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Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

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Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every item in my house is produced by this so-called enemy state.

I am not saying I agree with grandparent, but I would like to point out that both your statement and grandparents statement could simultaneously be true with zero conflict between the two

I'm just saying it's a bit late to start raving about "enemy state" influence after they outsourced the manufacturing capacity of the entire country to it.

Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#43
post #39
post #4

> “In the context of social media platforms used by nearly half of Americans, it’s not hard to imagine how a platform that facilitates so much commerce, political discourse, and social debate could be covertly manipulated to serve the goals of an authoritarian regime, one with a long track record of censorship, transnational repression, and promotion of disinformation.” Mark Warner (D-VA), Senate Intelligence Committ…

I'm confused - are we talking about America here? I thought ByteDance was Chinese?

I think the idea is “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't” as reason to want to be owned by an American company or banned outright

Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#44
I don't care either way. I think it'll be really interesting to see how people react to this though. Do Americans learn how vpns work suddenly, do tiktok users just switch to reels like nothing happened. Do we snap out of our social media trance. It's like playing sim city and causing a little social chaos lol

Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#45
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every item in my house is produced by this so-called enemy state.

> Every item in my house is produced by this so-called enemy state. Because Americans have been foolish and short sighted. So then they're presented with a choice: continue making the mistake or take the difficult steps to attempt to correct it.

Sounds nice to say "Americans" did this, to socialize accountability, like this was some democratic decision and not the product of corporations having no loyalty to anyone or anything.

Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#46
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark Warner has gotten $343,211 from AIPAC. He cares about placating Israel, not protecting our data. If you can find a politician who says this but doesn't take money from AIPAC, I might be a little more convinced.

Maybe they have evidence that much of the pro-Palestian content on TikTok is stoked by Chinese bot accounts

[dead]

Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an authoritarian regime, one with a long track record of censorship, transnational repression, and promotion of disinformation So…the US government then?

Can you explain in what way the US is authoritarian? I don't feel it on a personal level at all. I mean, the dept of motor vehicles is pretty strict, but other than that...

I guess you are not a tiktok user...

Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#48
post #35

[flagged]

Yeah about that. There is no sign of genocide within Israel, Arab citizens are growing as fraction of population and have serious political power. Population of Gaza is likewise growing tremendously due to very high birth rate and there have been no attempts at coerced sterilization like China does to Ughurs.

Now lets turn to ethnic cleansing. It's true that ethnic cleansing of Arabs took place during formation of Israel. It's also true that ethnic cleansing of Jews took place in many/most Middle East countries like Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and so on. Now lots of people are displaced, how come no other country is given responsibility to help with aftereffects? Egypt lost Gaza as a result of attacking Israel and losing the war. Maybe they should take it back and spend resources to restore peace?

Or lets consider apartheid. Any monarchy - such as Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Morocco etc is by definition an apartheid. The king privileges Islam over other religions and minorities don't get a say in what the laws are, even in case of relatively tolerant kings like in Morocco. By contrast, Arabs/Muslims within Israel have full voting rights and Gazans were left alone to run their own affairs until Oct 7 attack. West bank is in a weird state for various reasons - religious zeal of settlers, PLA not forming a viable government, interference from foreign powers like Iran.

I am not trying to paint Israel as a perfect country. But which country is perfect when attacked? US literally nuked Japan and caused mass civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia? China? India?

Re: Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk

#50
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every item in my house is produced by this so-called enemy state. Because Americans have been foolish and short sighted. So then they're presented with a choice: continue making the mistake or take the difficult steps to attempt to correct it.

Sounds nice to say "Americans" did this, to socialize accountability, like this was some democratic decision and not the product of corporations having no loyalty to anyone or anything.

It's definitely "Americans" that did this. It came from the hubris of seeing the Soviet Union fall and deceiving ourselves that we were living in some capitalist liberal democratic end of history and letting the political system make decisions to match.

And frankly, attempting to not "socialize accountability" and instead pin the blame on some othered corporations would have the effect of fostering a helpless outlook in the face of those corporations.

IMHO, the way forward is to realize the collective mistake and fuck those corporations good and hard as part of the correction (e.g. lets make an example of Apple).

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