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Showing posts with label TikTok. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TikTok. Show all posts

Saturday 4 March 2023

When White House cracks down on TikTok, what is US afraid of?

 


The US, with around 750 military bases across the globe, warships in most oceans, which is waging a proxy war, stirring up conflicts here and there, is now vehemently making a fuss about so-called "threats" it is confronting: Earlier this month, it was balloons, and now, it is TikTok.

The White House on Monday gave government agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have short-video platform TikTok on federal devices and systems, Reuters reported on the same day. In December last year, US Congress voted to bar federal employees from using the video app on government-owned devices. Now, US President Joe Biden officially tossed out the deadline.

The decision is as unreasonable as Biden's order to shoot down balloons with missiles. It is a typical irrational action generated by security anxiety stemming from a kind of mental illness, Shen Yi, an international relations expert from Fudan University, told the Global Times.

If the move reveals anything, it is that the US has gone hysterical in its anti-China stance while its relevant decisions have gone far beyond reality. TikTok has been trying to demonstrate its global nature. However, in the eyes of American elites, being born in China is an "original sin."

Over the past years, TikTok has been questioned on whether the Chinese government has access to US user data; whether its content is censored by China; whether its stored US user data is based on US soil … However, after TikTok appropriately responded and met all these requirements, the US still claims the app is a "national security threat."

In 2020, then president Donald Trump even tried to mandate that ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, strike a deal to sell TikTok's US operations. In other words, the US government has been attempting to harm this globally leading short-video platform which was not born in the US, using various excuses.

The latest ban is aimed at government devices and will only affect a small portion of TikTok's users in the US, yet some observers believe that, the US is actually attempting to fan the flames of a wider call to ban the app throughout the country. On the global arena, some US allies have already followed suit. Also on Monday, Canada announced a ban on TikTok from government-issued devices. Last week, the European Commission and Council of the EU, EU's two biggest policy-making institutions, banned staff from using the app.

It is a mystery why the US and its Western allies are afraid of TikTok, when there is no evidence to prove its "danger," and when it is basically a purely entertainment platform, which people can download out of their own free will. Against the backdrop, banning TikTok is absurd. And the US is behaving like the emperor in the folktale "The Emperor's New Clothes." Don't ask why he has no clothes, he is just being unreasonable and even mentally ill, Shen said.

"How unsure of itself can the world's top superpower be to fear a young people's favorite app like that?" Mao Ning, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, asked at a daily briefing on Tuesday, when responding to the White House's TikTok ban.

It cannot be ruled out that the Biden administration needs some scores to demonstrate its capability to keep staying in the White House and protect so-called US national security, observers noted. Moreover, reports show that TikTok was the most-downloaded app worldwide. That being said, killing TikTok means US internet companies will have one less competitor.

US Federal Chief Information Security Officer Chris DeRusha said this latest decision on TikTok is "part of the Administration's ongoing commitment to securing our digital infrastructure and protecting the American people's security and privacy."

US officials keep talking about "American people's security and privacy," do they mean it? As George Galloway, a six-term British parliamentarian, tweeted, "It's American intelligence, not Chinese, which is coming through your back door, your front door and all of your windows."

Worse, it was speculated that Washington's balloon frenzy earlier in February has a lot to do with covering up the scoop over what US did behind Nord Stream bombing. There is also reason to suspect the hype of TikTok is aimed at distracting people from Ohio derailment and chemical spill. Thanks to social media platforms like TikTok, short videos can be uploaded anytime and anywhere. And they helped to push the story into the public when traditional mainstream media covered their eyes. US' crumbling railway system is shocking, and US government's attempt to cover up the toxic train has been nakedly exposed to the world. 

 

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Friday 21 October 2022

How to confront bigots on social media — and win

MY journey to becoming an online presence is nothing short of accidental. After getting fired from my job at a well-known sports conglomerate, I felt more lost than ever. That’s when Tiktok came into my life and my online persona was born. 

 

 Within Tiktok, there are some influencers who have built entire communities around misogyny and sexism, says the writer. – AFP

Today I have nearly eight million followers on Tiktok. My large following has allowed me to become a full-time content creator. However, my niche is not popular among influencers. And that’s because my niche is roasting misogynistic men on social media.

Within Tiktok, there are influencers who have built entire communities around misogyny and sexism. These communities are centred on the degradation of women and minority groups. These videos cover many topics: women being unworthy if they’ve had multiple sexual partners, if they’re fat, if they don’t work to keep their man, if they don’t accept jokes about domestic abuse. Some straight up promote sexual assault against women.

Existing in the social media space can be exhausting, whether you’re a consumer or a creator. But when I realised how much vitriol existed on this platform, I was drawn to it. I could not believe that men like this not only existed in the same world I did, but felt so confident spewing their hatred of women. The audacity shocked me, but simultaneously lit something within me.

The fire that drove me to fight on Tiktok was akin to what I felt defending my sister from being bullied in school. Or for my friends when they were sexually harassed in college. The rage I felt was all too familiar and I was determined to act on it. That’s what inspired my first video. It wasn’t just taking on these terrible bigoted men, but rather the reality that women are subjected to violence in many different forms, everywhere, every day.

The violence and abuse that misogyny and patriarchy have inflicted on so many different marginalised groups are what unite my community of followers. Conversely, the hatred projected onto me by these kinds of bigots – primarily cisgender heterosexual white men – is also what unites them.

I’m often asked in the Tiktok comments, “Why don’t you try educating them?” Or “How are you going to respond to hate, with more hate?” Well, to that I say, because it works. Realistically, there’s nothing I could say to an outright bigot that would help them see the humanity in people who do not have the same life experiences as they do. But that isn’t my goal. My goal is to get them to be quiet and to delete their presence from social media. There is never an apology, a retraction or a change of heart – only silence. I aim to silence them, like they have silenced us for thousands of years.

Far too often, marginalised people are held to an impossibly high standard, in the real world and on social media. No matter how deep the offense, no matter how harmwe ful the rhetoric, are conexpected stantly to take the high road. These offendentitled ers are to a mature and educational response to their abuse, but marginalised folks aren’t entitled to simexist ply without critique.

Any power or strength we draw from standing up for ourof selves is stripped us the minute a bigot attacks, unprovoked – especially if it is all under the guise of a “joke.” Not surprisingly, these men are not fond of the treatment they feel so comfortable weaponising against others. It’s funny to see how quickly they develop empathy for their fellow misogynists when they see them getting treated the way they treat others.

The only fear I have when it comes to my platform is that I may never be out of a job. It feels as though I’m standing in a boat with holes, and no matter how often I scoop water out, more pours in. Making this kind of content is arduous, emotionally taxing and downright terrifying at times.

But when it seems like it’s too much to bear, I think about the stories I’ve heard from people who follow me. I think about the woman in Mexico who told me she wore a bathing suit for the first time because my content gave her the courage to. I think about the trans woman who told me my battles against bigots have kept her on this Earth longer than she planned to be.

I desperately hold on to accounts like this, when I feel I can’t keep doing this. Because it’s not about me, it’s about them. 

  • By DREW AFUALO Drew Afualo is a Tiktok content creator.
  • – Los Angeles Times/tns
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Saturday 24 September 2022

Chinese apps gain popularity globally

 

Though it takes a long time to develop a brand in foreign markets, Chinese companies are good at research and development, meaning products can quickly be technology-driven and meet local needs 

- Fang Han,

From the world's top short video application TikTok to the biggest fast-fashion app Shein and emerging music-video app StarMaker, a rising number of mobile apps developed by Chinese companies are influencing people's daily lives across the globe.

A new report published by market consultancy iResearch showed that the overseas revenue of China's entertainment apps grew 204 per cent year-on-year in 2021.

In addition, a report from US search giant Google said that the downloads of apps made by Chinese developers among the world's top 1,000 applications nearly doubled over the past decade, from 8 per cent to 14 per cent.

Industry experts said this demonstrated Chinese companies' strong innovative capabilities, but they also face challenges amid rising geopolitical tensions.

"Chinese companies are playing a bigger role in global mobile app innovation, thanks to the rapid development of the digital economy. The momentum of digital consumption and 5G commercialisation promoted the continuous innovation and iterative upgrading of digital technologies, thus driving the huge innovative vitality of app developers," said Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

"The Chinese government has also been making great efforts in driving digital innovation and encouraging companies to deeply integrate digital technologies with the real economy," Wang added.

Wang also said that such efforts have led to the development of a group of industry leaders that are able to leverage their innovative ability to contribute to global industrial development.

The iResearch report noted that Chinese gaming apps continued to be the major revenue driver of the nation's apps overseas, but social networking apps have also displayed growth momentum over the past year.

The United States, Japan and South Korea were the main overseas sources of income for Chinese apps. 

Notably, downloads of Chinese apps also increased in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia last year, among which the African market was the most prominent, with a total growth rate of 18.9 per cent year-on-year. StarMaker, a karaoke video app enabling users to create and share music videos, quickly went viral in 102 countries and regions, where it has become one of the best-selling music apps.

"The global market is promising for Chinese companies. 

'Though it takes a long time to develop a brand in foreign markets, Chinese companies are good at research and development, meaning products can quickly be technology-driven and meet local needs," said Fang Han, CEO of Kunlun, the developer of StarMaker.

"After success in one market, we are also able to quickly spread this to other countries," Fang said, adding that the company has a dominant position in markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Small developers from China are also warming up the global mobile app market. US tech company Apple Inc said that more than 5 million third-party developers in its iOS app ecosystem are from China, up from 4.4 million a year ago, and they have increasingly become a major force in the global app economy.

However, Huang Leping, head of technology, media and telecommunications at Huatai Securities, said that many challenges remain for Chinese companies in going global, especially as many countries have tightened up their data protection policies.

"In the past, companies have been able to build a set of algorithms in China and offer services in foreign markets, where the data can be interconnected. 

'But in the future, companies may need to build supporting facilities in various countries to do that, which will greatly increase their operating costs and risks," Huang said.- China Daily/Ann

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China: most popular apps 2022 - Statista


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TikTok Owner ByteDance to Spend Billions in Singapore After U.S. Ban

 

 

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Saturday 12 September 2020

TikTok Owner ByteDance to Spend Billions in Singapore After U.S. Ban

TikTok is the most downloaded app of 2020, as quarantines have spurred more and more users to hop onboard and learn about the latest dance trends and memes. But the app also faces a slew of regulatory hurdles, privacy concerns, and allegations of censorship, issues experts say will be new CEO Kevin Mayer’s top priority.

Bill Gates Says U.S. Data From TikTok Safe With Microsoft

Jul.07 -- President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok in the U.S. over threats to national security as tensions continue to rise with China. Bloomberg’s Selina Wang reports on “Bloomberg Markets: China Open.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-09-11/tiktok-owner-to-spend-billions-in-singapore-video >
  • ByteDance looks to add hundreds of jobs in the nation: people
  • Chinese company wants Singapore to be base for rest of Asia

ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese owner of video-sharing app TikTok, is planning to make Singapore its beachhead for the rest of Asia as part of its global expansion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Beijing-based company is looking to spend several billion dollars and add hundreds of jobs over the next three years in the city-state, where it has applied for a license to operate a digital bank, said the people, who asked not to be identified because of confidentiality.

The investment would come at a crucial time as the technology firm is forced to sell TikTok operations in the U.S. under pressure by the Trump administration.

ByteDance, the world’s most richly valued startup, is plowing ahead with plans to take its social media services deeper into Asia after setbacks in India and the U.K. as well as the U.S.

The internet phenomenon controlled by billionaire Zhang Yiming has long eyed Southeast Asia’s 650 million increasingly smartphone-savvy population, a region where Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. are also making inroads.

Read how TikTok becomes part of U.S.-China flashpoints

The plans for Singapore include establishment of a data center, the people said. Its operations there include TikTok and Lark, an enterprise software business.

ByteDance currently has more than 200 job openings in Singapore, for positions in everything from payments to e-commerce and data privacy, according to its job referral site.

The company already has 400 employees working on technology, sales and marketing in the city-state, one of the people said.

A ByteDance representative offered no comment.

Shopping Spree

Southeast Asia's e-commerce is on track to top $150 billion in 2025

2015 $:5.5B 2019: $38.2B 2025: $153B

Source: Google & Temasek / Bain, e-Conomy SEA 2019
Gross merchandise value

Southeast Asia is rapidly evolving into a critical location for China’s largest tech corporations from Alibaba to Tencent in the face of growing hostility from the U.S. and other major developed markets. Singapore is becoming a regional base for both Western and Chinese companies because of its developed financial and legal system, and as Beijing tightens its grip on Hong Kong.

“Singapore is highly attractive to tech firms looking for a hub to address the Southeast Asian markets due to geographic proximity,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Vey-Sern Ling.

“The workforce is highly educated, tech savvy and multilingual.”

In China, ByteDance also runs news aggregation app Toutiao, and TikTok’s Chinese twin Douyin. Collectively its stable of products have more than 1.5 billion monthly active users.

ByteDance is said to have generated more than $3 billion of net profit on more than $17 billion of revenue in 2019.

U.S. Deadline

Asia is a growth area for the company, especially when it is increasingly likely to miss the U.S. government’s deadline for the sale of its TikTok U.S. operations. President Donald Trump said Thursday he won’t extend his Sept. 15 deadline for the deal.

In India, TikTok is among more than a hundred Chinese-made consumer apps that are banned by the government on concerns about security. SoftBank Group Corp. is exploring gathering a group of bidders for TikTok’s India assets.

The U.K. government will likely ban TikTok from moving local user data out of the country, Bloomberg News has reported.

Gateway

Singapore, in particular, offers ByteDance the opportunity to explore an area it’s had relatively little exposure to. The company is leading a consortium that has applied for a digital-bank license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Other members of that group includes a private investment firm owned by a member of the Lee family that founded Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.

The regulator will award as many as five such permits to non-banks by December. Ant Group and Tencent-backed Sea Ltd. have also applied. The city-state offers a potential gateway to the rest of Southeast Asia, where the digital lending market may reach $110 billion by 2025, according to a report by Bain & Co., Google and Temasek Holdings Pte.

(Updates with details from penultimate paragraph)

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Wednesday 5 August 2020

US president’s move to get a cut from TikTok as an ‘extortion threat’ and ‘mafia deal’

Washington robs TikTok by treading upon rules

TikTok for Business: What is TikTok Anyway?
Exclusive: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50 billion in ... 


Countries mull reducing reliance on US tech in wake of TikTok drama

As the US shocked the free world with its mafia-style forced sale of Chinese-owned short-form video platform TikTok, Chinese experts said that US extortion and looting have left a deep impression on the minds of the nations of the world, and pointed out that many of the countries are already striving to boost self-reliance in terms of security, industrial independence and technological ownership.

Expert slams US president’s move to get a cut from TikTok as an ‘extortion threat’ and ‘mafia deal’


https://youtu.be/cOgQnIJJRZs

https://youtu.be/j7Zi1CCtQIQ

Controversial: Trump has said he would approve TikTok’s sale to Microsoft only if the US government gets a cut from the deal. — Reuters
TikTok's roller-coaster ride in the United States continued on Monday as President Donald Trump said he would approve the video-sharing app's sale to Microsoft only if the US government gets a cut, a condition that one expert called a "mafia" deal.

The president also gave Microsoft and TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, a deadline of Sept 15 to complete the deal, or the app will be banned in the US.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular media briefing in Beijing on Tuesday that the US treatment of TikTok is "outright bullying", and the US only uses a "national security risk" as an excuse to suppress Chinese tech enterprises.

"The relevant enterprises carry out business activities in the US following market principles and international rules and abiding by local laws and regulations," he said. "However, the US has set restrictions and suppressed them with unwarranted charges, which is political manipulation."

Wang said that if the wrongdoing by the US continues, then any country could take similar measures against any American enterprise on the grounds of national security.

"The US side must not open this Pandora's box, otherwise it will suffer its consequences," he said.

The increased scrutiny of TikTok culminated on Friday when Trump threatened to ban the app from operating in the US due to a "national security risk". The negotiations between the two companies were then halted.

But after a weekend phone call with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Trump reversed his stance and reportedly gave the two companies 45 days to close the deal. This was confirmed by Microsoft on Sunday, which said in a statement it "will move quickly to pursue discussions" with ByteDance and complete the talks "no later than" Sept 15.

The president added a condition to the potential purchase on Monday: Microsoft should buy TikTok outright, and the US Treasury Department should be paid because the government made the deal possible.

"It's a little bit like the landlord/tenant; without a lease the tenant has nothing, so they pay what's called 'key money', or they pay something," Trump told reporters in the Cabinet Room at the White House on Monday. "But the United States should be reimbursed or should be paid a substantial amount of money, because, without the United States, they don't have anything."

Investors in privately owned Byte-Dance valued TikTok at $50 billion, according to a Reuters report.

Kai-Fu Lee, former chairman of Google China, said the US treatment of TikTok, including "forced acquisition, plus only 45 days, plus finder's fees", is "incredible".

Lee said that China has set clear rules for internet companies that want to operate in the country, and Google had decided to exit as it didn't want to comply with Chinese laws and regulations.

"The US didn't give any parameters that TikTok could work with, and didn't provide any evidence for their claims that TikTok had caused national security risks to the US," he said.

The legal basis of Trump's requirement that some of the money from the deal go to the US Treasury was immediately questioned by experts.

"This is quite unusual; this is out of the norm," Gene Kimmelman, a former chief counsel for the US Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, told CNN.

"It's actually quite hard to understand what the president is actually talking about here.... It's not unheard of for transactions to have broader geopolitical implications between countries, but it's quite remarkable to think about some kind of money being on the table in connection with a transaction," said Kimmelman, a senior adviser to the policy group Public Knowledge.

Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., said Trump's "extortion threat" is a "mafia business model".

"Trump's full explanation of why the Treasury should get a 'cut' of a Microsoft/TikTok deal is, somehow, even more grotesque and shameless than I had anticipated," said Sanchez.

"As with his tariff policy, there doesn't seem to be any consideration of whether this sets a dangerous precedent for other countries to engage in similar pretextual protectionism against us, or how whimsically compelling divestment might affect international investment," he said.

Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center, also warned that shutting down the app altogether would set "a dangerous precedent in which the US government can blacklist companies based on country of origin using blanket national security as justification".

The Trump administration has been scrutinizing TikTok for several months, claiming that the platform shares the data of US users with the Chinese government. The company has repeatedly denied the accusations, maintaining that all the users' information is stored in the US.

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In the most barbaric way, the US is trying to solidify a high-tech world order in which it is the absolute center. Whether it ends up "killing" TikTok or forcibly taking the child out of Bytedance's arms, it is one of the ugliest scenes of the 21st century in the high-tech competition

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Thursday 7 November 2019

US adopts blinkered view of TikTok

TikTok, a global music and video platform created in 2016 by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, is known in China as Douyin. Photo: VCG
A Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday focused on discussions about the significant risks that short-form social video app TikTok could pose to US national security and citizens' privacy.

The accusations about TikTok are based on the assumption that its parent company ByteDance may hand over personal information of the app's US users to the Chinese government, thus posing huge risks to users and the country. In addition, there are also claims that TikTok censors content. TikTok denies both charges.

TikTok runs its business according to US law, so how can it threaten US national security? Many people believe that the US is using this as an excuse to crack down on this globally successful Chinese social media app. To date, all popular social media platforms have been created by US companies, but TikTok is an exception. It challenges their monopoly and some American elites are uncomfortable about it.

Over the past 12 months, TikTok's app has been downloaded more than 750 million times, compared with 715 million for Facebook, 450 million for Instagram and 300 million for YouTube. Its success has even worried Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and now Facebook is developing a short video sharing application that mimics TikTok.

It's not a good trait for the US to suppress competitors of American companies by political means. Washington has taken extreme measures against Huawei, such as cutting off the supply of some components, a move that cracks down on competitors at the expense of hurting domestic companies. There are signs that TikTok is the next target. What the US is doing is driven by extreme protectionism and runs counter to a free market economy.

Washington elites should think about that. US-developed social networking sites are popular around the world. Any country can use the same concerns US lawmakers have about TikTok to target Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Without any evidence, if every country conjured up risks to challenge those companies, would the world ever be able to share common applications? If such national security principles were to be promoted globally, US internet giants would suffer the most.

The US internet market is becoming solidified. Americans are supposed to welcome competition from TikTok. China's internet market has changed tremendously in recent years with JD challenging the dominance of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, followed by the rise of strong players such as TikTok and PDD, which boost the dynamics of the Chinese internet market. The US shouldn't suppress competition and encourage idleness.

Despite being the strongest country in the world, the US often accuses others of being national security risks. It uses political means to safeguard its existing interests when its technology falls short. But this approach will affect how Americans view modern competition and how American society participates in international competition. In the long run, some American companies may use dishonest practices, not better technology and innovation, in the international marketplace.

The US should carefully study the TikTok phenomenon and learn from it. TikTok has its own algorithm, but it pays close attention to abiding by laws and customs of the countries where it is carrying out business activities. When in Rome, do as the Romans do - this is a universal rule for business activities. All US social media giants have the opportunity to enter the Chinese market if they follow that rule.

We hope the US won't go to extremes. Being open is where US interests lie. Even if they have worries about TikTok, they must exercise restraint. Many people are worried that the US might monitor them through various means every day, but they are restrained and rational. The US has no reason not to do likewise.

Source link
 

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Centre of attraction: China’s President Xi Jinping greeting Dr Mahathir as he
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad giving the comic book to China's President Xi Jinping as a gift. Image via Twitt. leaves with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the opening ceremony of the Seco

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nd Belt and Roa.



Rightways