The primary objection to Chinese ownership of TikTok is based on stats showing that something like a third of teenagers "regularly" get news from TikTok—which could make them targets for Chinese propaganda. But this is based on survey data, and most people have a very wide definition of news. It includes celebrity news, sports news, music news, movie news, and so forth. So how much real news do most people get from TikTok?
Spoiler alert: There's no way to know for sure. There just aren't any concrete statistics for what you and I think of as "real" news (politics, foreign affairs, the economy, etc.). However, I got curious about this and after doing a bit of digging I think we can make a pretty good guess.
First, here are a couple of rankings of the most popular topics on TikTok:
News is nowhere to be found. You can find dozens of different estimates like this, and they're all the same: TikTok users are interested in entertainment, sports, fashion, health, etc. etc. Not news.
Here's another chart, this one dedicated solely to real news:
These are the top conventional news sources on TikTok, and taken together they have about 30 million followers. By contrast, a list of the 50 most popular TikTok accounts has about 3 billion followers, and not a single one of the accounts in the top 50 is news related.
Among unconventional sources, the biggest accounts have around 10 million followers. That's more than traditional publishers, but still a tiny drop in the TikTok bucket.
Finally, a couple of researchers took a look at news served up by TikTok's algorithm last year. An online article summed up their conclusions like this:
The findings reveal a considerable lack of user interest in news coverage on TikTok.... Users are primarily exposed to entertainment content, trending news topics tend to lean towards entertainment, and news producers receive limited engagement.
Put all this together and it points in one direction: TikTok users probably get very little real news from either conventional or digital native sources. My horseback guess based on everything I dug up is that maybe 5% of teens get any real news from TikTok, and probably not very much of it. This means that their potential exposure to Chinese propaganda is tiny because they don't pay attention to news in the first place.
I'd be very interested in a survey that dived deeper and asked TikTok users what kind of news they typically get and how much of it they get each day. I have a feeling the results would be instructive.
Isn't the issue more that info from the app can be used in espionage, as when you're an executive at a tech firm and your child has a TikTok account and somebody at TikTok finds out what kind of things the kid is most likely to look at and share with others and they create something specifically to appeal to them and when they send it to their parents and their parents look at it their laptop gets infected and now some intelligence service has a window into that tech firm?
Or something to that effect.
The problem is much more insidious than that. Most of the parents worth targeting can defend against such an attack.
An app can, by reading the phone's accelerometer, figure out that the phone is in a moving vehicle, how fast it is going, and when it makes turns. It takes maybe 3 turns to pin down the phone's exact location in the US.
And that's assuming it isn't reading GPS. If you can't imagine how foreign intelligence services can use this, you need a better imagination.
This is only one threat vector. All that "non-news" is an ideal context for disinformation because people don't have their critical facilities activated when they are engaging with it. Which is another, very different threat vector.
Russia and China despise democracy and want to destroy it. The success of democracy threatens their own regimes. They estimate they can't beat it militarily, so they would rather undermine it.
Meanwhile Trump is promising to expunge all the "Deep State traitors" from the military and intelligence communities.
"If you can't imagine how foreign intelligence services can use this, [knowing the location of teenagers using Tick Tock] you need a better imagination."
Ok, I plead guilty to needing a better imagination. How in the world can foreign intelligence services use that information?
Not just teenagers. If they can track you they'll know when you're not home, they'll know if you're having an affair, they'll know often you go to the casino . . .
You should watch an episode of the Outer Limits tv show, O.B.IT. The government has a machine that can tune in on anyone and see what they are doing without their knowledge. It uses it to spy on its own scientists but of course it’s also used for other things. As it turns out the device was brought to earth by aliens to demoralize humans and cause unrest, making us easy prey for conquest. They know we will find such devices irresistible.
Some teenagers are the children of important figures in national security. Can you see why knowing where those figures are might be useful? Both in the strategic sense as hints for "what are they working on now" and the tactical sense of "who is minding the store right now". Setting up the possibility of an assassination is remote, but with things the Russians have done, not off the table.
That was just an example. An app on a phone can do all sorts of nasty things to locate people, eavesdrop on them, listen to their phone calls from Mom or Dad, and so on.
A phone with TikTok on it is a listening device in the same room as Mom or Dad.
An app can, by reading the phone's accelerometer, figure out that the phone is in a moving vehicle, how fast it is going, and when it makes turns. It takes maybe 3 turns to pin down the phone's exact location in the US.
Perhaps "an app" can do that. Do you have a shred of evidence the app in question can do that? And do you honestly believe the world's greatest tech power—the United States of America—has zero capacity to screen applications for direct military use against us?
Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, Australia and every single Nato member allows TikTok to operate in their respective markets. Seems highly unlikely that would be the case if the application were so dangerous.
Then why is it banned from government phones? It can't be the propaganda, people in government get propaganda from everyone they meet every day.
Isn't this, at bottom taking into account Dr. Jay's posts, an argument against virtually all apps on cell phones, and really, an argument against cell phones?
"Privacy" historically meant (1) your home and (b) your person, with (b) interpreted to mean things like your car, eventually, and potentially something like a suitcase you are holding.
Anyway, I've always found the arguments against things like traffic cameras interesting since there is no difference between any outside camera and a "surveillor" standing outside, where they can always stand anyway.
Once it was acknowledged that cell phones have two way directional ability, even having a cell phone ups the ante on the discussion, but remember historically the government had every right to follow you around and know where you were as that was considered being in "the public."
Modern technology makes it way easier to discover stuff, but other than the "Alexa factor" of your device listening to you (which I grant is a huge issue), its not invading privacy so much as the carrying of a cell phone makes public activity so much easier to track.
This ^^^. "Apps" can potentially find out all sorts of information about users, but Microsoft and Google actually find out and use to exploit the population far more information than TikTok ever could. The TikTok scare is pure Sinophobia. I'd trust the CCP to own it via a Singapore company far more than the consortium Steve fuckin' Mnuchen is reportedly putting together to offer to buy it.
I'm still not sure what the actual objection is to DanceByte divesting from the CCP.
This strikes me as similar to "inflation will be gone in a few months" that started in 2021.
I'm a huge Kevin fan - his anti-doom work is very important. But he sometimes gets locked into a position....
Yeah, I think it's aligned with his "social media doesn't matter" stance.
Really? How so?
But he sometimes gets locked into a position....
Please. One could say that about anyone who holds any position. Are you about to change your mind and start opposing the forced sale or banning of TikTok? If not, why aren't you just as "locked into" your position as Kevin is?
He thinks this is a bad bill. He's right.
with all the intellectual property the chinese have stolen from the West over the past 25 years I think this is a no brainer.
I'm still not sure what the actual objection is to DanceByte divesting from the CCP.
China has already stated it won't allow the forced sale. It's possible they're bluffing or will change their mind (I doubt it). But unless they do, the "objection" is to having the service banned.
I'd call their bluff
People who develop successful companies object to being told to sell them so someone else can reap the rewards. They're funny like that.
So you're saying that this is a Red Scare?
If you want a chart that explains the hot war against TickTock, look up support for Palestine over Israel. Prior to 10/7 TT could have gone on doing its dumbing down of American kids with just a few culture war cranks complaining about it.
there are so many available avenues for infection/data harvesting on the web that tiktok is just rounding error
even after divestiture you'll have ccp-friendly employees embedded in the organization so not sure how much good it would do
i also suspect a lot of the 'panic' is astroturf driven by fb, google, xitter, etc
and i think it's interesting that republicans didn't give a shit about russian shenanigans on the various platforms but are now concerned about tiktok
i'm guessing they're afraid there are fewer magaphiles in the ccp
and i'm not sure it's much of an improvement if steve mnuchin owns tiktok
China doesn't have the influence with certain US Congresspeople the way Russia does. But I'm sure it wants to.
CAR-T/glioblastoma
I don't think that's exactly how people using TikTok "get news". Most of it comes indirectly through influencers, not news organizations. You might be a little too old to get how this all works, KD.
Spot on. The fact that teenagers aren't watching Wolf Blitzer videos on TikTok doesn't mean that they are not consuming political propaganda.
Nor does it mean they are. From my observations, while YouTube is awash with political content, there's very little on TikTok. The most-followed "influencers" aren't a secret. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_accounts#:~:text=As%20of%2012%20March%202024,most%2Dfollowed%20user%20on%20TikTok.
Propaganda doesn’t actually have to be “news” though. If China produces thousands of clips that feature sexy people singing “China is cool” and “fuck Taiwan” and some of them go so viral that tens of millions of teens start singing it too, for example, that’s still propaganda. It’s not thoughtful propaganda, which is why us political junkies may not recognize it as propaganda, but it still could lead those same teens to voting for a candidate who incorporates the song into a campaign commercial with a message of “let’s hug China” or “let’s abandon Taiwan.” Voters have been led to vote for lots of politicians based on sexiness or coolness, so in that regard, it would still be propaganda. (Most effective propaganda is actually a substitute for careful thought… the producers of it don’t want you to form your own well-thought-out opinion… they want you to just embrace whatever prepackaged idea they give you. Hence the effectiveness of “Life Begins At Conception” - many of the people brainwashed by that propaganda are shocked to learn IVF destroys millions of embryos because they never thought about the propaganda applied to real life situations.)
Now do I think TikTok needs to be banned? Hell no. The kids will simply move onto some other site, and China will simply buy or steal the data it wants from perfectly legal social media sites selling it to all comers.
Lisa: “Dad, you’re giving into mob mentality!”
Homer: “No I’m not, I’m getting on the bandwagon!”
Two items in my news feed today.
1. Bannon talking about the power of TikTok: how Taylor Swift could mobilize hordes of "low-information" fans to vote in the fall; "this is why you got to get rid of TikTok"
2. Mnuchin talking about his investor group that plans to buy TikTok
Republicans are not all on the same page (yet) but the likely end results are these:
a. TikTok ownership remains as is (mostly)
b. TikTok ownership shifts to a right-wing group
I think China is the better way to go.
Agreed.
There are worse things than China.
OhNo, not hordes of low information voters!
So for those who want to ban TikTok out of fear of CCP propaganda, Kevin says that's silly because very few people get "news" from TikTok. And for those who oppose banning TikTok because they claim it's "where most teens get their news," that's also silly for the same reason.
But I agree with other commenters that Kevin misses the point that there are much more effective ways of spreading propaganda than through direct news reporting. Influencing influencers to throw shade on certain officials or candidates or policies is one way. And it's not a "red scare" issue, because it's not necessarily ideological -- it's the potential to infuse disinformation into the conventional narrative, or even to just sow chaos into public opinion. Look at how Russian disinformation influenced the 2016 election. Foreign actors know exactly how narrow our election margins are, and they know exactly which voters need to be influenced.
And if you could somehow get the propagandists to talk, I bet they would always tell you that any country that wants to bring down the USA wants Trump to become president.
People using TikTok - not just teenagers - presumably get a lot of liberal-slanted stuff from NowThis and the "liberal" MSM which completely dominate the rest of the news list. Now Steve Mnuchin wants to assemble a group of presumably Republican investors to buy TikTok. I was just wondering why the right didn't have anything like NowThis to propagandize teenagers. Evidently Mnuchin wondered the same.
So one result of taking TikTok away from China may be to have it swing over to right-dominated news. As Kevin shows news doesn't amount to much on TikTok and the Fox News approach will not be as successful with teenagers as it is with olds, but there would be opportunity for more insidious propaganda in the other things that really dominate TikTok.
Are the Democrats who voted for the TikTok bill in the House being suckered?
W/o any opinion on TikTok, I think this misses the point.
The obvious way to use a property like TikTok for ill is simply to get Americans to hate each other. And that's not a question of news, it's a question of framing, something that can be done in every context.
For an example, consider the Ms Marvel series. Yes, that's entertainment, not news, not history. But it has a VERY DEFINITE OPINION about Indian history and partition, makes that opinion known, and makes zero attempt to suggest that other points of view exist, or that these are opinions, not facts.
That's how you do it – throw out strong opinions on both sides of an issue, build up (on both sides of an issue) a certainty that your side is 100% correct and the other side is driven by pure evil (obviously they are, since there are zero good arguments for their points of view...). Goal is not to make America Woke or MAGA, it's to make America more interested in fighting the other 50% of Americans than in following whatever it is that China (or Russia) is doing.
And it kinda works. I assume Russia did not sponsor Hamas in any way, but their task in Ukraine has become a lot easier since the flood of me-too tweetsters with the Ukraine flag in their byline all switched to me-too tweetsters with a Palestinian flag in their byline...
if we really wanna save democracy we should suggest a deal with the ccp:
sell tiktok and we'll give you fox news for $1
Dead right. If the U.S. really is concerned about fake, misleading news then Fox "News" should be eliminated.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress that TikTok was not only a disinformation threat, but that it could "control software" on a phone. This is very vague, but it's exactly what I was pointing to upthread.
If your argument is "Republicans want this, so it must be bad", then you are engaging in the same poor logic that got the Republicans to support Trump. Please stop it.
If you are someone who thinks social media is silly, trivial, and harmless, so what's the big deal, you are wrong about how harmless it is. Everyone who went into the Capitol on 1/6 was heavily invested not just in Fox News, but in social media. They had their secret message apps and their Facebook pages.
If you are someone who is a TikTok user and has the attitude of "this isn't harming me, or anybody else through me" you are likely to be correct about this, and yet the harm can be done through TikTok, maybe through someone else. They are fishing on the grand scale, and most of the users will be of little value to them.
That's how this stuff works today. It's what the internet has enabled. It's the dark side of the long tail. With computers you can actually find the needle in a haystack.
unitedhealth's medical payment system was hacked in february, which has millions of people's medical records and financial ppi; last i checked it was still offline
a few years back the chinese hacked the fed's opm and got millions of people's sf86 info (documents you file to get security clearances)
'fixing' tiktok is like trying to shovel the ocean dry
wikipedia: major security breaches
Pet peeve, but I really wish that when the MSM covers protests they would photograph it from a distance so you would get a true sense of the amount of outrage instead of a closeup view of 5 or 6 people with signs. Since they don't, my default assumption when I see photos like that is to assume that there were really only 5 or 6 people there.
I think there is a whole different argument in favor of outlawing TikTok: China does not allow Western social media on its internet. Yet it makes money from TikTok. Isn't this a breach of the Free Trade agreements that China was so very eager to join?
I also find it less than reassuring that the Chinese Government has a whole different TikTok for their own subjects.
The news sources appear to all be US. The top 50 TikTok appears to be world-wide…
I think you'd find the right's most common, genine objections to the content on TikTok have nothing to do with "news". TikTok's full of LGBTQ influencers, corrupting America's children! BAN THEM!
Kara Swisher says she uses a burner phone for TikTok. IDK if she's joking about it, but she says that fears over TikTok are not overblown.