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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

#481

Post by droptablemain »

jmbwell wrote: post #325
droptablemain wrote: post #319

If China passed a similar law, I wonder what the U.S. state dept. would say about it.

From what I understand, Google, YouTube, the web site that used to be called Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook are all banned in China already. So I suspect the state department would say something like, "the state department recommends banning TikTok."

I suspect the state dept. would say China banning Facebook/Twitter, etc. is an example of it being a "bad" or "totalitarian" "regime."

But the U.S. banning Tik-Tok? Why that's just good ol' democracy at work!

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

#482

Post by droptablemain »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #324
droptablemain wrote: post #319

If China passed a similar law, I wonder what the U.S. state dept. would say about it.

Uh, Google was kicked out of China for not censoring search results, Meta and others are blocked for not submitting to censorship. This is tame by comparison.

Kicked out for not complying with rules vs. being forced to sell.

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

#483

Post by HaZeust »

notresidenter wrote: post #443
tonymet wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 !

Ha - I'll bite. How is it the most capitalist country nowadays? It's HEAVILY state-sponsored mixed-market, if anything.

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

#484

Post by dgfitz »

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…

> Children aren't taught skepticism because parents don't want their children to be taught skepticism.

Say huh? Where on earth did you pull this “factoid” from?

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

#485

Post by sevmedna »

luyu_wu wrote: post #454

The thing that ticks me off is that there hasn't been conclusive evidence that actually justifies this ban. I'd be perfectly happy if the CIA came out with documents of how the data goes to China, but all I've seen is evidence to the contrary (e.g. servers in US, headquarters in SG etc). If I'm wrong, I'd gladly look at some linked articles of course.

Some ex-TikTok employees say the social media service worked closely with its China-based parent despite claims of independence https://fortune.com/2024/04/15/tiktok-china-data-sharing-byt...

Ex-ByteDance Exec Claims TikTok Gave Communist Party 'God User' Status https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-political-china-communist-god-use...

American TikTok user data stored in China, video app admits https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/23/american-tik...

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

#486

Post by nickthegreek »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #406
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%…

Is this going to impact Riot Games' games (League of Legends, Valorant), the wildly popular American video game company which is owned by Tencent?

Tencent also owns 40% of Epic Games, which wants its own AppStores on the mobile OSes.

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

#487

Post by luyu_wu »

AlphaSite wrote: post #469
luyu_wu wrote: post #454

The thing that ticks me off is that there hasn't been conclusive evidence that actually justifies this ban. I'd be perfectly happy if the CIA came out with documents of how the data goes to China, but all I've seen is evidence to the contrary (e.g. servers in US, headquarters in SG etc). If I'm wrong, I'd gladly look at some linked articles of course.

If nothing else the ban on foreign ownership of Chinese companies alone feels like it justifies some reciprocal action. No US (or otherwise) company can operate in China, but the reverse is not true.

I've seen this point scattered throughout the thread, and it seems quite popular. I don't particularly take issue with it since market reciprocity obviously makes sense, but I'm not sure that this bill should tag itself as national security in that case!

Small note: Many US companies do operate in China with large margins (Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD, NVidia, etc). There's been a Wikipedia article cited a through times throughout this thread with a complete list of blocked domains! Just a minor nitpick, thanks for the thoughts still.

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

#488

Post by FrustratedMonky »

luyu_wu wrote: post #454

The thing that ticks me off is that there hasn't been conclusive evidence that actually justifies this ban. I'd be perfectly happy if the CIA came out with documents of how the data goes to China, but all I've seen is evidence to the contrary (e.g. servers in US, headquarters in SG etc). If I'm wrong, I'd gladly look at some linked articles of course.

Yeah.

If this amount of effort is going into protect us from TikTok, then why not protect us from every other Social Media company that is tracking us.

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