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US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

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Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#102
post #78
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really tired of arguments like this. The US (and West as a whole) are not a bunch of angels, of course. But the kind of censorship, state-mandated propaganda, and market control you see from China is not even remotely comparable to the situation in the West. Equating the two is at best uninformed, at worst disingenuous or actively malicious.

Not yet, but this is an obvious step in the same direction, "banning" a social media platform to prevent exposure to foreign ideas. It's difficult not to assume the motives are similar, a need to control political narratives and manufacture consent for American policy.

It's not about foreign ideas. It's about a foreign, arguably hostile, government having control over what gets amplified and what gets hidden. I don't think anyone would have an issue with an official CCP account posting CCP positions on social media platforms they don't control. Those things are very, very different!

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#103
post #82
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, but this is an obvious step in the same direction, "banning" a social media platform to prevent exposure to foreign ideas. It's difficult not to assume the motives are similar, a need to control political narratives and manufacture consent for American policy.

I don’t need TikTok for foreign ideas. I see them everywhere. For example while I don’t buy them I have absolutely heard the Russian arguments for Ukraine. You can find complete texts of every Putin speech online, not to mention thinkers like Alexandr Dugin. The Internet is absolutely boiling over with both pro and anti Israel arguments and propaganda too. You almost can’t even avoid it. If the powers that be don’t w…

To add to this: owning the platform and controlling what gets amplified is very different than posting information on someone else's platform which also is different from posting the information and disclosing your affiliation. I'm pretty sure we could easily get a strong consensus that there is zero issue in an official CCP account posting official CCP positions on Twitter or Facebook.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#104
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The message is that the us government does not want your protected speech moderated, curated, and amplified according to the whims of a hostile foreign nation

False. The message is the US government doesn’t want Americans to freely speak out against American foreign policy such as the current genocide against the Palestinians. They want US citizens to communicate on US platforms where they do have influence and control so they can censor speech and continue the capitalist forever wars.

> They want US citizens to communicate on US platforms where they do have influence and control so they can censor speech and continue the capitalist forever wars.

No different to any other country. China does the same, as does Russia, Korea and Japan.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#105

Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours. I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.

Instead of US competing with TikTok they should just take it because that is what China does? Do we really want to become China?

How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We"? that was more of a DJT thing, he was lambasted for it, the security state wanted TPP. They call stepping away from it a mistake.

TPP was a strategy to counter China's growing influence, it wouldn't have benefited them.

Also a strategy to lengthen copyright/IP terms around the world for the sake of “harmonization”, harmonization meaning raise the terms to what US lobbyists negotiated there.

It’s a miracle that the TPP went down in flames. It had great marketing as an anti-China bill but mostly served to enrich a small minority of notorious tax evaders, namely companies that revolve around state granted monopolies to Intellectual Property.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#107
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which US companies has China forced to divest their holdings?

Almost all of them? Microsoft had to divest its Chinese cloud to a Shanghai water utility company (they do sewers, water reclamation and Microsoft Azure cloud!). All the auto companies that setup in China had to do it as 49/51 JVs so Chinese companies could learn lots of "how to make auto" IP, well, Tesla is the first one that was allowed to come in whole.

A sewerage company sounds perfectly qualified to operate modern internet infrastructure, they deal with much the same material

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#108

Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours. I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.

Instead of US competing with TikTok they should just take it because that is what China does? Do we really want to become China? How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?

> they should just take it

Tiktok will not become state-owned/run by the US.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#109
It's an interesting experiment for the government. Is there another large (forget massive) social platform, heavily geared towards the young, that was banned and the users trickled into another platform?

I can't think of an instance of this. I don't see how it won't succeed, if they cut off monetizing the posts..

I guess, what happens if someone's wearing a sponsor's t-shirt and makes a plug in the middle of their rant about someone who put their feet on the back of their airline seat?

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of US competing with TikTok they should just take it because that is what China does? Do we really want to become China? How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?

> they should just take it Tiktok will not become state-owned/run by the US.

Force to sell it, and the owners should be in US or something like this can happen again. The state then has data access.

I get what you mean but it is just splitting hairs at this point.

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