Top intel agency says China used TikTok to influence U.S. elections

[brooklynite]

Source: Axios

China's government has used the wildly popular video-sharing platform TikTok to influence recent U.S. elections, the American intelligence community warned in its annual threat assessment on Monday.

Why it matters: The warning comes during an election year and as the House prepares to vote on legislation to force China's ByteDance to divest from TikTok or else the platform will be banned from app stores in the U.S.

Congress is pursuing the legislation over national security concerns about the Chinese government's access to U.S. user data and its ability to conduct influence campaigns through the platform.

Context: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the head of the U.S.' 18 intelligence agencies, releases a yearly assessment on the major threats to the nation's interests around the world.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/2024/03/11/tiktok-china-us-elections-influence

[IronLionZion]

1. Nothing good comes out of TikTok

There are American short video services like Facebook/Instagram/Youtube if people want an alternative. Humanity would probably be better off without any of them.

[PortTack]

11. And you think meta and musk are not selling information to China?

My guess is you’ve never been on TikTok. There are lots of great creators there including presidents Obama and Biden, Adam Schiff, other democratic congress ppl and senators.

If you want to reach young voters TikTok needs to be included.

[BlueWavePsych]

13. Ex-TikTok executive says Chinese government used app to locate, identify Hong Kong protesters

A former executive at ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the popular short-video app TikTok, says in a legal filing that some members of the ruling Communist Party used data held by the company to identify and locate protesters in Hong Kong.

Yintao Yu, formerly head of engineering for ByteDance in the United States, says those same people had access to U.S. user data, an accusation that the company denies.

Yu, who worked for the company in 2018, made the allegations in a recent filing for a wrongful dismissal case filed in May in the San Francisco Superior Court. In the documents submitted to the court, he said ByteDance had a "superuser credential" — also known as a "god credential" — that enabled a special committee of Chinese Communist Party members stationed at the company to view all data collected by ByteDance, including those of U.S. users.

The credential acted as a "backdoor to any barrier ByteDance had supposedly installed to protect data from the C.C.P's surveillance," the filing says.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tiktok-hong-kong-1.6868141

Backdoor to every TikTok user

[Voltaire2]

2. Banning Tik Tok would be very stupid.

First, this is just xenophobic propaganda, part of our big upset about China being better at this capitalism thing than we are.

But more importantly tik tok is hugely popular. Bad political move. Democrats should distance themselves from this.

All social media platforms are full of dubious content. Nothing unique about tik tok other than ‘China’.

[twodogsbarking]

3. All you said. Well stated.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. A ban isn't really on the table quite yet

TikTok can avoid a ban if they disassociate themselves with China a little more.

[SouthernDem4ever]

5. I don't see how that's possible

Chinese govt has full control of TikTok when it deems necessary.

[IronLionZion]

8. What makes you say China is better at capitalism than the US?

[Voltaire2]

12. We keep having to put up trade barriers

to defend our remaining productive capacity.

Remember when both parties were all waving the Free Trade flag? Nobody is talking that shit anymore.

[SoFlaBro]

19. Vulture and exploitive fucking capitalism with the near slave goddamn work force and all that other fuck shit.

[Voltaire2]

20. I honestly don't know how this doesn't apply to both Chinese capitalism and the US system.

Last edited Tue Mar 12, 2024, 06:41 PM - Edit history (1)

Or how you manage to separate them.

I suppose you could conveniently ignore the slave labor and exploitive capitalism that is integrated into our system. You could pretend that the hideous situation in the early iphone era at FoxCon was somehow not connected to the rise of Apple to a trillion dollar valuation. And obviously our global system of production is dependent on hideously exploitative labor relations all over the globe, not just in China. We have migrant children getting mangled in meat processing plants right here in the USA.

[IronLionZion]

21. Depending on industry, US does have some safety/quality/labor regulations

and unions using collective bargaining for better conditions. Yes of course the treatment of migrant workers is deplorable and that needs to be addressed somehow.

US Conservatives complain constantly about "job killing" regulations. China doesn't have much of that. In China if lots of people die, they die.

[Voltaire2]

22. Well sure, mostly left over from the pre-Reagan system.

But that is irrelevant. The global economic system that we still are the largest national component of, and whose traditional global institutions and regulatory agencies we generally dominate, is massively dependent on labor forces that are outside the EU, Japan, and the US, and frequently in countries with effectively zero environmental or labor regulations.

[SoFlaBro]

25. The US doesn't employ slave labor.

[Voltaire2]

26. Capitalism is a global economic system. nt.

[progressoid]

29. Indirectly, we do.

Guess what app is more popular in the US than Tik Tok?

TEMU!

A Congressional report published Thursday offered a blistering critique of popular Chinese retailers Shein and Temu, with lawmakers accusing the latter of failing to maintain “even the façade of a meaningful compliance program” that seeks to prevent goods made by forced labor from being sold on its platform.

In the report, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said Temu’s business model essentially allows the company to avoid responsibility in complying with a U.S. law that block imports from China’s Xinjiang region unless businesses can prove the items were made without forced labor.

“American consumers should know that there is an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labor,” the report said.

....https://apnews.com/article/temu-shein-forced-labor-china-de7b5398c76fda58404abc6ec5684972

[PortTack]

10. Agree!

[Igel]

15. So force divestiture.

Oh, wait, that decision is up to ByteDance. The only way it gets "banned" and shut down if ByteDance doesn't put it up for sale and take their money home with them.

Like a lot of things that are presented as being entirely one sided, it takes two to tango in this case.

A large corporation is making a lopsided case for keeping one of its prominent US assets, one that might really become profitable in the US, as well as making its authoritarian enabler happy and able to spy and infiltrate and influence,

I'd imagine if ByteDance wasn't based in the CPR but in the Russian Federation and was Байтвтактe many people's views would be rather different.

[Voltaire2]

16. So no Chinese corporations can do business in the US?

We are not at war with China. China is not at war with anyone. All the major commercial social media platforms are toxic. Disinformation and bad actors abound. Perhaps we should address that problem rather than blindly cheerleading xenophobic bullshit.

[ThreeNoSeep]

6. Seems a little hypocritical to me

If it is only about sharing private data with foreign companies, perhaps the US Government should ban the acquisition of ANY personal data by any foreign or domestic entity without the permission of the original human source of that data.

If the US wants to keep Chinese companies and governments from my data, then the US should keep all companies and governments from access to that data, by law.

[Shipwack]

9. THIS!!! 1000 times THIS!!!! nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. The article isn't about private data, or control of TikTok; it's about the Chinese government having TikTok accounts

Here's all the report says about TikTok:

China is demonstrating a higher degree of sophistication in its influence activity, including
experimenting with generative AI. TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm reportedly
targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2024-Unclassified-Report.pdf

We have no idea what they put out using those accounts, or how they "targeted" which candidates. I suppose you could say that if China influences TikTok management, it could ensure that those accounts don't get banned if someone complains about them.

[Voltaire2]

17. Lots of governments have or had Xitter accounts. Likely lots have tik tok accounts.

Government social media accounts, the official ones, are normal. I assume each government publishes their ideological views. As they should.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. I can't tell from the report if they meant accounts that were openly government-controlled

or clandestine - probably the latter (because if it's plain the Chinese government was talking about candidates, it would probably be remarked on more).

[Voltaire2]

24. Social media is flooded with bots from lots of sources

Why do we think that a) only government agencies are a problem, b) China is the only government doing this, c) our government isn't also doing this?

I think disinformation of all sorts is a huge problem, but it is not primarily a foreign government problem, at least not with respect to US political disinformation propagation on social media targeted at the US population. That shit is coming mainly from domestic sources.

So I view this whole Tik Tok Panic as, quite unironically, a disinformation propaganda campaign, part of the effort to make China our new Global Adversary.

[ThreeNoSeep]

23. A quick check into the actual reasons WHY these GOP lawmakers want to ban TikTok

I appreciate your point. After reading the OP article, i asked myself, what was the mechanism the Chinese government was using to influence elections? A quick Google search revealed it was about Chinese-backed influencers and selling user data specifically. The generic boogy man of " Chinese ownership earns far less actual justification.

"The bill’s primary backers, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), say the app poses “a grave threat to U.S. national security” due to its Chinese ownership, and they warn that TikTok could be used to influence U.S. public opinion or harness user data to spy on Americans. "
From here
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/12/tiktok-ban-bill-us-congress/

[BlueWavePsych]

7. The Chinese government is using TikTok to meddle in elections, ODNI says

The Chinese government is using TikTok to expand its global influence operations to promote pro-China narratives and undermine U.S. democracy, according to a report released today from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The annual assessment from ODNI outlines national security threats facing the U.S. in the coming year, and warns that China may attempt to influence this year’s elections through online influence and disinformation campaigns.

ODNI alleges that “TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022,” and that “China is demonstrating a higher degree of sophistication in its influence activity, including experimenting with generative AI.”

The report’s release comes as lawmakers are increasingly concerned about national security threats that TikTok poses. House lawmakers are expected to vote Wednesday on a bill that would force Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok — or it would face a ban from U.S. app stores.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/china-is-using-tiktok-for-influence-campaigns-odni-says-00146336

Axios down. Might be DoS

[Scrivener7]

27. I don't think tik tok is our worst worry in that department.

[NoodleyAppendage]

28. Ban them ASAP

TikTok and other watch/swipe social media platforms have ZERO redeeming value in our society.

J

[rockfordfile]

30. Get rid of it.

China and Russia are threats to USA.