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What if no one misses TikTok?

nytimes.com

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Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#131

Post by nozzlegear »

bdangubic wrote: post #77
nozzlegear wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An American and a Chinese citizen are having a discussion on Rednote about freedom in their respective countries. The American proudly says: "In America, we have true freedom! I can stand in front of the White House and shout, 'I don’t like the President!' and nothing will happen to me." The Chinese citizen thoughtfully replies: "We have the same freedom in China. I can stand in front of Tiananmen Square and shout, '…

if you think you have “freedom” as an American citizen I have some Enron stock to sell to you … sooooo funny, geeeez

Great comment, hard to argue with that.

Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#132

Post by ericmay »

cherry_tree wrote: post #128
ericmay wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are First Amendment Association rights?

This is low effort, you couldn’t google that exact phrase rather than putting it in as a comment? https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/first-amendment-... > Supreme Court wrote in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson (1958): >"It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for advancements of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the 'liberty' assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteent…

Please don't accuse people of engaging in "low effort" comments. It doesn't add anything to the discussion. You can see that I've actually written quite a few very good and well-thought responses to discussion points raised by others. It's anything but low effort.

In a discussion where the First Amendment related to speech is at the center of the discussion, it's important for people to define what they mean by First Amendment Association versus Freedom of Speech as defined in the First Amendment, especially when the discussion is primarily framed as an issue relating to Freedom of Speech. If someone is asking for clarification of what someone else means, that adds to the discussion, it doesn't detract from it. We can't discuss things if people are unwilling to explain what they mean, particularly within context.

To that end, I'd encourage you to read the section on Limits on the Freedom of Association in the article you provided to see why that line of reasoning doesn't apply here.

Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#133

Post by dialup_sounds »

dragonwriter wrote: post #120
ericmay wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this argument is that you are putting TikTok on a pedestal. The US (and every country on the planet) has rules and regulations around who can do business in their country and who their citizens may do business with. If you want to argue that the U.S. shouldn't be able to prohibit its citizens from doing business with TikTok you should spend some time generalizing that argument and figuring out a good…

> "Free speech" is not a good argument here. TikTok isn't a "free speech" platform. Free speech doesn't protect free speech platforms: free speech protects every speaker, platform, and listener against regulations targeted on the basis of content/viewpoint.

Three branches of government agree that this is not regulation targeted on the basis of content or viewpoint.

Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#134

Post by scarecrowbob »

ericmay wrote: post #111
redwall_hp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get over how widely accepted this paternalistic thinking is. "People might be viewing and think in the wrong things and must be stopped!" It's textbook censorship, with a bunch of legal tap dancing to attempt to justify it against the obvious unconstitutionality. We can hardly claim to have a democracy while acting like the population at large needs to be controlled in such a way. It's contradictory.

As a society we just get to decide that. We can simultaneously be a democracy and also prohibit people from doing things. We can even be hypocritical. It's great! There's nothing contradictory about it because living in a democratic society doesn't mean that you have free reign to do anything that you want.

Hell, yall can put people in concentration camps, enslave folks, summarily execute them.

It's great. /s

Look: I live next to a reservation, where the US gov committed war crimes. There's a fort up the hill a quarter mile up from where I am, which was a "residential school" where the US gov put kidnapped children to "educate them".

You are 100% right that democracy can coexist with all manner of depravity.

We get it, yall can happily do enact horrors you feel like enacting on the rest of us and still enjoy feeling smug that we don't like it.

But that fact means that something being "democratic" does not mean that we should respect what you do just because you have a veneer of democracy across it.

I am profoundly grateful I have so many greater crimes commited by the US to contextualize what, in the big scheme of things, is a meaningless and goofy action. If I didn't know that they were spearheading the literal ecocide of the planet while incarcerating more people than have every been locked up, while simultaniously funding a genocide in Israel, I'd probably feel like this is some kind of espeically bad thing.

But it's not; it barely even registers once you start looking at the millions of people that the US has directly murdered in the last 250 years.

But It's Great! (tm)

Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#136

Post by ericmay »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #134
ericmay wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a society we just get to decide that. We can simultaneously be a democracy and also prohibit people from doing things. We can even be hypocritical. It's great! There's nothing contradictory about it because living in a democratic society doesn't mean that you have free reign to do anything that you want.

Hell, yall can put people in concentration camps, enslave folks, summarily execute them. It's great. /s Look: I live next to a reservation, where the US gov committed war crimes. There's a fort up the hill a quarter mile up from where I am, which was a "residential school" where the US gov put kidnapped children to "educate them". You are 100% right that democracy can coexist with all manner of depravity. We get it,…

I know I know.

Americans... sorry I meant United Statesians, are really bad people. We might even be the worst people on the planet by any conceivable measure.

Since we're so bad and we've murdered so many millions of people, I guess there's no redeeming us and anything good we've ever done was meaningless so I say we go ahead and ban TikTok as our final coup de grâce in this terrible and twisted timeline.

Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#137

Post by neither_color »

wongarsu wrote: post #26
daft_pink wrote: post #8

It’s totally insane that China can ban all American social networks on security concerns and ban all kinds of just basic speech on their apps, but banning a Chinese social network is so controversial.

China doesn't claim that free speech and personal freedom are part of their core values

"tit for tat" is a rational act after getting burned for cooperating. You start open and cooperative, expect reciprocity, and when you don't get it you finally retaliate. A bad faith actor might even accuse you of not living up to your core values in order to persuade you into continuing to play the losing strategy.

The youngest tiktokers weren't even born yet or were just infants/toddlers when Google first got banned there. They may not understand what's going on here because by the time they came of age nearly all major western social media sites were already blocked there and for them it's status quo now. From their point of view the US is being the censor. They are at prime age to go on red book out of spite, but I hope they'll eventually understand.

Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#139

Post by corimaith »

redwall_hp wrote: post #103
keybored wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TikTok isn’t being banned because of free speech or not but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues. China has recognized this as a threat and as such has banned foreign adversary social media companies from operating within its borders. The “personal freedom” part would be most immediately salient here. Free speech wouldn’t apply if the app wasn’…

I can't get over how widely accepted this paternalistic thinking is. "People might be viewing and think in the wrong things and must be stopped!" It's textbook censorship, with a bunch of legal tap dancing to attempt to justify it against the obvious unconstitutionality. We can hardly claim to have a democracy while acting like the population at large needs to be controlled in such a way. It's contradictory.

If you want politically contrarian content you can just go to /pol/ or numerous internet forums discussing global events and politics. Hell, Wikipedia would be sufficient, and if you are serious you would be reading academic papers and studies, not social media.

The fact that these people don't want to do that, and would rather rely upon walled gardens and algorithms to feed them short-form content to inform their opinions already implies a desire for paternalism in of itself. You look at some these people talking about they were "lied" to about how China is third-world dump (where did they get that idea?) and in fact it's bustling cities with skyscrapers, when there are plenty of youtube videos showing the modern Chinese cities since it's inception.

When they didn't try to verify their assumptions with a trivial 2 minute search should tell you that these people want to be propagandized and will always be propagandized. Whether it's American Propaganda or Chinese Propaganda or whatever, they aren't ever going to take the responsiblity to actually to challenge their own preconceptions, they'll just sway from one extreme of propaganda to the next.

These people, by rejecting the old internet and choosing walled gardens, they want to be treated paternalistically. That's why they'll always reference other walled gardens like Facebook or Instagram, they'll never reference older forums or image boards. And so if we don't take that role, well the CCP would be quite content to fill in.

Re: What if no one misses TikTok?

#140

Post by corimaith »

ritcgab wrote: post #106
TulliusCicero wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a trade issue. If Country A bans imports from Country B, it's entirely reasonable to respond in kind.

Then the US acts like China.

Tit for Tat. Mercantalism is quite effective in a world of Free Trade, but if everyone turns Mercantalistic it becomes unsustainable and burns out. Once the most Mercantalistic actors are wiped out and EVERYONE understands why such policies were bad, we can return to the principles of Free Trade.
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