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Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

politico.com

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Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#161

Post by jncfhnb »

coldpie wrote: post #95
jncfhnb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you feel if China offered Americans $5 to vote for the candidate of their choice? Or paid people to speak on that candidates behalf without disclosing it as advertising? Or paid twitter to hide certain topics while promoting certain topics without classifying them as ads or promoted? Or if they were social media and just started lying to you about your social circle’s public opinion?

How would you feel about Facebook doing any of that?

I would feel very bad, but I would also expect a whistleblower to intervene “eventually”. Many of these things are explicitly illegal. And it would be kind of shocking for executive leadership at Facebook to decide this was worth the risk.

YMMV for different scales of influence. I don’t trust Facebook at all. But they’re not an antagonistic nation state.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#162

Post by gruez »

soylentcola wrote: post #139

Wisdom of any legislation aside, I'm curious how you can effectively "ban" a program or a website. It seems futile to ban the distribution of software, and while you can get ISPs to block access to an IP/range, there are easy ways around this. See also: torrents of unlicensed-everything and the use of mirrors, proxies, etc. to access the sites that index them. Not saying it wouldn't put a dent in use, but if all I ha…

Even a minor roadblock like a DNS ban would be enough to cripple the app, in terms of market share. Think about it, the target audience of the app is someone who wants to mindless scroll through short video clips. Do you think they're going to download tor browser, find the darknet site where you can get an unofficial copy, and jump through a dozen hoops to sideload that on their phone? No, they're just going to switch to instagram reels or youtube shorts.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#163

Post by pests »

gruez wrote: post #157
pests wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the MPAA and RIAA never would go after little old grandmas for their love savings just for downloading an mp3.....

I'm not sure how the behavior of the MPAA or RIAA has any relevance on how the DoJ functions.

Just an example of an entity using laws to punish everyday people we thought might otherwise go unpunished.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#164

Post by rchaud »

jayveeone wrote: post #8
chankstein38 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implications, as far as I've understood, is that the Chinese government has access and, theoretically, could be slurping the information that TikTok collects which is seemingly more than some others collect. I'm not purporting to know this is happening but I believe this is the reason for the assertion.

There is zero proof that TikTok collects more user data or uses that data any more nefariously than Meta. US privacy laws are a joke. Singling out TikTok without addressing events like Cambridge Analytica with Facebook, is at best suspicious.

> Singling out TikTok without addressing events like Cambridge Analytica with Facebook

They have addressed it, with the single largest FTC fine in history.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#165

Post by usernomdeguerre »

wolverine876 wrote: post #112
RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #104

I don't think it is just about TikTok being capable of spying on foreign users; my opinion is that it is more about TikTok's propaganda potential, i.e. how it can be used to manipulate narratives in the most subtle way against U.S.'s national interest. Imagine the case where the U.S. government would like the (western) world to form certain sentiments on the current regional conflicts that are aligned with its own in…

Propaganda is widely used on social media. Why focus on TikTok? Other countries have laws and agencies to protect against propaganda; the US doesn't bother. I doubt the propaganda concern is driving political will.

The US did not have to worry overmuch about propaganda in the past because they knew they could throw the most amount of money at the problem whenever they needed to. They were the richest. That's not true anymore.

Both technical advances (machine learning) and economic advances by other nations (China) put us closer to an even playing field. I would even go so far as to say we're at a disadvantage here relative to China.

Except, as you point out, on the issue of propaganda.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#166

Post by 0xParlay »

gruez wrote: post #137
paganel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (up to $1 million USD and 20 years in prison) Is that really on the table? If yes, then it's bat-s*it insane, it's maybe rude to call it that but there's no better word to describe it. To put it in perspective, throughout the '80s people were not getting sent to 20 years in prison for listening to Radio Free Europe here in Eastern Europe. There were still some political prisoners left, put in prison under different…

>Is that really on the table? If yes, then it's bat-s*it insane, it's maybe rude to call it that but there's no better word to describe it. Not really. That might be the maximum sentence but the chance that a kid who's downloaded tiktok using a vpn of getting anywhere near that is near zero. See: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

Thank you. 20 years would be for the VPN provider.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#167

Post by smolder »

Eumenes wrote: post #4

At first, I was all for banning Tiktok, but I'm come around - no social media giant has the users or general public in mind, whether their HQ is in the US or China. Big tech in the US is just upset they didn't come up with Tiktok first and in turn, the intelligence agencies are upset they can't snoop as much as they'd like. This turns off politicians because they're 1) tight with big tech 2) support the federal intel…

I couldn't care less if tiktok was banned in some way, but the proposed bill that incriminates us for using VPN to access it is absolute garbage.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#168

Post by gruez »

pests wrote: post #163
gruez wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how the behavior of the MPAA or RIAA has any relevance on how the DoJ functions.

Just an example of an entity using laws to punish everyday people we thought might otherwise go unpunished.

1. There's a huge difference between a private entity launching civil lawsuits and the DoJ launching criminal lawsuits

2. I don't know what specific case you're referring to by "MPAA and RIAA [...] go after little old grandmas for their love savings", but the relevant laws likely predated mp3s and filesharing programs, so it's not clear how "we thought might otherwise go unpunished" would apply here. If anything it's the reverse. The laws existed, and people thought they wouldn't apply to them for whatever reason and ignored them.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#169

Post by mschuster91 »

jkubicek wrote: post #121
beachy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Targets them for what? Mind control? Attempts to change/form their views to be favourable towards dictatorships and antagonistic to democracies.

In the same way Shell targets[1] the youth and attempts to change/form their views to be favorable to fossil fuels. I still don't understand how TikTok is doing anything worse than what any other popular American-based social platform is already doing today. If we're going to legislate TikTok, we should also target Facebook, Fortnite, Twitter, etc. equally. 1: https://www.techspot.com/news/100426-shell-using-fortnite…

For what it's worth, yes we should, it's time to show Big Capital that yes, they can't run rampant and fuck up our society.

But at least we can, in contrast to TikTok whose operations run outside of our reach.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#170

Post by wyldberry »

vkou wrote: post #32
wyldberry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's never been a more ripe time for a third axis to open up stretching and bankrupting America. In America, and the west, we think often in terms of binary peace/war. This is not the same philosophy shared by those who wish to replace America as the world power. It's good to have the frameworks in place to execute these things when we need them and it's my opinion that we will need them in the next five years.

America will be replaced as a unipolar world power, it's a question of simple mathematics and economics and time. You'll get over it, same as the Brits did last century. Instead of doubling down on paranoia of the foreign 33-dimensional chess player[1], if you want the US to strengthen itself, look at dealing with its internal enemies and problems, as opposed to clutching pearls at external ones. All of our injuries…

All states play the same game. Of course it's math, economics, but it's also geography and demographics.

All of our injuries are self-inflicted. However, each state will attempt to act in a way to maximize power. In this inevitable confrontation that will set the next rules-based era of power, I want my side to come out on top.

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