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Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

congress.gov

241–250 of 741 posts

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you can buy that information for 'practically free' (amortized per person), you don't need an app for that.

Please tell me where I can purchase information about the sexual preferences of Republican politicians and leading religious figures. I... have... reasons.

I’m sure you could run some targeted ads on pornhub and figure it out.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#242

Maybe someone will scroll all the way down to this comment. Probably not. For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. I make a decent chunk of income in USD and this terrifies me... but this. This move saddens me. There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how…

[flagged]

I agree with your comment but if you think banning TikTok is about stopping China's psyops you are not paying attention. This is protectionism for the US social media industry. Removing American made content from TikTok will also make it less appealing for other western countries as it will have less of the wealthy empire-grown "influencers" everyone loves, hence giving an alternative to US alternatives by Google/Facebook/Snap to cut into their market.

China can psyops on any social media platform, Tencent owned Reddit for longer than anyone in congress has been worried about this only that no US based Reddit competitor makes enough money to pay for national security lobbyists in DC.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#243

Maybe someone will scroll all the way down to this comment. Probably not. For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. I make a decent chunk of income in USD and this terrifies me... but this. This move saddens me. There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how…

a) The government can do more than one thing at a time. b) There is zero appetite from the GOP for gun control. Until that changes the status quo persists. c) Information about US citizens (which can be used to manipulate them) being handed over to the Chinese government is something that the government should be concerned about.

FWIW, that data is being stored on Oracle servers in the US, with provisions on how it can be accessed as part of some of the agreements reached under Trump.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their qu…

> [The] US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China. Yeah, except that any business can just buy that information. I can buy your day-to-day movements for dirt cheap. I own a non-American company (though I'm still an American citizen, but that isn't a factor), and it is insanely cheap to get information about any American you want. Hell, BingBot will tell you all about…

The bill doesn't directly ban data sharing but instead focuses on foreign ownership in US companies. It would be enforced similar to anti-trust laws today, by preventing Chinese nationals from purchasing or having an ownership stake in certain large technology companies deemed a security risk. I don't like the bill because I think it's unnecessary but it has nothing to do with searching people's phones or regulating actual data in any way.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#245
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Washington Post data, there were 393,289 students enrolled at schools during shootings in the past 10 years[0]. (Note this is total enrollment, not those present or injured) In 2022, there were ~25.1 million teens[1], of whom ~67% used TikTok[2], for a total of ~16.8 million on TikTok (totally ignoring anyone under 12 or over 17). I know the numbers are hacky because the first group includes younger chil…

The person you’re replying to said that the possibility of being shot at school is psychologically taxing. This would apply to all students at all schools, not just ones where a shooting literally happened. It is relevant because of how frequent school shootings are now, compared to say, 30 years ago. Columbine shook the country when it happened, now we’re at a couple Columbine-style incidents per year. You can say “…

This idea sorta goes against this other HN post i saw today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35359271

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? It seems focused on only applications/products from a few countries of concern ...or any country that the Secretary of Commerce unilaterally decides is a "national security" concern. That's an incredibly sweeping power to grant.

Sure, but there are natural guardrails within that... for instance if we decided to call the UK a country of national security concern it would trigger massive diplomatic and trade ramifications. Other than China you'll notice everyone else on the list basically has 0 trade volume with the U.S., so there's not much damage to the U.S. economy, but doing it to other countries would be a major escalation with economic c…

No it wouldn’t because the decision wouldn’t be publicized.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their qu…

> [The] US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China. Yeah, except that any business can just buy that information. I can buy your day-to-day movements for dirt cheap. I own a non-American company (though I'm still an American citizen, but that isn't a factor), and it is insanely cheap to get information about any American you want. Hell, BingBot will tell you all about…

TikTok disappearing from tens of millions of iPhones overnight (I have no idea about Androids) would probably work pretty well. If I had to guess, almost none of those people can jailbreak their iPhone to get it again, either. Your option would be to switch to Android and learn to sideload apps (which I think is pretty damn easy these days).

The point is not to enforce against individual users, just to remove it from the main distribution channels.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a good breakdown of it. I read it, but don't think I really understood.

Jeremy Hambly does a decent job breaking parts of it down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6AynjtnJG8

Thanks! The worst part of this is all the comments about social networking when this bill is about punishing people who want privacy or end to end encrypted communication on their devices with 1 million dollar fine and 20 years of jail time.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#249
The media coverage of this (and the title of this submission, which I argue should be changed to the actual title of the bill) are really confusing everyone - both in here and elsewhere.

There is a Senate bill[1] called "S.85 - No TikTok on United States Devices Act", which is very short and seems to only do one thing, and that's ban TikTok. This bill is in committee.

There is another Senate bill[2], called "S.686 - RESTRICT Act", which is the one linked in this submission and is the one everyone is - imo rightly - quite concerned about, because a bunch of stuff seemingly unrelated to TikTok is getting the Department of Homeland Security treatment. TikTok isn't even mentioned in the text of the act. This bill is also in committee.

I'm honestly left wondering if the RESTRICT Act is being intentionally amplified as "The Bill to Ban TikTok", because of how shitty it is, to give people the means to say "no we shouldn't pass this if the cost of banning TikTok is Patriot Act Part Deux", when in reality we shouldn't pass this bill anyway because it sucks.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/85/...

[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#250

Did anyone notice that the bill doesn't even mention Tiktok??? If it's a "bill to ban TikTok" why doesn't it name the target? It's a red herring. This is the Patriot Act for the Internet. Ironically they're copying the CCP playbook and want the same level of sweeping control with the implementation of a Great Firewall. It's extremely broad and includes everything connected to the internet that has >1M users in a year…

lol ridiculous.
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