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

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

#301

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 h…

Agreed it's crazy, but it's a good political move. Everyone agrees we should ban it, but no one wants the blame because you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it. So if you're the one who isn't in charge of the hard-but-good decision (or in Trump's case, if you don't particularly give much of a shit about it anyway) it's easy to just pick the most politically advantageou…

> it's crazy

Yes.

> but it's a good political move

Domestically, maybe, and only in the short term. Internationally, not at all. It makes America look very weak and hypocritical, at a time when America can ill afford to look even worse.

> Everyone agrees we should ban it.

No, they don't. The media and political classes agree. That's not the same thing.

In reality less than half agree, last I checked [0].

> you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it.

Blindly? Young people already hate Biden, and it's not because of TikTok. It's the two-faced support of mass murder, the economy, the inequality, the lies, the inflation, the oil drilling, the union attacks, the failure to deliver on campaign promises, etc. [1]

Blaming TikTok for that is just an easy wedge. There's nothing smart about it; it's cynical, divisive, and extremely stupid in the long term.

0 - https://www.reuters.com/technology/close-half-americans-favo...

1 - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/young-voters-...

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

#304

I'm interested to see how this plays out. TikTok is popular enough that I can imagine it's making enough money outside the US to just let them ban it and not sell. The whole thing is interesting to watch from a non-China/US perspective. It feels like a move to make the US government look strong to its citizens. A move that, unusually, can have bipartisan support. It feels like propaganda really. And judging by the co…

>TikTok is popular enough that I can imagine it's making enough money outside the US to just let them ban it and not sell.

Back in 2020, 10% of TikTok users were American but they accounted for 50% of revenue, or something like that. Any US shutdown would be catastrophic for TikTok's valuation.

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

#305
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?

More or less. Since the 1790s the USA has regulated banks, communications, energy, and technology situations in similar fashion: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/tiktok-vote-house-5-things-1.7...

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

#306
Almost half of Americans are using TikTok. If the Chinese govt. can spy on Americans than this is definitely a national security concern. I understand that American companies like FB and Google are doing it too but hopefully they are not selling the data to Chinese companies.

After I typed that I feel FB and Google would sell data to highest bidder.

Maybe it is time to focus on privacy and clearly understanding what apps are gathering from users and how that data is being used/sold.

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

#307
Ignoring everything else TikTok screwed up. They’re m being accused of having the ability to manipulate public opinion and elections.

So what did they do? Push alerts to millions of users telling them of a possible ban and helping them call their representatives to change a political issue’s fortunes.

Oops.

All of a sudden a ton of representatives who were on the fence jumped off and joined the bandwagon.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Because we are (used to be?) a country that believes in democracy and the will of our citizens. If people want to download a Chinese app and watch straight up Chinese news and propaganda (not even close to what TikTok actually is), they sh…

> If people want to download a Chinese app and watch straight up Chinese news and propaganda ... That's the entire idea of the First Amendment... > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.…

Freedom of speech includes not being prohibited from listening to other people's speech.

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

#309

Lol, the US finally showing its true colors. It's a freemarket until our companies start to lose - then suddenly you gotta think of the children, national security, the brainwashed masses and the evil communists. At this point they're basically using the same arguments the Chinese use to ban Western apps. Bunch of sore losers. We're losing all moral authority over being a beacon of capitalism. The Chinese made a bett…

>Lol, the US finally showing its true colors. It's a freemarket until our companies start to lose

If TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's both. You don't think it's possible TikTok usage data is being accumulated for prominent Americans and/or their children for the purpose of intelligence gathering? I'd actually be surprised if it wasn't happening.

...what 'intelligence' would they be gathering though? What actionable intelligence could be cleaned from someones TikTok viewing habits?

Quite a lot! There are articles ad infinitum about how specifically tailored the TikTok algorithm is for many users.

I certainly think that knowing very specifically what a substantial portion of a county/market’s population is interested in qualifies as intelligence.

How effectively you make that information actionable is up to the creativity of your intelligence/advertising apparatus.

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