FreeSpeech and Censorship: Thread

[grarpamp]

Biden unbans Communist Socialist China
His party Twitter bans prove he didn't do it because he
believes in free speech or free software.


Why TikTok Must Be Banned In US And Free World

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19295/tiktok-ban-us

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-reverses-trump-s-effort-ban-tiktok-orders-broader-review-n1270133

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7218234/MEMORANDUM-for-the-SECRETARY.pdf
https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/the-real-danger-of-chinas-national-intelligence-law/
https://www.facebook.com/SenatorHawley/posts/pfbid02rrRFwWu4X7mcjs8pxk9STXQMo8WmVn2PHzHWzMe2A8fzasNnnnjQrVdyx3yL6JMDl
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-sen-mark-warner-trump-was-right-banning-chinas-tiktok-warns-parents-letting-kids-app
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3694346-tiktok-is-chinas-trojan-horse/
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/01/interview-fcc-commissioner-says-government-should-ban-tiktok
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/10/20/tiktok-bytedance-surveillance-american-user-data/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-bytedance-workers-fired-data-access-journalists
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/texas-gov-greg-abbott-bans-tiktok-state-devices/story
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/10/marco-rubio-ban-tiktok-america-china-mike-gallagher/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/technology/tiktok-browser-tracking.html
https://www.lawfareblog.com/unpacking-tiktok-mobile-apps-and-national-security-risks
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/23/china-tech-giants-process-stolen-data-spy-agencies/
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tiktok-wechat
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/28/20986867/tiktok-unblock-us-teen-china-criticism-muslim-minority-terrorist-imagery-moderation-guidelines
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/zensur-bei-tiktok-sternchen-bei-woertern-wie-internierungslager-17798752.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY Spinach and Opium
https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-between-tik-tok-in-china-and-the-us

The United States recently banned TikTok from all federal government
devices over growing security concerns. That is a good start.

TikTok, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned at the beginning of
December, is controlled by the Chinese government, which is a national
security concern.

TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has,
according to TikTok's own estimates, 1 billion users worldwide. In
2021, TikTok had approximately 87 million users in the US, according
to Statista. Disturbingly, a recent study found that 10% of US adults
get their news from the Chinese app, up from 3% in 2020.

Wray said that China's government can control the app's recommendation
algorithm, "which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want
to, to use it for influence operations."

    "All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn't
share our values, and that has a mission that's very much at odds with
what's in the best interests of the United States. That should concern
us," Wray said in a speech at the University of Michigan.

Wray's comments echoed those he made at the "Worldwide Threats to the
Homeland" hearing held at the House of Representatives Homeland
Security Committee on November 15.

"We do have national security concerns at least from the FBI's end
about TikTok," Wray stated.

    "They include the possibility that the Chinese government could
use it to control data collection on millions of users. Or control the
recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations
if they so chose. Or to control software on millions of devices, which
gives it opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal
devices."

Wray's concerns are not new -- actually, they come a bit late. In
2020, President Donald J. Trump, citing similar security concerns,
tried to ban the app in the US, in addition to sanctioning the
company, but several federal judges ruled against both sanctions and a
ban, blocking his attempts. One judge ruled that the ban failed "to
adequately consider an obvious and reasonable alternative before
banning TikTok" and that the ban was "arbitrary and capricious."

"ByteDance's submission and compliance with Chinese law has rendered
it a reliable, useful, and far reaching ear and mouthpiece for the
Party and State," the Trump administration wrote at the time in a
document motivating the proposed ban. The document cited ByteDance's
commitment to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as resulting in
"systemic censorship of content across its platforms" and "the
harvesting of user data."

In the document, the Trump administration stressed noted:

    "ByteDance, as a company, and its subsidiaries are subject to PRC
national security laws that require or compel the assistance of any
Chinese citizen or entity in surveillance and intelligence operations.
As ByteDance is subject to PRC jurisdiction, PRC laws can compel
cooperation from ByteDance..."

Chinese law requires all Chinese companies to turn over information to
the Communist Party upon request -- and ByteDance reportedly employs
more than 130 Party members to ensure compliance, among other matters.

The Trump administration stated :

    "One of the foremost national security risks presented by the
TikTok mobile application in the United States is the possibility that
the PRC government could, through lawful authority, extralegal
influence (Communist Party) influence, or PRCISS, compel TikTok to
provide systemic access to U.S. user's sensitive personal information.
A number of press reports clearly indicate the PRC Government has
already compelled TikTok to assist them for domestic surveillance,
censorship, and propaganda action within China, and their compliance
is indicative of how they are likely to respond to intelligence
requests on U.S. users. Given the bounty of information TikTok could
offer on foreign users, as well as the aforementioned cyber tactics
employed by the PRC, the Department of Commerce assesses the PRC and
PRCISS would not limit their use of TikTok to domestic concerns and
would instead use it for foreign intelligence and surveillance."

Furthermore, similar to the concerns expressed by Wray, the Trump
administration argued,

    "The PRC government and the CCP can exert influence on ByteDance
and, through the TikTok app, censor and shape content available to
U.S. users in ways that can influence their opinions and views of
China."

In April 2021, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley wrote:

    "TikTok is a Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party that has
no place on government devices—or any American devices, for that
matter.... TikTok has repeatedly proven itself to be a malicious
actor."

According to Adonis Hoffman, a former chief of staff and senior legal
advisor at the FCC who has served in legal and policy positions in the
U.S. House of Representatives:

    "Its algorithm is at once simple and sinister. Download the app on
your smartphone and you have given China access to all your data...
This opens a treasure trove of data on millions of Americans for the
Chinese government to use whenever and however they choose. And
history shows they use that data for nefarious purposes."

President Joe Biden reversed Trump's attempt at banning TikTok,
signing an executive order in June 2021 that revoked Trump's proposed
ban. Instead, the Biden administration has sought to work out the
security concerns with ByteDance through a negotiated deal with the
Chinese company that would reportedly allow TikTok to continue
operating in the US without any change of ownership.

"Well, I think Donald Trump was right," Senator Mark Warner, D-Va.,
chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently said.

    "I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat. So, if you're a parent, and
you've got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned. All of
that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored
somewhere in Beijing."

Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner at the Federal Communications
Commission, said in November that the only way to resolve the national
security concerns regarding TikTok would be to ban the app.

"I don't believe there is a path forward for anything other than a
ban," Carr said. According to Axios:

    There simply isn't "a world in which you could come up with
sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient
confidence that it's not finding its way back into the hands of the
[Chinese Communist Party]," Carr said.

In October, Forbes revealed that a China-based team at ByteDance had
planned to use TikTok to track the locations of an unspecified number
of Americans.

In December, it was revealed that ByteDance had used the app to
surveil several journalists to track down the journalists' sources.

According to Texas Governor Greg Abbott:

    "TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users' devices --
including when, where and how they conduct internet activity -- and
offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese
government,"

Also in December, Indiana became the first U.S. state to sue TikTok,
for misleading users about the Chinese government's capacity to access
their data and showing mature content to minors.

"The company's ownership of TikTok is problematic for two reasons,"
wrote Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Republican US Representative
Mike Gallagher.

    "First, the app can track cellphone users' locations and collect
internet-browsing data — even when users are visiting unrelated
website.

    "That TikTok, and by extension the CCP, has the ability to survey
every keystroke teenagers enter on their phones is disturbing. With
this app, Beijing could also collect sensitive national security
information from U.S. government employees and develop profiles on
millions of Americans to use for blackmail or espionage...

    Even more alarming than that possibility, however, are the
potential abuses of TikTok's algorithm...

    Its algorithm is a black box, in that its designers can alter its
operation at any time without informing users... in the hands of
ByteDance, it could also be used to subtly indoctrinate American
citizens.

    TikTok has already censored references to politically sensitive
topics, including the treatment of workers in Xinjiang, China, and the
1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. It has temporarily blocked an
American teenager who criticized the treatment of Uyghurs in China. In
German videos about Chinese conduct toward Uyghurs, TikTok has
modified subtitles for terms such as 'reeducation camp' and 'labor
camp,' replacing words with asterisks."

In China, the content available on TikTok could not be more different.
China serves up the "spinach version": science, physics, engineering
and patriotism. In the US, TikTok serves up the "opium version."
Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, said of China's approach to
TikTok on CBS' 60 Minutes:

    "It's almost like [the Chinese] recognize that technology is
influencing kids' development, and they make their domestic version a
spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the
rest of the world."

"If you're under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you
can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational
videos," said Harris of the content served by TikTok within China,
adding that Chinese children were limited to only 40 minutes a day on
the app.

    "There's a survey of pre-teens in the U.S. and China asking, 'what
is the most aspirational career that you want to have?' and in the
U.S., the No. 1 was a social media influencer, and in China, the No. 1
was astronaut. You allow those two societies to play out for a few
generations and I can tell you what your world is going to look like."

TikTok urgently needs to be banned from the US and the rest of the free world.