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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

#641

Post by dpkirchner »

maxwell wrote: post #610
dpkirchner wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the whole reason this is happening is it distracts us from more serious issues such as Chinese labor practices. If politicians can "take China seriously" by banning TikTok they don't need to talk about barring import of products made using forced labor, say.

Didn't they already do that with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021? Or are you referring to other regions of CCP-occupied China?

It looks like that has blocked about $100M in goods shipped from Xinjiang since inception -- about 1/3 of shipments from that region and less than 1% total imports from China in that period. I'm not sure that token amount counts as taking it seriously.

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

#642

Post by bradleybuda »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #562
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.

It's not even just about propaganda. Watch Tik Tok videos in China and it's all young people helping the elderly, learning job skills, and doing other socially virtuous things. Watch Tik Tok videos outside of China and it's all videos of kids stealing cars, eating Tide pods, and pranking people in Home Depot.

TikTok shows you what you want to see. I see a lot of musical covers, dumb jokes about the Dune films, standup comedy clips. I don't know what first ~20 videos a brand new account with no history sees but this caricature of TikTok (Tide Pods? really?) is pretty outdated.

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

#643

Post by vizzier »

jrockway wrote: post #534
BatFastard wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the founders could account for international influence in the age of the Internet and smart phones. No one is asking for a great wall around the US. People are just asking that major influencers are not under the control of hostile governments.

Is international influence something that should be stopped? Like, I should check the citizenship of someone before I listen to their ideas? It just doesn't make sense to me. If someone tells me nonsense I can ignore the nonsense. It doesn't mean the government should smash their printing press. It's annoying when people in other countries rile up people to change how they vote, but ultimately, that's a problem with…

> Is international influence something that should be stopped?

This should be a simple yes. External authoritarian governments (Russia's IRA, CCP via bytedance) should not have their thumb on the scale (trollfarms & the algorithm) for what is viewed in western democracies. I'm actually amazed that this view is controversial.

I agree with the rest of your premises, but the above should be a separate issue from them.

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

#644

Post by jpsouth »

kingraoul wrote: post #286
OJFord wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the link supposed to be? Are people sharing videos about it/against Israel? (I don't use it, thought it was mostly silly dancing/reactions/pranks/etc.)

The Flour Massacre was seen on Tik-Tok.

Ah mate, I was having a pretty good day, then I read about this. :(

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

#645

Post by flakeoil »

throwaway199956 wrote: post #613
zachmu wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiktok isn't "some website", it is partially owned and controlled by the CCP, which influences what content gets shown to Americans. A majority of zoomers get most of their news and information primarily from this platform, which again is under the influence of a hostile foreign government. (TikTok also spies on US citizens for the CCP, but let's keep this restricted to the free speech argument about the ban). We act…

Doesn't first ammendment protect even that. Propaganda of other countries are legal under first ammendment. Why should we be a nanny state that should dictate which apps one can or cannot use on one's device. Also even at the hight of cold war, Soviet Life magazine was published and disseminated widely in the US.

Why should we be a nanny state that should dictate which bomber planes can or cannot enter our country?

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

#646

Post by kmeisthax »

corytheboyd wrote: post #323

This 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…

The reason why TikTok is able to spy and botnet on Americans is because we have no effective data privacy law. This is deliberate because the CIA and NSA buy shittons of user data from adtech data brokers to do an end run around the 4th Amendment.

Stopping TikTok without gutting 1A would be very easy: just copypaste GDPR into local law and make sure we have someone enforcing it. The problem is that the US government likes it's spying and Congress isn't interested in reigning them in.

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

#647

Post by pksebben »

BeetleB wrote: post #594
pksebben wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find troubling about this is the delta between the vox populi and the decision made. Whether it's right or prudent or whatever, if you figure that people using the service don't want it shut down (~170M or roughly half of the population) then what's happening here is that our "representatives" are doing what they always do and totally ignoring their constituency. Mind you, this isn't surprising in the least, b…

Representatives are elected to do "what's right". If their constituents don't like it, they can elect them out.

Can they, though? I've been trying for about as long as I can remember without much luck...

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

#648

Post by Fauntleroy »

jrockway wrote: post #486
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…

I don't think we should "lowest common denominator" to oppressive regimes. Our Constitution says "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." TikTok, at the end of the day, is just a kind of…

The Western world is in dire, dire need of education on geopolitics.

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

#649

Post by groggo »

lumb63 wrote: post #611
zachmu wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiktok isn't "some website", it is partially owned and controlled by the CCP, which influences what content gets shown to Americans. A majority of zoomers get most of their news and information primarily from this platform, which again is under the influence of a hostile foreign government. (TikTok also spies on US citizens for the CCP, but let's keep this restricted to the free speech argument about the ban). We act…

If someone wants to subject themselves to CCP propaganda, why stop them? If they’re that lacking in critical thinking, then maybe they’re getting what they deserve. It’s not like anyone is forcing people to use TikTok.

The funny thing is there's not really that much propaganda on TikTok, much less pro-CCP. Sure there's the potential, but it's really not even much of a thing IRL.

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

#650

Post by WillPostForFood »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #603
Sammi wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US constitution is for the people in the US. Chinese companies don't apply. If you want to grant freedom of speech protection under the US constitution for TikTok, then TikTok must be owned by US people.

Your point is that freedom of speech is not freedom to read. I sincerely disagree.

You still have freedom to read. You will still be able to access TikTok if they choose not to sell. This is not a firewall block on TikTok, it is a business restriction on operating within the US. It simply bars US companies from hosting TikTok services or distributing the TikTok app.
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