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TikTok is now banned in Montana

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Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#181

Slightly off topic - I'm not sure I've heard the gov stating it plainly in the recent years: "the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States" (from the bill). Did I just miss it / glance over, or is this out of character for officially released gov documents?

That line caught me as well - seems Montana at least has a designated enemy even if federal offices don’t state it that way. However the DoD in their recent zero trust framework document basically pointed all the fingers at China as well.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a state even have a right to do something like this? Somehow, I feel like if California tried to ban Fox News - it would not fly. This doesn't seem that different, though I personally find it amusing that it's coming from a conservative state. I do agree TikTok is toxic trash - but I'd say the same about Fox News - and it just doesn't seem like something a state has the ability to ban.

It's predictable that it's coming from a conservative state. That they are broadly against using state power to ban things is part of their identity and marketing but not reality. Especially when it can be construed as a social-moral problem.

Or, in other words, all "conservatives" don't necessarily agree on or believe the same things, and this varies by person and by region.

Like any political group, there's a wide variety of ideas. Religious right folks get lumped together with constitutional libertarians, but have very, very different ideas on the proper limits of legislation and government power.

And yes, there are both idiots and brilliant thinkers in the Republican party (which !== 'conservative'). There are very good ideas, and abominably stupid ones.

Much like any group of humans.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#183

>The law specifies that no penalties apply to users of TikTok. But app store operators and TikTok itself could face fines of $10,000 per violation per day, with an individual violation defined as “each time that a user accesses TikTok, is offered the ability to access TikTok, or is offered the ability to download TikTok.” Sounds like a money-printing machine.

[flagged]

Why not advocate for general phone privacy laws? Why can't apps that require geo data use location then discard it? Why can't users decide?

Because these laws don't care about privacy if American companies and government reap the data.

I think TikTok is malware, and I think the reasons the US wants to ban it are self serving. Not how the RESTRICT act bans VPNs, for goodness sake.

I am highly skeptical of government making a coherent privacy bill that isn't a backdoor to more domestic surveillance.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#184
That's a shame because in a world of artificially inflated 10-minute youtube videos, I really enjoy tiktok's to the point short clips. If I want to see a review or a how-to or similar, I go to tiktok first because they are from normal dudes and not big channels that artificially pad their videos to 10 minutes for the ads.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#185

My only consolation in this shitstorm is that it's been expanded to include "all social media applications that collect and provide users' personal information or data to a foreign adversary, or a person or entity located within a country designated as a foreign adversary." So, yeah. I guess it's time to shut 'em all down. Now we just wait for the "I didn't mean American companies" retraction.

That such bans don't include domestic companies spying on people and providing that data to domestic entities says everything about how bankrupt this whole thing is.

That the US is illegally spying on its own citizens is bad, but not as bad as allowing an explicitly hostile, autocratic foreign power to turn a massive propaganda and surveillance platform on US citizens.

The US has many problems, but I'd still rather live in its admittedly somewhat rough approximation to transparent liberal democracy than under a completely and explicitly unaccountable regime like the Chinese Communist Party.

It would be foolish to allow the CCP to abuse our liberal values in a way which undermines the security upon which liberal society depends.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah nothing like banning people from going to restaurants without a state issued vaccine pass (we didn’t forget)

I didn't claim no other groups use state power to ban things. I'm pointing out that the idea that conservatives are uniquely and generally opposed to it is fantasy.

On that we can wholeheartedly agree.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#187

My only consolation in this shitstorm is that it's been expanded to include "all social media applications that collect and provide users' personal information or data to a foreign adversary, or a person or entity located within a country designated as a foreign adversary." So, yeah. I guess it's time to shut 'em all down. Now we just wait for the "I didn't mean American companies" retraction.

That such bans don't include domestic companies spying on people and providing that data to domestic entities says everything about how bankrupt this whole thing is.

Please be clear what you're talking about. There's a difference between "service providing targeted advertising based off what it knows about you" and "service that sells data it has collected about you". The former wouldn't sell that data, because it's their most valuable asset.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's predictable that it's coming from a conservative state. That they are broadly against using state power to ban things is part of their identity and marketing but not reality. Especially when it can be construed as a social-moral problem.

Or, in other words, all "conservatives" don't necessarily agree on or believe the same things, and this varies by person and by region. Like any political group, there's a wide variety of ideas. Religious right folks get lumped together with constitutional libertarians, but have very, very different ideas on the proper limits of legislation and government power. And yes, there are both idiots and brilliant thinkers i…

I'm not speaking about the validity of their ideas or the cohesion of their group identity. Just pointing out that their reputation as being universally against top-down bans is not based on their actions when given the capacity to enact top-down bans.

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#189
post #99

One underappreciated aspect of this is ban is that anyone who wants Tiktok will just go download it in Wyoming or Idaho etc, as it seems to be merely a ban on downloading the app, and not a ban on Tiktok traffic itself. So the ban will have near zero actual impact in practice (even if it somehow makes it into effect). Furthermore, it's unclear if the web app of Tiktok will be affected, or if it's only a ban on the mo…

The point of censorship is not really to ban something outright. It's to show that a thing can be banned, that this thing is not safe from just doing whatever it wants. It is mostly to assert a dominance over a socio-cultural domain and to establish an identity by negation. The initiators of the ban probably do not believe the banning will work either. The main point of the ban is the enforcement of the ban, not the ban itself. It is also done out of fear, to undermine a disrupting element of the established order, which Tik Tok certainly is. I mean, it's pretty much brain poison lol

Re: TikTok is now banned in Montana

#190

Slightly off topic - I'm not sure I've heard the gov stating it plainly in the recent years: "the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States" (from the bill). Did I just miss it / glance over, or is this out of character for officially released gov documents?

That line caught me as well - seems Montana at least has a designated enemy even if federal offices don’t state it that way. However the DoD in their recent zero trust framework document basically pointed all the fingers at China as well.

Not enemy, adversary. A much softer claim and one I'm pretty sure has been taken for granted for a while.
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