China’s TikTok Blazes New Ground. That Could Doom It.

Is there anything the Chinese invent that will not cause national security concern for the US? What good is this new McCarthy terror against the Chinese that is sweeping the land? Where is the political leadership that embraces win win rather than zero sum? Perhaps that is not in our gene. We like to beat up others to show our exceptionality.

Thanks to The New Yorker for breaking this story in a recent article: "Brave New World Dept.: The Meme Factory.

Here we have a stellar example of anti-China fake news industrial complex. First, some “experts warn” (without evidence) that a Chinese product “could” have national security implications. This gets picked up by the media, and soon there is “widespread concern” on the safety of these apps. Next, some opportunistic politician launches “investigations” to safeguard privacy—ignoring of course the abuses of domestic giants. Finally, the media reports on the investigation, using its existence as evidence wrongdoing. Thus completes the cycle that fans anti-China sentiments and makes future anti-China stories more believable.

First, it was Huawei. Now it is Tik-Tok, which I have no idea what it is until reading it in the NY Times. Pretty soon, we will find reasons to censor, ban, or expel every popular Chinese owned or produced products in America. Then, we will feel secure. I know it is a depressing thought. But we are walking towards that goal. Just like we used to say American-made cars are the best. Now no one is talking about domestic cars anymore, silently admit in defeat. I think our youth are spoiled including my own kids. We need to teach our kids more focused, study harder, and work diligently. Not just spending time on social media, watching sports, or doing nothing meaningful to contribute to the society.

TikTok. I'll leave aside the merits of social media platforms, which in full disclosure let me say I find dubious at best. What TikTok is, to anyone with Western sensibilities, is another Chinese trojan horse. Use it, or not, but never fail to recognize that its main benefactor is a top-down totalitarian/Communist political system. They do not proffer this "tool" as a token of affection and a sign that they want to do business. John~ American Net'Zen

When Mr.Zuckerberg waves the flag of free speech in Georgetown U, many criticized him "Are Breaking America", "Assaulting Truth"; and when it is TikTok, you start to play the defend free speech card here. Pick your side, free speech or censorship, you can not play double standard.

Is it interesting here that when we can not solve our own problems, we blame everything on others?

Tik-Tok seems to be one more social media ap that sucks up time and effort that could be spent on acquiring real life skills. A niece who is not doing well in school spends an absurd amount of time working on Tik-Tok videos. If only she spent half as much time on her studies...... a retail 'career' -if even that- is in her future. In that sense it may be damaging the US but it seems as if we are well on the way towards dumbing down our youth with or without this particular ap. It is only one more thing contributing to rampant Narcissism. I have to wonder how much cumulative time and effort is now spent on Tik-Tok videos and such. Becoming an 'internet personality' (what exactly IS that?) seems to be a more 'realistic' goal than becoming an NBA star or Rock Star.

Need to read this article carefully. TikTok claims not to censor content because the Chinese government told them to. But Bytedance also runs a messaging app in China, which we know is censored by default. They also killed an entire app because of "core socialist values." Yes they "host" US data in the US for performance reasons. They did not say that selected, or backup, data is not sent to China. We also read major articles in this paper about the 1000 Talents program stealing US technology. Bottom line, China does not play by western rules. Remember that when you use Chinese technology.

The US cries "censorship" when China bans facebook on national security grounds, but when it comes time to put its money where its mouth is about "freedom", the US starts shouting "national security!" and tries to ban Chinese apps. As usual, America is so deep in its own hypocrisy that it fails even to make this simple connection. No wonder our word is worthless across the world.

@ Mark Zuckerberg Yes - strong free expression values - that have caused massacres in India through the uncontrolled spread of misinformation. That spreads political lies in the US under the guise of not censoring political speech. And now you want your government to quash any foreign competition while you copy their model. Admirable.

It just seems like the US government and the American public has fears for anything that has anything to do with China. First HUAWEI, and now it's Tik Tok. This article tells readers about the huge success Tik Tok has managed to achieve globally and then it proceeds to say how the US government would do to Chinese companies suspected of compromising US interests without any evidence. Isn't the US of A supposed to be a country of rule of law? How can they ban Chinese companies even though they aren't hurting the US? What happened to the belief of due process? Just because someone else isn't playing by the rules means that you can too? If the US really fear China that much, maybe they should stop using anything that has the remotest connection to China. For example, Chinese food and the Chinese language. There's a chance they can contract communism just by eating a Kung Pao Chicken or saying a word in Chinese.

If my nation is threatened by an app that is used by teenagers then I think it is bigger problem.

There's been a lot of press about TikTok in the past several weeks, mostly about how it's being used by people and how popular it's becoming. Only now am I seeing stories that it's owned and operated by China. Given what we know about Chinese spying, you would think this aspect would have been more clearly included in the original stories. It's like publishing stories about how popular smoking cigarettes is and how everyone is doing it, and then later publishing some pieces about the dire health concerns. I'm going to try to clean my phone of any Chinese-owned apps.

As Chinese are doing so well on mobile phone platforms, more Chinese app will be part of ecosystems. While this is a learning experience for the Chinese companies to operate in a different environments, for we Americans, xenophobia and yellow peril should not dominate the discussion.

If American apps can't be downloaded and used in China, Chinese apps shouldn't be used in the US either. China controls its internet, yet wants Chinese companies to take advantage of the open internet outside of China. Just ban all Chinese applications untill China opens its market to US applications.

If people don't like this app, they don't have to use it. The government has no business telling people what social media they use or censoring social media platforms.

Would that we held Facebook and it's ilk to the same scrutiny....

Is it TikTok more dangerous than Facebook and Google? Or it is dangerous because it threatens hegemony of FB and Google?

I’m a little lost here. What average American cares which country the company that makes an app they use is based? I mean this very seriously. I can’t help but join my younger friends and scream “OK boomer”. No American fears an app because it’s from PRC. Not a single one. This is contrived drama. I don’t care that HK protests are censored. I really don’t. I don’t care about PRC facial recognition. None of my friends do either. I’m going to go open TikTok now and scroll for a while, instead of American-owned Instagram. Wait, is where I choose to spend my time the real problem here? And whose problem is it? Certainly not mine or any average American that isn’t a Silicon Valley tech executive. If we didn’t want TikTok, we wouldn’t use it. Plain and simple!

Maybe this will convince lawmakers in Washington the need for strong consumer privacy laws that covers all companies, whether Chinese or American.

Don’t know why the US would ever allow a Chinese company to buy an American one, or allow a Chinese company to operate here. China doesn’t allow US companies to operate there, unless it’s under close government supervision. Let the Chinese technocracy come here, invent here, and operate here (or Europe), under US or EU rules. Otherwise, just say no. Huawei is a perfect example. They’re an unofficial arm of the Chinese government, intent on not just infiltrating American telecommunications networks, but actually building them. That’d be just nuts to allow that. I’m liberal Democrat, but it’s basic common sense.

Woah now.... TicTok presets a far larger threat and this threat goes far beyond censorship issues. It is an issue of personal identity and who can master the technologies for machines to create personal identities and then who "owns" these identities. Right now were are witnessing a company that has created a new and seemingly innocuous data space, but a space that inherently involves facial data. What's done with these data,by whom and all of the questions, are unanswered, unregulated. This is akin to what Facebook and Google did within the data landscapes they invented and exploited, but this one is Chinese and IS the issue of ownership of personal identity The Chinese have already demonstrated various state of the art applications of facial recognition on their own populations. We also know that the future of FR technologies involves improving facial recognition machine learning over multiple ethnic facial types. TicTok now provides this, internationally So if US teens and tweens are creating and trading all of their puppy-eared and kitten-whiskered escapades, you can be guaranteed their facial data has become harvested and of course, memorialized by TicTok.. This is not harvesting data to best understand how to sell widgets or socks. This is potentially how one political or economic entity effectively researches, collects and identifies for eternity, the identities of an international and unsuspecting user base.

It’s understandable. Creating leverage as the ongoing unrestricted warfare between US and China drags on. China would do the same (indeed had in the past) if opening an investigation in the name of security is the right play. These skirmishes will pop up from time to time until one side gains/regains absolute dominance. Our government will intervene and stick its hand in the ‘free market’ if the supremacy is challenged. And that’s an inescapable outcome because in the end that’s what government should do really in the interest of its people. In the US case, a due investigative process is necessary because optics is one of the useful tools in the political toolbox, whether the target audience is domestic or international.