midislack 4 years ago

TikTok is a Chinese spy platform. It was found to be snarfing the clipboard once a second. It was found to be opening reverse proxies to China. It’s an excellent, unparalleled tool to groom and compromise people, most especially children of high value targets. The Chinese and their allies here in the US must be given some props, stopping Trump from banning it was extremely good for China and I would expect all who contributed to the effort to stop its ban have already been rewarded generously.

Hats off to China. THIS is how you conduct warfare in the post-nuclear age.

  • wfhordie 4 years ago

    100%. Trump should have banned TikTok, and Biden should do it now. Do not wait. Sanction ByteDance.

    While we're at it -- kill Grindr too. It was sold off for similar reasons, but it should have been killed long ago.

  • ribosometronome 4 years ago

    >It’s an excellent, unparalleled tool to groom and compromise people, most especially children of high value targets.

    Two earnest Qs: 1) is there any evidence of that? 2) wouldn't this concern apply to any network where private data is stored? E.g. Were Tim Cook so inclined to be a blackmailer (which I have no reason to think he or Apple is), it seems like he would have access to tons of compromising data on US citizens. Even a successfully enforced requirement to mandate in-country storage that is inaccessible elsewhere seems insufficient to prevent the kind of bad actors you're concerned about, no?

f38zf5vdt 4 years ago

I can't say I'm surprised. I had always expected that TikTok was a Chinese intelligence operation designed to mass profile young Americans for future use in political manipulation.