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TikTok Sued by United States Justice Department for Violating Child Privacy Laws
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I do not think people really realize how many posts/videos are fake, throughout social media. Quotes taken out of context or videos changed, from its original intent.
The internet in general is a toxic environment overwhelmed with hate, negativity, disinformation. Probably not a good idea to participate in any online forums or discussions. Just use the internet for banking, buying stuff, and communicating with your family, doctor, banker, etc.
It may violate the 1st Amendment
The Biden Admin's claim TikTok is a national security threat and that the app needs to be either sold to a U.S. entity or banned is questionable especially in light of the fact that the Biden Admin rejected TikTok's "Project Texas" proposal, a proposal that would have been "the least-restrictive" course of action.
TikTok offered so many concessions that would have alleviated U.S. concern. All of them were rejected or ignored.
On top of all this, if TikTok is such a big threat, then why did Biden create a TikTok account earlier this year
and tell reporters that he planned to use the TikTok account through the election period?
Biden campaign plans to keep using TikTok through the election
The possible ban that the president signed into law Wednesday won't go into effect until January, at the earliest, and his campaign told NBC News it will keep using TikTok for now.
www.nbcnews.com
Kamala Harris created a TikTok account a little over a week ago.
You don't see that as being the slightest bit hypocritical?
TikTok offered an extraordinary deal. The U.S. government took a pass.
TikTok offered the Biden administration control over its U.S. operations and a kill switch if things went south. The administration took a pass.
www.washingtonpost.com
TikTok offered an extraordinary deal. The U.S. government took a pass.
May 29, 2024
To save itself, TikTok in 2022 offered the U.S. government an extraordinary deal.
The video app, owned by a Chinese company, said it would let federal officials pick its U.S. operation’s board of directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire and would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code, according to a copy of the company’s proposal. It even offered to give federal officials a kill switch that would shut the app down in the United States if they felt it remained a threat.
The Biden administration, however, went its own way. Officials declined the proposal, forfeiting potential influence over one of the world’s most popular apps in favor of a blunter option: a forced-sale law signed last month by President Biden that could lead to TikTok’s nationwide ban.
The government has never publicly explained why it rejected TikTok’s proposal, opting instead for a potentially protracted constitutional battle that many expect to end up before the Supreme Court. Since federal officials announced an investigation into TikTok in 2019, the app’s user base has doubled to more than 170 million U.S. accounts - including Biden’s reelection campaign.
But the extent to which the United States evaluated or disregarded TikTok’s proposal, known as Project Texas, is likely to be a core point of dispute in court, where TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, are challenging the sale-or-ban law as an “unconstitutional assertion of power.”
The episode raises questions over whether the government, when presented with a way to address its concerns, chose instead to back an effort that would see the company sold to an American buyer, even though some of the issues officials have warned about - the opaque influence of its recommendation algorithm, the privacy of user data - probably would still be unresolved under new ownership.
“The government essentially threw up its hands at the possibility of any kind of regulation or cybersecurity measure,” said Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University law professor who researches international tech policy.
“TikTok proposed this incredible array of protections, but none of it mattered,” he added. “In the government’s thinking, it wasn’t: ‘Can this app be protected?’ It was: ‘There’s a Chinese owner.’ That became the death knell. The government had a complete absence of faith in [its] ability to regulate technology platforms, because there might be some vulnerability that might exist somewhere down the line.”
A senior Biden administration official said in a statement that the administration “determined more than a year ago that the solution proposed by the parties at the time would be insufficient to address the serious national security risks presented. While we have consistently engaged with the company about our concerns and potential solutions, it became clear that divestment from its foreign ownership was and remains necessary.” The official declined to specify what made the plan insufficient.
In their legal challenge, TikTok and ByteDance argue the sale-or-ban law violates the First Amendment by suppressing a platform Americans use for information and self-expression. Courts traditionally evaluate such speech disputes on whether the government is pursuing a compelling state interest through the least-restrictive means possible.
The government, some legal experts said, probably will be asked to explain why Project Texas wasn’t a reasonable solution for its national security goals. The Biden administration hasn’t publicly detailed why the proposal was inadequate, saying only that the possibility of future Chinese data-gathering or propaganda merited an aggressive response.
In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson said the law “addresses critical national security concerns in a manner that is consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations. We look forward to defending the legislation in court.”
Jodi Seth, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said in a statement that the company has voluntarily subjected itself to rigorous examination, including opening its source code to outside inspectors for ongoing technical review. “No other entertainment or social media platform provides a similar level of third-party oversight, even though they employ large numbers of foreign nationals and have development centers around the world,” Seth said.
TikTok and ByteDance leaders prepared the plan as part of their negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, a group composed of officials from nine federal agencies that reviews business deals for national security concerns.
TikTok outlined its proposals in a draft “national security agreement” totaling more than 90 pages, a copy of which The Washington Post reviewed last year. That proposal would have bound the company contractually to government controls in exchange for the ability to stay online in the United States.
The deal included extensive provisions never before offered to the government by a private company - including TikTok’s U.S.-based peers in the tech industry, such as Google and Facebook.
The plan would have largely blocked ByteDance’s global executives, including in its Beijing headquarters, from decision-making authority over the U.S. operation and would have siloed most of the U.S. app’s functionality in a discrete subsidiary subject to Washington oversight.
An American board of directors shaped by federal authorities would have been empowered to scrutinize the company’s content-moderation decisions and data flows, the draft agreement said. It also would have offered a “shutdown option” that the government could use to suspend TikTok in the United States if the company broke its part of the deal.
The plan was drafted over months of meetings in consultation with CFIUS officials, who told TikTok that they were close to a final agreement, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks.
But shortly after TikTok submitted the proposal in August 2022, “CFIUS without explanation stopped engaging,” TikTok and ByteDance wrote in their legal petition to the appeals court. The companies said they “repeatedly asked why discussions had ended and how they might be restarted, but they did not receive a substantive response.” (The administration official contends that the administration told TikTok at the time that divestment was the only viable option.)
TikTok officials requested meetings with Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and other agency leaders, who declined, arguing that the company was already meeting with the appropriate officials, a U.S. official told The Post. Around that time, officials from the White House and Justice Department, including Monaco, were holding meetings with the forced-sale bill’s co-sponsors and other lawmakers critical of TikTok to offer advice on how they could draw up a bill that would survive a legal challenge, congressional members and staffers told The Post.
“There was clearly a bait and switch that happened here,” said a person who observed but was not involved in either side of the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss what they had witnessed. “There was a 100-page national security agreement draft that was excruciatingly detailed. They went down the road and started building a lot of stuff to comply with that. Then at some point the government just changed its mind.”
Despite the lack of agreement from the government, TikTok adopted a number of the proposal’s components, saying in its legal filing that it has spent more than $2 billion to “resolve the very concerns publicly expressed by [the law’s] congressional supporters.”
The company moved the TikTok teams responsible for overseeing U.S. user information, security and content moderation into an American subsidiary, U.S. Data Security, that now employs more than 2,000 workers. Nearly all are Americans, a company spokesperson said, except for a few dozen British and Australian workers hired for around-the-clock support.
The company also shifted American users’ data to servers run by Oracle, the Texas-based tech giant that the U.S. military entrusts with some of its most highly classified cloud-computing work.
Some of its efforts, however, have been stymied by the government’s reluctance to engage, U.S. Data Security officials said at a briefing this month for the Center on Technology Policy, a policy think tank at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that has received funding from foundations and tech companies including Google, Meta and TikTok.
According to attendees at the briefing, TikTok said it had submitted to the government a list of nominees for directors, but that federal officials had yet to approve them. That has left U.S. Data Security without an independent board.
The administration official declined to offer a response on this point. Without an agreement in place, it’s unclear how any such board nomination would apply.
TikTok also pledged to allow the U.S. government to set the rules for hiring, including requiring all new hires to be U.S. citizens or green-card holders, to consent to background checks and to accept that their employment offers could be revoked by government officials as they saw fit.
With no agreement in place, however, TikTok has been conducting its own background checks, the officials said in the briefing. A spokesperson said TikTok’s human resources work for U.S. employees still runs through ByteDance but that the company expects to fully transition the work into U.S. Data Security within a matter of weeks.
The stalled arrangement also has undermined Oracle’s ability to conduct third-party review. Though Oracle employees are actively reviewing TikTok’s source code for flaws and vulnerabilities, the U.S. Data Security officials said the government’s failure to participate has meant the code reviewers have no clear process for how they would report any red flags they might find.
Matt Perault, a former Facebook policy director who leads the UNC center, said those missed connections have weakened the government’s ability to guard against the risks it has long characterized as national threats.
“For the system to have the level of verification the government seems to want, the government has to play ball,” Perault said. “If you’re serious about trying to address concerns, you would suggest a set of remedies. And essentially what the government has said is there’s no remedy other than a sale.”
The law gave ByteDance 270 days from the day of Biden’s April 24 signing to sell TikTok, with an option for a 90-day extension if Biden determines that “significant progress” has been made toward a sale. In a filing, ByteDance argued the possibility of an extension was not feasible, given that it requires the company to take an action that it is fighting in court.
If ByteDance does not divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. assets by the deadline, the government will make it unlawful to “distribute, maintain, or update” the app within the United States.
Tech experts expect the order would largely be carried out by private companies: Apple and Google’s app stores would be required to stop pushing out app updates or downloads, and Oracle would be forced to stop hosting the app’s data and infrastructure on its U.S.-based servers.
Apple and Google declined to comment, but two people familiar with those companies’ thinking said the companies do not expect to weigh in on the matter.
One of the people said federal officials had not shared any evidence with the companies substantiating their national security concerns about TikTok. “Everyone internally thinks it’s the biggest bunch of bulls—,” this person said of the concerns, “but they’ve just decided to stay out of harm’s way.”
TikTok, ByteDance and a group of TikTok creators who sued over the law joined with the Justice Department in asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to fast-track the case and offer a ruling by Dec. 6. That would allow time for either side to seek a Supreme Court review of the ruling before the current forced-sale deadline of Jan. 19.
Because the law requires all challenges to run through the appeals court as its “exclusive jurisdiction,” the case will operate differently from traditional legal battles, court filings show. Instead of a discovery or fact-finding phase where evidence and witnesses would be presented, usually handled by a district court, the parties will file legal briefs for the court’s judges to review.
On Tuesday, a panel of three judges ordered that the companies and the creators must submit their briefs by June 20, and the Justice Department by July 26, a filing shows. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin in September.
The Justice Department told the court in a separate filing earlier this month that it is “evaluating” whether it needs to file an evidentiary submission that would contain “classified material to support the [law’s] national security justifications.”
While the government has offered some classified briefings for lawmakers, it hasn’t publicly shared any evidence showing the Chinese government has exercised influence over the app. In March, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information about TikTok so as “to better educate the public on the need for urgent action.” A spokeswoman in Blumenthal’s office said they haven’t received a response. An ODNI spokesperson said they were continuing “engagement with Congress on the issue.”
Chander, the Georgetown law professor, said the lack of government substantiation after five years of investigating has made it hard to understand the government’s current urgency over an app millions of Americans use for news and entertainment.
“It’s hard to square this as an immediate threat if the Biden campaign keeps posting TikToks,” he said.
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Do you mean deflation would slow down?
TikTok Shop, Temu, and Shein all help to bring down inflation.
How companies with ties to China, like Temu, Shein, and TikTok, are influencing US ecommerce
Analyst insight: “I think the appeal of the US market and the fact that ecommerce is continuing to grow here is really the big opportunity [for these companies with ties to China],” Canaves said. “China’s a much more highly competitive market for retail, and there’s also that slowdown in the consumer economy there. So it’s really pushing the companies, the ecommerce players, and the brands and manufacturers to look overseas for their next stages of growth.”
The advantages:
- Companies with manufacturing in China have a pricing benefit. “As inflation remains top of mind among price-sensitive US consumers, the low prices from ecommerce apps like Shein and Temu are a top draw, with offers of big savings over competitors,” Canaves said.
Then there are all the TikTok videos showing people how to shop smarter and save money.
What happens to TikTok when the ban happens?
"Five Eyes" agencies don't control social media. They just watch it. And they're presumably developing just as much ability to watch TikTok as they have for Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.
"Five Eyes" agencies don't control social media. They just watch it. And they're presumably developing just as much ability to watch TikTok as they have for Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.
I won't get much into the competency of this administration. By the time the deadline hits, The Biden administration won't even occupy the White House. Trump has drafted executive orders in favor of banning TikTok from the U.S. If he is elected, I see his administration favoring a permanent ban of operations in the U.S. If somehow whoever the Democrat-elect is elected, then who knows what will happen.It may violate the 1st Amendment
The Biden Admin's claim TikTok is a national security threat and that the app needs to be either sold to a U.S. entity or banned is questionable especially in light of the fact that the Biden Admin rejected TikTok's "Project Texas" proposal, a proposal that would have been "the least-restrictive" course of action.
TikTok offered so many concessions that would have alleviated U.S. concern. All of them were rejected or ignored.
On top of all this, if TikTok is such a big threat, then why did Biden create a TikTok account earlier this year
and tell reporters that he planned to use the TikTok account through the election period?
Biden campaign plans to keep using TikTok through the election
The possible ban that the president signed into law Wednesday won't go into effect until January, at the earliest, and his campaign told NBC News it will keep using TikTok for now.
Kamala Harris created a TikTok account a little over a week ago.
You don't see that as being the slightest bit hypocritical?
Let's just say some people think TikTok commits espionage by selling information to China. The punishments for espionage are written clearly in statutory law and they don't require an interpretation by the courts. TikTok's lawyers could argue in court until they're blue in the face... It's a done deal at that point. Huawei had faced the same type of ban a few years back, so I'm not sure how TikTok will come out with a win here.
I guess you haven't heard that Trump is now against a TikTok ban
Trump's TikTok ban reversal comes after meeting megadonor who has stake in TikTok
Trump reversed his position on potentially banning TikTok ahead of an expected House vote this week on legislation that could lead to it being blocked in the U.S
As Donald Trump reverses his position on potentially banning TikTok ahead of an expected House vote this week on legislation that could lead to it being blocked in the U.S., the former president has been rebuilding his relationship with a GOP megadonor who reportedly has a major financial stake in the popular social media platform.
Trump met with the donor, hedge fund manager Jeff Yass, earlier this month at a Club for Growth donor retreat in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1.
The Club for Growth, a conservative political organization to which Yass has donated millions of dollars, has opposed anti-TikTok efforts.
Trump says a TikTok ban would only help 'enemy of the people' Facebook
After trying to ban TikTok when he was president, Mr Trump now opposes a bill that targets the app.
www.bbc.com
Former US President Donald Trump has criticised a congressional bill to force TikTok's parent company to sell the app or see it banned in the US.
[ . . . ]
Club for Growth, a conservative lobbying group that is close with Mr Trump, has taken a strong stand against the proposed TikTok ban.
Last week Mr Trump met a major donor to the group, billionaire hedge fund manager Jeff Yass.
Kellyanne Conway, who was one of Mr Trump's top aides in the White House, has in recent months been lobbying for TikTok in Congress on behalf of the Club for Growth.
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...as in the Tiktoker's getting paid and buying high value items like homes, vehicles...things that if a TikTokers had a average paying job wouldn't be able to afford. A perfect example is being able to buy a $110,000 EV and trash it. Or Flippers flipping homes for likes...driving home prices up...and I'm not saying getting rid of TikTok will solve the problem...but its not helping.
I hate to break it to you, but technically this forum is social media.
And, yes, it is a huge waste of time, but here I am, wasting my time... but I am self-aware enough to realize it, and realize that it is my choice.
Perhaps we should be teaching children more about personal responsibility, so they have a better chance in this messed up world that we have created for them. Of course, since we aren't very good at taking personal responsibility, I'm not sure who would teach them.
The world would be a lot better if we worried whether we were doing everything we can to help everyone succeed rather than pointing out the mistakes we feel others are making, but as a species we prefer to cast stones. One of the main reasons for social media's success, sadly.
Counterpoint: Social media enables responsible teens to find and seize opportunities and achieve higher level skill and appreciation of their hobbies and aspirations typically more than what can be had from any local community not the suburbs.
From Behance, Dribble, to even X.
It’s not far-fetched for teens to get free tickets to conferences or discover modern and emerging means of pursuing what they love through those channels.
Funny enough that ABSOLUTELY is the case for most high-earning jobs that are not at all static on information and skills to be great at such as engineering, music, performative arts, and sports.
As a parent you and the school you forced your kid to settle with are responsible gor having your child efficiently use socoal
media to benefit and maximize their life—not vicariously live life through others, mindlessly death scroll about things very distant of being beneficial to them, and seek out communities and people that benefit and respect who they are and are becoming.
So no: It makes no sense to devoid a meaningful amount of teens from social
media.
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Exactly, this is also social media.
And I'm of the opinion that anyone below 18 shouldn't be on social media as it is quite harmful. Now matter how much you teach your kids, they will receive DM's from bad people. You cannot avoid that unless you don't allow them to be on social media.
That makes no sense from a standpoint of the network effects of social media that would become an unnecessary utility bill for things in which isn’t necessarily consistently useful for you in a particular month (or however frequently a user decides to get charged).
While scholarships/opportunities as well as modern tool, techniques, examples/performatives, and topics on social media platforms are consistently invaluable for emerging engineers, performative arts practitioners, models, musicians, and etc, it’s a stretch to force everyone to pay to use almost social media platforms.
Whether that’s LinkedIn, X (real-time info is especially invaluable for engineers, designers, and musicians), or Tik Tok (long overdue for a short-video successor to Vine—especially for comedians and fashionistas).
The whole “you are the product” rhetoric without more nuance is pointlessly very cynical and you can frankly frame various participant-driven social phenomenon that way.
Without such nuanced it’s veiled entitlement and naive oversimplification of the dynamics needed to support a site that typically employs scarce and expensive human talent to even create the invaluable features and public exposure users have to interact with those interested or applicable with how they want to express themselves and communicate online.
Also a common saying in the internet over the years “keep that same energy” organizing free for users things in-person or digitally that has the positive impact or capabilities social media can have in any sustainable matter that also pays people to support you and sustain you as well.
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Governments are gonna have to accept they have to be held more accountable with their archaic means of verifying people being who they are amongst all the digital-oriented means people live their lives.
IDs, passports, and birth certificates should all be digitized and able to utilized verify people are human with this being required for social-media-oriented accounts.
For social media, all users need to verify themselves as being human and two factor authentication being required.
Particularly for social media involving persistent direct interaction with other humans, trolling would significantly be reduced if accounts could not be anonymous (always directly being tied to a particular person).
Framing social media as crappy is lazy close mindedness.
Regardless, another person’s “trash” is another person’s “treasure”—a gem even to the other person that the previous person didn’t appreciate not thoroughly evaluating (benignly perhaps, prioritizing other things).
There’s also many variants of social media we like and don’t like. Obviously you don’t find all social media to be crappy to be on this forum sharing your thoughts in the first places.
There’s pros and cons to all forms of media. Some people find books a waste of time compared to movies; some people find LinkedIn too boring than TikTok.
Some fine social media more convenient than traditional news channels can be for their lifestyle and interests.
It’s all relative at the end of the day; absolute language about social media when we’re talking about societal matters such as the impact/benefits of social media is extremely problematic to me
Yep. Even some of the stuff said here is pretty depressing. It would be good if we could just have nice things without consequences, but being able to facelessly say things apparently amplifies our more base instincts. I have to admit some of the toxic stuff I've seen said over meaningless stuff on the internet has reduced my faith in the species.
It appears that the more we can communicate together, the more we only think about ourselves, and I'm amazed how quickly that feedback loop spirals. Add an AI feedback loop and this should be a depressing ride in a handbasket.
What tree are you barking up? You all over the comment with this that and other sides thought my reply.
The reality is social media is nothing more than newsstands and food stores that sell or sell gossip newspapers and magazines years ago. Then as today, I don't believe or care about what who says, etc. Nothing new but that way this garbage is delivered. As a parent, I worried for years about how this style of social media would have on my family. Even my child then knew it wasn't worth doing and ignored it. Parents do have a strong example to give to the children, and in Japan, the school heads always say " You are in control of their devices not them.
I think many people are missing the point here about TikTok and the US governments concerns about it. The point is that yes young teenagers will use social media app's even if they are not supposed to because of age limit requirements BUT the majority of the worlds social media app's are owned and run by companies in countries that have strict data protection laws. These laws protect how and where data is used. China may have data protection laws but China is well know as a country that does not follow many of it's own laws hence why the country is well known as the fake/theft capital of the world. If you want something copied, China will do it, if China want's something the West have, they will steal it so they can copy it. Do you honestly believe that a Chinese company is going to protect the personal data of millions of US tiktok users? the US government does not think so. With that data state agitators could blackmail US citizens, they could use the data for identify theft. What is China going to do if the US found out it was using the data from tiktok to carry out unscrupulous behavior? say it is sorry and that it wont happen again. Hell no, China will tell the US to get lost.
China would misuse tiktok's user data and the US government knows it.
China would misuse tiktok's user data and the US government knows it.
Not a solution. Social networks will be dead in no time, companies know that. People not eager to upload their real IDs to web, myself included. Recently YouTube asked me to upload ID to be able to upload artworks or smth, well I don’t trust them my information, I just deleted the account and forgot about such idea to develop this blog.
There are many other means to confirm identity of user and control deviant behavior online, and companies have been effective doing it so far. After all, if media can suppress one narrative over another and disable comments for certain discussions, it makes bot activity almost ineffective
Facebook did that with me. I wasn't about to give them my ID so created a different name, started posting and then I got an email saying they do not believe my Facebook name is a real person and they have disabled my account until I can prove that I am a real person. Because apparently the T&C's of Facebook requires people to use their real names, names that they use in real life. Here's the kicker, to appeal their decision I have to provide them with a mobile number so they can text me some info that I then have to put into the site to start the appeals process.
I mean how dumb do they think I am, not only do they want my real name but also my mobile phone number. Yes I can use a pay as you go sim to get around the mobile number thing but that's not the point, the point is that Facebook wanted a 'live' mobile phone number. Just ripe for giving to one of there many advertising partners.
While TikTok may have the strictest TOS on paper, I don't believe it works that way in practice as a consequence of very lacking moderation:
I've jumped on a handful of times over the years without creating a profile and was randomly suggested videos shot and uploaded by criminals having fun with harassing cops and civilians. Like, car chases, assaults, etc.
At first, I assumed it was clips from documentaries, or local police having fun exposing criminals, or from one of those "follow the cops on their job as they face off with ridiculous criminals" type of shows. I've never seen stuff like this on YouTube or (pre-Musk) Twitter so I didn't really grasp it at first.
But no. This was straight up criminals publicly sharing videos of their crimes and having these videos proliferate throughout TikTok with seemingly no consequences despite month old comments asking for people to join in on reporting the videos.
I'm sure defenders want to argue that it's to be expected when considering how massive TikTOk is. But to that I'd say I've never seen anything like this on YouTube despite watching several thousands of hours of content on YT for work and in my free time.
TikTok might enforce rules that are stricter than any of social platform. But in practice, they don't have the tools or staff to enforce it at large.
All the conspiracy theory stuff is also much nuttier and popular on TikTok by comparison to YT, like with reptillians, UAPs, moon-landing, illuminati type b.s. Seems like they're barely removing any of it.
