Did American TikTok users want this?
No?
Then it needs to die.
It's fascinating watching the government interventions sans voter support that HN celebrates vs eviscerates.
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
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-…
Are you opposing the divestment law? If so, and you think TikTok is a real security threat, what is the alternative measure?
I don't agree that this is security theater. Divestment will put the entity which controls TikTok under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, and no, it isn't obvious that the company would still legally be able to export data to the CCP. I also don't understand arguing against a measure on the basis that it won't work well enough - you have to argue that the measure itself is bad.
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are folks using it to distribute propaganda? Yes. Is there evidence - any evidence whatsoever - that CCP or bytedance is using tiktok to push a particular flavor of propaganda? No. That said, TikTok's moderation is quite unfriendly to LGBTQ+ and Palestine creators (even though they find ways around it).
The 60 minutes episode last year (?) insinuated that the CCP's main goal is social disorder eg they heavily restrict the Chinese version for kids to be education oriented where the American version is basically all ages softcore porn and ragebait.
In other words they have content restrictions in their country as with TV and other media, while the international version is more similar to its competition in Instagram?
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#404Got to love ByteDance's insistence that they wouldn't hand over US data if asked to by the CCP. They're not even trying to hide how fucked they are anymore.
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#405This is going to be a shit show. I don’t even really know where I stand. On one hand, we have to acknowledge that an adversarial government has massively succeeded in installing a botnet in our population— even if that wasn’t the initial intent of ByteDance, it’s effectively true now. On the other hand, you can’t stop people from installing spyware, donating money to fraudster politicians, surrendering themselves to…
It’s going to pass Congress, signed into law. Then a federal judge will issue a preliminary injunction blocking it on first amendment grounds just like what happened both times with the Montana ban in 2023 and trumps executive order in 2020
This feels mostly right. Although, it may not make it past the senate, and it might not get signed if it goes by the president. Especially since he's campaigning on TikTok.
What amazes me is how people's view in these threads are for a ban. For a counter point, the EFF thinks congress should not ban apps[0]
[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/congress-should-give-u...
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#406Earlier 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…
This isn't a First Amendment issue, it's regulating commerce with a foreign nation.
What is the nature of that commerce? I don't think you can ablate the 1A concerns this easily.
(Note that I am sympathetic to the idea that TikTok is a source of foreign influence. But it's not clear to me what precedent allows the US congress to control their ownership without doing the same to every "US" corporation that's incorporated in Ireland.)
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#407Earlier 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…
As other commenters have said, the GP's argument is not about free speech but about trade. Banning TikTok is not impinging on free speech. People are still free to say whatever they want on so many (unrestricted) platforms. If someone makes a video of a TikTok video and shares it on Youtube/Whatsapp, that's legal. The actual content is legal, so it's not a free speech/censorship issue. This is the equivalent of "We'v…
Except this is not about commerce. US wants to ban TikTok for the same reason Russia has blocked BBC. Russia believes that information from BBC can harmfully influence people's mind.
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#408Don'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.
US national security adversaries are platform neutral. If TikTok is banned, they'll just put more resources into the things that aren't banned. Twitter is owned by Elon Musk, who by all accounts spouts Russian propaganda daily, and changed the algorithm to where it makes up a solid 50% of my "For You"...and I have yet to see many, if any, Republicans or Democrats saying we should ban it, or even yank Elon's security clearance, or sever his government contracts. I don't see how you can have it both ways.
TikTok shouldn't be banned, and if it is, it could eventually open the door for US owned companies without "direct" ties to also be forced "divest." Some of Facebook and Twitter's biggest investors are not exactly US allies. To me, it's a slippery slope. The "tit for tat" argument also falls flat to me, the US shouldn't try to mimic being China. China's attempts to wall itself off from the world have hurt it more than helped it.
If we really wanted to address this, we'd just have legislation on personal data in general, not this company targeting nonsense; but we'll never do that because Facebook/Twitter/Google/Microsoft/etc all have their hands lining the pockets of plenty of lobbyists in DC. They just maybe don't realize, or care, at the moment that eventually their own allegiances will be called into question.
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#409I 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…
>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…
>we are (used to be?) a country that believes in democracy and the will of our citizens
We either need to mass-educate everyone on the whole Edward Bernays subconscious manipulation thing (which we won't do because it would catastrophically break PR, advertising, political campaigns and more) or do it ourselves, do it thoroughly, and prevent others from accessing our citizens eyes/ears, which is what we're trying to do except for that last part.
We're far, far beyond "we'll just let our well-educated citizens decide for themselves", and it's weird to see someone act like that's how anything works. That idea's been broken for closing in on a century.
Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app
#410The arguments I can think of for why you wouldn't support restricting social media owned by foreign adversaries: * You don't believe social media companies can become literal or de facto extensions of the countries they are located in. * You don't believe social media can influence people's beliefs and behaviors. * You believe the above, but think a government cannot (or should not) regulate companies operating in it…
I think there's one extension, although you _kind of_ covered it with "you just like the product"
Some people are addicted to the product. It's not even that they like it any more, and they can see the harm it causes, but they also can't imagine their lives without it.
I think it's a vital move by the government, but I also think it's too late.