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US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

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Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I disagree with everything. But mostly I disagree that anyone serious actually thought that entering on a global marketplace would turn any kind of nation democratic... but I mean people at the top can have any kind of ideologies, I shouldn't consider impossible that somebody actually bought the magical markets propaganda.

>But mostly I disagree that anyone serious actually thought that entering on a global marketplace would turn any kind of nation democratic... There's certainly research on the subject. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/economic-integration-and-tran... Exploiting improvements in air, relative to sea, transportation that occurred since the 1960s, and combining survey data with country level measures of democracy from 1960…

Hey, I may give it a full read later, but so far the abstract seems sound.

>Trade with non-democracies has no impact on either attitudes or institutions.

And actually it’s good that there’s research about it. Different correlations between economic and political attitudes are interesting, I believe that the relation is from the political to the economic side, not otherwise yet, my biggest gripe is, that the idea that markets would result into democracy is a big assertion with shaky foundations.

And I mean, is not like we don’t have history of countries trying to open other’s markets, sometimes even forcefully. I saw the same, now dressed with modern ideologies.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#222
post #124

This is really difficult for me. I have an app that is available in every country except for China because it isn’t allowed to be published there. In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China. On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiat…

But then we have different values than China, and we claim to have more freedom (whatever it means today). The ban on tiktok didn't come when everyone was criticizing the negative impact it had on children and teenager's mental health, it only came now when lots of its users started publicly criticizing a certain country more openly than is allowed on other platforms... So its censorship/ban will be to comply with we…

Yes I totally understand this point but the Trump administration was trying to get Bytedance to sell TikTok to Oracle before the war IIRC.

Really showing their hand with the NatSec claims in my opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/technology/trump-oracle-a...

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#223
post #186
post #124

This is really difficult for me. I have an app that is available in every country except for China because it isn’t allowed to be published there. In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China. On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiat…

The US isn't China, and our government is explicitly prohibited from attempting to censor or otherwise curate public media.

I guess I am looking at the issue on the level below media, primarily as a trade issue.

It’s not that TikTok can’t exist; they’ve been trying to force a sale AFAIK. Whether it’s a NatSec issue or a censorship issue seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#224
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're arguing the CCP is going to force TikTok's algorithm to amplify Chinese propaganda, the algorithm is probably going to work the way it does everywhere, by optimizing for engagement by showing content similar to what a user already prefers. I'm not aware of evidence of that, though, beyond the circumstantial evidence of people claiming American leftist activism must the result of CCP brainwashing through…

> Unless you're arguing the CCP is going to force TikTok's algorithm to amplify Chinese propaganda Yes, that's my concern. We don't know the algorithms and IMO the risk is too high, given China's other efforts at propaganda. At least Twitter added community notes, but that's somewhat secondary given the algorithms potentially controlled by a hostile government.

To add to my response, it looks very much like TikTok is in fact suppressing specific topics and boosting others in a way that strongly correlates to CCP preferences: https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/17839541809708159...
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