Alright. Hundreds or thousands of Chinese trackers on every military base in the world. Perfect.
The US military independently banned Tiktok on all personnel devices half a decade ago.
How do they enforce the ban?
TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
481–490 of 1001 posts
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#482“Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX), the author of the bill to ban TikTok, owns hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Meta, one of TikTok's chief rivals. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) bought up to $50,000 worth of Meta stock last January before voting to ban TikTok in April." Exhibit 1. https://www.capitoltrades.com/issuers/431610?page=2
[deleted]
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#483What'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?
> flip-flop so quickly
The timing and phrasing make it clear that this was planned and negotiated in advance, and the shutdown was just for show in order to be able to post a memo about how "President Trump" saved it. If actual negotiation had to occur, it would not have happened in the twelve hours between midnight and noon on Sunday morning.
The point of the stunt was to persuade large numbers of younger folks that the Ds are the bad guys and Trump in particular is the hero. And it'll work as designed.
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#484I guess we know now why TikTok voluntarily went dark. Wonder which companies will be assured by TikTok's assurances there will be no consequences for helping them break the law. I just hope this causes congress to dig their heels in again. Almost can't believe what I'm seeing.
In a sane world Congress would be furious at the executive overreach.
I don't remember the last time either party called out their colleagues for questionable use of executive orders, but to do so would require principles, and we haven't seen those in decades either.
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
[flagged]
> People aren't allowed to change their minds?
Sure they are, but they should explain why they changed their minds. In the case of meme coins like $TRUMP, it's hard to defend crypto as an investment or as a currency, which leaves the obvious reason: it's a scam.
In the case of Trump, I'm sure he was all for crypto as soon as he realized that he personally could make money from it. Same goes for his NFT grift.
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#486this is on the edge of becoming a shitshow...
The US has already jumped head first into the shit can. All those ideals of democracy I learned about growing up in the US - checks and balances, the rule of law, land of opportunity. It's all become a massive joke.
Well it needed people to enforce those things and it needed people to vote. Both those things didn’t happen.
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#487My read is that the US government originally wanted to try to force TikTok to restructure its relationship with China so it wouldn't be under control of the party, either by leaving the country or more likely selling to a US-friendly owner. This was the argument when Trump toyed with the idea during his first mandate. Occam's Razor suggests this was due to both a matter of national security from the perspective of th…
> But these buyers don't want the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero
Quick reminder: TikTok is available for most of the planet (except China), so a US ban does not make the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero.
It makes a sell-off very unlikely, but I doubt it's going to happen no matter what.
It's quite puzzling why ByteDance didn't bring up the idea of making a TikTok US in the same way TikTok CN (a.k.a. Douyin) works.
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#488The 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.
[deleted]
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#489It'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…
Where's the smoking gun for these privacy issues? Why hasn't the FBI or anyone else investigated and discovered these issues, if they exist?
Because the Chinese Communist Part is not stupid enough to just exploit their leverage over sovereign nations for shits and giggles. You don't need a smoking gun to understand how corporations in China operate. They operate with the blessing of the CCP, and regardless of whether they've ever done anything, the scale of what they could do if they wanted to would be some spectacular lessons in modern propaganda.
Re: TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
#490By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda? I sometimes cannot believe it's those who so loudly cry about threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process. Rather than tackle the narratives substantively, they'd argue about who gets to manipulate the…
I do find people's faith in Democracy, as opposed to Authoritarianism, somewhat exasperating. Two candidates, pre-selected by the powers that be to lead the nation, compete in inane televised debates, wave flags and make promises that everyone knows they are going to break. This everyone debates hotly, and then lines up to register one bit of Holy Democratic Choice, to be averaged with a hundred million similar bits to determine, by a margin of a few percent, the one and only legitimate Government of the People, by the People, for the People. My Ass.
In the end, "democracy" is about power and control, just like any other form of government, and the TikTok ban is just another power-play, however it may be justified publicly. Not that I'm overly sorry to see it banned, by the way :)