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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

#781

Post by segasaturn »

calibas wrote: post #764
segasaturn wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising awareness about a bill in Congress and giving US citizens the tools to speak to their representatives about it isn't "manipulating democracy", it promotes democracy. That is a foundational part of how American democracy is supposed to work, the reps vote on bills but the citizens have the last word - if that's so unacceptable that lawmakers would change sides to ban TikTok in response then Americans should st…

In a strict technical sense, you are correct. Anything that encourages individuals to participate in their government is promoting democracy. However, I think it's heavy whitewashing to look at this whole situation and says it's TikTok promoting democracy. I find it very hard to believe TikTok is doing this being they genuinely want to promote democracy in the US. This threatens to end TikTok's influence over million…

Obviously the issue that they're promoting is in their interests, but its the same for everyone else. Nobody would promote an issue that didn't benefit them! When Google and Facebook blacked out their sites to stop SOPA, that was because it was in their interests too, SOPA would have kneecapped the Web just as it was beginning to take off.

What frustrates me about this discussion is the way that people take anything TikTok does here and assumes that it's out of evil and malicious intent, with very little proof other than its murky links to China, which feels very Cold War 2.0.

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

#782

Post by lnxg33k1 »

calibas wrote: post #776
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t try to manipulate democracy, people didn’t vote for their representatives based on their ideas about tiktok, there was no referendum about how to handle tiktok, but of course they actually showed that they could have the influence to affect future democratic process

Contacting your representative to try to influence them is a fundamental part of democracy. Democracy is not just voting for someone, a democratic government is intended to be directly influenced by the people continually. It's kind of the whole point of a representative democracy.

It is either part of democracy or trying to manipulate democracy, it can't factually be both for obvious reasons, I agree, contacting a representative is part of the democratic process and has been a practice happening forever.

Trying to manipulate democracy would be involving actions that aren't part of an accepted democratic process, like telling your supporters to go to assault Capitol Building and them showing up with assault rifles and pressure elected officials

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

#783

Post by rajamaka »

amou234 wrote: post #741
throwaway199956 wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What most of the posters in this thread don't realize is that US is effectively at war with China. China is working in front of the scenes to be the major funder of Russia's war [1] against Europe, which is US's ally amongst the coalition of democratic countries. China is working behind the scenes to stop the supply of artillery shells to Ukraine. [2]. and it is increasingly and more visibly supplying Russia with mil…

China also continues to trade with the US despite Russian sanctions on the US.

Does this mean China is effectively at war with Russia too?

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

#784

Post by RGamma »

hellojesus wrote: post #531
hawthornio wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it’s sickening how the CCP is able to push their hoof cleaning agenda on americans /s

It's not a push. It's a pull. Americans are ejecting to get this information. You have to download software, optionally allow it to send you notifications, the purposefully open and interact with it. It's rational consumption. Simple as. Edit: I now realize what /s means.

It's digital crack. My mind melts when I see what's going on there (American social media too though).

Surely letting someone make your populace addicted and/or stupid is problematic? In a way I consider it China's late payback for the opium wars.

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

#785

Post by nonethewiser »

avgDev wrote: post #331
MBCook wrote: post #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.

Apparently some kids were calling crying saying that they will kill themselves if they ban the app. Absolutely crazy. TikTok trying to sway users made a huge mistake.

> Apparently some kids were calling crying saying that they will kill themselves if they ban the app. Absolutely crazy.

Darwinism.

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

#786

Post by frumper »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #224
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a different world than the one where our ideas of freedom were born in. Used to be we were talking about somebody on a soapbox in a park. Now, it's a firehose of misinformation spread instantly to hundreds of millions. A tidal wave. A hurricane. What should we do? How do we put the genie back in the bottle?

It's also a firehose of misinformation you choose to jump into. One can reasonably watch TikTok with the understanding that it might be good for entertainment or learning about things that don't really matter. It's a terrible news source, just like any other user content driven platform.

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

#787

Post by takinola »

cangeroo wrote: post #637
throwaway199956 wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do foreign nationals have the same rights as Americans? Foreign companies shouldn't have the same protections. And in many countries, locally-operating subsidiaries are required to have majority ownership by citizens, partly to prevent foreign influence.

Foreign nationals in the US have the same rights (but not privileges) as American citizens.

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

#788

Post by rchaud »

hollerith wrote: post #520
rchaud wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way the US had dealt with issues like this is in the courts of law through an evidentiary process, not by political decree, which will get slammed down in the courts anyway. Show that TikTok causes active harm compared to FB/Twitter, put that on the public record, and clear the obstacles for a bill to ban.

>The way the US had dealt with issues like this is in the courts of law How would that work in the case of TikTok. If for example the US Department of Justice were to sue TikTok, what law or regulation would it allege TikTok to have violated? >the US had dealt with issues like this This suggests that there were law suits in the past. Who were the plaintiffs and the defendants? What law were the defendants alleged to…

> If for example the US Department of Justice were to sue TikTok, what law or regulation would it allege TikTok to have violated?

That's exactly what DOJ would be tasked to do, build the case against them. Surely if the risks are so dire, they can find something to persuade a judge.

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

#789

Post by rajamaka »

shuckles wrote: post #770
yalok wrote: post #769

If you try to publish your app in any of the Chinese app stores, you will be required to add an SDK to your app that basically allows them (Chinese government) to track user activity in your app. This basically means that not only TikTok, but any app originating from China is mandated to have this tracking SDK integrated, and it's a much bigger problem than just a single app...

What are the Chinese app stores? Do you mean the China storefront of the Apple App Store or something else? Do you have any documentation about this?

Huawei AppGallery, Tencent My App Store , XiaoMi MIUI App Store. Apple only have about a 17% market share in China.

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

#790

Post by [deleted] »

rchaud wrote: post #788
hollerith wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The way the US had dealt with issues like this is in the courts of law How would that work in the case of TikTok. If for example the US Department of Justice were to sue TikTok, what law or regulation would it allege TikTok to have violated? >the US had dealt with issues like this This suggests that there were law suits in the past. Who were the plaintiffs and the defendants? What law were the defendants alleged to…

> If for example the US Department of Justice were to sue TikTok, what law or regulation would it allege TikTok to have violated? That's exactly what DOJ would be tasked to do, build the case against them. Surely if the risks are so dire, they can find something to persuade a judge.

[deleted]
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