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Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

congress.gov

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Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#281

Post by goatlover »

charlieflowers wrote: post #81
kirse wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual #1. TikTok is banned in China, but in their similar app (Douyin) their kids are limited to 40min a day and restricted from a lot of the digital opium drip that US kids are receiving in infinite quantities. Sounds like it'd only be fair to follow suit if China itself is limiting the poisoning of their own citizens: https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2023/03/24/douyin-tiktok...

It is mind boggling, and at the same time not surprising at all, that China is enforcing a humane policy to protect its children when we are not willing to do the same.

[flagged]

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#282

Post by narrator »

threeseed wrote: post #183
withinboredom wrote: post #164

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.

There are people who look at crime statistics to figure out how likely they are to get murdered based on their circumstances and optimize that, and there are people who watch the news.

There are people who look at data to determine how likely they were to die from covid vs. the risk and effectiveness of a vaccine authorized for emergency use, and there are people who watch the news.

You can't have a good argument with people who watch the news because they get convinced of their position emotionally through anecdotes that the news focuses on, not data. You end up arguing with that person's emotional reaction to anecdotes. It's never a good idea to criticize another person's emotions if you expect to remain friends with them or not get flagged on HN.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#283

Post by satellites »

spamlettuce wrote: post #245
satellites wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think we can safely say that social media hurts mental health worldwide, and school shootings are also really bad for people. It’s almost like they’re separate issues and we don’t have to pick one or the other to deal with. Does that sound reasonable?

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#284

Post by sudosysgen »

bdw5204 wrote: post #104
ramblenode wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China doesn't allow FB, Insta, Twitter, etc to operate in its market > If western social media companies were able to offer their services in China I've seen this meme floating around a lot recently and feel the need to add in some relevant history. Between the mid and late aughts Google, Facebook, and Twitter were all operating in China. Around this time the Chinese government got very serious about content filter…

The problem there is that Google, Facebook and Twitter refused to export American values abroad and chose to comply with the censorship laws of foreign governments. I do regard it as morally unacceptable for an American tech company to collaborate with political repression in a foreign country either by silencing dissidents or by helping that foreign government track down dissidents. I also think it is quite reasonab…

Google, Facebook, and Twitter didn't have that choice. They could either agree to follow Chinese censorship, or be steadfast and get banned. They did the latter.

TikTok is not asking to be allowed to operate in the US and uphold Chinese values. It's just asking to be allowed to operate in the US, and agreed to public oversight on its algorithms and data storage. This is essentially equivalent to what the Chinese government asks of American companies, and what they declined to do, in large part due to moral disagreement from their employees.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#285

Post by sudosysgen »

calgarymicro wrote: post #169
AustinDev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language on what constitutes a violation is vague, but it does appear you could face hefty fines and jail time for this behavior under the current draft of the act. "Hence anyone using a VPN to access TikTok would be in trouble—specifically, subject to up to $1 million in fines, 20 years in prison, or both."[1] [1] https://reason.com/2023/03/29/could-the-restrict-act-crimina...

If you believe the Senator who wrote it (up to you I guess), this doesn't meet the bar for prosecution. > Warner's office says this isn't so. Spokesperson Rachel Cohen told Newsweek that the provisions only apply when someone is "engaged in 'sabotage or subversion' of communications technology in the U.S., causing 'catastrophic effects' on U.S. critical infrastructure, or 'interfering in, or altering the result' of a…

I can't find that language in the act. It seems to apply to any violation of the act. The linked article goes over the language of the act and it seems to have the same impression thereof.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#286

Post by ActorNightly »

gorwell wrote: post #214

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…

Honest question,did the Patriot act ever get misused intentionally in a grossly negligent way?

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#288

Post by rglover »

revscat wrote: post #250
gorwell wrote: post #214

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.

It's not at all. Give it a read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35345064

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#289

Post by FormerBandmate »

throwaway4837 wrote: post #176
withinboredom wrote: post #164

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…

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…

Well yeah, ByteDance directly takes orders from the Chinese government. Big Tech can also take orders from the American government, but America is bound by the rule of law and isn't actively imprisoning millions in concentration camps so it's way better

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#290

Post by atlasunshrugged »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #246
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would that be possible? I've read the text and didn't see any ability for them to not publish it, but more practically as soon as they ban an app from X country not already on the list, wouldn't it become clear in their justification for doing so that the country of origin would have been added?
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