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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

#371

Post by abvdasker »

danieltanfh95 wrote: post #332

It is maddening to see people who usually are pretty serious and mature turn into zombies parroting whatever political propaganda the state decides to push out this year. Some key facts: 1. Tiktok isn’t allowed to sell because their AI models and algorithms are trained on Chinese citizenry data. These items have been marked as non-exports for some time now, and this is a well known fact by the people pushing for the…

It's genuinely remarkable to witness the Democratic Party spurn their base of young people for no discernible gain. Who exactly is the constituency for this legislation other than China hawks?

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

#372

Post by ThinkBeat »

I hope this will show the severity of threats countries face from social media and that things are no longer business as usual.

Every European country /and/or EU/ECC as a block, as well as every other nation or block, should follow this up as soon as permitted to have all social media apps operated by a foreign country be subject to the same legislation.

TikTok will have to sel to the US, Netherlands, France, Germany, Turkey, Gabon, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Egypt etc etc etc.

That will of course also go for all other social networks as well. The threats this bill highlights are universal to all social media operated outside the control and ownership,

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, WhatsApp, will either have to stop operating outside of the Unites States or they will need to be sold to every country they wish to operate in.

Certainly, a small state has the same rights and the same cause to protect their citizens from the surveillance and manipulation from foreign owned social networks.

From a geek perspective this would be great. We would get smaller entities that would need to interact with each other in so far as that would be possible or attainable.

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

#373

Post by mminer237 »

ok123456 wrote: post #60
dwnoble wrote: post #22

Fun fact: according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... , tiktok.com has been blocked in mainland China since 2020.

Shouldn't the US prove it's better than China by its self-consistent actions with its espoused virtues of freedom of the press?

The Bill of Rights does not inherently apply to non-citizens. There's nothing stopping the people from running TikTok without government oversight. The only problem is that a foreign adversary controls it. This really is not comparable to China's restrictions.

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

#374

Post by hall0ween »

themagician wrote: post #361

Honestly, the loon who lit himself on fire the other day might have been onto something . The bill that the President just signed seems like an attempt to alienate at least 50% of voters under 30. It almost feels like the current administration is trying to give people a reason to vote for the other guy.

I interpreted it differently. That Biden was putting national interests ahead of reelection interests. That said, I should caveat that I tend not to read US based news cause it’s a cesspool of outrage based clickbait.

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

#375

Post by vizzier »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #372

I hope this will show the severity of threats countries face from social media and that things are no longer business as usual. Every European country /and/or EU/ECC as a block, as well as every other nation or block, should follow this up as soon as permitted to have all social media apps operated by a foreign country be subject to the same legislation. TikTok will have to sel to the US, Netherlands, France, Germany…

De-facto international antitrust, I like it.

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

#376

Post by jtriangle »

wumeow wrote: post #357
icar wrote: post #348

Given the recent law in the US to give the NSA full access to user data without court order, forcing Tiktok to be owned by a US company makes more sense.

It does not force US ownership. Read the bill.

You're right, it's "US ownership or get banned".

Not just tiktok either, this will wind up applying to many companies.

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

#377

Post by brigadier132 »

turquoisevar wrote: post #335
efitz wrote: post #179

I see the feedback here is overwhelmingly negative. My biggest problem is that it’s too narrowly targeted. I have worked for several US businesses with global footprints and working with China (and some other countries) required whole or part ownership of the business by entities within that nation. So we partnered with businesses in China to set up and operate our infra, and had to manage everything through contract…

I see variations of this argument pop up in this debate, which always confuses me. I’d expect the takeaway to be “That’s bad, so we shouldn’t do it” instead of “Hold my beer and let me show you how we can follow their example.” I always thought that the point was to not be like authoritarian countries.

> I always thought that the point was to not be like authoritarian countries.

No, the point is to not give authoritarian countries a free pass.

This is like saying we shouldn't put people in jail for murder because it's effectively kidnapping and that would make us like them.

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

#378

Post by jquery »

calgarymicro wrote: post #368
jtriangle wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bans American companies from providing services that distribute, maintain or update any sufficiently popular apps where a company is headquartered in, or has more than a 20% ownership share of the company held, in a country that has been determined to be a foreign adversary. It is much, much broader than a 'tiktok ban', it applies to any company that fits that criteria. So to put it bluntly, if the CCP bought 20%…

> So to put it bluntly, if the CCP bought 20% of reddit, reddit can't be distributed, maintained or updated by any US company. Provided they have more than 1 million MAU (which they do, obviously). The president would also have to affirmatively ban it and report to Congress about the specific threat that company poses, and what assets need to be divested. TikTok is the only company written into the bill by Congress t…

1 million MAU is nothing. Throw up AdSense on something that gets 1m MAU and that pays for a single developer. Also, I don't like the President getting this kind of power over businesses. It's bad enough when they can make angry Twitter threats... now they can give them a corporate death penalty.

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

#379

Post by extr »

danieltanfh95 wrote: post #332

It is maddening to see people who usually are pretty serious and mature turn into zombies parroting whatever political propaganda the state decides to push out this year. Some key facts: 1. Tiktok isn’t allowed to sell because their AI models and algorithms are trained on Chinese citizenry data. These items have been marked as non-exports for some time now, and this is a well known fact by the people pushing for the…

Don't really see what any of this has to do with the core objection that via TikTok a foreign nation, a global power, has the ability to directly and completely opaquely manipulate american voter at an unprecendented level.

Would be insanely easy to identify swing counties/demographics and slightly tweak their algorithm to influence votes. You can be sure some chinese data scientist has already run the numbers on this (if not already experimented on it at a state/local level). I don't really feel comfortable with the CCP having that level of control.

> Pro Palestinian content is highly searchable on tiktok, and that made a lot of people unhappy and uncomfortable.

Not saying that the popularity of pro palestinian content is a psyop. But if it were, how would you even know? Maybe it's not a psyop today but they pulled the right levels to make it go viral, and now it's an organically driven flywheel? Maybe it's all organic and I'm fearmongering. The point is there is no way to know, or ever find out. Chinese datacenters can't be subpoenaed.

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

#380

Post by interactivecode »

jtriangle wrote: post #352
returningfory2 wrote: post #38

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…

It bans American companies from providing services that distribute, maintain or update any sufficiently popular apps where a company is headquartered in, or has more than a 20% ownership share of the company held, in a country that has been determined to be a foreign adversary. It is much, much broader than a 'tiktok ban', it applies to any company that fits that criteria. So to put it bluntly, if the CCP bought 20%…

Lol, queue china writing a clear document on all the US stock their citizens and companies own. Just to mess with the USA.

Anything they sell just gives them more money to buy more ownership.

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