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U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#171

Post by 3JPLW »

justinzollars wrote: post #86

TikTok is actually a great app. When I was a kid in the 00's my friends and I used to carry around a video camera to make music videos. With TikTok you can do it with your cell phone. They beat SnapChat, FB and Instagram on experience. Censorship is something serious to consider, but these are mainly kids making music videos. They aren't using it to organize campaigns.

It's not the creation that's the problem. It's the dissemination of others' content and ads (and the choices in what gets promoted/highly ranked/etc).

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#172

Post by ahoy »

ShteiLoups wrote: post #56
tbyehl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Americans should only be exposed to American Corporate-sanctioned propaganda.

Hey, at least americans can vote on that propoganda.

I didn't realize we were all on facebook's board of directors.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#173

Post by AWildC182 »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #130

While I agree that Chinese soft imperialism is bad, I think it's tremendously funny that Americans are complaining about it now, after years of using military and economic power to enforce a similar imperialism everywhere.

[flagged]

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#175

Post by pdabbadabba »

freeflight wrote: post #120
pdabbadabba wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to, exactly? There certainly is no enforceable law in the United States against LGBT content. There theoretically are restrictions on "obscenity," but they are virtually nonexistent in practice. The only law I can think of that resembles what you're describing in any way is our, indeed, quite aggressive ban on child pornography. And I'm no expert on Canadian child pornography laws, but I'll bet…

> What are you referring to, exactly? There's a pretty good meme about differences between European and American media take on censorship [0]. It's now locked behind an Imgur login due to being NSFW (over a single nipple), but the basic premise is that US media would censor a nipple away, leaving the person recognizable, while European media didn't take issue with the nipple, but instead censored her face to protect…

Yes. This is a fair point. I would emphasize, though, that this is about US culture, not US government or law. Interestingly, part of the whole point of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution is to maintain a lot of separation between these two things.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#176

Post by mgraczyk »

Merrill wrote: post #75

Musical.ly was started by entrepreneurs in Shanghai. Although it may have had US and Japanese investors, I don't think it was an American company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical.ly >"It’s the first company to be headquartered in China, designed in China, but popular in the US," said Greylock investor Josh Elman. "Finally we’re seeing talented people who live in that ecosystem in that world and actually transce…

I've heard this myth that musical.ly was founded in China before, but it's hard to believe if you look at some basic facts.

One cofounder worked full time at SAP in SF bay area for several years before and after musical.ly was founded. The other says on his LinkedIn that he was working in Santa Monica for several years on either side of the founding. They lived, worked, and founded the company in CA.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#177

Post by sol_remmy2 »

kmonsen wrote: post #153
dv_dt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the US doesn't hard censor media like China, I'd agree there is something of a soft censorship/ignoring of many topics. And, if you think about US based hard restraints, there are certainly onerous restrictions with rules attached to financial services imposed by the US into foreign nations.

The censorship is completely different though, if you want to write "Fuck Donald Trump", or give a detailed account of his crimes on a US platform, it will not be censored. Try the same in a Chinese owned platform about f.ex. something as obvious as Tianmen. There are some things such as porn that is censored in many areas.

In America speech is censored by American private companies all the time. Racial or anti-semitic speech is often censored thanks for pressure from civil rights groups (i.e. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-white-n...) and from lawsuits (i.e. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47705904)

Twitter has even begun censoring political speech from public figures: "Twitter will now hide — but not remove — harmful tweets from public figures" (https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18761132/twitter-donald-t...)

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#178

Post by adventured »

Merrill wrote: post #75

Musical.ly was started by entrepreneurs in Shanghai. Although it may have had US and Japanese investors, I don't think it was an American company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical.ly >"It’s the first company to be headquartered in China, designed in China, but popular in the US," said Greylock investor Josh Elman. "Finally we’re seeing talented people who live in that ecosystem in that world and actually transce…

"TikTok also says China does not have jurisdiction over content of the app, which does not operate in China and is not influenced by any foreign government."

If it's a Chinese company, why is TikTok saying that China has zero jurisdiction over the app?

Besides that, the US can require that Bytedance peel off TikTok / Musical.ly. If Bytedance wants access to the US market with that app, it will have to play by US rules. That works similar to how China blocked the Qualcomm - NXP acquisition. Neither Qualcomm nor NXP are Chinese companies. If the combined entity wanted access to China they had to obey China's position on that acquisition. And given China's extreme behavior on restricting US Internet companies from their market, this is more than fair game.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#179

Post by molteanu »

tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #170
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #130

While I agree that Chinese soft imperialism is bad, I think it's tremendously funny that Americans are complaining about it now, after years of using military and economic power to enforce a similar imperialism everywhere.

The false equivalence is strong with this one. In no way shape or form is it even remotely similar.

"Your boy cracked my son's head!"

"Your boy started it first. He broke mine's leg!"

"Yeah, a cracked head is not even remotely similar to a broken leg!"

Moral of the story: Broken legs are normal.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#180

Post by wongarsu »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #148
wongarsu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is much more relaxed about nudity (exposed breasts in prime time TV are fine) but much more restrictive about violence and gore. Instead US companies enforce US standards on us. Even child porn isn't an easy subject. Everyone can agree that liking 12 year olds sexually is pedophilia and images about that are child porn. But when we are taking about 16 year olds it's muddier since we are taking about child porn…

>But when we are taking about 16 year olds it's muddier since we are taking about child porn outside of pedophilia. It's not muddier. The issue isn't the nature of the people viewing the content, but the ability of the victim to consent to the creation of the content. There's no muddiness involved here - sexual exploitation of minors for the production of media is not ok.

"Minor" is a very cultural term, the US steps of adulthood at 18 and 21 are more comparable with 16 and 18 in Europe. Also a 16 year old can consent to sex, so why not to images (particularly ones they made themselves and distribute to single persons).

For 12 year olds it's much easier with the "we don't support pedophilia" argument (which has wide support)

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