TikTok Algorithm To Be Retrained On US User Data Under Trump Deal (bbc.com)
- Reference: 0179466964
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/22/1924228/tiktok-algorithm-to-be-retrained-on-us-user-data-under-trump-deal
- Source link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gj7mlg9vdo
> It comes after President Donald Trump said a deal to prevent the app's ban in the US, unless sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance, [2]had been reached with China's approval. White House officials claim the deal will be a win for the app's US users and citizens. President Trump is expected to sign an executive order later this week on the proposed deal, which will set out how it will comply with US national security demands.
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> The order will also outline a 120-day pause to the enforcement deadline to allow the deal to close. It is unclear whether the Chinese government has approved this agreement, or begun to take regulatory steps required to deliver it. However, the White House appears confident it has secured China's approval. Data belonging to the 170m users TikTok says it has in the US is already held on Oracle servers, under an existing arrangement [3]called Project Texas . It saw US user data siphoned off due to concerns it could fall into the hands of the Chinese government.
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> A senior White House official said that under President Trump's deal, the company would take on a comprehensive role in securing the entirety of the app for American users. They said this would include auditing and inspecting the source code and recommendation system underpinning the app, and rebuilding it for US users using only US user data.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gj7mlg9vdo
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/15/2040255/tiktok-deal-framework-reached-with-china
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/02/05/238213/tiktok-unveils-new-us-based-transparency-and-accountability-center
Typical Trump deal (Score:3)
It's a concession that isn't really a concession but has no idea because he's such a terrible negotiator...
I think it was Ed McMahon who said he wants to real estate deal with Trump and he sat down and Trump just talked and talked and talked and talked and when he was done McMahon had gotten absolutely everything he wanted and Trump got nothing.
It doesn't matter where the algorithm is stored. And of course they have us specific training in their algorithm.
Then again if the heritage foundation goons got involved in this like they usually do they probably got some back door concessions that allow right-wing content to be prioritized.
The problem with that is every time they do something like that inevitably it just brings the Nazis right to the top of the algorithm.
The problem is the dog whistles. The right wing uses dog whistles to pipeline people from just watching a Fox News affiliate all the way into the hardcore stuff. Because it's all the same dog whistles the algorithm doesn't know any better and it starts picking up the connections.
Basically dog whistle number one leads into dog whistle number two which leads into number three and four until your knee deep in white supremacy.
For a human being that process takes years maybe even decades but of course a machine is much faster so it's short circuits that and it's "whoops all Nazis" before you know it.
Pre-Musk Twitter famously had to manually moderate white supremacist content because when they used an algorithm they couldn't stop it from going after Republican politicians and flagging them because they were using the same dog whistles and the algorithm doesn't care that they are a senator or a house rep.
Which US data? (Score:3)
Ant bets that the deal specifies WHICH US data it is trained on? None of the liberal stuff, just right wing data. I think TikTok is going to end up being the video version of twitter really quickly.
Re: Which US data? (Score:2)
On the money. But what I want to know is what about all the other countries that access tiktok outside of the US. Do they see the anti-woke regime approved version too? Or will there be a US only version and a rest of the world version?
I mentioned it on another comment (Score:2)
But it is really really hard to bias in algorithm in favor of the right wing and not turn your entire platform into a Nazi bar.
For those that don't know are Nazi bar is a thought experiment from a journalist. The story goes a journalist walks into a bar gets a drink and then a couple of Nazis walk in. Not outright schwastikas but the kind of jacket patches that tell everybody they're Nazi except maybe the normies.
Bartender freaks out and kicks the two out immediately. The journalist asks why he didn
This is just security theater (Score:1)
There are no incentives here to make any issues found public. Oracle makes money allowing it to continue. They'll be as effective an auditor as Moody's, i.e. not at all.
National comparison (Score:3)
I wonder if the models trained on US-only data can be compared to the model trained on everyone-but-the-US data to gain some insights - flattering or otherwise
Re: (Score:3)
Translation: it will be retrained to get rid of radical left woke agenda
Re:National comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation of the translation: It will be retrained to promote Trump's agenda and suppress viewpoints that oppose it.
Re: (Score:2)
It will be used to identify opponents of Trump so that they can be handled by his administration. I called it days before the deal that Oracle would be involved in handling the technology used to host the new U.S government-approved version of TikTok. Larry Ellison is a major donor of the Trump campaign and Trump wants him to have the data so that Trump can ask for whatever he wants without having to request a warrant, which would leave a paper trail and the approval could ultimately be denied.
Re: (Score:2)
How soon until masked goons show up at your house because you call him a shit head?
Re: National comparison (Score:2)
Knock knock