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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

#441

Post by noqc »

roody15 wrote: post #400
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…

Hmm not sure I agree. It can be helpful to have access to social media that contains perspectives outside of the control of the country you live in. Sure will it be slanted or even outright propaganda ? Yes but this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions. The idea that our “government” will curate content and sanctify what is true is simply dystopian. Citizen these socia…

>this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions.

This is a nice fantasy but it fails to a number of intractible social problems. Children aren't taught skepticism because parents don't want their children to be taught skepticism. You would need to use force that you do not have access to in order to even attempt the solution you are proposing.

Second, implicit in your argument is that people would be responsible for thinking critically about every fact that they believe. This is just too much work, the human strategy requires trust, and we have massive incentive structures called societies whose main job is to facilitate that trust through the establishment of systems of incentives. This complicated system of incentives has been demolished, wholesale, by social media, and we're not going to adapt fast enough to avoid serious damage.

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

#442

Post by insane_dreamer »

anonuser1234 wrote: post #49

US companies are not allowed to fairly compete in China. I think that reason alone is justification.

It's funny how many of the comments here have really no idea the level of restrictions that are on US (or European) companies who want to operate in China (not just manufacture for export).

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

#443

Post by notresidenter »

tonymet wrote: post #404
intellix wrote: post #64

if you've been to China, you'll know that they ban all western products: facebook, google, etc etc and replaced them with their own variants. If they want to run around free-range without any restriction with their own products then they should respond by loosening restrictions in their own country. This is an absolute no-brainer. If you want Tik Tok in the US, lower your middle finger. Am I missing something?

China is communist. That is not the bar we are holding ourselves to.

China is absolutely not communist, it's probably the most capitalist country nowadays !

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

#444

Post by hot_gril »

noqc wrote: post #441
roody15 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm not sure I agree. It can be helpful to have access to social media that contains perspectives outside of the control of the country you live in. Sure will it be slanted or even outright propaganda ? Yes but this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions. The idea that our “government” will curate content and sanctify what is true is simply dystopian. Citizen these socia…

>this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions. This is a nice fantasy but it fails to a number of intractible social problems. Children aren't taught skepticism because parents don't want their children to be taught skepticism. You would need to use force that you do not have access to in order to even attempt the solution you are proposing. Second, implicit in your argum…

We solved this by disallowing children from voting. Kids these days eventually learn not to trust anything they read on the Internet.

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

#445

Post by hackerlight »

intellix wrote: post #64

if you've been to China, you'll know that they ban all western products: facebook, google, etc etc and replaced them with their own variants. If they want to run around free-range without any restriction with their own products then they should respond by loosening restrictions in their own country. This is an absolute no-brainer. If you want Tik Tok in the US, lower your middle finger. Am I missing something?

> If you want Tik Tok in the US, lower your middle finger.

Reciprocity isn't the main reason. It's become a legitimate national security problem. We're no longer in the early 2000s where we could delude ourselves into thinking China wasn't a rival. They're clearly revisionist, with their aggressive approach to resolving border disputes and rhetoric about forceful reunification of Taiwan being on the table. They are bolstering strategic reserves of oil beyond normal peacetime levels, appointing Taiwan hawks to the Politburo, increasing PLA presence near Taiwan, running war games involving an embargo of Taiwan. They doubled their trade with Russia, filling in gaps left by sanctions. They are overtly hostile to the maritime sovereignty of a treaty ally of the US.

The world has changed a lot, and few here realize it because they're stuck in this weird libertarian bubble where everyone's interests are the same and foreign policy doesn't exist and it's cynical intentions all the way down. You are all in for a rude awakening to wake you up from your hypnosis just as Europe was back in 2022.

The US will legislate according to its interests, and that is what it's appropriately doing here.

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

#446

Post by npteljes »

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…

>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.

Next up, we could migrate government systems away from foreign IT software and services. The FOSS world has plenty of capable offerings, and it's not as if the choices were made on technical merit in the first place. I'd love to see Free Software and open standards being taught in schools, and being used in government.

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

#447

Post by josu »

ddp26 wrote: post #425

I looked into this, and here's what I think will happen [copied from another thread where I posted this]: - ByteDance will challenge the ruling in court (>95%), but they will lose (80%) - They then will succeed in selling TikTok US to a US company, despite what ByteDance execs and China are saying (75%) - The sale will be for $30-50B (CI 50%), it won't include important ByteDance IP that will have to be recreated by…

>The sale will be for $30-50B (CI 50%), it won't include important ByteDance IP that will have to be recreated by a US-based company, likely Snap or X.

Why replicate it? Can't ByteDance license the IP to the US company?

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

#448

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

I disagree with all of these points except the first one. #3 is particularly misleading: 1) Apple and Microsoft are not media companies, and 2) cute how you said "local laws" instead of "government censorship". This reads right out of a CCP handbook.

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

#449

Post by insane_dreamer »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #347
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…

[flagged]

any time you see a post talking about "compliance with local laws" when it comes to media companies, as if it were some sort of zoning or worker safety compliance issue, you know where the talking points are coming from :)

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

#450

Post by RIMR »

Vegenoid wrote: post #432
danieltanfh95 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course the CEO is going to say that, because they don't want the law passed. When the chips are down, it's a lot less likely that just pull out than that they take the money from one of the many salivating buyers.

If TikTok is in bed with the CCP as much as Congress says they are, think about the actual cause and effect of their different options.

If ByteDance sells TikTok to US owners to satisfy the requirement, they give up control of a successful platform developed inside of China to a self-declared adversary that already controls most of the world's social media platforms, representing a significant loss to China as they attempt to compete online.

If ByteDance ignores the demand to sell, the US government has obligated itself to prevent its citizens from accessing one of the most popular social media apps in existence, something that the affected users will be extremely angry about, and will likely make claims of state censorship.

If I were China, and my goal was to leverage TikTok to do harm to America, I would choose the option that turns US citizens against the government over the option that transfers power from China to the US.

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