None of that matters though. The point is this: TikTok is owned by ByteDance. By definition, ByteDance is owned by the CCP. The CCP currently has concentration camps and is starting to act fairly imperialistic and bellicose. They clearly believe that their method of governance is superior to Democracy and they have ambitions to become the worlds superpower. The point is that they could use this to spy at any point in time if they wanted to even if they aren’t at this very second. The CCP simply cannot be trusted and never should have been in the first place. It is the exact same CCP that led to the death of millions of innocent Chinese during the cultural revolution. They still have portraits proudly displayed of Mao Zedong FFS.
Context: All internet companies in China operate under China's Cyber Security Law [0]. Among its consequences: "Companies could be asked to provide source code, encryption, or other crucial information for review by the authorities".
(Tangent: TIL Apple's operation of iCloud in China is by a government-sponsored data company named Guizhou-Cloud Big Data [1] as a result of this law.)
The establishment of "Chinanet", such as Alibaba and Tencent, do pledge allegiance to (and are owned in part by) the party in name and action, in return they benefit from the protection and favorable policy it ensues.
I personally don't like ByteDance mainly due to its product philosophy of reducing users to mindless eyeballs (it's a general indifference to social consequences in China tho ), but can't
help but clarify that ByteDance isn't like those.
Having billion-dollar app killed by the party without recourse is just not a remote possibility for the Chinanet establishment, but it is a reality for ByteDance. This is not to say it's impervious to CCP influence, but the dynamics is more nuanced. Old comment:
>The CCP high officials don't really care about anyone but their own relatives and cronies, while your assumption is mostly right as in the cases like Alibaba and Tencent, ByteDance isn't exactly like them, it has a kind of autonomy and internationalization those companies wouldn't dare to dream of. ByteDance isn't as beholden to the party as those two since it's a startup capitalized on the app economy, it's growth is organic, didn't rely on government policies and protection.
>In fact ByteDance already has blockbuster app Neihan Duanzi killed by Chinese authorities overngiht.
By Which definition you're referring to? Now ByteDance is desperately trying to find a way out of this. It shows CCP is not intended to save their ass like how they try to save Huawei. Because it's just a company without government background.
> They clearly believe that their method of governance is superior to Democracy and they have ambitions to become the world's superpower.
It is the Western World who believe Democracy is superior to any others without contexts.
Democracy is good of course on paper, however, it's usually used as a cause to target flawed developing countries and leaving them to burn in hell. The West got rid of Gaddafi, leaving Lybia people suffering even more. Assad was facing a similar situation, I believe if he died the situation in Syria would be much worse. They just want to judge, and don't give a shit about that they cause much more damages.
A quote from Lee Quan Yew from the interview with Charlie Rose[0]: "I think to make sure that they feel they're accepted at the top table." China was THE superpower for a very, very long time (For example, in terms of GDP, and here's a video on the historical comparison [1]). The situation is more like, China has its own system and it's not possible to largely change or its people would greatly suffer (as always according to Chinese history, or just like Eastern Europe), and they're not quite accepted because the system is radically different.
> They still have portraits proudly displayed of Mao Zedong FFS.
State media has already started to criticize Mao for years. They didn't do it at scale because it would piss-off most middle-aged or old people, and it's pointless. It's very likely they will do this after these generations have died. It's basically like when people talk about Washington they rarely talk about how he treats slaves.
That's what people don't understand about TikTok and how the CCP works. Data gathered aren't the main issue, this app should not be analysed the same way as Facebook. The CCP will use it like they use anything else, as a tool to promote their own view.
You fear CCP propaganda. All right. But it seems that in your zeal to deny CCP propaganda, you seem to forget that all media is propaganda. All this western media attention towards how CCP is evil and how Tiktok can be used to spy or influence us, no matter whether they are right, are also designed as distractions from domestic issues.
Let's say we should ban Tiktok. Everybody's data is still being spied on by the CIA, and gathered by PRISM.
Go one step further. Ban Tiktok and Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Just a bit more context.
ByteDance is backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group [0]
The majority of investors and high-stake owners of Bytedance are non-Chinese.
Yeah, but please save your fud shoes for the time when they will actually start doing what you're afraid of via tiktok. Or at least for when it will become unclear and better encrypted. Before that it's up to everyone to use or not to use private companies' apps who never killed millions of people and are just doing a regular business. (I'm not a US citizen and apolitical if that matters)
Okay, but if I were an American civilian TikTok user, why should I care?
If you're saying we shouldn't support China financially, I agree, but TikTok doesn't even scratch the surface on the ways in which Americans give money to Chinese companies. Banning TikTok might be the start of a larger set of sanctions against China, but that would have massive economic implications for the US, which aren't likely to be popular. I doubt this will happen. So banning TikTok as an economic sanction is a pretty meaningless gesture.
If you're saying we should be worried about TikTok collecting data on us: again, I agree, but I think we should be more concerned about American companies and government agencies collecting information on us. Every time I know of an American civilian has been arrested, shot by law enforcement, canceled, etc., it has been due to actions of Americans. Has even a single action been taken by the CCP against an American civilian?
Privacy is a fundamental human right, and it's unacceptable for the CCP, the US government, or US companies to violate that right. But if we're trying to protect ourselves, it makes sense to protect against the entities that are actually attacking us, and for US civilians, that's not the CCP. I don't see a strong argument for banning TikTok here that doesn't also apply to Facebook, Instagram, Google, or any of the various other corporations that collect data on you and then sell it to whoever will pay for it.
EDIT: I'm sure the person who downvoted this post in the time it took for the page to refresh after posting it read the whole thing. /s
Well perhaps if you try criticising the CCP and the Chinese ambassador to the UK through this bizzare interview of the footage such as this [0] and repost it on TikTok and it goes viral, you might see yourself banned immediately.
Being able to influence geopolitics and orchestrate a pro-CCP feed to target demographics is a long, subtle plan that spans decades and TikTok is just the current instrument that the CCP has in their arsenal, and it's very likely early into that plan.
It's a little naive to think that there would be a red herring found with a packet inspection, though the author deserves credit for settling doubts.
If its association with China is the only problem, then that means you'll have no problems with Bytedance selling Tiktok to a US company, and putting US employees in charge, right?
> .. understand what data does TikTok regularly send back to its servers. I decrypted the content of the requests and analysed it. As far as we can see, in its current state, TikTok doesn’t have a suspicious behavior and is not exfiltrating unusual data. Getting data about the user device is quite common in the mobile world and we would obtain similar results with Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and others.
Thanks for excellent technical analysis! I personally enjoyed reading your article. However, to my knowledge, no decision maker is interested to learn the technical details. Don't we know already this tiktok is just in the US-China cross fire?
Our American friends are interested to teach our Chinese friends lessons by hitting hard on their public business faces. Never mind not talking about thousands of real state investments by Chinese people in US cities. Never mind, not talking about CCP atrocities on the Xinjiang people going way back at least 15 years (since when I am following).
It's not support for humanity, it's not about sudden urge for national security, it's about politics and populism.
If it were just in the US-China crossfire, I'd expect to see a lot more voices speaking out in defense of it. The decisionmakers themselves aren't tremendously technical people, but technical people seem convinced there's a real problem here.
It's important to say that BURP only deals with http like requests ( http/https websockets ) and the app can be sending/receiving data via other protocols, the same way you can't see whatsapp messages via burp [0]
I think America not allowing any Chinese product is not tenable and is a rejection of free markets. We must have a way of making them safe, providing penalties for violations of people's safety, and oversite provided by independent corporate entities
Markets are never fully free - ask any US company that has tried to sell to the Chinese market. What we are seeing here is the first truly global Chinese app. The US is grappling with the fact that China makes it very difficult for American companies to access the China market, but the US generally does not do the same for foreign countries. However, maintaining that approach puts US companies in a distinct disadvantage.
>I think America not allowing any Chinese product is not tenable and is a rejection of free markets.
Free markets are a two way street, if one party refuses to participate then why is it not okay for the other party to block them? China refuses to participate by blocking American companies from competing in many Chinese markets and requiring Chine ownership of most companies that are in China. So there already isn't a free market, the US is simply acknowledging that fact and acting accordingly.
Clearly apps ecosystem badly needs end-to-end encryption which is exclusively installed and applied by each enduser party not by server side which is easily circumvented by powers to be ... also to obfuscate who endusers are we also need a tor router like ecosystem ... until these layers become available everyone is simply rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic of mass surveillance
TikTok is a company, and has many competitors, there would not be any issue for anyone to develop a tiktok copycat. Why should it be banned under a free market? Plenty of silicon valley leadership have their political allegiance. Why would that be a problem for the users?
I would be shocked to see solid proof that tiktok is substantially more intrusive than snapchat or instagram. Data collection should be limited at the OS level anyway.
[+] [-] oxymoran|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plusCubed|5 years ago|reply
(Tangent: TIL Apple's operation of iCloud in China is by a government-sponsored data company named Guizhou-Cloud Big Data [1] as a result of this law.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
[+] [-] balola|5 years ago|reply
I personally don't like ByteDance mainly due to its product philosophy of reducing users to mindless eyeballs (it's a general indifference to social consequences in China tho ), but can't help but clarify that ByteDance isn't like those.
Having billion-dollar app killed by the party without recourse is just not a remote possibility for the Chinanet establishment, but it is a reality for ByteDance. This is not to say it's impervious to CCP influence, but the dynamics is more nuanced. Old comment:
>The CCP high officials don't really care about anyone but their own relatives and cronies, while your assumption is mostly right as in the cases like Alibaba and Tencent, ByteDance isn't exactly like them, it has a kind of autonomy and internationalization those companies wouldn't dare to dream of. ByteDance isn't as beholden to the party as those two since it's a startup capitalized on the app economy, it's growth is organic, didn't rely on government policies and protection. >In fact ByteDance already has blockbuster app Neihan Duanzi killed by Chinese authorities overngiht.
[+] [-] namelosw|5 years ago|reply
By Which definition you're referring to? Now ByteDance is desperately trying to find a way out of this. It shows CCP is not intended to save their ass like how they try to save Huawei. Because it's just a company without government background.
> They clearly believe that their method of governance is superior to Democracy and they have ambitions to become the world's superpower.
It is the Western World who believe Democracy is superior to any others without contexts.
Democracy is good of course on paper, however, it's usually used as a cause to target flawed developing countries and leaving them to burn in hell. The West got rid of Gaddafi, leaving Lybia people suffering even more. Assad was facing a similar situation, I believe if he died the situation in Syria would be much worse. They just want to judge, and don't give a shit about that they cause much more damages.
A quote from Lee Quan Yew from the interview with Charlie Rose[0]: "I think to make sure that they feel they're accepted at the top table." China was THE superpower for a very, very long time (For example, in terms of GDP, and here's a video on the historical comparison [1]). The situation is more like, China has its own system and it's not possible to largely change or its people would greatly suffer (as always according to Chinese history, or just like Eastern Europe), and they're not quite accepted because the system is radically different.
> They still have portraits proudly displayed of Mao Zedong FFS.
State media has already started to criticize Mao for years. They didn't do it at scale because it would piss-off most middle-aged or old people, and it's pointless. It's very likely they will do this after these generations have died. It's basically like when people talk about Washington they rarely talk about how he treats slaves.
[0] https://youtu.be/A8GwmsLXOx8?t=597 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg
[+] [-] realusername|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FooBarWidget|5 years ago|reply
Let's say we should ban Tiktok. Everybody's data is still being spied on by the CIA, and gathered by PRISM.
Go one step further. Ban Tiktok and Facebook, Twitter, etc.
[+] [-] zkid18|5 years ago|reply
The majority of investors and high-stake owners of Bytedance are non-Chinese.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tiktok-cfius-exclusive/ex...
[+] [-] wruza|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atarian|5 years ago|reply
>USA bans Huawei
>TikTok becomes the most popular social app
>USA bans TikTok
Yeah it's totally because China is "evil" and not because we're losing our edge.
[+] [-] kerkeslager|5 years ago|reply
If you're saying we shouldn't support China financially, I agree, but TikTok doesn't even scratch the surface on the ways in which Americans give money to Chinese companies. Banning TikTok might be the start of a larger set of sanctions against China, but that would have massive economic implications for the US, which aren't likely to be popular. I doubt this will happen. So banning TikTok as an economic sanction is a pretty meaningless gesture.
If you're saying we should be worried about TikTok collecting data on us: again, I agree, but I think we should be more concerned about American companies and government agencies collecting information on us. Every time I know of an American civilian has been arrested, shot by law enforcement, canceled, etc., it has been due to actions of Americans. Has even a single action been taken by the CCP against an American civilian?
Privacy is a fundamental human right, and it's unacceptable for the CCP, the US government, or US companies to violate that right. But if we're trying to protect ourselves, it makes sense to protect against the entities that are actually attacking us, and for US civilians, that's not the CCP. I don't see a strong argument for banning TikTok here that doesn't also apply to Facebook, Instagram, Google, or any of the various other corporations that collect data on you and then sell it to whoever will pay for it.
EDIT: I'm sure the person who downvoted this post in the time it took for the page to refresh after posting it read the whole thing. /s
[+] [-] rvz|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1284784810200838145
[+] [-] genidoi|5 years ago|reply
It's a little naive to think that there would be a red herring found with a packet inspection, though the author deserves credit for settling doubts.
[+] [-] FooBarWidget|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rydre|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] DarthGhandi|5 years ago|reply
This is just absurd, that's not the case at all. Your argument boils down to some bizarre implication that any Chinese company is state-run.
For all the over-emotional CCP rants on this website this has to be up there as one of the most hilariously ill-informed.
I get the feeling it's not possible to have a good faith discussion here.
[+] [-] myopenid4|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] diminish|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strooper|5 years ago|reply
Our American friends are interested to teach our Chinese friends lessons by hitting hard on their public business faces. Never mind not talking about thousands of real state investments by Chinese people in US cities. Never mind, not talking about CCP atrocities on the Xinjiang people going way back at least 15 years (since when I am following).
It's not support for humanity, it's not about sudden urge for national security, it's about politics and populism.
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuyuri|5 years ago|reply
[0] - https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/153944/burp-wit...
[+] [-] DarthGhandi|5 years ago|reply
Checking wireshark should really be done first.
[+] [-] alexnewman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solidasparagus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcinzm|5 years ago|reply
Free markets are a two way street, if one party refuses to participate then why is it not okay for the other party to block them? China refuses to participate by blocking American companies from competing in many Chinese markets and requiring Chine ownership of most companies that are in China. So there already isn't a free market, the US is simply acknowledging that fact and acting accordingly.
[+] [-] secondcoming|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moreorless|5 years ago|reply
In China, you can change the policies, but you can't change the party. In America, you can change the parties, but you cannot change the policy.
[+] [-] AtomicOrbital|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beaunative|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DarthGhandi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] K0nserv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kanox|5 years ago|reply
I would be shocked to see solid proof that tiktok is substantially more intrusive than snapchat or instagram. Data collection should be limited at the OS level anyway.
The only crime of tiktok is being chinese.
[+] [-] walnuts110|5 years ago|reply
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