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Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

rubio.senate.gov

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Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#371

Post by janalsncm »

The message this sends if it passes is not “don’t spy on people”. The message is “play ball or get banned”. It’s hard to come up with a principled justification for allowing Facebook to operate with impunity while banning TikTok, unless those principles are highly aligned with those of three letter agencies.

This leads me to the cynical interpretation of “national security” objections. The spying was never the issue. It’s who can access the data afterwards that’s the problem. If the US government can’t, then it’s a security concern.

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#372

Post by AlbertCory »

snapcaster wrote: post #197
AlbertCory wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, it's the old slippery-slope argument again. I'm fine with banning all apps from countries that require their app-makers to share data with the government. If that requires an international treaty to codify when a company must share data (e.g. only with a criminal warrant), then great, let's do that. China would refuse to sign that treaty? Even better.

This would ban all US apps right?

The (proposed) treaty would say they can ban apps which don't respect privacy. It doesn't say they must ban them.

As for the validity of the complaint: that would be handled the same as for existing free trade treaties, i.e. slowly.

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#373

Post by mannerheim »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #364
mannerheim wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they didn't 'pull out', they were banned. And Dragonfly wasn't stopped by the US, it was cancelled by Google after their employees protested. Anyway, if Google and Facebook need to follow censorship laws in China, then maybe TikTok needs to follow not-being-based-in-China laws in the US. After all, they can't just decide not to follow the laws.

Are there such laws? So the idea isn't reciprocal after all, it's to entirely target one country's companies. https://www.thatsmags.com/china/post/32153/this-day-in-histo... Dragonfly was stopped after pressure from Americans, both civil and political pressure.

That's what this law is about.

> In 2018, media reports that Google was working on a prototype for another censored Chinese search engine surfaced, which was met with backlash from some Google employees. The development, called ‘Project Dragonfly,’ was shortly after suspended, according to The Intercept.

The US government did not force Google to stop Dragonfly.

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#374

Post by dtjb »

goosesanta wrote: post #359
dtjb wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would the US not do the same with TikTok? Millions (?) of Americans have freely chosen to receive and interact with the app, wouldn't their freedom of speech allow them to enjoy the content they choose?

But they're not choosing the content. Algorithm -> Tiktok -> China -> Communist party is.

Who specifically is in charge of the algorithm at Twitter? Keep in mind the recent foreign interest financing and editorial changes. How are we certain they have our best American Interests™ at heart?

I'm not trying to play the whatabout card, I'm trying to understand how we would legally articulate what TikTok has done to justify banning by congressional decree. The senate bill [1] doesn't appear to have any measurements or values or clarifications, it's just a few paltry pages that never specify what line TikTok crossed. The only argument I'm hearing is China=Bad.

And who knows, maybe China is nefariously manipulating the TikTok algorithm, but for the US government to step in and say "these ideas are too dangerous, you can not access them," seems like the cure is as bad as the disease. It's using blatant authoritarianism to try to stop the spread of potential authoritarianism.

[1] https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/1ebac814-15...

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#375

Post by bitshiftfaced »

LarryMullins wrote: post #273
standardUser wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping our markets open is the American way and it's how the US became the preeminent trading nation and the cornerstone and chief architect of the global economic system. The US always pushes hard for other nations to open their markets as well (for better or worse), but it also leads by example.

"America" in the abstract has benefited immensely from free trade, but the average American has not. Wealth inequality has never been worse.

Income and wealth inequality, but some studies have shown that consumption inequality hasn't changed much, and that the trend is the opposite when you look at leisure time inequality.

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#376

Post by bioemerl »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #326
mannerheim wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple lies. Google was banned after they decided to stop censoring searches. Facebook was banned after they refused to provide the government the identities of protestors in Urumqi. Google cancelled Dragonfly after outcry from their employees.

What? How are they lies, they were operating fine until they decided to not follow the laws one day. That was their prerogative and not the CCP deciding to block them from the market. Unless you can point to laws tiktok is violating it's not a remotely comparable situation. The way that Chinese companies work they explicitly create distinct entities that can meet the requirements of any territories that they operate…

If you think Google and basically every other Western tech company choose to leave China on a whim despite massive profit that could be made I have a few crypto exchanges for you to deposit your money in.

"They weren't following the law"

The law:

"You have to give a chinese company all your technology and 51 percent ownership"

China is a flat out enemy of the United States. We should treat TikTok as an arm of that enemy as a result of how China demands state control over every company operating in the country.

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#377

Post by kristopolous »

akomtu wrote: post #344
kristopolous wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misreading things ... let me try again based on your initial comment: > if you believe China is a dystopian state why would a Chinese tech product that isn't even allowed in it's international form within China not itself "dystopian" ^^ The classification here as "chinese" tech product is the first issue > imo the most dystopian thing about TikTok is the fact that China intentionally exports a highly addict…

The centralized bureau is called CCP. TikTok's main power is creating associations. For example, CCP may dislike some US politician because he is a trouble for Huawei, so TikTok starts subtly pushing videos that associate that politician with bad stuff. In a few weeks 150 millions US citizens have a strong negative reaction to that politician. TikTok may do the same for targeted high-profile individuals, e.g. family…

Have any direct, verifiable, falsifiable and testable evidence with clear a audit trail?

I'd love to see it

Sorry for the high bar. Remarkable stories of secret vast networks of communist mind control have a long history. I claim aggressive skepticism of supposed international plots by a cabal of communist puppetmasters is warranted.

I mean Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, real spies. Not saying this stuff is impossible, there's just a lot of noise here.

Hell there's the long forgotten 1980s espionage by the Japanese stealing stuff from IBM https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/02/09/Hitachi-pleads-guilt... stuff does happen... Espionage in the Silicon Valley, a book published in 1984, is a pretty good summary of them if you're really interested. You'll have to toss about $20 on the used market to get a copy though. (I should send mine to internet archive)

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#378

Post by bitshiftfaced »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #298
maria2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with user data. People are influenced by the content they see on social media. Allowing a foreign adversary to run the main information network for an entire generation of the population is not a wise move.

HN posters are in love with the "people are too stupid to think for themselves and need me to protect them" narrative. Nowhere else do I see that line of thought as frequently as I see it here. Not even Reddit pushes that justification for controlling the ability of others to access whatever media sources they want as much as it is pushed here. We truly must be the intellectual giants of humanity to know so consisten…

Let's say that the nation of Lalaland is has a state-owned company whose product is a social network that's popular among Americans. Lalaland decides that one particular candidate in the next US election is beneficial to their country's trade/security/etc. The social network strategically shows "go out and vote" content to the demographics most likely to vote for the candidate they would like in office.

Is this ok? Were any of those people on the social network "stupid" if they were more likely to vote after seeing targeted content?

Re: Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

#379

Post by UltraViolence »

cute_boi wrote: post #345

"national security concerns" and "what about children" have always been used by government to pass useless bills. Instead of banning Tiktok, how about enforcing proper rules and regulations that every social media should follow? Why not make a proper privacy that every people in US deserves. Many people are probably glad that they are banning Chinese tech, but at the end it is gonna be superseded by Instagram which s…

Because there's essentially no way to enforce the rules.

All user data is processed in China and de software is also Chinese-made. There's no way in hell you'll get access and you can regulate all you want but in the end they'll simply ignore you.

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