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Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

congress.gov

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Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#561

Post by insane_dreamer »

dirtyid wrote: post #132
bigmattystyles wrote: post #106

I feel like they could have done this by creating a bill saying that US social media companies must be given the same access and freedoms to the Chinese market as TikTok has to ours. It would put the onus back on the CCP, they would never allow it and they would get TikTok banned in the US without being the ones to directly ban it. I am sure someone smarter than I can tell me why this is not a viable strategy.

Because US/western social media has same market access to PRC... all they have to do is follow PRC regulations. Literally why FB and Google had internal projects to engineer compliant products to re-enter PRC market, but killed due to internal dissent. The narrative that PRC bans US platforms was always cope. Google pulled out because they didn't like dissidents being hacked, when operationally and eventually they sh…

> data sharing at PRC gov requests like in US.

No, it's nothing like the US. PRC actively censors all social media in China (the social media companies do it themselves based on keywords provided by the government).

> it's not PRC's fault FB/Google employees killed efforts to move back into PRC, or that the SV was drunk on free speech (cheap moderation) until western society realized (but won't admit) PRC regulators were prescient

Moderation on Western platforms is nothing like the censorship that takes place on PRC platforms, and equating them is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. Not to mention that government censorship is much more problematic even than company defacto cenorship (where if you don't like Twitter you can move to Mastodon) since gov censorship is absolute.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#562

Post by evol262 »

retinaros wrote: post #422
Dalewyn wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are able to write your comment criticizing the US government (Congress) because we follow the rule of law and that rule of law includes the 1st Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech and expression. China has no such protections and guarantees.

yeah ask how people who backed trump fared once he lost? ban from social circles, political oponents “tracking” the people who worked with him or under him so that “they never have jobs anymore”. its just one example. just like china, if you are on the bad side you don’t exist anymore. see assange.

There is a stark difference between a sovereign power gagging or stifling perceived dissidents and other citizens (whether they are elected officials or not) deciding you're an unethical asshole others should be warned about.

What happened to Nixon? What happened to OJ Simpson from the victim's family?

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#563

Post by ramblenode »

gonehome wrote: post #413
throwaway4837 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their qu…

The data isn’t the risk, it’s more the ability for CCP to leverage influence. https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/ Dialing up things to cause unrest, dialing down stuff critical of the CCP. It’s not an issue about data, or even an issue about speech, it’s an issue of ownership of a media company by an adversary that will weaponize it against you. Who controls and owns media companies is a reasonable national…

This argument could make sense to me in a world where powerful corporations, PACs, and monied individuals didn't wield so much control over the media and politics. These domestic entities have far more influence than the CCP, and to the average American I don't think they are any less harmful. These entities profit from disunity and a chaotic government the same way a foreign adversary might. The current divisiveness in America is due to the outsized influence of powerful domestic actors. They are a much bigger concern.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#564

Post by Tempest1981 »

If I was a game developer, I would definitely be concerned. The average user spends 92 minutes a day on TikTok! Average

That's gotta be taking a huge chunk of time away from playing Xbox/PlayStation/PC games.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#565

Post by pyuser583 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #523
n0tahacker wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this attitude is wrong. A strong democracy doesn't need to fight "fake news" legally and doesn't need their own propaganda op in foreign states like Radio Free Asia etc. If you are banning foreign media in your own country, you are doing the same as China in the end. Why not establish a great firewall?

This is the Paradox of Tolerance in action. One must fight against intolerance in order to preserve their tolerant ideals in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

America used the Paradox of Tolerance to outlaw left wing parties during the Cold War and WWI.

It has a really nasty history.

It’s not common for tolerant societies to descend into despotism. Liberal deco meadows are very resilient.

Allowing intolerance is usually better than systematic political suppression.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#566

Post by iudqnolq »

djha-skin wrote: post #401
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…

Really HN? The top voted comment is "this country has gone downhill"? This isn't Reddit. We're supposed to at least say something novel here, and hopefully interesting. How has the country gone downhill? Why is this decision so uninteresting? This comment also completely ignores the very interesting geopolitical aspects of this bill. On the surface it does look like something innocuous, as implied, which is why peopl…

The comment seems pretty clear to me: Despite very serious issues legislators are focusing on unimportant fads.

I increasingly think interesting geopolitics are a trap for a certain type of brain. When I was in high school I followed that sort of thing closely, and felt very smart. But it all had no connection to me, and it didn't matter to me at all. I realized I prefered geopolitics to domestic news because I could feel detached from the tradgedy.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#567

Post by iudqnolq »

OzyM wrote: post #377
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debating the minutiae of the number of school shootings is just...sad. The total number of children who should die in school shootings should always be 0. It's not even particularly hard. Practically every country in the world manages to achieve that target.

And the ideal number of suicides is 0, and the ideal amount of spyware is 0, etc. All of these are targets, but an ideal doesn't give you further information on how to prioritize

Many other countries have succeeded at bringing school shootings to zero, providing the fundamental feasibility in principle. That makes the difference.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#568

Post by carabiner »

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…

Congress, like the news, has become dominated by clickbait. This is what gets you eyeballs, and votes.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#569

Post by jquery »

throwaway4837 wrote: post #176
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…

Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their qu…

That’s what they say. Is it really so simply though?

https://youtu.be/-zdBmA3Q-hk

Politicsgirl makes the case this is about shutting down marginalized voices, among other things. I’m no TikTok user myself but the argument holds water.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#570

Post by dragonwriter »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #559
dragonwriter wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The United States does not have a strong democracy. Half (more or less) of the population believes the election was rigged. From various recent polls, it looks like somewhere between 30-40%, somewhere under 2/3 of Republicans and Republican-leaners and basically no one else.

For the most recent presidential election maybe. For the previous one a majority of Democrats including many high ranking Democrat politicians and officials were election deniers. Clearly you aren't going to have a large contingent of deniers of elections that your favored party won.

> For the most recent presidential election maybe.

Yes, that’s generally what “believe the election was stolen” without further qualification means; its not a reference to the total sum of people who believe at least one election in the history of the US was stolen.

> For the previous one a majority of Democrats including high ranking Democrat politicians and officials were election deniers.

No, they weren’t.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/more-republicans-distru...

A large percentage of Democrats believe Russian interference and other improper interference influenced the election results, but that’s different than thinking the actual vote was rigged or invalid.

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