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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

#561
post #232

what about all the american apps that have no service in china

Interested. What about them?

I think the criticism is that China can buy a seat at our table through flattery, and likely other favours , but we can’t? So we’re potentially corrupted / compromised, and they aren’t.

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

#562
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…

> 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 This is only true if you assume the US is the only market that matters. But TikTok is very much an international phenomenon, and selling would likely harm the company far more than a couple billion. Firstly it would give another company everyt…

> Secondly it might encourage other countries to also force TikTok to sell.

Wouldn't that be a no-op if they already did so?

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

#563
post #552

Despite my own feelings on the ban, this kind of royal court politics is the worst potential outcome. Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path. Not to mention the prosecutorial discretion may be creating massive liability that the new administration could use to extract favors from som…

How do you figure? The explicit domain of enforcement is the executive branch, so if the new guy coming in says something akin to "They've made their decision, let them enforce it" that's somewhat by design even if you may not agree with it. The system was designed with these checks and balances in mind explicitly.

> if the new guy coming in says something akin to "They've made their decision, let them enforce it" that's somewhat by design even if you may not agree with it

It’s absolutely not. Which is why non-enforcement doesn’t release liability; if you break a law that the President declines to enforce, people can sue the government to force enforcement today and the next President can enforce tomorrow.

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

#564

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…

> It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as well Or... regulated? I'd be all for privacy regulations and data handling regulations that would affect the algorithms of everyone but as long as the law is targeting TikTok only and not also FB, Insta, Twitter, etc, the idea that this ban is about "the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose" is a total red herring.

It's not about the algorithmic feed, it's about allowing your #1 adversarial state to have control over that algorithms parameters. They don't let Twitter, Google, or Meta operate in China.

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

#565
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…

Another free speech interpretation: the right to assemble. I cannot assemble with the group of people I once was with TikTok gone

If you used to assemble at a public park, and the city closes the park entirely to turn it into something else, does that violate your right to assemble too?

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

#568

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 negatives of ~Tiktok~short form videos have nothing to do with …

It feels silly with this coloring of TikTok as the evil when meta, Google and a dozen other American companies are doing the same, just less successfully because they let advertisers and corporate interests buy priority in the algorithm which literally just boils down to “you likely like the same stuff as people who like the same stuff as you”.

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

#569

Trump has clearly neutered both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Welcome to a unitary government, with one god-emperor and no checks nor balances. It's going to be a wild two (few?) years.

If what you’re saying is true, why would there be a term limit at all?

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

#570

Despite my own feelings on the ban, this kind of royal court politics is the worst potential outcome. Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path. Not to mention the prosecutorial discretion may be creating massive liability that the new administration could use to extract favors from som…

>feels like the start of a very dangerous path

Start?

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