January 19, 2025
January 19, 2025
TikTok thoughts
The second order effects of banning TikTok will be very interesting.
— thaddeus e. grugq (@thegrugq) January 19, 2025
Personally, I think people are missing the real threat it poses, which is that the CCP has influence over the discourse of any topic they choose. They can promote one side and downplay others.
Access to data does not require having an app. Data brokers will sell anything, or can be hacked, and they have far more aggregate data than a single app can collect. There are no laws about data brokers, so obviously data isn’t the real concern.
— thaddeus e. grugq (@thegrugq) January 19, 2025
The threat of information warfare via TikTok is real, but it is presented as “no moderation” or “buying ads to spread a message” or similar. These are not the real threats.
— thaddeus e. grugq (@thegrugq) January 19, 2025
Any marketer will tell you the most effective messaging is organic and authentic content from real people.
TikTok has so much content that any perspective on any topic will have real organic authentic content representing that point of view. The company can then selectively promote or suppress the reach of these views as they see fit.
— thaddeus e. grugq (@thegrugq) January 19, 2025
It is like owning a business but your competitor is in charge of the “customer reviews.” They can simply choose which reviews to highlight at the top and which ones to push to page 50.
— thaddeus e. grugq (@thegrugq) January 19, 2025
The problem isn’t that they can collect data or host ads.
They control the discourse.
TikTok and Trump
this is literally a stunt all planned by trump. look at how the message changed within 20 mins…. trump is gonna come in office and play savior by unbanning the app to get more sympathy and likes from the public. do not fall for this bs. #tiktokban pic.twitter.com/EAoPGYF6M4
— amaya ❦ (@amxya17__) January 19, 2025
Ignore this lady’s commentary and just look at the changed text. There are at least two ways to read this, one is that Trump has told TikTok that he’ll help so they praise him publicly, but the other is that it’s a bit of an attempt to force him to help them.
Personally, I think that even though he signed executive orders to ban TikTok before, he will find some way to unban them now. It will generate support from the youth so which he wants.
Free photo for you guys to use if you’re running late to something & need an excuse pic.twitter.com/HboO0EwNDU
— rayne fisher-quann (@raynefq) January 18, 2025
Threat actors naming their loader “__PSScriptPolicyTest_.ps1” https://t.co/FMOtMZQ2Uc pic.twitter.com/77wpYtAVuT
— Florian Roth ⚡️ (@cyb3rops) January 18, 2025
Info stealer > creds stolen > Atlassian (Jira) tickets scraped > more creds > s3 bucket containing 7.8TB data exfiltrated
— Mark (@sneakymonk3y) January 17, 2025
…cloud-based hotel management solution used by over 10,000 hotels worldwide. https://t.co/D1iM6WbrE9
AWS detected a new form of ransomware attack, where attackers use SSE-C to overwrite your S3 data and re-encrypt them with the attacker's key.
— Yan Cui (@theburningmonk) January 17, 2025
Presumably, you'd have to pay them a ransom in exchange for the key to regain access to your data.
So now, they recommend disabling the…
WATCH 🔴
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) January 18, 2025
US soldiers have taken to the Chinese Red Note app, sharing videos directly from an aircraft carrier.
Unbelievable pic.twitter.com/osjII9LQ47
