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Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

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Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#301

The work "ban" is in scare quotes for a reason. The law doesn't ban TikTok. Rather, it bans TikTok from having Chinese owners. If the law stands, the end result will likely be that TikTok will be sold to US owners, rather than TikTok going away. It's surprising to me that this this pretty significant distinction has been glossed over both in media reporting and in general comments here on HN. To be clear, I'm not sup…

Just because it doesn’t say “ban” doesn’t mean its not one. It is well known that China lists algorithms and AI models trained on citizen data as a non-export so tiktok will never be able to sell to anyone other than a Chinese company unless they retrain the model etc.

The CEO has mentioned that they will simply pull out of the US market.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has signaled that they would block a sale.

Which makes the case of china interference seems more plausible now.

It is already well known that tiktok ai models and algorithms trained on Chinese citizen data is non-exportable, so tiktok will never be able to sell to a non-chinese entity.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#304

@dang, Am I imagining things or did something unusual happen with the ranking of this submission? Shot up and then dropped despite votes and comments.

Threads with comment counts vastly exceeding their upvote count historically get suppressed, it's an anti-flamewar mechanism. Not sure if it's still in effect, but it would have applied here based on the # of upvotes.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#305

The work "ban" is in scare quotes for a reason. The law doesn't ban TikTok. Rather, it bans TikTok from having Chinese owners. If the law stands, the end result will likely be that TikTok will be sold to US owners, rather than TikTok going away. It's surprising to me that this this pretty significant distinction has been glossed over both in media reporting and in general comments here on HN. To be clear, I'm not sup…

The law doesn't ban them from having Chinese owners.

It bans American companies from providing services that distribute, maintain or update any sufficiently popular apps substantially owned or controlled by foreign adversaries.

TikTok could host APKs from CCP headquarters if they want to.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#306
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China and other countries do far worse to us than just requiring local ownership of businesses; and if they feel that is in their national interest, why can’t we return the favor when we feel it’s in our interest? This is bigger than China for a lot of people. TikTok has given an alternative voice to groups typically marginalized on pro-Western platforms. We typically see hypocrisy from the West when it comes to Isr…

I'm not seeing any issue with those voices finding a space elsewhere say on X/Twitter - believe me, I see enough of the slop over from it. The level of direct control the US Government has over US Social Media platforms pales in comparison to the control China has over TikTok.

Why not both? As it stands X platform is run by a pathological liar that has cozied up to the ADL to get the activist Pro-Israel community off his back. Many users many not prefer to use that platform because of these issues. The more options for people the better. What people seem to be forgetting is that TikTok is not the only market player. To single them out is absurd in this context.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#308
Can someone explain why the previous "ban" was blocked but this wasnt? As I recall TikTok filed for an injunction and they argued it was unconstitutional (violated the 5th ammendment) and the injunction was granted. Then Biden rescinded the executive order and it ended there.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#309

The work "ban" is in scare quotes for a reason. The law doesn't ban TikTok. Rather, it bans TikTok from having Chinese owners. If the law stands, the end result will likely be that TikTok will be sold to US owners, rather than TikTok going away. It's surprising to me that this this pretty significant distinction has been glossed over both in media reporting and in general comments here on HN. To be clear, I'm not sup…

Just because it doesn’t say “ban” doesn’t mean its not one. It is well known that China lists algorithms and AI models trained on citizen data as a non-export so tiktok will never be able to sell to anyone other than a Chinese company unless they retrain the model etc. The CEO has mentioned that they will simply pull out of the US market.

[deleted]

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#310
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Further, Chinese government officials would show up unannounced and plug shit into our networks, and required access to our encryption keys and accounts databases and employee & customer lists etc. This happens in the US too and has been happening for a very long time ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A ) only when it happens to US companies they get gag orders and/or paid off. (see https://www.theguardian.co…

> The difference is that when the servers are in China the US government can't get that kind of access/cooperation. Except that TikTok’s data, or the main copy of it at least, resides in the US, so the evil US govt theoretically already has access to it. That’s not the motivation for this bill.

It's not about access to the data, it's about access to controlling or influencing the content that users see.
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