Strategic TL:DR on the looming TikTok “Ban” –
(March 13, 2024 US House of Representatives passed a bill that forces TikTok to have American ownership or cease operations – We’ll see what the Senate does).
Legally requiring American Ownership of a popular and often beneficial social media platform that has been quietly adapted and actually used as a Chinese cyberweapon to attack american citizens – doesn’t change anything other than maybe where the cash flows.
TikTok is still Chinese technology with weaponized backdoors that easily hack your phone, regardless of who owns it
1 – TikTok is very popular, addictive, and bad for your dopamine.
2 – The American Tik Tok Community overall is a very diverse and supportive group of millions that actually help and enrich each other’s lives.
3 – TikTok has been proven multiple times to be a Chinese Trojan Horse on your phone and has been weaponized multiple times against American Journalists and American citizens. This is an open “Secret” in the hacker and cyber security circles. Cyber Security Journalists don’t have TikTok on their phones. And some hackers use hack TikTok and use it as a hacking tool, because it’s deliberately set up to be used as one.
4 – Not to mention ANYONE that breaks into TikTok can use it as a misinformation and propaganda tool, simply by placing their finger on the scales of the algorithm and flooding users with thousands of authentic videos of a specific opinion. You can make anything go viral on TikTok if you know how to exploit the code and hack it. We don’t know how, if, or when the Chinese do that. But we know it’s very simple to do if you control the technology.
Examples of all that are the news if you can use a search engine, and in books, and magazines, and newspapers, and hacker tutorials, and hacker sites – it’s been a thing for years. Don’t believe me, look it up yourself.
Changing the Ownership of The American subsidiary that licenses the Chinese technology from ByteDance does not change anything. It’s still a Chinese cyberweapon with lots of security gaps that doubles as a very popular social media platform with a cool community.
I’m trying to find the strategic position here…. Maybe the US Government is intent on reverse hacking TikTok to fight cyberwar against Chinese hackers. But they could do that without an act of congress. You highjack American TikTok assets under espionage laws and do it quietly…
Even Kids and amateurs hack TikTok.
What do you do when a very popular social media app is also a cyberweapon used by a hostile government and cybercriminals to attack your citizens?
Seriously. What is the strategy there? Ban it only on government phones? Ban it outright and face backlash? Ignore it and hope? Make symbolic actions that don’t change anything? Take control of the weapon and fight it?
What do you think?
@stratsci
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