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

nytimes.com

211–220 of 1001 posts

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

#212

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While he wasn't "right", he was also a more complex character than the cardboard cutout villain that the media presented. I believe a lot of people see through the one-sided reporting and begin to mistrust mainstream media ("what else are they lying about"). Not everyone needs their news dumbed down to grade 4 level.

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

#213
I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security concerns. We can make similar arguments about the negative effects of Facebook, Instagram, and etc. even from the POVs of other countries, but the key issue here is that China heavily restricts foreign apps and services from operating in their market. If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market?

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

non-political is political. Do you imagine that there aren't people making political TikToks? Or that non-political themes don't affect politics? Or that bubble control doesn't affect politics?

Sorry, what? How are my dancing Korean girls and cat videos affecting politics?

You're focusing on them instead of politics. "Panem et circenses" is a political tactic.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. At least according to their website, it seems like US data does not leave US data warehouses: https://usds.tiktok.com/our-approach-to-keeping-u-s-data-sec... I don’t know the details of course but if China wants the data there are umpteen companies who engage in data broker…

Even if data doesn’t leave US, we want to avoid algorithmic manipulation via TikTok feed.

This logic is not going to hold up in court. You cannot ban access to propaganda in the US.

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

#216
post #20
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?

It's important to note this isn't banning TikTok. It's forcing the sale of it from a CCP-linked parent company. The precedent for this would be US pressuring sale of Grindr from Chinese ownership due to privacy concerns: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/grindr-sold-china-national...

I don't disagree that the way TikTok is operated is problematic for the US. But will making TikTok a US corporation prevent any of the problems? Couldn't the company still legally send private information to "partners" which indirectly makes it's way to the CCP? And couldn't it still freely choose to moderate and promote posts according the priorities and values of the company? Being staffed by a large number of CCP-friendly employees, those will reflect CCP policies. For this to have any impact we need privacy laws to restrict this US company anyway.

It still seems like security theater to me, which is particularly unfortunate because it is a real security threat.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we shouldn't. Be we also shouldn't be schmucks that give market access that isn't reciprocated. Most free trade agreements work on reciprocity. We agree not to put tariffs on country X's cars because they agree not to put tariffs on ours. A ban is essentially an infinite tariff. If that's how a foreign country is going to treat American companies, why not respond in kind?

Because it goes against one of our purported values. I'd hope that this action had some inherent merit (I'm not claiming it doesn't), and it's not just retaliation. Are we protecting America's trade interests with this bill? I don't think so...

What purported value is it going against? Allowing market access to countries that don't reciprocate is not one of our values. Nor is it one of China's. Or most countries, for that matter. When other countries erect tariffs, we usually respond on kind. And when we raise tariffs other countries - including close friends like Canada - they respond with their own tariffs against American imports too.

You've got it backwards: reciprocal trade agreements are the norm not just in US politics but across the world.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is the fact that China does not let American social media in its market. Why should America give China access to it's markets when that's not reciprocated?

That's false, American social media simply refused to follow Chinese law. (I believe facebook specifically refused to remove accounts belonging to ETIM/TIP, an organisation recognised by the UN, EU and at the time the USA as a terrorist group)

Zuckerberg tried damn hard to get his crap into China, he even asked the Chinese president Xi in person to name his unborn baby. He became quite "unfriendly" to China/CCP after all those efforts got him nothing in return.

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

#219

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.

What propaganda is TikTok pushing? Besides if your country is strong enough you should be able to shrug it off. France recently put the right to abortion in the Constitution despite American media.

[dead]

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

#220

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I mean bin laden wasn't wrong that the US is responsible for much suffering in the middle east and elsewhere due to decades of meddling from funding extremists, to facilitating coups in the name of big business.

But he was wrong on many other things since he wanted basically all-out islamic war on the US akin to the fetish evalgenicals have for all-out christian war for end times in israel.

Lol.

Welcome to the world, it's fucking shit and I can't wait for a meteor to snuff us out.

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