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TikTok was never supposed to be political. When it launched in the US in 2018, the video app was marketed as a fun place to discover goofy content and experiment with its sophisticated editing software and vast music library. Yet nearly two years and 165 million nationwide downloads later, TikTok has been a platform for teachers strikes, QAnon conspiracy theories, Black Lives Matter protests, and a teen-led campaign to sabotage a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The TikTok algorithm is perfectly suited to spread political content faster and to a wider audience than any social media app in history, whether the company wants to admit it or not.

Now TikTok is proving itself to be political in a much broader way, one that challenges the very existence of the app. White House officials are talking seriously about attempting to ban it (how the government would choose to do so is less clear) in the wake of rising tensions with China, where TikToks parent company ByteDance is based.

There are two major factors at play when we talk about the risks TikToks ownership could potentially pose: data privacy and censorship. While the former is potentially easier to understand (the Equifax hack, where members of the Chinese military were charged with stealing the personal information of 145 million Americans, is perhaps the most famous example), the latter, which includes how TikTok instructs its moderators and changes its algorithm, could have more existential and more difficult-to-predict consequences for the US at large.

Will a ban actually happen? President Trumps chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said in July that a decision could come in weeks, not months. But the conversation is a lot more complicated than Is China stealing our data? although thats likely how the Trump White House would prefer to frame it. TikTok has become a straw man for fears over a serious competitor to Silicon Valley: If a generation of kids is synonymous with an app owned by China, what does that mean for Americas role in global technology?

Experts in cybersecurity and Chinese tech make it clear that the issue is not black and white, and that serious concerns about national security are likely rooted not in xenophobia but in the fact that the Communist Party of China (CCP) under President Xi Jinping has a track record of surveillance, censorship, and data theft. There are also those who warn that the US banning TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps could set a dangerous precedent for a less free and open internet ironically, the sort of internet modeled after that of China.

The governments interest in TikToks ties to China and its communist leadership stems from last fall, when Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Tom Cotton (R-AR) called for an investigation into the company. Their statements came after reports from the Guardian and the Washington Post revealed that TikTok had at one point instructed its moderators to censor videos considered sensitive by the Chinese government.

By November, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which investigates the potential national security implications of foreign acquisitions of US companies, announced that it would be reviewing ByteDances acquisition of Musical.ly, the app that would become TikTok. Meanwhile, TikTok has been steadfast in its claim that it does not send US user data to China and does not remove content sensitive to its government and would not if it were asked. Two Chinese intelligence laws from 2014 and 2017, however, require companies to assist with any government investigation and hand over all relevant data without refusal.

In a statement to Vox, a TikTok spokesperson wrote:

Protecting the privacy of our users data is of the utmost importance to TikTok. Theres a lot of misinformation about TikTok right now. The reality is that the TikTok app isnt even available in China. TikTok is led by an American CEO, with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security, product, and public policy in the U.S. TikTok stores U.S. user data in Virginia, with backup in Singapore, and we work to minimize access across regions. We welcome conversations with lawmakers who want to understand our company. Were building a team here in Washington, D.C. so lawmakers and experts can come to us with questions or concerns. We know that actions speak louder than words, which is why were opening Transparency Centers in LA and DC so that lawmakers and invited experts can see for themselves how we moderate content and keep our users data secure.

In early July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the US was considering a TikTok ban after months of rising tensions with China and a ban of more than 50 Chinese apps including TikTok in India the week prior. Since then, TikTok users have been panicking over the potential loss of the internets greatest time waster; the Senate just advanced a bill to ban TikTok from all government devices. Facebook, too, is closing in: The company announced it will launch its copycat product, Instagram Reels, in the US in August.

Banning TikTok isnt as straightforward as it may sound in a country built upon the First Amendment, but there are several ways it could take place. The first is that CFIUS could force ByteDance to sell off TikTok to a US-owned company by determining it a national security risk (thats what happened to Grindr after it was sold to a Chinese company). Another is that it could put TikTok on whats called the entity list so that US companies like Apple and Google would be forced to remove it from their app stores. Adi Robertson at The Verge has a thorough examination of all these possibilities, but lets get to the real issue at play.

The case for banning TikTok, for many cybersecurity professionals, is relatively simple: The risk is simply too great, no matter how wonderful the content on the app may be. Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, says that despite what TikTok claims, If the Chinese government wanted that data, they would be able to get that data.

While that may not scare the apps large user base of teenagers who are pretty sure the Chinese government doesnt care about their scrolling habits, Todt says its possible China could be building dossiers on high-profile individuals, including information like passwords, bank accounts, internet addresses, or geolocation, all of which could then be cross-referenced with even more personal data on other apps.

Ive been in the national security space for a couple of decades, and there is decades worth of evidence and data around Chinese interest, intent, and capability to hack the US, whether thats through intellectual property or through data theft, Todt says. The Chinese government hacked the broadest database of personnel in the US government. Theyre the only ones who have done that.

Todts other concern relates to Chinas role in the global tech wars at large. Artificial intelligence is only as good as the data that goes into it, and so if China continues to collect all of this data from populations around the world, its artificial intelligence has a lot more data input into it. How might it aggregate that data for the purposes of innovation, research and development and science? she asks. That can sound xenophobic, but it is a national security statement, just as we are cautious about Russia and Iran and North Korea for different reasons.

There are other arguments for banning TikTok, ones that relate to moderation and censorship. I find the data privacy issue to be a bit of a red herring, says Jordan Schneider, host of the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter. The Chinese government has many likely more impactful ways of getting blackmail or corporate secrets or just general information about individual US nationals.

Instead, Schneider argues that the problem is the Chinese Communist Partys potential ability to influence conversation about politics on the app. People today are very concerned about the amount of power [Facebooks] Mark Zuckerberg has to value one type of speech over another or impacting elections by tweaking the algorithms and end up changing peoples opinions on certain things. So imagine if someone with the equivalent of Mark Zuckerbergs level of power over the US has no choice but to do what the CCP wants it to do? My sense is that is the case with ByteDance. He uses recent examples of Chinese disinformation campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube around topics like the Hong Kong protests and Taiwanese independence.

I think theyve probably learned the lesson of 2016, which is that Russia can interfere in elections and basically get away with it, he says. What might that look like? For the average TikTok user, it wont really look like anything. You can just push certain videos more than others, and theres no open API to double-check these things, Schneider says. At the end of the day, the Chinese government clearly has the leverage to push ByteDance to do this sort of thing, and would honestly be dumb not to, because the prize is enormous, which is the ability to influence who the next president of the United States is.

It would be easy to leave it there, but Samm Sacks, a senior cybersecurity policy fellow at Yale Law Schools Paul Tsai China Center and New America who has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, warns against conflating Chinese tech companies with the CCP. There is much more of a push and pull in that relationship there, particularly around the security services access to private data, she says.

Plus, she argues that the incentive to censor content and steal user data is worth less than owning one of the worlds most important global tech companies. TikTok was intended to thrive and fly on its own overseas, and so its not necessarily in the Chinese government or ByteDances interest to set up the company to be secretly beholden to Beijing. Theres a commercial incentive at play that I think we have to take into account.

TikTok has, for many people in American politics and tech, become an existential threat that no amount of distancing itself from China building headquarters in the US and London, hiring a former Disney executive as its CEO will undermine. TikToks terms of use and black box algorithm are virtually identical to Facebooks policies, but its success has foreshadowed a potential end to Silicon Valleys dominance. Unspoken in many tech executives dismissal of TikTok is protectionism and, arguably, xenophobia.

Should the US government ban TikTok, Sacks says, it would be an important step toward the US government controlling the way that Americans use the internet, which is ironically a step toward Beijings own cyber-sovereignty, the very thing weve been railing against for years.

It also would likely be against the USs commercial interests. It offers a blueprint for others around the world to think, Maybe we dont trust the way that Silicon Valley companies are handling our data, so lets just ban them, too, she says. Were already starting to see the rise of digital sovereignty in Europe and in India in these really important markets, and when we think about the so-called tech competition with China, particularly with artificial intelligence and machine learning, what is it thats going to give US companies an edge? Its access to large international data sets. If we are increasingly closed out of markets around the world and access to that data because weve helped create a blueprint for how to do it with China, I could see those same tools turned around on us.

Instead, Sacks has called for a comprehensive federal data privacy law that would be applied to all platforms, not just Chinese-owned ones, that would create standards for better data security, algorithmic transparency, and better management of online content. All of the things that I think were using is China as a foil and saying, That company is a threat, lets stamp them out, [could be dealt with by] developing our own vision for how we want to govern the internet in a more democratic, secure way, she says.

China aside, a TikTok ban would have serious effects on American youth culture, where hundreds of teenagers have now built massive followings and spread important political messaging on an app that allowed them to reach huge audiences. Its changed not only the experience of being online but the experience of being a young person.

TikTok has serious flaws conspiracy theories in particular, some related to QAnon, Pizzagate, and the coronavirus, have thrived unchecked on the app but theres still no evidence that the Chinese government has anything to do with any of those. Would setting a precedent against any one Chinese-owned tech company solve the immediate issues that affect American social media users, namely misinformation, content moderation, and transparency? Or would it allow Silicon Valley companies like Facebook to continue to mimic competitors software and grow ever larger and more powerful? Its now in the hands of the government to decide.

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Will Trump ban TikTok in the USA? - Vox.com

It was one of the first protests in Hong Kong after a feared national security law came into effect.

Among a dozen or so lunchtime demonstrators at a luxury mall in the Central business district, a man raised a poster that when viewed from afar read in Chinese, Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.

The government had just banned the slogan, saying it had separatist connotations and so ran afoul of the new security law's prohibition of secessionist acts.

Shortly after, riot police entered the mall, shooing away onlookers. They detained the man, telling him the slogan was banned. But when officers looked at the poster up close, no words could be made out. It merely had circular shapes against a contrasting background. They snapped a few photographs of the poster and let him go.

Since the imposition of the security law which bans secessionist, subversive and terrorist activities, as well as collusion with foreign forces, with penalties of up to life imprisonment anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, and those supporting the movement, have adapted their methods to try to make their voices heard without violating the legislation.

Before the law took effect on June 30, protesters often held up colorful posters plastered with slogans that ranged from condemning the Chinese government to calling for Hong Kongs independence. Since then, they have become creative in obscuring their messages.

Many of the protesters at the luxury mall held up blank pieces of white paper to protest against Chinas white terror of political repression. Other posters are designed to circumvent bans on slogans. The government has not yet made clear if such forms of expression are illegal.

The law has had a chilling effect on yellow shops that support the protest movement. Many have removed protest artwork and sticky notes bearing words of encouragement from customers, out of fear that they could land them in trouble with the authorities.

Some shop owners, like Tan Wong, have instead put up blank sticky notes to show solidarity with the movement.

We are doing this right now because (the shop) is private property. We are trying to tell Hong Kong people that this is the only thing that we yellow shops can do, said Wong, who runs Kok Kok Chicken, a Korean fried chicken store.

If we do not persist, we would no longer be able to deliver our message to others, he said.

Yu Yee Cafe, a Hong Kong-style diner that serves fast food, has covered its windows with blank sticky notes and even displays an origami figure of Winnie the Pooh, a playful taunt of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Chinese censors briefly banned social media searches for Winnie the Pooh in China after Xis appearance was compared to the cartoon bear.

I wonder if theres still rule of law if sticking a (blank) piece of paper on the wall is illegal, said Eddie Tsui, one of the diners customers. Its just using a different way to express our demands. If you dont allow us to protest that way, well find another way.

The use of blank paper or sticky notes to protest is a changing form of resistance, according to Ma Ngok, an associate professor of politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

They put up blank notes so that even if the government wants to prosecute them, there is nothing that can be used against them, he said.

Protesters in Hong Kong have also come up with alternative slogans to circumvent the ban on Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.

Some users quote the initials of the romanisation of the eight Chinese characters in the banned slogan - GFHG, SDGM. Others have changed the words entirely to terms that sound similar but mean very different things. One alternative slogan now reads Patronise Hong Kong, Times Square, a reference to a popular shopping mall in the city.

A popular protest anthem, Glory to Hong Kong, has had some of its lyrics changed, with protesters replacing the words with numbers in Cantonese that sound approximately like the lyrics.

The circumventing of bans on slogans is reminiscent of how mainland Chinese internet users come up with creative ways and similar-sounding words to talk about sensitive issues without triggering censorship under the Great Firewall of China, where censors delete posts containing sensitive terms and make such keywords unsearchable on online platforms.

There is a long history of censorship where we know that people will find ways to circumvent the system, no matter how you regulate, said Fu King-wa, associate professor at the University of Hong Kongs journalism school.

Sometimes, censorship can backfire, triggering more people to discuss an issue because they think that if it is censored, then it must be something important, he said.

See the rest here:
Hong Kong protesters get creative with signs and slogans to skirt new security law - Euronews

Some players out there give it their all for the love of the sport. Doug Censor Martin is one such player who has been giving it his all for Call of Duty but has had a bad time in the League and has now decided to back out of it for a while.

In his career, Censor has been a part of some major teams, including Team Envy and FaZe. Censor was a substitute for the New York Subliners and was picked by the affiliate team but he was benched once again.

Censor took to Twitter to announce that hed be taking a break from the game. He has stated that hed not play Modern Warfare and would rather wait for the next Call of Duty title to drop.

I will not be playing at the Modern Warfare challengers champs. If you guys dont know I went on Triumph, we got fourth. I was not able to join another team. I was struck on Triumph for another week and a half. I had offers from top 5 teams. I couldnt accept it because I was still on Triumph.

I will be ready day one on the next Call of Duty. And hopefully, this never happens again because this was the worst and most stressful year ever as a Call of Duty competitor. And I know I got it, I know I can play in the top level. I couldnt literally prove it this year. I was forced to sit on the bench the entire year and there is nothing I can do about it.

The player only recently made the happy announcement and was rather very excited to play for his new team. Unfortunately, after the Call of Duty Challengers Circuit, Censor was dropped from the New York Subliners roster. The player even came out openly to say that his performance was underwhelming in that match.

The player is confident in his ability and would be looking forward to making his mark yet again. Tough times ahead for the player but the support from the community and his friends will surely assure his great comeback.

Source: Censor Twitter

Originally posted here:
Call of Duty Pro Announces Break From the Game - Essentially Sports

Two women lay in bed in a tight embrace, one is stroking the other's hair and whispers that she is in love with her.

These intimate scenes wouldn't be out of place in a Hollywood movie, but in Nigeria's film industry, Nollywood, they are near taboo.

But Nigerian filmmaker Uyaiedu Ikpe-Etim says she is tackling the subject head-on in her new film titled "Ife," to create space for queer characters in the country's prolific movie industry.

"Ife'" means love in the Yoruba language, spoken in West Africa, and most prominently in southern Nigeria.

LGBTQ characters are described poorly in Nollywood and are viewed in problematic roles that encourage violence or judgment from viewers, Ikpe-Etim says.

"I'm queer so 'Ife' is dear to my heart. I wanted to represent LGBTQ characters in a different light than how they are shown in past stories, to change how heterosexuals view them," she explained.

Homophobia in Nigeria

The story centers on two women Ife and Adaora and the uncertainty surrounding their relationship. It is created in partnership with Equality hub, an NGO in Nigeria focused on fighting social injustices against sexual minorities.

"They come into problems when they are not certain of the future of their relationship considering that these two women live in Nigeria which is a homophobic country," she said of the storyline.

In the West African nation where homophobia runs rampant,Ikpe-Etim is anadvocate for the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) community.

Homosexuality is illegal in Nigeria. The Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2014 says anyone found guilty of homosexuality faces up to 14 years in prison.

A 2019 survey by The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERS), a Nigerian human rights organization, found that 75% of people in the country support the continued enforcement of the anti-gay laws.

Censorship of queer films

Ikpe-Etim, 31, says "Ife" has no fixed release date yet but will be out before the end of the year.

What is certain is that it faces an uphill battle with Nigeria's film censors, who have said they may "go after the producers," if they find that the film promotes homosexuality.

Adedayo Thomas, executive director of the NFVCB, told CNN the board will not approve films that promote themes that don't conform with the country's "constitution, morals and traditions."

"We are monitoring the progress of the movie, and if it goes against the law by promoting homosexuality, we will be forced at some point to go after the producer and executive producer," he added.

According to Thomas, Ife was never submitted to the NFVCB before its trailer was released, making it impossible to classify or censor the film.

"We look at the content of the film and we look at the end. For example, in a movie that glorifies fraud, we look at how it ends, did the fraudster meet their waterloo? How the movie ends will determine our censorship. You wouldn't watch your kid to watch a film that glorifies fraud," he told CNN.

"Ife's" producer Pamela Adie says agencies like NFVCB suppress the creativity of filmmakers.

"If there is a demand for films like Ife and if people want it, and the censor's board does not approve then it means they are indirectly stifling the creative powers of filmmakers. To deny a film simply because of queer characters is discrimination," she said.

Stereotyping queer characters

Nollywood has always had a problematic relationship with its queer characters, portraying them as mentally ill, under the influence of witchcraft or troubled.

In Emotional Crack, a 2003 film, one of the lead characters, Camilla falls in love with Crystal, a married woman who suffered domestic abuse from her husband.

Both women kicked off a relationship that eventually ended when Crystal became unsure of remaining in a same-sex relationship.

While the film was one of the country's early introductions into LGBTQ relationships, it repeated damaging stereotypes like branding Camilla as violent, predatory, and suggested that Crystal's lesbianism was as a result of being mistreated by a man.

Similarly, in a 2010 film, "Men in Love," the affair of the lead couple was explained away by a "strong satanic bond."

Adie told CNN that she wants to challenge other filmmakers in Nollywood to create more nuanced queer stories devoid of the usual stereotypes.

"My hope is that Ife shapes things up, and mainstream Nollywood starts to think about stories that portray the reality of LGBT Nigerians," she explained.

The 36-year-old added that "Ife" is one of few films with a focus on lesbians in Nigeria, "a lot of representation has been geared towards gay men," she says.

Outpouring of support

Nigeria is not the only country with strict rules regarding films with strong LGBTQ representation.

In April 2018, Rafiki was banned by Kenya's Film and Classification Board (KFCB) because of its intent to "promote lesbianism," in the East African nation.

Despite the challenges around creating queer centered films in Nigeria, Adie says there has been an outpouring of support for "Ife" from audiences in the country.

"It is something that is groundbreaking. We have received support, from when we released the poster to the trailer. It feels like people didn't know they wanted this kind of content till now."

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A Nollywood film about two women in love faces an uphill battle in a country where homophobia is rampant - The Philadelphia Tribune

John Milton, the greatest English poet of the 17th century, was alsothe great champion of press freedom, and "Areopagitica"(1644), his impassioned plea for "unlicensed printing," begins every course of the history of censorship.So Milton's pamphlet provides an excellent guide for thinking about whether The New York Times should have published Sen.Tom Cotton's op-ed, "Send in the Troops."

On the one hand, Milton fills "Areopagitica" with stirring exhortations about the necessity of free thought and speech. "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience." Truth "has more shapes than one," and anyway, who wants everyone "to be of one mind"? Censorship is a "manifest hurt" that is an "affront" to learning. Milton's larger point is that repressing views you don't like takes away choice, and the only way to know good is by evil. Milton, it seems, would fully support the publication of Cotton's op-ed, not because he might agree with Cotton's views, but because readers are adults, and should be trusted to make up their own minds.

But in fact, his argument is more complicated than that.

Milton is not against censorship per se, but against pre-publication censorship.The author can publish whatever he or she wants. But the Church and the government must keep a "vigilant eye [on] how books demean themselves," and if they misbehave, then the authorities must "confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them."

What does a book have to do to merit suppression? Here's where Milton meets what Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt call "safetyism," the notion that we must be protected from ideas or speech that might cause not just physical, but emotional damage. Milton's benchmark for when a book becomes a "malefactor" is a little unclear. Books, he says, are like mythical dragon's teeth, that could turn into "armed men." While Milton is speaking in metaphors, it seems clear that he means a book must cause actual, not potential, harm. It must inspire someone to actually commit violence.

It would not be enough to assert, as Roxane Gay tweets, that "Running this [op ed[ puts black @nytimes writers, editors and other staff in danger."You would have to prove that the article really did palpable harm.An abstract threat is no threat at all.So, again, it seems that Milton would agree with the initial decision to publish Cotton's op-ed. Spiking Cotton's opinions, no matter how noxious, as both Ross Douthait and Bret Stephens have said, would mean repressing an argument you don't like because you don't like it. Milton would probably agreethat's not a legitimate reason.

Except there's a twist at the end of Milton's argument.

After Milton writes that nobody has a monopoly on truth, he draws a line in the sand: "I mean not tolerated popery and open superstition." In context, Milton means Catholicism, which Milton considered, for good reason, an activemilitary threat to Protestant England, and probably also Judaism and Islam. There are some ideas, some concepts, some opinions, that are beyond the pale. These are justly suppressed.

The question, then, is whether Cotton's views belong to that category. Does his proposal for "an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers" so offend our collective values that it "proves a monster" and so should be "sunk into the sea"? A few days before the Times published his op ed, Cotton tweeted that the military should do "whatever it takes" to restore order. Even worse, he called for "no quarter," which in military-speak suggeststhe "lawbreakers"should all be killed, even if they surrender.

Milton reminds us that no right is absolute, that freedom of speech has its limits, both legal and by social convention. You cannot shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater; you cannot threaten violence against the president; and white people cannot say the n-word. All of these are forbidden. Does Cotton's op-ed cross the line? Arguably, yes. The op ed is factually challenged ("Antifa," did not "infiltrate" the demonstrations, as Cotton claims, mainly because no such organization exists) and the spectacle of a senator proposing to sic the full might of the U.S. military against demonstrators is repellent.

So yes, Milton would agree that The New York Times erred in commissioning and publishing Cotton's screed. In this case, the great defender of press freedomwould approve of consigning this op-ed to oblivion.

Continued here:
John Milton, Tom Cotton and censorship: Why the great defender of freedom might have shut that down - Salon