TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer to shut down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., four sources said.
China can influence TikTok into giving them their data for free today.
Perhaps they could, but there’s no evidence that they as yet have. And of what use is your TikTok data to the Chinese state, anyway?
The US government doesn’t care about protecting your data. They care about accessing it themselves and controlling narratives on social media in order to shape public opinion.
Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big DealOn the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
Centralized and decentralized platforms share a common set of threats from motivated malicious users—and require a common set of investments to ensure trustworthy, user-focused outcomes.
Many discussions about social media governance and trust and safety are focused on a small number of centralized, corporate-owned platforms that currently dominate the social media landscape: Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and a handful of others. The emergence and growth in popularity of federated social media services, like Mastodon and Bluesky, introduces new opportunities, but also significant new risks and complications. This annex offers an assessment of the trust and safety (T&S) capabilities of federated platforms—with a particular focus on their ability to address collective security risks like coordinated manipulation and disinformation.
Trust and safety my ass. This is about manufacturing consent. They’re failing to control young American’s impression of and reaction to the Gaza genocide that’s being done in their name, so they’re pulling out all the stops now. Not the Onion but the NYT last week: Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe: A surveillance law referred to as Section 702 is needed to protect us from foreign threats.
For most people, “could” is enough to worry about. Just look at the people flocking whenever their app is bought by an advertising company.
(As for the NYT opinion, I’ll forward this comment: “Waxman worked under Bush as a senior national security advisor. So the administration that believes in torture is advising us that government surveillance is fine and keeps you safe? Not sure I trust the source.” My personal opinion is actually ambivalent towards surveillance, privacy, and safety.)
Perhaps they could, but there’s no evidence that they as yet have. And of what use is your TikTok data to the Chinese state, anyway?
The US government doesn’t care about protecting your data. They care about accessing it themselves and controlling narratives on social media in order to shape public opinion.
They’re after the fediverse now as well. Atlantic Council: Collective Security In a Federated World (PDF)
Trust and safety my ass. This is about manufacturing consent. They’re failing to control young American’s impression of and reaction to the Gaza genocide that’s being done in their name, so they’re pulling out all the stops now. Not the Onion but the NYT last week: Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe: A surveillance law referred to as Section 702 is needed to protect us from foreign threats.
For most people, “could” is enough to worry about. Just look at the people flocking whenever their app is bought by an advertising company.
(As for the NYT opinion, I’ll forward this comment: “Waxman worked under Bush as a senior national security advisor. So the administration that believes in torture is advising us that government surveillance is fine and keeps you safe? Not sure I trust the source.” My personal opinion is actually ambivalent towards surveillance, privacy, and safety.)