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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

#931

Post by account42 »

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 the US would benefit from reciprocity becoming more a more common requirement in international politics.

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

#932

Post by paganel »

cutemonster wrote: post #861
paganel wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If American democracy goes down because of "foreign influencers" from platforms like TikTok then it means that it wasn't all that strong to begin with.

I don't think there's any country that can withstand someone having direct access to manipulate more than half of the population

I stand by my point, if half of the population can be ideologically "switched"/manipulated by a smartphone app then the original ideology (I would assume liberal-democracy in the case of US) wasn't that heavily implanted to begin with.

The US politicians should look into why that is so, why is that suddenly the US population so easy to "manipulate" away from an ideology it has strongly believed in for more than 200 years, but I guess that would reflect poorly on said politicians (because they're part of the problem).

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

#933

Post by contrarian1234 »

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #379
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

Here is a study which compares the prevalence of topics on Instagram with the prevalence of topics on TikTok, and shows that topics which are sensitive to the CCP (Tibet, Hong Kong) occur 5-10x less frequently than comparable topics which are not sensitive to the CCP https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...

What a strange study... They seem to just count the number of videos on certain hashtags. The huge discrepancy would require a very large fraction (but not all) of videos under certain hashtags to be banned/removed entirely. That would be immediately obvious when just uploading videos under that hashtags (which they don't do)

They simply dismiss the alternate explanation .. that it's a demographic difference or a time difference. Uygher stuff was a hot topic before Tiktok became popular. And people that are super pumped about that issue and are posting about Chinese political issues probably are I'm guessing not the kind of people to be using Tiktok. Those are just wild guesses.. but there are a lot of ways to explain the difference observed here.

In any case.. just mildly muting topics is pretty benign.. I was expecting promoting conspiracy theories or bots posting AI generated videos. The stuff the Russians (and I think Chinese as well?) botfarms do on Facebook is way crazier

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

#934

Post by m_rpn »

Nesco wrote: post #23
andiareso wrote: post #13

I'm a big proponent of free speech and the first amendment, but I agree with the reasonings for banning it or forcing US owners. China most definitely has their hands in the data that TikTok amasses and given its popularity it's not an insignificant risk to U.S. citizens. We all know how easy it is to manipulate users... aka Cambridge Analytica. It'll be interesting to see what legal challenges come up if the bill pa…

Why shouldn’t Europeans do the same with US social networks then?

We totally should to be honest, the social network is the most harmful tech of all time, from various spectrums.

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

#935

Post by murderfs »

zachmu wrote: post #633
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.

A US citizen distributing foreign media themselves is quite different than what is effectively a directly controlled broadcast owned by a foreign government.

Well, we do that too: https://www.usagm.gov/2022/03/05/usagm-condemns-kremlins-inc...

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

#936

Post by ecoquant »

zachmu wrote: post #530
jrockway wrote: post #486

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…

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…

[flagged]

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

#937

Post by ecoquant »

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.

[flagged]

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

#938

Post by fennecbutt »

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…

You talk about lowest common denominator but that's kind of always been a core issue.

Imagine an enlightened and advanced technological culture that refuses to fight. For all their advancements and liberal policies they're still open to being obliterated by another culture that doesn't really care about the whole "war is bad" thing.

I think as society/morals/ethics/law advances, we still need protections in place for "how could somebody exploit this if they don't play by the same rules that we do".

We'll always, unfortunately, still need a person with a large stick and the threat of violence even in a peaceful society.

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

#939

Post by Invictus0 »

archagon wrote: post #917
Invictus0 wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you think it should be technically impossible to ban child pornography? There should be no consequences for possessing this in a "reasonable world"?

CSAM is not software. It is content. In a reasonable world, there should be consequences for possessing it. Implementing these consequences on a technical level would be an egregious affront to our freedoms.

software vs content is an irrelevant distinction, they're both digital objects composed of files and bytes. I see no reason the government should not able to regulate either one of them. The government already regulates lots of software via ITAR laws.

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

#940

Post by aragonite »

kurthr wrote: post #589
bjourne wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "reciprocity" cannot hide the fact that two wrongs doesn't make a right. We think it is wrong of China to censor Facebook and Twitter because that is what authoritarian regimes that don't give a shit about free speech do. For exactly the same reason it is wrong of the US to ban TikTok. And this bill has nothing to do with balancing international trade. It's stated purpose is to restrict China's ability to in…

What's wrong? The glorious right to investment profits? It's not even censorship. The 1st amendment right to free speech is about US citizens. This isn't even a US corporation. No 1st amendment there so it looks legal. They probably wouldn't have done anything, if the manipulation and spying had been a bit less blatant. Even Telegram and Kaspersky still operate. This isn't even a WTO trade issue since almost every si…

> almost every single tech or manufacturing company (except Tesla?) that wants to sell in China has to be a joint owned venture

Apple, Oracle, Amazon, GE, Micron, Intel, Dell, Samsung, Kingston, LG, Seagate, Inventec ... Not a single one of these is a joint venture. They are all wholly foreign-owned enterprises (WFOEs) [1][2]

According to the Department of Commerce,

> A large majority of new foreign investments in China are WFOEs, rather than JVs. As Chinese legal entities, WFOEs experience greater independence than ROs, are allowed exclusive control over carrying out business activities while abiding by Chinese law and are granted intellectual and technological rights. (https://www.export.gov/apex/article2?id=China-Establishing-a...)

Also (https://arc-group.com/china-company-setup/):

> WFOE refers to a limited liability company that is 100% invested, owned by foreign investors, and independently operated. Almost 60% of foreign-owned companies are WFOEs, making it the most adopted business type. Famous multinational companies such as Apple, Amazon, Oracle, and General Electric are all examples of WFOEs.

[1] https://www.ydylcn.com/skwx_ydyl/competitiveReportDetail?Sit... (The link is pre-2020, when the new Foreign Investment Law abolished the category but reduced the need for JVs even more [3])

[2] https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/wfoe-fact-sheet-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Investment_Law_of_the_...

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