Tubes #3: Abstract Expressionist Tech Policy

In this issue: newsletters missing their deadlines, lawmakers missing the point, and a quick lesson in art appreciation. Plus, our first sponsor!

A close-up of Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XIX.

I recently dragged my partner to the MoMA here in NYC as part of my ongoing quest to turn him into A Guy Who “Gets” Modern Art. There’s whole guides on this exact subject, but they all basically boil to the same four steps:

1. Find a big ol’ painting.

2. Step away from the big ol’ painting.

3. Step closer to the big ol’ painting.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you feel something profound.

Abstract artists have always been a personal favorite because the right perspective changes everything about them. From across the room, something like Untitled XIX (which is also the illo up top!) feels almost like it’s screaming at you; it’s six and a half feet of pure, anxious energy. But when you get up close (and drag your SO alongside), you can see that every paint smear was put there with purpose. “Accidentally intentional” is how I summed it up to him.

I can’t say for certain how much of that stuck (this is someone who once called called Andy Warhol “the soup guy”), but I couldn’t stop thinking about that phrase several days later, when I watched TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew getting utterly roasted during his first-ever Congressional hearing.

On paper, this was the chance for Democrats and Republicans to dig up some dirt about the potential Chinese ties of an app that’s on the phones belonging to roughly half the country. In practice, the hearing was partly about Congress’s concerns with TikTok, partly about Congress’s concerns with social media as a concept, and partly served as an excuse for lawmakers to grandstand about their own imperfect takes on privacy legislation. Mostly though, it was Chew being interrupted with questions like this:

Product Hunt 😸 @ProductHunt

What was your favorite moment of TikTok CEO's hearing at the US congress, and why was it this one?

I knew there was bipartisan rage, sure, but I couldn’t tell you where people’s legitimate concerns began and where hyperbole ended. It turns out most reporters and researchers in this space also shared that sentiment. So in the days that followed, I bought a pack of hard seltzer, turned on C-SPAN, and tried to parse the intentional jabs from the accidental……. everything else.

In the end, I settled on picking out each unique crime the company was accused of, dumped them into categories ranging from “utter bullshit” to “kind of reasonable,” and gave some context explaining why I dumped them where I did. In the end, I had 3,500+ words(!) from the first hour(!!) of the hearing(!!!). Some of that’s jokes, and some of that’s details about TikTok’s internal workings that you won’t read anywhere else.

BUT BEFORE ALL THAT…

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C-SPAN’s transcriptions—which is what I used—are in all caps, for some reason. I could have fixed it, but it’s so much funnier when you imagine everyone screaming over each other.

Accusations that felt like actual accusations: 5

“MR. CHEW, YOU ARE HERE BECAUSE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NEED THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THREAT TIKTOK POSES TO OUR NATIONAL AND PERSONAL SECURITY. TIKTOK COLLECTS NEARLY EVERY DATA POINT IMAGINABLE; FROM PEOPLES LOCATIONS TO WHAT THEY TYPE, WHO THEY TALK TO, BIOMETRIC DATA AND MORE” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

Maybe I’m just jaded from covering privacy faux pas for four years straight, but when someone in congress says “every data point imaginable,” you’d think they’d list off more than… four:

1. TikTok will be the first to tell you that TikTok doesn’t currently collect precise location data—it’s a talking point Chew fell back on multiple times during his testimony, and that spokespeople highlighted in at least one recent blog post. Neither of these statements address how TikTok openly collects users’ approximate location based on details gleaned from, say, their phone’s SIM card or their computer’s IP address. On one hand, TikTok says that this data is limited to a person’s zipcode or city at most. On the other hand, the company makes it pretty clear that you can’t opt out of these inferences. While most other major platforms like Meta also use IP addresses and Wi-Fi connections to approximate a person’s location, TikTok is the only household name I’ve seen tracking SIM’s like this—though they’re definitely not the only ones doing it.

2. I’m guessing the “what they type” thing refers to the researcher who found keylogger capabilities baked into TikTok’s in-app browser. TikTok confirmed these findings to Forbes in 2022, promising that the keylogger was strictly used for debugging purposes. Sure.

3. I’m stumped on what she meant by TikTok tracking “who [users] talk to.” Someone please help me out here.

4. Most of the hubub I’ve seen about TikTok’s alleged collection of biometric information can be traced to this ominous AF 2021 update the org made to its US privacy policy that explicitly notes that TikTok uses could have their vocal or facial data collected while using the app. During the hearing, Chew shockingly confirmed that people’s faces were sometimes scanned in publicly posted clips as a way to gauge whether the poster’s underage. That said, Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese counterpart) does similar facial recognition checks for similar age-related reasons, and even Instagram has started doing the same in some markets.

I’m not sure if Rodgers knew it, but she actually called out two shitty practices (keylogging/SIM-sniffing) that haven’t cropped up on any other social platform to my knowledge. They have cropped up elsewhere on the web though—more on that later.

“THE CCP'S LAWS REQUIRE CHINESE COMPANIES LIKE BYTEDANCE TO SPY ON THEIR BEHALF. ANY CHINESE COMPANY MUST GRANT THE CCP ACCESS AND MANIPULATION CAPABILITIES AS A DESIGN FEATURE.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

I’m honestly not sure that that second claim is—but the first is a pretty clear case of he-said/she-said. Specifically, China’s Foreign Ministry has denied that the country’s government would mine mobile data in any way that ran afoul of local data privacy laws. At the same time, part of the reason this hearing happened in the first place is because we don’t have a federal data privacy law in the U.S. The best we have are some scattered laws at the state level, which are pretty much active in name only as far as most apps are concerned. “Spying,” might be a strong word here, but so are China’s national security laws.

I can’t stress enough how this, like nearly every ill that Congress says is unique to TikTok, is hypothetical at best. We don’t have proof that anything like this has actually happened at scale. But it could, so into the list of credible threats it goes.

“TIKTOK HAS HELPED ERASE EVENTS AND PEOPLE THAT CHINA WANTS THE WORLD TO FORGET. IT EVEN CENSORED AN AMERICAN TEENAGER WHO EXPOSED CCP'S GENOCIDE AND TORTURE OF MUSLIMS.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

Rodgers was referring to this brief controversy from 2019 where a New Jersey teenager found herself suspended from TikTok after she’d put out a clip featuring some pretty frank details about China’s ongoing internment of Uighur muslims. Then she noticed that her video, which had done serious numbers up until that point, was mysteriously pulled from the platform, too. TikTok would later chock the whole debacle to a series of convenient technical whoopsies that don’t really hold water—especially when you remember that TikTok’s UK director of public policy admitted in 2020 that the app actually did have policies to quash Uighur content in the past. She did promise those policies have since been changed, but… she also works for TikTok, so.

“IN YOUR PREVIOUS AND CURRENT POSITIONS WITHIN CHINESE COMPANIES, HAVE EMPLOYEES ENGAGED IN HEATING CONTENT FOR USERS OUTSIDE OF CHINA? […] SO THE ANSWER IS YES, THANK YOU.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

“Heating” refers to the internal tool that TikTok’s staffers use to thumb the scales of people’s For You Pages and hand-pick who gets seen at the top. And execs at the company’s U.S. branch have openly noted that that this tool gets used to juice views for, say, an upcoming sporting event or concert.

At first I was a bit confused why Chew would openly confirm a PR nightmare like “yes, folks from overseas can fiddle with people’s homepages stateside.” So I did a bit (a lot) of digging and found one possible interpretation. As part of TikTok’s slow lurch into e-commerce, the company’s been steadily rolling out a new “Promote” tool to different markets. It’s promoted as an easy way for TikTok Shop merchants to score traffic on pre-existing content. It also more or less functions the way “heating” does, which is why there’s a silly lil flamey guy in some of the assets:

Scored from a deck aimed at U.K. merchants last month.

Some recent reports from mainland China suggest that Bytedance is pushing for more cross-border commerce because the local market is pretty saturated, which is probably why local merchants selling stuff abroad were among the first to get access to TikTok’s commerce tools. This included Promote. The company’s comms to Chinese sellers even include the lil flamey guy.

For those who don’t want to slog through the Mandarin-language marketing jargon under that link, here’s the guy in question.

Could this tool be used for nefarious means? Of course. Will it be used force knock-off designer clothes onto all of us? Almost certainly.

“YOU'VE SPOKEN ABOUT IT IN YOUR OPENING STATEMENT ABOUT A FIREWALL RELATIVE TO THE DATA. BUT THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT HAS THAT DATA. HOW CAN YOU PROMISE THAT WILL MOVE INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO BE PROTECTED HERE?” — Anna Enshoo [D-CA]

Obviously Chew responded in the affirmative here, but if you look at the details TikTok’s plan includes pretty broad exemptions that ensure whatever servers TikTok’s using stateside will be leaking some kind of data to parties abroad. It makes sense for a cross-border commerce operation, but leaky servers are still leaky servers.

Accusations that felt like actual accusations—just ones that a ban would do nothing about: 6

“THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY CAN USE THIS AS A TOOL TO MANIPULATE AMERICA AS A WHOLE.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

While we’ve certainly seen some nascent efforts from Chinese officials to push divisive political content to the top of people’s TikTok feeds, the whole point of an influence operation by any foreign power is to… influence people, wherever they are. Before TikTok was on the scene, state actors lurked on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and wherever else people were socializing online. Banning TikTok would probably be a hiccup for these operations at worst.

“WHEN YOU CELEBRATE THE 150 MILLION AMERICAN USERS ON TIKTOK, IT EMPHASIZES THE URGENCY FOR CONGRESS TO ACT. THAT IS 150 MILLION AMERICANS THAT CCP CAN COLLECT SENSITIVE INFORMATION ON AND CONTROL WHAT WE ULTIMATELY SEE, HEAR AND BELIEVE.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

Depending on how you define “sensitive information,” there’s a nonzero chance that Chinese officials are already accessing it with the help of adtech middlemen in the U.S. and China. I literally wrote about this nearly three years ago at this point, and I’m pretty sure it still holds up—unless global data sharing agreements became real unprofitable all of a sudden.

“RIGHT NOW, BYTEDANCE IS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE DOJ FOR SURVEILLING AMERICAN JOURNALISTS, BOTH DIGITAL ACTIVITY AND PHYSICAL MOVEMENTS THROUGH TIKTOK.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

Before I address the utter insanity of being tracked by the subjects you cover, lemme say this: the DOJ has never been on the right side of this issue. In fact, it has a pretty long track record of snooping on reporters’ phone records, email logs, and geolocation history.

When you’re a pain in the ass of government officials or tech workers, it’s safe to say they’ll keep an eye on you—even if they bend the rules a bit to do it. The rogue TikTok employees that tried to stem the flow of internal leaks using app and IP data from journalists at Forbes and The Financial Times are the most recent culprits, but hardly the first. Uber’s done it, Tesla’s done it, Meta’s done it. In an ironic twist, I’ve heard my privacy coverage has gotten me surveilled by an Unnamed Big Tech Co at least once. It’s extremely shitty that TikTok joined their ranks. More than anything else though, I think it’s a sign that those reporters were (and are) just really good at their jobs.

“AS FORT BRAGG'S CONGRESSMAN, I HAVE SERIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITIES TIKTOK GIVES THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY TO ACCESS THE NON PUBLIC SENSITIVE DATA ABOUT WHERE MEN AND WOMEN -- OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN UNIFORM. THIS PERSONAL DATA AND LOCATION INFORMATION CAN BE HARVESTED, AND COULD BE USED, FOR BLACKMAIL, ESPIONAGE, AND EVEN REVEAL TRUMP MYTHS.” — Richard Hudson [R-NC]

These are the top 10 free iOS apps in the U.S. as I’m writing this:

Data’s from AppFigures, FYI.

Of them, four are developed by companies in China. If you nix the two that are owned by Bytedance, you still have two extremely popular shopping apps that—like most shopping apps—require your payment information and home address at minimum, and will generally ask for your rough location on top of that. Seems weird that they wouldn’t be on the chopping block with TikTok.

“THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND MOST AGENCIES HAVE BANNED TIKTOK ON GOVERNMENT ISSUED DEVICES, AND I BELIEVE MORE HAS TO BE DONE TO ERASE THE APP FROM THE PERSONAL DEVICES. HAVING AN APP BANNED ON ADVICE ON ONE POCKETBOOK, DOWNLOADED ON A DEVICE IN YOUR OTHER POCKET DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ME.” — Richard Hudson [R-NC]

Did I mention Chinese developers made roughly a third of the most popular mobile games in the app store right now? And one of the most popular bible apps in the country? And at least two of the apps that you can download on your government issued devices? And that the DoD Inspector General literally issued a report about that last one, before pulling it from its site a few days later? haha jk it’s just at a new URL, ty Aaron Schaffer for that correction!

“MR. CHEW, DOES TIKTOK ACCESS THE HOME WI-FI NETWORK, MR. CHEW? […] IS IT POSSIBLE THEN IT CAN ACCESS OTHER DEVICES ON THAT HOME WI-FI NETWORK?” — Richard Hudson [R-NC]

When an app scans for local devices, it’s typically doing for ad targeting, fraud preventing, or both. I can say with certainty that every app on my phone has tried to do it at least once, because I won’t stop getting these privacy popups from Apple.

At least I think this is what he was asking about. Your guess is good as mine.

Accusations that were less about “TikTok” and more about “Apps”: 8

“EVEN IF THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN ON TIKTOK, YOUR TRACKERS ARE EMBEDDED IN SITES ACROSS THE WEB.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

I’m guessing she’s referring to the TikTok tracking pixel, which sounds terrifying until you realize Meta, Google, Snap, and Reddit (for some reason) each have their own cross-site tracker that can more or less do the same thing.

“TIKTOK HAS REPEATEDLY CHOSEN THE PATH FOR MORE CONTROL, MORE SURVEILLANCE AND MORE MANIPULATION.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

Swap out “TikTok” for “Google” or “Meta” or “Amazon” in the above and tell me it’s not true. You can’t! You literally can’t!!!!

“IT'S ALSO PORTAL FOR DRUG DEALERS TO SELL ILLICIT FENTANYL, THAT CHINA HAS BANNED. YET IT IS HELPING MEXICAN CARTELS PRODUCE, SEND ACROSS OUR BORDERS, AND POISON OUR CHILDREN.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

Back in my day the teen-to-fentanyl pipeline was pretty straightforward: you knew a guy who knew a guy whose name was “Scuzzy” or something, and you communicated with whatever cheap burner phone you could find at the local Radioshack. In 2023, you’re using Instagram to meet up with smugglers, you’re running customer service for your drug empire through Telegram, marketing your goods on Twitter, covering your tracks with WhatsApp and using Snapchat for everything else. Who’s got time to use TikTok these days?

“TIKTOK COLLECTS AND COMPILES VAST TROVES OF VALUABLE PERSONAL INFORMATION TO CREATE AN ADDICTIVE ALGORITHM THAT IS ABLE TO PREDICT, WITH UNCANNY ACCURACY, WHICH VIDEOS WILL KEEP USERS SCROLLING EVEN IF THE CONTENT IS HARMFUL, INACCURATE, OR FEEDS DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR OR EXTREMIST BELIEFS.” — Frank Palone [D-NJ]

Weren’t we saying this about Instagram last year? (we were)

“A RECENT REPORT FOUND THAT 20% OF TIKTOK SEARCH RESULTS ON PROMINENT NEWS TOPICS CONTAIN MISINFORMATION.” — Frank Palone [D-NJ]

I flipped through the study he’s talking about and I just have to ask, once again, if we’re sure this isn’t just Instagram in a different shirt.

“HOW MUCH MONEY WILL TIKTOK MAKE BY DELIVERING PERSONALIZED ADVERTISEMENTS TO YOUR USERS IN THE UNITED STATES?

[…] TIKTOK IS MAKING ALL KINDS OF MONEY BY COLLECTING AND GATHERING PRIVATE INFORMATION ABOUT AMERICANS THAT THEY DON'T NEED FOR THEIR BUSINESS PURPOSES AND THEN THEY SELL IT.” — Frank Palone [D-NJ]

Between these two quotes, Chew literally tried to explain that a private company’s revenue figures are (gasp!) private, which makes it all the funnier that Palone pretty much responded with “WELL…. I BET IT’S A LOT!!!!!!!!!!!!” (reports suggest it’s actually a bit lower than the company was hoping for, but. you do you senator.)

On the second point: the general consensus I’m seeing is the Chew was probably too dang confused about how data “sales” get interpreted state-by-state to rebuke that statement off the bat. He later clarified that TikTok doesn’t sell data from its users (though it does share the hell out of it).

“THE CARTELS ALL USE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. […] WE HAVE HEARD THAT TIKTOK RECRUITS PEOPLE INTO THE CARTELS.” — Michael Burgess [R-TX]

Okay, again, even Burgess is acknowledging that the war on drugs isn’t only being fought on TikTok. Still, I was curious about how someone might use TikTok to recruit someone into an operation like this, so I poked around a bit and found:

Red Uno De Bolivia HD @RedUnoTv

#Cochabamba | Los narcos también usan Tik Tok: imágenes de jóvenes “pisacoca” son virales. #RedUno #Notivisión #Policial

I’m kind of surprised that this worked! really well! as a recruitment ad. I’m not surprised that these literal children ended up arrested when it went viral.

“TIKTOK'S IN-APP BROWSER SURVEILLED EVERYTHING FROM AMERICANS INCLUDING PASSWORDS AND CREDIT CARD NUMBERS, ET CETERA.” — Jan Schakowsky [D-IL]

I have some bad news: not only are there companies whose sole purpose is tracking every keystroke and form input made on a site, but hundreds of thousands of sites have them installed. Sometimes those sites are government-owned. It took me 30 seconds to find one popular provider, Hotjar, on the texas.gov site, along with a bunch of others.

I feel like the unwritten question here is whether Schakowsky is more comfortable with a Chinese company getting their hands on this data, or an American company getting their hands on this data and then immediately sharing it with a Chinese company, as they’re so wont to do. I’m just asking!

Accusations that made me say “bruh” out loud, to nobody in particular: 5

“CHILDREN AND TEENS ARE PARTICULARLY VULNERABLE. FREQUENT ONLINE VIEWS OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA ON DIGITAL DEVICES IS ASSOCIATED WITH INCREASED LEVELS OF DEPRESSION AMONG MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS.” — Frank Palone [D-NJ]

This is one of those claims that gets thrown around a lot because it sounds perfectly reasonable until you actually look into the evidence to back it up. Turns out there isn’t much. And if anyone takes this as a personal invitation to email over one of the many, many peer-reviewed papers that prove how wrong I am, ask yourself why there’s just as many papers proving otherwise. I really think that we don’t have enough data to prove things either way. Palone might, but I’m the one with a neuroscience degree (unfortunately).

“CAN YOU TELL ME WHO WRITES THE ALGORITHMS FOR TIKTOK?” — Anna Enshoo [D-CA]

Okay, I think I get what she was trying to get at here—but like, this is a massive, international company….. with different algorithms for every piece of the app’s basic functions….. and thousands of people overseeing them at any given time…….

“THE ALGORITHM IS A TOOL FOR TIKTOK TO PREY ON THEIR INNOCENT.” — Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA]

Sentences like these make me feel like it’s the 30’s all over again, but we swapped “algorithms” for “marijuana.”

“SECTION 230 WAS NEVER INTENDED TO SHIELD COMPANIES LIKE YOURS FROM AMPLIFYING DANGEROUS AND LIFE THREATENING CONTENT TO CHILDREN.” — Bob Latta [R-OH]

“EARLIER THIS WEEK, YOU POSTED A TIKTOK VIDEO ASKING AMERICAN USERS TO MOBILIZE IN SUPPORT OF YOUR APP AND OPPOSE THE POTENTIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT ACTION TO BAN TIKTOK FROM THE UNITED STATES. BASED ON THE ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUR COMPANY AND THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO CONCLUDE THAT THE VIDEO IS ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN THE TYPE OF PROPAGANDA THAT THE CCP REQUIRES CHINESE COMPANIES TO PUSH ON ITS CITIZENS, AND I YIELD BACK.” — Bob Latta [R-OH]

Thanks for making it this far. If this (somehow) wasn’t enough for you, I can compile the other four hours of testimony and put it out for paid subscribers, or something. Let me know in the comments.