corpwatch.org/article/verizon-and-google-helped-...
> "Technology companies willingly provided information to U.S. government agencies to help the Obama administration snoop on reporters from the Associated Press (AP) and Fox news in order to ostensibly crack down on leaks that pose a "threat" to national security."