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TikTok’s Poison Pill

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Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#131

Post by afiori »

withinboredom wrote: post #106
brobdingnagians wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the electoral college ultimately derives its members from people who are voted on by the general electorate. The electoral college is an abstraction so that the states in the United States are able to have a check and balance on federal power. Having a direct democracy of 300 million people would be a bad idea, a lot of political philosophy has been written on why. If you build on a library that builds on library…

That doesn’t magically make it a democratic election. In fact, the way you describe it working is a relatively new way of doing things and varies from state to state. It is not uniform. Also, if you paid any attention at all in the last election, you’d realize how tenuous it all really is and in multiple elections, the actual person voted in wasn’t even the winner by popular vote. So by definition, it can not be demo…

If your definition of democracy is "nationwide popular vote to elect a single role" you will find that there are very few democracies around.

Actually in the US the election of the president is remarkably linear.

In Italy the actual head of state is elected by the parliament (with no underlying direct vote) and then during national elections 1) the people elect a new parliament (with a complex mixture of proportional/non-proportial seats) 2) the parliament proposes various governments to the head of state 3) the head of state selects (and makes suggestions for modifications) the government (the actual executive branch).

And surely there are democracies that follow a more complex process.

The main difference between the US and most other countries is that the US counts votes for the president federally and not nationally, and the difference would almost completely disappear if more states would follow Maine and Nebraska example and drop the Firts Past the Post election style.

Democracy means that the legitimacy of the state is given by the people, not blood, not military, not religion, not oligarchs.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#132

Post by pessimizer »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #53
fxtentacle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Everything you say is true. But it's not an argument. Failing to live up to all your stated values in past is not a reason to give up on then for all time.

Russia and China also have lists of noble values that they don't live up to. That's not a distinction.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#133

Post by angio »

partiallypro wrote: post #116
angio wrote: post #56

It's interesting to read this article from March [0] and then check the tiktok's coverage on the news after that. > Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok > The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. > “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said. [0] https://www.was…

None of this detracts from concerns about Tiktok and the CCP though. Just as Microsoft funding anti-Google pieces doesn't detract from Google's near monopoly status in online advertising. Competitors do that all the time, you can't let that be a distraction from what the underlying problems are.

Most of these articles single out TikTok when they apply to all big tech companies. Clearly the call should be for better privacy protection laws that protect all citizens from all present and future tech companies.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#134

Post by angio »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #120
epups wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but really: Facebook collects very private data, including personal messages. Google has even more sensitive information. I also don't see why suddenly TikTok is such a concern, except for sinophobia or pure misinformation.

There's a large and substantial difference between "Google has your data" and "Google abuses your data". You might have doubts whether the limits set by Western authorities on Google's use of your data would be effective, or about the ability of those authorities to investigate and enforce, but I think we can all agree the odds are much better than for TikTok where no chance exists at all.

Snowden showed 10 (!) years ago that american tech companies share data with the us government even when that's clearly against the law. That, in my book, is abusing my data. EU courts agree with me and are limiting how much data can be shared with us-based businesses.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#135

Post by pessimizer »

withinboredom wrote: post #75
towaway15463 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we didn't punish contrary opinions quite as badly as China / Russia Understatement of the year. We also currently don’t outlaw homosexuality or religion or engage in genocide and we elect our leaders democratically among other things.

You should probably check your facts. All but the first one is false. They have engaged in genocide: see Native Americans; trail of tears. The USA is a republic, not a democracy.

And we certainly still do genocides, we just don't do them locally.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#136

Post by soco »

severino wrote: post #71
soco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this situation the diversification means also the CCP will know everything about you.

But the CCP is not our government, and at least it can mean that your government knows less about you. In the old East Germany, it wasn't a problem that the CIA knew everything about you. It was that the Stasi did.

Unless you use some sort of totally de-googlified phone (if such a thing exists), it will still be both governments knowing everything about you.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#138

Post by pid_0 »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #19

An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia - especially given there's no proof that TikTok is actually being used by the Chinese, whereas Snowden etc. has shown us that the USA already does stuff like this. I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos anyway...

No post body was provided.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#139

Post by soco »

severino wrote: post #86
throw_m239339 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the CCP is not our government, But there are Chinese dissidents and Tibet independentists in your country which are at risk, so it's OK if China spies on those because "they are not your government"? https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/opinions/j-michael-cole-o...

I don't think they are at risk while they remain here in my country. It's very unlikely that the Chinese government decides on a strike against any dissident here. That's more typical of the US like they did yesterday in Afghanistan.

So your example of "US dissident" is the head of a global terrorist organization?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#140

Post by pessimizer »

derbOac wrote: post #128
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #19

An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia - especially given there's no proof that TikTok is actually being used by the Chinese, whereas Snowden etc. has shown us that the USA already does stuff like this. I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos anyway...

Snowden is sort of an unusual standard to apply for this sort of thing? Espionage and intelligence almost never meets a certain level of proof that's available to the public eye. I'm not really sure what to make of Chinese government involvement with TikTok but from the information available, it seems like whatever it is, TikTok isn't being forthright about it. You can distrust the US government and also think there'…

> You can distrust the US government and also think there's reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to TikTok for domestic or foreign intelligence.

I wish people would stop giving me permission to believe two things at the same time as a way of pairing

a) the thing with overwhelming evidence that I'm worried about and they're trying to minimize, with

b) the thing that there's little evidence for that they're trying to get me to believe.

It's a marketing tactic. a) suffers by association with the innuendo and rumor of b), and b) is strengthened by being associated with the extensive documentation of a).

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