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FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

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Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#81

Post by colechristensen »

mc32 wrote: post #5

TikTok is the new anodyne entertainment that is worse for youth than stale TV was for previous generations because it encourages harmful behavior. If it were only the time wasting aspect it would not be so bad --the bad part is propagating harmful behavior to unrealized adults, specifically wrong self-help information.

Every generation has its hysterics about the thing ruining the children. No matter how much you ban things, teenagers aren’t going to have the mindset of people in their 30s, but for some reason some folks just can’t see this and will keep trying over and over and over. TikTok, Rap, MTV, Rock Music, Jazz, marijuana… etc. etc. etc. are not the reason your teenager doesn’t think like you.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#82

Post by emkoemko »

vkou wrote: post #39
emkoemko wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ummm with how much we are propping up China... a country with concentration camps and that is anti free speech is biting us back if your about free speech... all western films need to be edited to Chinese "speech", all companies must say the right "speech"...

If it feels a bit weird to have your country's media steered by social, cultural, and legal norms[1] of another country, that's just the situation that the rest of the world has been in for a very long time, now, due to America's dominance in international media production. The United States should not be expected to have a dominating position in media export forever, though, and when its relevance outside the domest…

"The United States should not be expected to have a dominating position in media export forever" ?.... who is saying it should? China is trying to dominate the market by limiting others while still being free to export their films to anyone who wants them and forcing foreign films to their "speech"

your saying its fine? that western companies have to bow to the CCP in other to be able to have access to the Chinese market? while we allow them to profit from our free speech/ freedom we have here

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#83

Post by pasquinelli »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, how is that behavior any different than previous iterations of planking? It is not. The only real difference is that it puts control of a majority of social media young people use in the hands of a foreign power. When FB et al were doing the same thing ( with same access ), it was all great. I have no love for social media, but that ban starts at home AND if we accept the proposition that TikTok should be banned,…

> only real difference is that it puts control of a majority of social media young people use in the hands of a foreign power An adversary. Different discussion. National security versus public health / competition. We don't need to justify enforcement on Tik Tok against our lenience with Facebook because they're separate conversations. To my knowledge, regulators haven't raised anti-trust concerns with Tik Tok the w…

> National security

what does national security mean to you? to me it means there is a threat to the safety of people living inside the borders of the united states. by that definition, how is china--let alone tiktok--a national security threat?

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#84

Post by colechristensen »

kibwen wrote: post #57
nicolashahn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think preventing the CCP from accessing private data of American citizens probably falls under normal statecraft actions

Agreed, and "espionage" is a fine answer, but that raises the question of why they haven't gone as far as explicitly saying "espionage".

If they’re worried about the data being lost, ban and enforce bans on collecting that information by everybody. I’m more concerned with google having that information than China (China doesn’t give a shit about me, google has a lot of surface area to affect me)

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#85

Post by Workaccount2 »

trunnell wrote: post #68

Duh. No reasonable adult (in any country) would go on the record to propose that a hostile foreign government should run any part of their internal communication infrastructure. It's well documented that all companies in China are beholden to the political whims of the Chinese Communist Party; when national security is at issue, Chinese companies and the Chinese government are one entity, sadly. I'm squinting skeptic…

I can't wait until China invades Taiwan and their is a statistically significant shift of gen-z support for Chinese imperialism, or more likely, support of american isolationism.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#86

Post by emkoemko »

josephcsible wrote: post #52
emkoemko wrote: post #2

i agree, plus China doesn't play by the same rules they ban a endless list of sites/apps from outside of China then copy the product to be used and profited from inside China and out..

Maybe a reciprocity rule is what we need: ban foreign companies from operating in the US whenever an equivalent US company wouldn't be allowed to do the exact same thing in the foreign country.

yes exactly, never understood why we allowed this to happen look at how strict they are with even simple business trying to open in China you basically have to give them all your proprietary info before they allow you to partly own your own business in China.. You can't even invest into Chinese stocks... they play by their own rules to benefit them self's and we allow them to do so

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#87

Post by pasquinelli »

trunnell wrote: post #68

Duh. No reasonable adult (in any country) would go on the record to propose that a hostile foreign government should run any part of their internal communication infrastructure. It's well documented that all companies in China are beholden to the political whims of the Chinese Communist Party; when national security is at issue, Chinese companies and the Chinese government are one entity, sadly. I'm squinting skeptic…

> No reasonable adult (in any country) would go on the record to propose that a hostile foreign government should run their internal communication infrastructure.

frankly, calling tiktok internal communications infrastructure is idiotic.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#88

Post by pasquinelli »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #85
trunnell wrote: post #68

Duh. No reasonable adult (in any country) would go on the record to propose that a hostile foreign government should run any part of their internal communication infrastructure. It's well documented that all companies in China are beholden to the political whims of the Chinese Communist Party; when national security is at issue, Chinese companies and the Chinese government are one entity, sadly. I'm squinting skeptic…

I can't wait until China invades Taiwan and their is a statistically significant shift of gen-z support for Chinese imperialism, or more likely, support of american isolationism.

> or more likely, support of american isolationism.

we can only hope.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#89

Post by trunnell »

kevinventullo wrote: post #76
trunnell wrote: post #68

Duh. No reasonable adult (in any country) would go on the record to propose that a hostile foreign government should run any part of their internal communication infrastructure. It's well documented that all companies in China are beholden to the political whims of the Chinese Communist Party; when national security is at issue, Chinese companies and the Chinese government are one entity, sadly. I'm squinting skeptic…

My TikTok feed is mostly stand up comics and absurd sketches from American 20-somethings. I think characterizing TT as “internal communication infrastructure” is a massive stretch. That said, I could see the argument that what TT chooses to censor or uprank is a kind of soft power that could influence American attitudes over time. But I’m not sure this is any more significant than say, Chinese influence on what Disne…

Right - it's complicated and nuanced. Some Disney censorship is probably benign, right? This is the argument made by the crowd urging inaction.

Consider the recent example of John Cena, an actor in the "Fast and Furious" franchise, apologizing to China for calling Taiwan a country. Is that apology good, bad, or irrelevant? Probably irrelevant by itself, I'd say.

But what about China's ability to coerce John Cena into making that apology? This is more akin to the problem you might see on TikTok. Influential people that others look up to parroting Chinese propaganda, wittingly or unwittingly.

It doesn't require much imagination to see the problem. If China secretly coerced 10 famous actors to say, "the US should leave Taiwan to China," and those videos had >100 million views in the US, that could be a very successful influence operation. TikTok could be a means of distribution for that kind of thing.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#90

Post by pasquinelli »

trunnell wrote: post #80
colechristensen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing tiktok to the post office circa 1940 is… an odd choice. Tiktok is more like a foreign power owning playboy and mad magazine. People making dumb videos for a laugh isn’t critical communications infrastructure it’s entertainment. Banning ZTE and Huawei makes sense… but if your culture and infrastructure is so sensitive that Chinese ownership of dumb entertainment is a threat… you’ve really already lost. If ti…

People underestimate the power of TikTok to influence opinion. Strangely, TikTok makes up a large part of the "information diet" for a lot of people. It's tough to find a great analog from 1930, but I think the postal service analogy is in the ballpark.

no, it's not. "information diet" is not the point. the postal service was the mechinism by which information traveled. a person's information diet is what they choose to pay attention to, communications infrastructure is how information moves.
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