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House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

nytimes.com

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Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#32
post #9

As much as I don't care about tiktok going away, and acknowledge the privacy and security risks, there's something about banning a highly popular website that doesn't sit right with me. Is there precedent in the USA for anything like this?

[flagged]

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#33
I've been reading endless headlines about how hard it is to do business in China because the Chinese courts subpoenaed business records from Bain's China offices etc., wonder if I'm going to see endless articles about how hard it is to do business in the US.

And as others have said - no privacy protection laws for Americans passed - only if the company is Chinese.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#34
I'm going to ask an intentionally stupid question. TikTok is largely just kids dancing and other innocuous videos, even if Bytedance is sucking up all that data and sending it back to the CCP, how does that constitute a national security threat?

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#35
One positive in all this is when Twitter got blocked in China, over night basically everyone under the age of 24 learned how to use VPNs, and learned how to subvert various official software update mechanisms.

I'm thinking that this, or something like it, could be what is finally going to break the stranglehold that Apple and Google have on the US app store market, even if it's just an unintentional side effect.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#36
Nate Silver did a nice write up on the probability and implications of all this here: https://open.substack.com/pub/natesilver/p/why-the-political...

When Biden passes this bill (which he said he would), I can only assume Dems will lose a large part of the younger voting demographic. If jot now, then 4 years from now. Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking about how much he loves TikTok now.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#37

Such a freedom. But it's understandable that the US election day is coming.

Precisely. Not sure it gets passed but let's say it does. Today is March 13th plus a week for senate and President. Takes effect in 6 months. Right in the middle of the campaign. Someone will say we did it. Someone else will say not enough. But we get the freedom to not use it :)

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#39

I understand this would theoretically stop the CCCP from getting info on US Consumers, but is there anything to this that actually limits the data collected? I assume not.

CCP - "Chinese Communist Party"

CCCP - "United [Soyuz] Soviet Socialist Republic"

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#40
post #23

I'm a big proponent of free speech and the first amendment, but I agree with the reasonings for banning it or forcing US owners. China most definitely has their hands in the data that TikTok amasses and given its popularity it's not an insignificant risk to U.S. citizens. We all know how easy it is to manipulate users... aka Cambridge Analytica. It'll be interesting to see what legal challenges come up if the bill pa…

Why shouldn’t Europeans do the same with US social networks then?

Europe is concerned about the influence and data-collection of American tech companies, and would be fully justified in doing something similar.
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