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Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

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Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#561

Post by ethbro »

bigpumpkin wrote: post #542
CydeWeys wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets right to the heart of the paradox of tolerance. When your country is tolerant of other countries' companies operating locally, but they aren't tolerant of the same, then you're going to eventually be overrun. You cannot defeat the intolerant through blanket tolerance; consequences and retaliation are necessary. To make it even simpler, tit-for-tat is a good strategy for iterated prisoner's dilemma; always c…

Hah! Why doesn't the US ban the Nazi party or the KKK if it really cares about the Paradox of tolerance?

Because neither are numerous enough so as to constitute a legitimate threat.

If we started seeing local governments having openly KKK or neo-Nazi majorities, the freedom of speech balance would substantially alter.

First amendment rights in the US are typically circumscribed only via a requirement to show actual, existential harm.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#562

Post by JumpCrisscross »

trasz wrote: post #528
ethanbond wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, if you don’t believe in the western systems of checks and balances despite the long, long track record of it performing with greater regard for human dignity than any regime without checks and balances, we’re just not going to be able to have a conversation here. No sensible person would suggest the American system is perfect. But to suggest that an imperfect system of checks and balances is tantamount to an ac…

Thing is, there are no checks and balances for this area of government activity. Otherwise why would american companies include government backdoors in their products?

> there are no checks and balances for this area of government activity

Of course there are. Congress can pass laws limiting executive actions. And the courts can constrain it.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#563

Post by scrollbar »

bigpumpkin wrote: post #542
CydeWeys wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets right to the heart of the paradox of tolerance. When your country is tolerant of other countries' companies operating locally, but they aren't tolerant of the same, then you're going to eventually be overrun. You cannot defeat the intolerant through blanket tolerance; consequences and retaliation are necessary. To make it even simpler, tit-for-tat is a good strategy for iterated prisoner's dilemma; always c…

Hah! Why doesn't the US ban the Nazi party or the KKK if it really cares about the Paradox of tolerance?

I think parent’s point is that it doesn’t (but it should if it wants to survive)

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#564

Post by [deleted] »

anon9001 wrote: post #459
caymanjim wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is that he can't. The president has no power to ban TikTok. The president also has no control over how the app is distributed or its connectivity. He can say whatever he wants, and he can strongarm the agencies he has some control over (like the FCC), but there's simply no mechanism by which a ban can be enforced, legal or technical. Unless Google and Apple decide to voluntarily remove it from their…

I want you to be right, but I don't think you are. He's likely to issue some kind of executive order forcing bytedance to divest tiktok to continue operations. We may see some DoJ or FCC enforcement action that's effectively a "ban" (for users) while only being legally a temporary disruption of service pending compliance (for lawmakers, judges, enforcement agencies, etc to be okay with it). As we have learned over th…

[deleted]

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#565

Post by Finnucane »

sjg007 wrote: post #418
keiferski wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite sure that COVID counts as a Black Swan event, at least according to his own definition. From Wikipedia: The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain: 1. The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology. 2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare…

He cleaned up in 2008.

Also not really a black swan event. Plenty of people saw the crash coming. Just not economists or regulators or real estate shills.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#566

Post by ethbro »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #516
grugagag wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe exposing the Chinese population to to a tiny bit of critical thinking or anything not in line with CCP’s propaganda is what is feared, not necessarily bullying, don’t you think?

I am talking about how they may rationalize it, not what the actual goal is. Take the Iraq war. The goal was to further assert ourselves in the Middle East, settle old scores, signal to our official enemies we mean business and enrich a bunch of military contravtors. But the rationalization that I think made it possible for a lot of these people to sleep at night was things like defending the country, empowering wome…

> but I think people sometimes underestimate the foothold of the CCP in mainland China and assume a coup would happen a week after YouTube was let in.

The important point is not what people believe, but what the CCP itself believes.

It seems natural for all governments brought to power through revolution to overestimate and fear the power of revolution. Especially when they knowingly don't have a firm grasp on public thinking, due to continued suppression of open, free media.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#567

Post by kristopolous »

KineticLensman wrote: post #540
kristopolous wrote: post #520

This could only lose him votes. He's obviously isolated himself from the savvy political operatives that rode him into victory last time. I welcome the continued missteps

> This could only lose him votes Yes, but he has probably decided that the people who are active TikTok users AND Trump voters are not a large part of the base.

The young "gamer republican" and the people wooed by flashy Milo types really helped push him over in the rust belt last time. How out of date that sounds now just shows how much he's lost that group.

His calculation is wrong. There's a few remaining bowties in the under 30 group but now probably not more than any other time.

Lucky for him the democrats are profoundly incompetent and would find a way to trip over their own shoelaces while walking barefoot so it may not matter.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#568

Post by JumpCrisscross »

shlant wrote: post #455
glenstein wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable to do for national security purposes, just like I think it's reasonable to disentangle U.S. industries from Chinese companies that pose national security threats and steal trade secrets. So as a matter of principle, at least, I'm fine with it. I can't say I feel great about the wisdom of banning Tiktok in particular, but I won't let that confuse me into disagreeing with the underlying principl…

> I think it's reasonable to do for national security purposes Haven't the most egregious erosions of civil liberties (Patriot Act for example) been implemented using the same argument? Not commenting on the validity of your position specifically, but your reasoning for it seems like it could be applied to just about anything regardless of how well it fits into the idea of a free and open democracy

> Haven't the most egregious erosions of civil liberties (Patriot Act for example) been implemented using the same argument?

Yes. We should be careful about it. That’s why I’m against secret courts. But this action us happening in the open, and ByteDance will have a chance to challenge it in court. (Something no American company could do in China.)

Just because something can be abused doesn’t mean it is always abusive.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#569

Post by throwaway894345 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #347
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #106

Not even getting into the CCP ties, it's always struck me as unfair that Western social media companies are banned in China, while Chinese ones have been able to compete Worldwide. In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a win…

I agree it's unfair, but when you defend something for moral reasons or claim to have a moral high ground, you should stick with it even if it's unfair, right? The West has always said that the Chinese bans to Western social media and tech companies were authoritarian and antidemocratic. How is this less so?

The US ostensibly isn’t banning TikTok to prevent its population from being exposed to foreign criticism, ideas, etc which might reflect badly on The Party. We know this because the US permits lots and lots of foreign media, applications, and websites while China restricts far, far more.

None of this is to say that I think the executive action is a good idea, but there is a middle ground between “a bad idea” and “literally the same as the CCP”.

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