Senate Bill to Ban TikTok • Hacker News Board

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#621

Post by andrekandre » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #554

andrekandre wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s more the ability for CCP to leverage influence. like they cant influence twitter, facebook and all the rest?

> like they cant influence twitter, facebook and all the rest? Well, no, that’s more Maximum Bone Saw’s purview than the CCPs, and that foreign influence isn’t (at least per the initial list written into the proposed law) considered adversarial. (EDIT: That’s specific to Twitter, not Facebook and all the rest.)

i think the point is, banning tiktok just means influence can move to these other platforms via other means (troll farms etc), it doesn't solve the issue (unless you want to ban twitter et. al)

but perhaps i am missing some obvious point?

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#622

Post by spamizbad » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:48 AM UTC

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…

To me it’s a beginning of the end of American technology - and cultural - dominance.

Some other country created something we couldn’t: a social media app that appeals to Gen-Z. Our domestic industry tried and failed to clone it. So we banned it.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#623

Post by yed » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #490

yed wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The provider would have to be controlled by China or other designated foreign adversary, and they would indeed have to be doing something determined to be a serious threat to the US.

The provider would be acting to abet the violation of this act. Whether or not they are Chinese doesn't matter in that subsection. If they were Chinese they wouldn't care about a US fine anyways. It's even possible that one would argue that a user using a VPN to access TikTok would be violating the bill.

The bill applies to only to financial transactions ("covered transactions" in the bill) and holdings ("covered holdings"), there's nothing in it at all directly regulating access to data or websites by individuals.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#624

Post by tuxpenguine » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:54 AM UTC

chaosharmonic wrote: post #560

tuxpenguine wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is exactly the manifestation of social media's influence on a person's view on America. I came from another country and lived in America now. If we watch the news from social media, you will inevitably get the sense that the country is in decline: guns out of control, sky-rocketing house and medical expense, non-functioning government etc. In reality, you take for granted the freedom that you enjoy here,…

If you have a problem with that, why limit this to TikTok? Not that it isn't at least a little reasonable to be wary of adversaries having access to a data collection platform, but the problem also gets meaningfully less substantial in general if you put meaningful limits on these companies' capacity to grow and eat each other in the name of building empires of surveillance capitalism. Meta in particular is pushing h…

1) It's just a lot harder from the legislation's perspective. 2) Other social medias are mainly profit driven, any negative social impact is mainly side effect due to misalignment of incentives. But TikTok is much more likely to intentionally act in a malicious way, so I think the risk not comparable here.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#625

Post by sneak » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

eganist wrote: post #206

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…

Speaking at least with my background: Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our free and open internet against our own people. Regardless of the fact that our kids are most vulnerable, China's seemingly made a point of outsourcing their most polarizing algorithmic decisions to the rest of the world but not to their own population, which is essentially a tacit admission of their awareness of the da…

> Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our free and open internet against our own people.

The way you weaponize the network against a populace is by censoring it. In this regard, Congress is the one doing that.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#626

Post by mistermann » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

anoy8888 wrote: post #586

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…

I think you are a bit naive and underestimate china’s will to influence US any chance they get. TikTok is not a toy . I repeat . TikTok is not a toy. It is a super app that gets the most attention and time from 150 million Americans. And unlike rich people in US who are powerful, in China, bitedance ( TikTok) CEO is like a dog to the CCP leaders. They asked you eat shit , you will eat it twice to please them. This is…

I'm WAY more distrustful and scared of the US government than the Chinese government.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#627

Post by mistermann » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:01 AM UTC

nanidin wrote: post #473

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?

A well informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy. Fake news and undue outside influence absolutely must be protected against.

The government is free to add philosophy to standard curriculum so people aren't so helpless.

It's funny it's not there already, with all the talk of the "need" for more critical thinking.

Democracy theatre.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#628

Post by whats_a_quasar » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:01 AM UTC

These comments are filled with whataboutism. America is terrible. Rich people and corporations already control everything. American democracy is strong enough to resist, or maybe American democracy is already fucked, and this bill is pointless. America is just as bad on human rights as China. Congress is sinophobic for even considering China a geopolitical rival. American social media companies do the same thing.

All of these claims are heavily debatable. But more importantly, none of this is remotely relevant to the bill. The policy question is whether or not Congress should allow 150 million Americans to be influenced by a platform controlled (directly or indirectly) by the Chinese Communist Party.

I want to someone to actually make the case for why allowing TikTok in the U.S. is better for America than banning Tiktok (unless it divests from Chinese control). Someone needs to argue that:

  - Allowing TikTok is better for American national security than banning it
  - Allowing TikTok is better for the health of americans than banning it
  - Or, there is some substantial harm from banning it that outweighs those benefits.

I'm sure there is a good argument to be made, but I don't know that it's shown up yet in the comments. I agree with the posters who think specific parts of the legislation are problematic. That makes sense! But that's not the core issue. People can oppose poorly crafted legislation that imposes on internet freedom while support banning this particular app at the same time.

And it's surprising to me that people still doubt that manipulating social media can cause societal-level effects. Back in 2014 Facebook published a study where they can increase or decrease levels of anxiety and depression by manipulating the emotional content of the news feed [1]. Back in 2012, academics estimated that 314,000 additional Americans voted in the 2010 congressional election because a they implemented a popup reminding people that "Today is election day."

As it stands, the Chinese government absolutely can use TikTok to manipulate the mental health of Americans, by influencing the content that is shown. The Chinese government can manipulate results of an election by preferentially showing a reminder voters of to one party or the other. Are they doing this already? The U.S. has no way to know, and no defense against this sort of manipulation. TikTok is absolutely a national security issue, and it's within Congress's purview to legislate around it.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1320040111

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11401

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#629

Post by throwaway4837 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

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 is an excellent point and I agree. Social media apps are basically brainwashing devices, and whoever controls the knobs and buttons can change how people think. Very easy to get radicalized with propaganda, or in this extreme case, even be convinced to end one's own life.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#630

Post by shrewduser » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

briffle wrote: post #598

coffeebeqn wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also China has banned or regulated to uselessness every American piece of software. Globalization and unipolar power has ended. Do you think banning Huawei from owning US telecommunications infrastructure is also a sign of the end times (Parent comment)?

Or, we could go beyond tit-for-tat, and make real laws protecting our citizens and their data. Do people really think TikTok is doing things Facebook, google, etc are not already doing with tracking and algorithms ?

tit for tat is the only way free trade is enforced...