I don't know the dots you're trying to connect here, but there's little monetary support from Congress for Israel nowadays. Although, in my opinion, that's more to do with partisan politics than anything.
TikTok has been the only popular social media network in the US not censoring Israeli crimes on Palestinians.
There is a reason this is one of the things that's passing with bipartisan support. Both parties are excusing, and are on the side of Israel and they know that public opinion turning against Israel will cause them future problems.
Reality is, the sudden push for a TikTok ban after it was stalled for more than a year is Palestine.
I'm interested to see how this plays out. TikTok is popular enough that I can imagine it's making enough money outside the US to just let them ban it and not sell. The whole thing is interesting to watch from a non-China/US perspective. It feels like a move to make the US government look strong to its citizens. A move that, unusually, can have bipartisan support. It feels like propaganda really. And judging by the co…
I think you're underestimating how powerful social media and TikTok in particular is
I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security concerns. We can make similar arguments about the negative effects of Facebook, Instagram, and etc. even from the POVs of other countries, but the key issue here is that China heavily restricts foreign apps and services from operating in their market. If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete…
That's a bad argument because western platforms are free to compete fairly in PRC market, provided they follow PRC laws like EVERY OTHER PRC PLATFORM. Facebook/Twitter only got banned after 2009 minority riots for abetting terrorism and not cracking down on posts calling for mutual retaliatory violence. It's more accurate to say most major western platforms at the time was simply incapable of of moderating PRC content. This was pre western human moderation push, unlike domestic PRC players who already had 10,000s of human moderators because that's what was needed. Western platforms didn't want to spend the money at the time and it wasn't after they scaled their own moderation efforts that FB/Google spung up (now defunct) projects to re-enter PRC market. The fundmental fact is western platforms didn't want to put in the work to comply with PRC laws at the time because it was expensive and looked bad optically (and still does, because are they going to handover dissident info to CCP?), and it would be unfair to allow them to operate in PRC without the same onerous moderation infra as domestic PRC platforms. There's a reason Bing still operates in PRC, see recent Bloomberg piece on Microsoft keeps Bing running in PRC by basically complying to mass censorship like domestic players. Like it's not PRC's problem if internal Google decent killed project dragonfly and whatever Zuckerberg tried to do in the mid 10s.
I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security concerns. We can make similar arguments about the negative effects of Facebook, Instagram, and etc. even from the POVs of other countries, but the key issue here is that China heavily restricts foreign apps and services from operating in their market. If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete…
>If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market? Because we are (used to be?) a country that believes in democracy and the will of our citizens. If people want to download a Chinese app and watch straight up Chinese news and propaganda (not even close to what TikTok actually is), they sh…
> If people want to download a Chinese app and watch straight up Chinese news and propaganda ... That's the entire idea of the First Amendment...
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There is a reason this is one of the things that's passing with bipartisan support. Both parties are excusing, and are on the side of Israel and they know that public opinion turning against Israel will cause them future problems.
I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security concerns. We can make similar arguments about the negative effects of Facebook, Instagram, and etc. even from the POVs of other countries, but the key issue here is that China heavily restricts foreign apps and services from operating in their market. If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete…
> We can make similar arguments Hey remember when Apple, Google & Amazon all colluded to ban Parler off the face of the planet within days, a purely political move, based on some shaky allegations of moderation? Meanwhile TikTok is labelled as a "must have" app in the AppStore....
>Hey remember when Apple, Google & Amazon all colluded to ban Parler off the face of the planet within days, a purely political move,
I actually don't remember that. I do remember lots of terroristic and genocidal posts on Parler though.
Nate Silver did a nice write up on the probability and implications of all this here: https://open.substack.com/pub/natesilver/p/why-the-political... When Biden passes this bill (which he said he would), I can only assume Dems will lose a large part of the younger voting demographic. If jot now, then 4 years from now. Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking about how much h…
Agreed it's crazy, but it's a good political move. Everyone agrees we should ban it, but no one wants the blame because you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it. So if you're the one who isn't in charge of the hard-but-good decision (or in Trump's case, if you don't particularly give much of a shit about it anyway) it's easy to just pick the most politically advantageous side.
Broadcast news and radio are limited to at most 20% foreign ownership by default [1]. Applying a similar requirement to large internet news distributors seems reasonable if they want to do business in the US (even if "banned" they could still distribute content, they'd just be restricted in making money). [1] https://www.foster.com/newsroom-publications-The-Road-Map-Fo...
But, every American has access to even government propaganda of foreign adversaries. It's part of the 1st Amendment. Denying access to this information feels really weird. If TikTok doesn't divest, it will be banned and app stores will not be allowed to distribute it and the government telling app stores which content is and isn't approved feels like the PATRIOT Act all over again, all of us handing over our rights f…
> every American has access to even government propaganda of foreign adversaries. It's part of the 1st Amendment. Denying access to this information feels really weird
As it should. Fortunately, this bill doesn’t do that. If ByteDance won’t sell, TikTok gets removed from app stores. TikTok.com will remain free to access.
The bill curtails distribution and amplification, not speech.
I think that is a slippery slope race to the bottom of morals/ideals. Pretty soon you have "China doesn't let people say bad things about their leader, neither should we" and "China uses force to take things from other countries, why shouldn't we" Your ideals and morals should be strong enough they don't change based on a bad actor.
I think you totally missed the argument: it's not about copying anything China does, it's about reciprocating restrictions that they place on your country. If China places a tariff on US imported goods, then the US places a tariff on Chinese goods. This is and has been the case even for non-adversary countries, and is bread-and-butter foreign policy
> it's not about copying anything China does, it's about reciprocating restrictions
Your justification is literally "They're doing it to us, so we should do it to them".
Apply that logic to everything China does. Do you want to behave like them?
Wait a few years and it will be about reciprocating other things China does.