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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

#61

Post by tqi »

andiareso wrote: post #13

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…

> We all know how easy it is to manipulate users... aka Cambridge Analytica.

There is little to no evidence that CA was able to manipulate anyone other than gullible campaign managers. And frankly the idea that a list of pages someone liked could be used to create a skeleton key that turned people into Republican voters is... far-fetched.

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

#62

Post by htrp »

beezle wrote: post #54
2four2 wrote: 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?

A better middle ground at this stage could have been requiring TikTok to daily display to users (and require they confirm/accept) a message stating the indirect CPC ownership, the risk to their personal info, and the serious risk of seeing state directed disinformation campaigns. Most would still use TikTok but perhaps it might get drilled into their heads to actually question some things they see on it. Personally t…

so every gdpr cookie modal

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

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tmaly wrote: post #41

My understanding is that this is a much broader bill than just TikTok. It would give the president the authority to ban any app or website both foreign and domestic based on the wording of the text of the bill. Can anyone verify if this is true in the text of what was passed?

> would give the president the authority to ban any app or website both foreign and domestic based

No, it has to be controlled by a foreign adversary country [1].

The broadest power is in 3(a)(ii) on page 10, which lets the President designate an app as a foreign adversary controlled application if it is a significant national security threat following public notice and reporting requirements. But even then, it’s a divestiture order subject to judicial review, not the power to ban.

[1] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...

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

#64

Post by jaylittle »

Just when I think I have a handle on how stupid our politicians are... they find some way to make me realize they are even dumber than I previously thought.

According to HuffPost it was a 352-65 vote, so this stupidity was bipartisan. So much for one party being smarter than the other. Banning an extremely popular app, in an election year no less, while providing absolutely zero evidence to prove what you accuse it of doing is really some kind of next level idiocy.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tiktok-ban-congress_n_65f1b24...

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

#65

Post by AndrewKemendo »

throwaway237289 wrote: post #19

Don't be fooled by talk about security or privacy. This is simple Nation State realpolitik. TikTok is a propaganda threat controlled by a non-friendly state to the US. Any other way to look at this is naive.

You know they can both be true simultaneously, right?

It’s a perfectly well understood fact that our nations use businesses, and literally every other avenue possible to spy on and propagandize each other’s populations

As a result, each nation has to counter that it does so mostly privately, but sometimes very publicly.

This is all part of the totally broken, absolutely run by children, international relations system.

It’s exceptionally mundane and exceptionally bad for all citizens as a result. However it’s great for business. So you’re not going to see a change until citizens demand different international economic, political, communications and relations structure that isn’t based on competition.

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

#67

Post by rbanffy »

strictnein wrote: post #60
rbanffy wrote: post #8

[flagged]

The one outlet you called out by name is already a publicly traded company, not one that is controlled by a foreign country. 63% of it is owned by institutional investors (Vanguard, Blackrock, etc).

I know that, and that doesn't exempt them from accusations of using their reach to actively manipulate the population to gain political power.

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

#68

Post by dauertewigkeit »

_fat_santa wrote: post #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?

Young people getting bombed by the US and its allies, are posting videos of themselves getting bombed and American teens have enough empathy to find such content moving.

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

#69

Post by bugglebeetle »

rusty_venture wrote: post #31

[flagged]

> Domestic spyware masquerading as social media is bad, but foreign spyware and propaganda masquerading as social media is unquestionably worse.

The former is unquestionably worse and a far greater threat to citizens of this country than anything TikTok does.

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