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

nytimes.com

901–910 of 1001 posts

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

#901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This logic is not going to hold up in court. You cannot ban access to propaganda in the US.

This isn't about regulating what content American citizens are creating. It's about regulating the involvement of adversarial foreign governments to distribute that information. These are quite separate concerns.

>regulating the involvement of adversarial foreign governments to distribute that information

How is that any different than say Press TV, whose website and media are not banned and are freely viewable in the US because we have freedom of expression?

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

#902

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We have laws against foreign ownership of broadcast TV and radio. Our legal system already acknowledges that foreign ownership of the media is a bad thing that should be prevented. The problem is that these laws haven't been updated for the modern era. TikTok is not covered. But this due to a failure of our politicians to respond to the modern era, not because the bill of rights enshrines or applies to foreign compan…

The law in the US is that you can't make radio transmissions on TV / AM / FM frequencies without a license, because left unchecked, everyone doing what they want would make radio useless for everyone. The government has a clear reason to require licenses, and they have the power to restrict who can receive one.

The Internet doesn't work like that, though. No license is required to make a website or mobile app, because websites and mobile apps don't interfere with each other. The government wouldn't have a very strong argument to require websites to have a license, because they have no reason for doing that other than in moderating the content of the website, which is prohibited by the Constitution.

In the past, TV licenses were absolutely used to censor viewpoints the government didn't like, but now that is no longer possible, because nobody cares about TV or radio. You can bring in whatever content you want from anywhere in the world, thanks to the Internet. That is what the government is salty about; they are losing control because people don't care about TV anymore.

(I'll also point out that shortwave radio still exists. You can tune your radio to, say, 5910kHz and listen to CCP propaganda all day, and there is nothing the US government can do about it. On the flip side, we have Voice of America for a reason. We like broadcasting American propaganda into China just as much as China likes the reverse. Unfortunately, nobody listens to shortwave radio anymore. That's what the US is mad about; people like TikTok, but they don't have anything like it.)

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

#904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gangs also offer to "defend" local businesses from other gangs.

And friends offer to help friends. Enough of this nefariousness.

I am afraid there are no such thing as "friends" when it comes to international politics...

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

#905

Pass a privacy law, stop arbitrarily banning. What exactly would be the justification for forcing the sale rather than passing a law solving the actual problem?

The actual problem is threat of algo manipulation in times of crisis. But they apparently don't want to make that their argument. It's the only valid justification imo. Data privacy should apply to all companies.

But the government hates online privacy. It stops them from spying. And (though I don't know this for a fact) I feel tech giants could be lobbying against privacy laws.

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

#906

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.

If the first amendment actually protects TikTok here, as may be the case, then the courts can strike this down. On the other hand, perhaps the first amendment doesn't block this. In that case, that relevant consideration would seems to be rare broad bipartisan support (as evidenced by a very lopsided 352-65 vote, but we'll see what happens in the Senate) to limit the potential harm that can be done by the information…

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

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young people getting bombed by the US and its allies, are posting videos of themselves getting bombed and American teens have enough empathy to find such content moving.

Considering Israel also has horrible videos of egregious violence being committed at them by Palestinians it's concerning that you don't think that's grounds for propaganda or manipulation.

But that content is freely shared on all mainstream outlets. There is an overabundance of that content.

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

#908
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…

It's a peeve of mine when people talk about the "CCP" like this, almost universally in a negative context--like they're trying to invoke the specter of communism in a scary way. Maybe you didn't mean it that way? Why say "CCP" rather than just "China"?

Maybe because not all of China supports the CCP's goals, means, and ideology? Substantial numbers of people disagree with some or all of those, and nobody gets to influence the CCP so it hardly represents anyone besides Party members. (And even some of those have serious disagreements.)

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

#909

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.

You just justified legalizing all drugs, even harmful ones. And of course let me guess you want harmful drugs to be legal only in the US.

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

#910

Pass a privacy law, stop arbitrarily banning. What exactly would be the justification for forcing the sale rather than passing a law solving the actual problem?

That’s half of Valley to fight against. Not going to happen.
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