Comment by Traster
15 hours ago
I think this is... fine? Am I just totally naive. I think it's fine to say "You don't really have privacy on this app" - as long as there are relatively good options of apps that do have privacy (and I think there are). TikTok is really a public by default type of social media, there's not much idea of mutual following or closed groups. So sure, you don't have privacy on tiktok, if you want it you can move to snapchat or signal or whatever platform of your choice.
Like, it's literally a platform that was run under the watchful eye of the CCP, and now the US version is some kleptocratic nightmare, so I just don't see the point in expecting some sort of principled stance out of them.
In some ways I think it's worse for places like Facebook to "care about privacy" and use E2EE but then massively under-resource policing of CSAM on their platform. If you're going to embrace 'privacy' I do think it's on you to also then put additional resources into tackling the downsides of that.
Tiktok has private messaging, and it is used by hundreds of millions of people.
IMO no consumer service should have private 1:1 messaging without e2e. Either only do public messaging (ie. Like a forum), or implement e2e.
Tiktok has direct messages, they don't even call them private.
It's better that they're honest about this, nobody should believe for a second that WhatsApp or FB messages are truly E2EE.
DM on social media shouldn't be used for anything remotely private. It's a convenience feature, nothing more.
> nobody should believe for a second that WhatsApp or FB messages are truly E2EE.
Meta still tracks analytics which isn't good for privacy, but I'm not aware of any news of them or 3rd parties reading messages without consent of one of the 1st parties? Signal is probably much better though
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> Tiktok has direct messages, they don't even call them private.
It may not be called that, but what are users expecting? Some folks may later be surprised when a warrant gets issued (e.g., from a divorce judge).
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Way to dunk on OP I guess but nobody is playing semantics here, it's just whether people think this is a messaging channel with one intended recipient
Honestly I'm tired with every app trying to become the everything app.
Now TikTok wants to be a messaging app. Snapchat has a short video feed just like TikTok. WhatsApp only has a text feed, how long until they also add a video feed?
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> nobody should believe for a second that WhatsApp or FB messages are truly E2EE
That's interesting. You think all firms that audited WhatsApp and Signal protocol used by WhatsApp and all programmers who worked there for decades and can see a lie and leak if it was true are all crooks? valid opinion I guess, but I won't call it "no one should believe for a second
(curious you didn't mention Telegram, it is actually marketed as secure and e2e and it has completely gimped "secret chats" that are off by default and used by like almost nobody.)
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In my experience most forums have private messaging.
Additionally I think it is fine to say "we don't support e2ee". I prefer honesty to a bad (leaky) e2ee implementation, at least the user can make an informed choice.
I agree. At least take of "Yes messages are stored on our servers" is honest. And if they are accessed by anything else than limited subpoena is policy or legal issue.
>In my experience most forums have private messaging.
Yeah but it's kind of accepted that the forum owner could read it all if they so chose. Maybe this is a hold over from back in the old days when encryption was nowhere near default during which forums arose.
Adding that private self hosted forums can permit uploads of encrypted files, encrypted with a pre-shared secret or a secret shared over a private self hosted Mumble voice chat server.
And yet virtually all consumer services with 1:1 messaging lacks e2e. This is a bit of a quixotic position to take.
The email protocols would like to have a chat with you.
You can bring your own encryption to that, and bring your own client to automate it.
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> as long as there are relatively good options of apps that do have privacy (and I think there are)
Once you have enormous network effect like TikTok has, you don't really have any free selection of alternative apps. You are free to use one, but you will be the only sad user over there.
Regulations are needed that would force large platforms like TikTok and Instagram to enable federation, opening them up to actual competition. This way platforms would be able to compete on monetisation and usability, instead of competing on locking in their precious users more strictly.
“Will we ever end the MySpace monopoly?”
> MySpace is well on the way to becoming what economists call a "natural monopoly". Users have invested so much social capital in putting up data about themselves it is not worth their changing sites, especially since every new user that MySpace attracts adds to its value as a network of interacting people.
> "In social networking, there is a huge advantage to have scale. You can find almost anyone on MySpace and the more time that has been invested in the site, the more locked in people are".
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business....
Sure, but then everyone moved to Facebook. The monopolist changed, but not the monopolistic market and the lack of consumer choice.
And nobody gained privacy in the process (I rather think everyone lost even more of it).
The situation currently permits only a tiny number of winning companies at a time, and the userbase is locked in even as the site becomes wildly unpopular, until some threshold of discontent is reached, and then everyone moves, and then that new site also enshittifies and the cycle repeats.
Federation is a mechanism whereby people would be able to actually choose providers as individuals and at any time, instead of having to wait years for a critical mass of upset people to build up and leave [current most popular social media site], and instead of being forced to go to [new most popular social media site].
>Regulations are needed
Lolololol. No, not regulations. Regulators. With the people we currently have voted into office in the US the only regulations we are going to get are ones saying Sam and Peter must look at everything you do all the time.
Until we stop voting for more authoritarianism, expect ever increasing amounts of authoritarianism.
I would argue the only thing that does stop current situation from snowballing into something much worse are pre-existing institutions and regulations.
That's also why dismantling and challenging these is often the very first priority for authoritarian actors.
I think it was clear what they meant.
federation would never work. How would it work here? Either you are forcing tiktok to give pageviews to federations of spam, or you are letting tiktok decide which federations to work with, which essentially results in no federation.
Nobody stops spammers from creating websites, but we still have search engines and web. Nobody stops spammers from sending emails, but we still use SMTP.
It is just a matter of tools we build to rank and filter content. With open protocols platforms can actually compete on antispam tools, among other features.
It might be fine if they presented an honest choice.
They are lying straight off though... police and safety team don't read messages only "if they needed to" to keep people safe. They do so for a large variety of other reasons, such as suppressing political dissent and asserting domination and control.
I don't think we can expect most people to understand TikTok's BS here either. I notice even a skeptic like you is uncritically echoing the dubious conflation of privacy and CSAM.
Anyone who doubts the requirement for e2e messaging should not be considered a skeptic, they are fully buying into whatever narrative LEO would like you to believe.
I am fine TikTok remaining that 'we watch what you are doing' platforms. Those do not care can gave that if they wish, I do not mind.
But bullshitting about it is making users more safe, that is ... bullshit! Worse that that, distorting public opinion, intentionally fooling the gullible.
Fine with me too. I think many other apps (WhatsApp, FB, etc.) are using E2EE for PR purposes and are not actually good implementations of E2EE.
Good implementations of E2EE:
1. Generate the key pairs on device, and the private key is never seen by the server nor accessible via any server push triggered code.
2. If an encrypted form of the private key is sent to the server for convenience, it needs to be encrypted with a password with enough bits of entropy to prevent people who have access to the server from being able to brute force decode it.
3. Have an open-source implementation of the client app facilitating verifiability of (1) and (2)
4. Permit the users to self-compile and use the open-source implementation
If company isn't willing to do this, I'd rather they not call it E2EE and dupe the public into thinking they're safe from bad actors.
No, saying that e2e encryption makes users _less_ safe is completely dishonest, nothing is fine about this.
The logic of "anything is better than before" is also fallacious.
Depends on your definition of "safe". Imagine an adult DMs a nude photo to a minor (or other kinds of predation).
If it's E2EE, no one except the sender and receiver know about this conversation. You want an MITM in this case to detect/block such things or at least keep record of what's going on for a subpoena.
I agree that every messaging platform in the world shouldn't be MITM'd, but every messaging platform doesn't need to be E2EE'd either.
The receiver has a proven and signed bundle, that they can upload to the abuse report. So the evidence has even stronger weight. They can already decrypt the message, they can still report it.
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SimpleX handles this by sending the decryption keys when the receiver reports the message.
Keeping children safe and prosecuting are too different concepts, only vaguely related. So no, being able to track pdfs doesn't make children safer. What keeps them safe is teaching them safe communication habits and keeping them away from things like Tiktok.
We shouldn't make the world a worse place for every one because some parents can't take care of their children.
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What was the rate of child exploitation in the GDR?
Ugh. The kids aren't even safe from the people making, and enforcing laws. This argument should be long over for anyone with eyes or ears.
Imagine Hamas are your government and want to figure out who's gay. You don't want a MITM in case they can do this.
Pick your definition of safe.
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It makes certain users less safe in certain situations.
E2E makes political activists and anti-chinese dissidents safer, at the cost of making children less safe. Whether this is a worthwhile tradeoff is a political, not technical decision, but if we claim that there are any absolutes here, we just make sure that we'll never be taken seriously by anybody who matters.
Claiming e2e makes children less safe is flat out dishonest. And the irony of you criticising “absolutes” after trying to pass one is just delicious.
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well having no e2e encryption is safer than having a half-baked e2e encryption that have backdoor and can be decrypted by the provider.
and for tiktok's stance, I think they just don't want to get involved with the Chinese government related with encryption (and give false sense of privacy to user)
That it’s fine because it’s the CCP (commies see all) is a new one.
It’s at best subpar for the same reasons as if it was the usual Silicon Valley spyware.
I could leave well enough alone. But why? Because there are choices? There are five other brands of cereal that do not have 25% sugar? I’d rather be a negative nancy towards these on-purpose addictive, privacy-leaking attention pimp apps.
Trying to gaslight the public into thinking end to end encryption makes users less safe is not fine.
>I think it's fine to say "You don't really have privacy on this app"
Disagree. To analogize why: privacy isn't heated seats, *its seat belts*. Comfort features and preferences are fine to tailor to your customers and your business model. Jaguar targets a different market than Ford, and that's just fine.
Safety features should be non-negotiable for all. Both Jaguar and Ford drivers merit the utmost protection against injury in crashes. Likewise, all applications that offer user messaging functionality should offer non-defective, non-harmful versions of it. To do that, e2e privacy is absolutely necessary.
>I just don't see the point in expecting some sort of principled stance out of them.
This is the defeatism that adds momentum to a downhill trajectory. Exactly the opposite approach arrests the slide - users expecting their applications and providers to behave in principled ways, and punishing those who do not, are what keeps principles alive. Failing to expect lawful and upright behavior out of those you depend on, be they political leaders or software solutions providers, guarantees that tomorrow's behavior will be less lawful and upright than yesterday's. Stop writing these people a pass for this horrible behavior, and start holding them unreasonably accountable for it, then we'll see behavior start to change in the direction that we mostly all agree that it needs to.
The most effective protests against internet censorship came from massive grass roots movements, with users drawing a line in the sand that they will not tolerate further impositions on their freedom.
>In some ways I think it's worse for places like Facebook to "care about privacy" and use E2EE but then massively under-resource policing of CSAM on their platform.
The irony is so manifest of billions of people having their privacy stripped by politicians and business elites in the name of protecting our children, while those politicians and business elites conspire en masse to prey on and sex traffick our children. If these forces actually took those concerns seriously, rather than sensing them as an opportunity to push ulterior motives, they'd be eating each other alive, right now. Half of DC, half of Hollywood, and at least a tenth of most major college administrations would ALL be at the docket.
Tesla doesn't have parking sensors. They're a safety feature. There's lots of safety features in cars that are optional, we've got an entire rating system for the safety of cars.
We're talking about an app that's controlled by the CCP, I do expect them to take a principled stance - stances like Taiwan is a part of China and you can't be openly critical of the leader of the party. They don't have the same principles as you. You can force them to put in E2EE, but you can't force them to be honest about it or competent about it. I would rather know what we're getting than to push them to lie.
This is the same thing as the OpenAI/Anthropic thing. You've got Anthropic taking a principled stance and getting pain for it, and you've got OpenAI claiming to take the same stance, but somehow agreeing to the terms of the DoW. Do you think it's more likely that Anthropic carelessly caused themselves massive trouble, or do you think OpenAI is claiming to have got the concessions that clearly won't work in practice. I think it's naive to think the former.
>We're talking about an app that's controlled by the CCP, I do expect them to take a principled stance
In the area of large scale internet service providers, who do you expect to take a principled stance, and why do you expect them to take it?
If the answer is, "nobody", then why keep singling out China? And if the answer isn't "nobody", then how do we apply the same pressures and principles to TikTok and other platforms that offer messaging?
This isn't some abstract concern. We know that WESTERN journalists, activists, and others have been murdered in acts of transnational repression that either began or were focused and abetted by communications surveillance aimed toward political dissidence. It seems incredibly naive to believe that current Western political and military leadership could ever be dissuaded from taking effective action (and such surveillance and repression campaigns certainly are effective) by moral qualms unsupported by strong checks and balances of accountability. In other words - this sort of repression most likely continues happening to journalists, activists, human rights lawyers, and other political dissidents, in our society, today. Enabled by the refusal of our service providers to protect us, their users.
It seems incredibly naive - civilization threateningly so - to write a pass to anyone, let alone Larry Ellison, for opting to deliberately expose "his" users to this risk. Nothing is OK about this dereliction of responsibility towards them.