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Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

politico.com

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Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#191

Post by colinsane »

winter_blue wrote: post #144
wolverine876 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Propaganda is widely used on social media (GP) > how it can be used to manipulate narratives On the domestic side of things, Elon Musk is doing this, to an extreme degree, with X/Twitter. I'm someone that follows mostly left-wing/liberal/progressive accounts, yet I keep seeing tweets on my feed (even in the "For you" timeline) from right-wing accounts (that I don't follow). It's extremely annoying, and it is plain…

that footnote is a whirlwind. either make the minor sacrifices necessary to live your values, or tone down the rhetoric to be in line with your actual, demonstrated values.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#192

Post by falcolas »

snoman wrote: post #155
lilyball wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument always strikes me as weird given that we know domestic social networks are doing precisely this, adjusting their algorithms to promote or suppress things for political reasons, but I have yet to see any claim that TikTok has ever done this, only that they could .

Please excuse my ignorance here, but how do we know that?

Cambridge Analytica scandal aside, we know from first hand research papers that Facebook has conducted experiments to manipulate users' moods.

We also have whistleblower data that they (allegedly intentionally) intentionally ignored manipulation for the 2016 election. Worth reading Sophie Zhang's narrative:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/29/1030260/facebook...

Sure, none of these is a smoking gun for the explicit claim that the companies themselves are explicitly manipulating users, but they certainly appear to be complicit. Complicit in a conspiracy (in the legal sense) to influence voters.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#193

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#194

Post by nacl_er »

winter_blue wrote: post #144
wolverine876 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Propaganda is widely used on social media (GP) > how it can be used to manipulate narratives On the domestic side of things, Elon Musk is doing this, to an extreme degree, with X/Twitter. I'm someone that follows mostly left-wing/liberal/progressive accounts, yet I keep seeing tweets on my feed (even in the "For you" timeline) from right-wing accounts (that I don't follow). It's extremely annoying, and it is plain…

[dead]

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#195

Post by falcolas »

Gormo wrote: post #69
usernomdeguerre wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are national security arguments not legal? My understanding was that Chinese Tech companies are required by law to serve as (willing or unwilling) arms of the domestic spy agency in China.

> Are national security arguments not legal? Arguments aren't a source of law, and what's permissible in legislation is defined by the constitution.

The constitution and the dozens of dozens of interpretations of the constitution by way of case law rendered by the supreme court.

Reading the full text of the constitution won't do much but put you a toe past the starting line in understanding what is and is not "constitutional" in the US.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#196

Post by whatshisface »

enragedcacti wrote: post #89
lukev wrote: post #23

I haven't heard a good explanation yet for whether this is even legal. It seems like a textbook example of an unconstitutional bill of attainder. You'd have to ban TikTok based on something it does , and any such law would impact a lot of other companies too. Or I guess you could ban all Chinese software using trade laws, but that has even bigger ramifications.

The media refers to it as a TikTok ban and its apparent that TikTok is the inspiration, but the RESTRICT act never mentions TikTok specifically. Instead, the act: > proposes that the Secretary of Commerce be given the power to review business transactions involving certain information and communications technologies products or services when they are connected to a "foreign adversary" of the United States, and pose a…

"Undue" national security risk? In contrast to a due national security risk? Who is writing these? ...

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#197

Post by hotnfresh »

rchaud wrote: post #136
AlexandrB wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why past tense?

Twitter isn't as universal as it used to be. Even people who didn't have a Twitter account would see Twitter embeds on every news page for the past decade. That's gone down a lot over the past year.

I was initially happy with Musk’s acquisition, both because watching a dumpster fire is entertaining and because he actually made it work a lot better for logged-out use, very soon after the purchase.

Changes in the last few weeks have flipped that around and made it terrible if you’re logged out. Friends (with accounts) have started sharing screenshots rather than links, because the links strip all context for a post if you visit them while logged out. Logged out search no longer works. Account pages have seemingly insane post ordering putting posts from months or years ago at the top, and newer posts often no-where. Whole site’s now entirely useless without an account.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#198

Post by cm2012 »

lukev wrote: post #23

I haven't heard a good explanation yet for whether this is even legal. It seems like a textbook example of an unconstitutional bill of attainder. You'd have to ban TikTok based on something it does , and any such law would impact a lot of other companies too. Or I guess you could ban all Chinese software using trade laws, but that has even bigger ramifications.

China banned all our social networks, we ban their's, simple trade stuff works.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#199

Post by beachy »

mschuster91 wrote: post #169
jkubicek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You say we can, but history shows we can't.

If there was an easy way to reign in big oil then we would have found it by now. Whereas we (democracies) would have a fighting chance (literally) of seeing off a malevolant dictatorship.

Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban

#200

Post by tick_tock_tick »

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…

Stop arguing in bad faith.

It doesn't matter if Shell is worse it doesn't matter if a million other fucking things in the USA are worse. They are all accountable to the USA government. TikTok is not that is the issue.

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