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Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

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Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#291

Post by rglover »

ActorNightly wrote: post #286
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?

Go ahead and take your belt and shoes off for me.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#292

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sudosysgen wrote: post #284
bdw5204 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gove…

> 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.

Sigh, it isn't just this: China doesn't do rule of law, so American companies have to follow rule by law when operating in China, but they are also subject to American anti-corruption laws even for their operations in China, which makes doing business in China difficult (unless they can be isolated from that like they are in manufacturing). If it were just "moral disagreements due to employees", the CEOs would find a way around that, but technically it is just hard to do social media in China under Chinese rules that you won't even be told what they are.

But I agree TikTok should be treated fairly, even if that fairness is definitely not reciprocated in China.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#293

Post by sottol »

YellOh wrote: post #275
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 “…

I agree shootings do large societal harm past the students at the school (though to be fair, I'd say the opposite side could correctly argue that TikTok makes lasting changes to children/society beyond just the ones that use it (and may be correlated with depression/suicide, which is also profoundly sad)) Surely you have to do some kind of math eventually, or else you'll end up prioritizing whatever sounds the most d…

> Surely you have to do some kind of math eventually, or else you'll end up prioritizing whatever sounds the most dramatic instead of the things that actually matter (consider people who are more afraid of sharks than drowning, even though shark deaths are 1 in 4,332,817 and drowning deaths are 1 in 1,134)

TSA? Or any other "but think of the children"-type bill? Or look at water-scarcity "solutions" in the south west for something different.

I'm serious, "prioritizing whatever sounds the most dramatic instead of the things that actually matter" is literally 90% of the politician's playbook.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#294

Post by goatlover »

dragontamer wrote: post #68
vkou wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're using China as a role model for our information hygiene, then I think it's fair to say that the free speech experiment that some liberal democracies have practiced over the past few centuries has ran its course, and can be considered a failure. Pack it up, folks, as it turns out, there are some things that are too dangerous to let the public hear.

I think you need to study WW2 a little bit more. The Office of Censorship opening up letters to destroy pro-Nazi sentiment, and the Office of War Information buying up Disney Cartoons to show Donald Duck / Popeye / etc. as a Navy Sailor and encourage us to buy War Bonds through very overt propaganda. Free Speech comes and goes in the USA. We tend to lean towards the freer-side of things, but if we need to, we clamp d…

> Censorship is a tool. A tool best used rarely, maybe only a few times a century. But I unfortunately think we're coming to the point where we need to start using it within this decade or so. And no, not for the stupid AP African American class crap. I mean for the part that matters right now, the China-Taiwan conflict that is obviously brewing up.

How about the Red Scare or Huckleberry Finn? Problem with censorship as a tool is that it will be abused. What makes you so sure that the party censoring AP African American studies won't be back in power next?

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#295

Post by snake_plissken »

These things are pretty dense and generally difficult to read but here are a few nuggets/hot takes.

Could potentially apply to VPNs - Sec 2-3-(B) - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...

General leeway for The Secretary of Commerce to classify things as they see fit. Chevron Deference, the idea that courts defer to executive branch agency interpretations of the law, might go away so this hedges against that - Sec 3-(a)-1-2 - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...

Judicial Review in Section 12. I think this is the section most resembling what we think of with respect to The Patriot Act. Basically feels like it will be very hard to challenge decisions made under this law. I don't read these things often tho so perhaps I am way off base. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#296

Post by FormerBandmate »

chimeracoder wrote: post #239
petilon wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This bill is absolutely horrific. In what way? Explain that, and let readers decide if it is horrific.

> In what way? Explain that, and let readers decide if it is horrific. The bill allows the Secretary of Commerce to unilaterally ban products associated with countries of their choosing, with a 20 year prison sentence for any US citizen who attempts to use a VPN to circumvent the access ban.

> a 20 year prison sentence for any US citizen who attempts to use a VPN to circumvent the access ban

That's fucked up and insane. It should also fail a First Amendment test easily, but that all depends on the courts

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#297

Post by atlasunshrugged »

realce wrote: post #263
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's silly of course, but what about a Ractive? I think something that actively tries to collect data on you and shape your perception controlled by a geopolitical competitor should be handled carefully and potentially outlawed.

So you agree that the Chinese government is doing the right thing when they block a Chinese citizen from viewing Twitter? You agree with the usage of the Great Firewall? You agree with the ability for the government to tell you what websites you can visit? If you use a VPN to read a Chinese newspaper article, you agree that the government should be allowed to imprison you and take all of your possessions? That's madn…

Like I said, things "should be handled carefully and potentially outlawed." Personally I don't think your comparison holds because Twitter for instance isn't controlled by a state actor so the geopolitical issues don't really apply (unless you consider Elon controlled by China because of his dependencies on their critical mineral supply chains and market for Tesla... or by Saudi because of their funds ownership in Twitter).

I don't think the hyperbole here is particularly helpful; there is clearly a national security risk to allowing a foreign competitor unfettered access to your market and control over what amounts to a major media property. Maybe you believe that this doesn't matter and shouldn't be addressed, but if you do believe it should be addressed in some way, you need the legal framework to be able to do so

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#298

Post by atlasunshrugged »

eganist wrote: post #206
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…

Speaking at least with my background: Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our free and open internet against our own people. Regardless of the fact that our kids are most vulnerable, China's seemingly made a point of outsourcing their most polarizing algorithmic decisions to the rest of the world but not to their own population, which is essentially a tacit admission of their awareness of the da…

Yes, telling parents (who are the voters) that actually they should just be doing a better job monitoring their kids activities online seems like a losing political strategy!

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#299

Post by hot_gril »

quasarj wrote: post #180
hitpointdrew wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's MUCH WORSE than the Patriot act. This bill is absolutely horrific. And calling it at bill to "ban TikTok" is extremely disingenuous as it egregiously goes well beyond that.

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

I don't need a breakdown, I already hate it.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#300

Post by yed »

akerl_ wrote: post #279
yed wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read the bill and while I'm not a fan for more general reasons, it doesn't say anything like this at all. The bill is strictly about foreigners from designated US "adversaries" having an ownership stake in large technology companies operating in the US. The text cherry picked in some of these news articles is just a list of the types of technology companies the bill specifies should be the prioritized when evalu…

The bill doesn’t require an ownership stake, it even includes provisions to consider an entity hostile if the holding is indirect.

The intent there is to deal with people trying to get around the provision via intermediary holding companies. At its core there still must be some ownership stake or controlling interest by a foreign national, whether direct or indirect.

Edit: the key parts of the bill that specify it applies only for controlling interests:

> Sec 2-2: CONTROLLING HOLDING.—The term “controlling holding” means a holding with the power, whether direct or indirect and whether exercised or not exercised, to determine, direct, or decide important matters affecting an entity.

> Sec 2-3-a (emphasis mine): COVERED HOLDING.—The term “covered holding”— means [...] a controlling holding held, directly or indirectly, in an ICTS covered holding entity by— [...]

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