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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

#461

Post by mschuster91 »

bilekas wrote: post #387
codekaze wrote: post #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…

> 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? I understand what you're saying and I actually support the ban as tiktok can be used as a giant botnet at-will by Chinas government, but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US is supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I…

> but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US is supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I wouldn't agree with.

"stay on the moral high ground" only works when the other side is roughly playing by the same rules as you are.

With authoritarian nations, with authoritarian leaders? They see any kind of even the slightest allowance as a weakness to exploit, an explicit allowance to move the Overton window. We should have kneecapped China years ago, when the first complaints about industrial espionage came in, and same for Russia after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. We didn't, and now we're a bunch of lame ducks swimming in a pond of manure.

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

#462

Post by ramesh31 »

codekaze wrote: post #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…

>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 the United States, and we are better than that. We are a society that promotes free trade, freedom of expression, and economic globalization to the ends of the earth.

It's kind of our whole thing.

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

#463

Post by n4r9 »

User23 wrote: post #433
bilekas wrote: post #387

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? I understand what you're saying and I actually support the ban as tiktok can be used as a giant botnet at-will by Chinas government, but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US is supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I…

What's being described isn't an eye for an eye, but tit for tat. And tit for tat is the norm for international relations and has been since time immemorial. Usually it's relatively dull stuff, like if country A requires citizens of country B to have a visa to visit, country B will as a matter of course require citizens of country A to have visas to visit too.

Interesting... "eye for an eye" has an almost identical meaning to "tit for tat" in my mind. Both of them effectively mean "retaliation in kind". One slight difference I guess is that "eye for an eye" often relates specifically to justice or just punishment.

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

#465

Post by j_maffe »

hypeit wrote: post #431
rjmunro wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't they already, in effect, DDOS the congress telephone system?

No, they did however increase engagement in democracy in a very dramatic fashion. More people making demands from their government is a good thing.

When they're deliberately coordinated by foreign states with malicious intent? When the demands become more and more extreme towards the opposing side?

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

#466

Post by PM_me_your_math »

shuckles wrote: post #374
ericmcer wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this in principal, but in practice it seems troubling to have every person (even beyond kids) hooked on a stream of info that is controlled by a foreign government who doesn't like us very much. If your plan is that people should be strong enough to uninstall or smart enough to recognize subtle propaganda, that seems very likely to fail.

The premise of strong freedom of speech rights is that the government being smart enough to decide what is illegal propaganda may fail as well, sometimes more catastrophically.

[dead]

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

#467

Post by rchaud »

robg wrote: post #46
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?

I didn’t know that Rupert Murdoch had to become a U.S. citizen to own a U.S. newspaper. So precedents for old school media but of course the problem is new media not needing physical distribution that can be readily monitored.

Good thing that rule was in place, otherwise it could have opened the door for some unscrupulous person profiting off of national division and disharmony.

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

#468

Post by matwood »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #210
basisword wrote: post #143

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…

Idk, every person I talk to thinks it's crazy that the US is this close to banning an app because it doesn't like the content. The idea that Americans aren't allowed to view "propaganda" is insane and very against the ideas of free speech. But I come online and there's so much support for banning an app who hires lots of devs in Silicon Valley itself...

It's not about being allowed, but more about being steered.

And yes, other social media platforms have similar issues with algorithmic feeds, but they are currently a less clear national security threat. Though, one could argue they are radicalizing internal threats.

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

#469

Post by rsaz »

ericmcer wrote: post #391
contrarian1234 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence it's been used for propaganda? I don't use TikTok a lot, but it seems very non-political (maybe it's my filter bubble). The real cesspool of hatred and madness is Facebook - but of course Congress doesn't care too much about that. As far as I remember from the previous elections the Russian bots were operating on US based platforms

This is 100% anecdotal and lacks any kind of research, but... I heard it was a more subtle propaganda. The American feeds could have messages about how bad the economy is, how futile working is in a corrupt system, how depressed and traumatized your peers are. On the opposite side you would fill it with messages about the virtues of hard work, stories of success and happiness, etc.

That seems possible, but that might just have to do with the state of the culture before TikTok anyways. Maybe the doom and gloom among young people in North America is because of other factors and content relating to it just happens to get more popular. China might have a more positive population right now, that makes and supports more positive content.

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

#470

Post by vkou »

ramesh31 wrote: post #462
codekaze wrote: post #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…

>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 the United States, and we are better than that. We are a society that promotes free trade, freedom of expression, and economic globalization to the ends of the earth. It's kind of our whole thing.

> We promote free trade, freedom of expression, and economic globalization...

...as long as it benefits our mega-corps.

As soon as they can't compete in these spaces, we immediately turn to protectionism, ag-gag laws, etc.

The one sacred cow we have is profit, everything else is weighed on the axis of advancing it.

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