Could they not allow another TikTok variant to be made that doesn't have the problematic ties. (I'm no TikTok fan)
I believe bytedance has a US company now
US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
271–280 of 769 posts
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#272Could they not allow another TikTok variant to be made that doesn't have the problematic ties. (I'm no TikTok fan)
This already exists. Several Western-owned social media platforms have cloned many of TikTok's features and much of its user experience. They just haven't done as good a job of it.
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol… you must be new here. When has ANY digital initiative gone right the first time from any Australian government. The last time they tried censorship (aka Stephen Conroy) it was thwarted by a 15 year old and abandoned. Let’s not even talk about their current piracy website ban where all you need to do is point DNS to someone non-Australian.
I'm pretty aware of how inept our government is at these policies, and their surveillance state tendencies (eg undisclosed facial recognition testing at flinder street station). But at this point i think a malicious australian government is less of a threat to the public and our way of life and emotional prosperity than social media.
> undisclosed facial recognition testing at flinder street station
I hadn't heard about that particular intrusion. Got a link?
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#274This is one of the things in my lifetime that gives me the most optimism, alongisde the IRA Bill. as someone in Australia who strongly supports our recent U16 ban, I hope META gets removed/broken up for you guys soon after, at least for underage users. I'm 22 and often wish I had never been born into a world with social media, with the belief that it is one of the worst things we have ever made as a species. I know t…
Just wait until they ban something you care about and then see if you are still in favor of governments deciding what apps you should have or not have.
You think this is a win for now and then in the future based on this same precedent, the Australian government will ban an app that you use regularly because they can and there will be nothing you can do.
When that happens, you'll go protest in the street against the big fascist Australian government, am I right?
> I know the Tit for Tat and privacy optics, and the shutdown of dissenting views on certain provable crimes in the ME may be bad sometimes
If you are going down that road, maybe you can explain when it's ok to ban dissenting views. Apparently, censorship is ok in some cases but not others? Who decides what should be talked about? You?
If censorship is fine in some cases but not in others how do you differentiate between good censorship and bad censorship?
After all, when China removes comments and articles about Tiananmen from the web, they are simply doing what is best for them. But in the west, we call them authoritarians, So what does that make us?
> the destruction of the social fabric of a society and the loss of development and inculcation of values of entire generations.
This vague statement is fear mongering and and a complete hyperbole and gross exaggeration. The same thing was said about newspapers then it was TV, then it was video games and now TikTok/social media.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Since not enough time has passed yet to see the effect of social media on multiple generations, then your argument is invalid.
Are there some downsides to social media? Sure. But it also enables marginalized people to connect with each other whereas in the past they would not have had a space to congregate.
It also helps uncover stories that people in power would prefer to not see the light of day. It also helps coordinate push back against new laws that in the past would have been approved without as much of a peep.
Your argument is basically, that we should throw the baby with the bath water.
It's not different than the populists parties who take complex issues and promise to solve everything with a simple solution when in fact most problems can't be fixed that way.
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It depends" (like every legal question). It's possible to violate free speech rights by banning a platform even when their are alternatives. Most relevantly to this situation, the platform itself is most likely engaging in speech of its own by choosing what to repeat of what other people have said (i.e. it's choice of algorithm). If the platform was being banned for that speech (and that speech didn't happen to fall…
I’m not aware of any other platforms that have been banned, without also having criminal cases opened. Are there any?
What does that have to do with it? The mechanism doesn't really matter, as long as it's legal, which courts have so far ruled it is.
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#276This is one of the things in my lifetime that gives me the most optimism, alongisde the IRA Bill. as someone in Australia who strongly supports our recent U16 ban, I hope META gets removed/broken up for you guys soon after, at least for underage users. I'm 22 and often wish I had never been born into a world with social media, with the belief that it is one of the worst things we have ever made as a species. I know t…
> I'm 22 and often wish I had never been born into a world with social media, with the belief that it is one of the worst things we have ever made as a species. Haha so that when you ring the girl's house her father would answer the phone and ask why you are calling his daughter. I don't use social media except for this site, still need to get on the github.
OMG, that was one of my biggest fears back then. Ah, good old times =P
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with AU's U16 ban is that it's going to end up being a de facto real ID requirement for any Australian to communicate online. And also, how many of us on this site were able to learn and grow because they got online as teenagers and learned things? It would have been much, much better to regulate out the worst features of social media platforms for everyone than to pass a Bill that nobody knows how to imp…
You're acting as if they're banning the Internet for U16, they're not, it's just social media (and not even YouTube, and probably not something like reddit either, at least for viewing). How many things did you actually learn from Facebook? I'm guessing not a lot. The problem with banning specific features etc is that it will most likely just leave giant loopholes and will be extremely hard to actually enforce.
> The problem with banning specific features etc is that it will most likely just leave giant loopholes and will be extremely hard to actually enforce.
I invite you to read the Bill^WAct and look at how it defines an "age-restricted social media platform".
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#278Reciprocity is key. Google and Facebook and most Western web services are blocked in China. If that is the case, then there should be no complaint with blocking Bytedance/other Chinese apps in the West.
Yes. Plenty of Teslas on the street in China but no Chinese cars on the street in the US.
Lets see what the next chapter is; as you said reciprocity is key ...
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is such a stupid argument. This is about censorship to American citizens and a conversation about losing their rights as an authoritarian state's victims.
No American will be censored if TikTok is banned. They will simply use (or go back to using) one of the many other non-TikTok alternatives to talk about the same things. If TikTok were the only game in town, sure, banning it would be censorship. But that's not the case, by a long shot.
This is clearly about censorship, as anyone living outside of the United States can see. It's actually pretty obvious that they're banning the one platform where US oligarchs have no say over what goes viral and what doesn't.
Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
#280This was always about running defense for the likes of Israel and it’s ongoing televised genocide…. This isn’t about national security, if it had been this would’ve never gotten as far as it has been, the door would’ve been closed long ago. TikTok and its algorithm isn’t beholden to the US’s government mandate like the other social media platforms. It also just happens to be the one with the largest amount of users a…
This has nothing to do with Israel. It's economic protectionism and refusing to allow a totalitarian government to have a platform they can use to run unfetterd influence campaigns on our citizens.
> TikTok and its algorithm isn’t beholden to the US’s government mandate like the other social media platforms
Oh please, possible government censorship/influence over US-run social media has been investigated to death over the past several years. There's no there there.