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TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

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Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#471

Post by vivekd »

bjourne wrote: post #146
sekai wrote: post #57

The people pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue are ignoring that no one was requiring TikTok to change their content at all. The law was written to allow for 0 impact on users if the CCP-connected parent company simply divested. Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. Bu…

Many American civil liberties organizations think that the the ban is a free speech issue: https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-scotus-tiktok-ban-violates... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supre... It seems to me that they aren't "pretending" they honestly believe the issue is about free speech. Laws that does not explicitly curtail…

I don't know if it's a free speech issue but legally speaking it's definitely not a first amendment issue because the law targets foreign corporations and the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#473

Post by wildrhythms »

BrenBarn wrote: post #418

It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue. To me it's more like if newspapers were printed with toxic ink or something. The negatives of TikTok have nothing to do with the speech expressed by the "creators" on the platform, but rather with the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose. It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as…

>the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose

What material effects are those?

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#474

Post by roboror »

stuaxo wrote: post #440
sekai wrote: post #57

The people pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue are ignoring that no one was requiring TikTok to change their content at all. The law was written to allow for 0 impact on users if the CCP-connected parent company simply divested. Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. Bu…

Fifuciary duty to shareholders is one of the most pernicious forces against progress there is. The short term "number go up" mentality is breeds is a cancer.

That's somewhat of a myth that lets these companies off easy, there's no ruling that says you have to maximize profit at all costs, or at all to an extent. The sole motivator is greed.

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#475

Post by kccqzy »

mrkramer wrote: post #53

I would like to ask Chinese president Xi Jinping when will Google and Facebook be available in China and all the rest of the Western social apps. Can I get any clarity and assurance? Thanks.

Well fifteen years ago Google was available in China. And at that time, while the masses simply used Baidu, among the educated it was well known that Google delivered better results. And that was because Google capitulated to the censors. The government had a direct hotline into the Chinese offices of Google and could demand the search engine immediately ban certain keywords or results. At that time Baidu's censorship was quite a bit more heavy-handed than Google's. It was Google that grew tired of this arrangement and decided to quit. They first moved the operations to Hong Kong, and then later the Chinese government decided to block the Hong Kong version of Google.

As a former Google employee, during my employment I found plenty of internal blog posts from the China team at that time about this arrangement. It was amazing to me that a lot of these internal blogs simply weren't deleted because people forgot about it and storage was so cheap.

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#476

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

nimbius wrote: post #431
robswc wrote: post #10

The straight up "shout out" in the pop-up, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional." Ironically, it probably got them huge bonus points so they know what they're doing.

[flagged]

> The problem is most readers still think theres a discernable difference between the parties.

I will give you excellent odds we're going to immediately see a definite difference between presidencies here.

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#477

Post by brisky »

mikeweiss wrote: post #25

Trump and team may be the biggest public relations masterminds of all time. They realize that the populous is fickle and easily won over with obvious stunts. Define the villains and play the hero. It keeps working for him over and over and over. Truly incredible.

It is easy to confuse a mastermind with somebody who is simply willing to break the law.

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#478

Post by freehorse »

sekai wrote: post #57

The people pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue are ignoring that no one was requiring TikTok to change their content at all. The law was written to allow for 0 impact on users if the CCP-connected parent company simply divested. Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. Bu…

I do not understand this line of argument. On the one hand there is a political decision to ban-or-annex a foreign company, on the other hand the reaction should not be political and in general political implications should not be discussed?

And if anything, if tiktok US is sold it will be way below its actual value, so there are many reasons to resist this apart from the political ones. And I assume they expect they will come to a concession in the first place.

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#479

Post by theobreuerweil »

Buttons840 wrote: post #45

The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech. We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced. Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.

This seems not to be an opinion that other people hold, but I never saw social media as “free speech” given that some third party can decides which parts of what you say get promoted.

If you sent letters to people via a middleman who decided which of those to forward onwards, you’d see that as censorship. I appreciate that that’s an over-simplified example - it’s meant to be a reductio ad absurdum. But control of the algorithm effectively regulates free speech, IMO.

Also (for clarity) the fact that China happens to be involved is not relevant to my point!

Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

#480

Post by JFingleton »

hackyhacky wrote: post #240
Brystephor wrote: post #34

What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it? Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?

> it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Trump was against Tiktok before he was for it. He was also against crypto currencies before he released his own.

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