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TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

reuters.com

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Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#631

Post by 0xffff2 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #529
baxtr wrote: post #525

> Privately held ByteDance is about 60% owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock and General Atlantic, while its founders and employees own 20% each. It has more than 7,000 employees in the United States That’s probably a very stupid question, but is how this is a Chinese company when 60% are owned by American funds?

Presumably, the relevant factor here is not ownership on paper, but who has real control via being able to tell Bytedance employees (including the executives) what to do. Which, in this case, is assumed to be China’s government leaders.

Presumably, yes, but is that actually how it works? I think we need a primer on how Chinese companies are structured. What does it mean to own 60% of a company if that doesn't give you any real control over the company?

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#632

Post by chinathrow »

josho wrote: post #628
some_random wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's mostly true and it's a good thing for the US to prevent hostile, autocratic, foreign powers from gaining undue cultural power.

I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us. Don't believe me, we've got lots of data correlating the rise of social media and mental health crisis. As time moves on the evidence linking the two continues to become stronger.

I guess the counterpoint here is that we have lots of data how external actors (e.g. Russia) is influencing large parts of the political landscape in Europe right now.

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#633

Post by some_random »

josho wrote: post #628
some_random wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's mostly true and it's a good thing for the US to prevent hostile, autocratic, foreign powers from gaining undue cultural power.

I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us. Don't believe me, we've got lots of data correlating the rise of social media and mental health crisis. As time moves on the evidence linking the two continues to become stronger.

[flagged]

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#634

Post by [deleted] »

mullingitover wrote: post #623
tnt128 wrote: post #614

Let’s be clear about one thing: it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification. Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion. The U.S. has held a monopoly on this power, leveraging it to gather data on citizens worldwide and projecting our value systems onto others. Banning TikTok is simply an effort by us to main…

The US censorship of Chinese social media apps on these grounds sure makes it look like China was completely justified in doing it first.

[deleted]

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#635

Post by warner25 »

swatcoder wrote: post #626
warner25 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This part is unclear to me. I know the article says "app," but this is general news reporting, and the term "web app" for stuff in the browser is acceptable terminology anyway. It also says that opening the app will redirect people to a page with information about the ban, not to the main page of the website. Prior to this discussion, I thought a ban at the ISP or CDN level was part of the plan, so a VPN would be req…

TikTok is ostensibly a commercial product meant to earn revenue that offset costs, and those costs are tremendous . Meanwhile, the ban will make it impossible for them to (a) enter into trade relationships with the advertisers and other partners that bring in revenu, and (b) share that revenue with monetized users. Continuing to run it at scale as a website without ads or monetization payouts (and without any legal p…

That makes sense, but means that banning it from making money through (a) and (b) would be sufficient to kill it quickly (if it's a legitimate business, as you said), without directly taking it away from users and causing so much political uproar.

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#636

Post by toofy »

some_random wrote: post #624
tnt128 wrote: post #614

Let’s be clear about one thing: it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification. Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion. The U.S. has held a monopoly on this power, leveraging it to gather data on citizens worldwide and projecting our value systems onto others. Banning TikTok is simply an effort by us to main…

That's mostly true and it's a good thing for the US to prevent hostile, autocratic, foreign powers from gaining undue cultural power.

i would argue, if it’s that powerful, it should be illegal for anyone to have that sort of power. from china to musk to zuckerberg to religions.

we really should ask ourselves why we’re continuing to allow some to continue these abuses…. there should be laws in place to stop all of them.

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#637

Post by xnx »

nextworddev wrote: post #213
spencerflem wrote: post #67

Given how easy it is for China to buy US data legally from data brokers and how similar the functionality of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, I feel like the only explanations are: 1. The govt is mad that a foreign company is outcompeting a domestic one Or more likely, given that there are so many other industries that didn't get a ban: 2. The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on…

Wrong - it's practically impossible to buy video and audio data at the PII level like Tiktok is getting.

The video and audio data that users publicly post?

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#638

Post by motorest »

josho wrote: post #628
some_random wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's mostly true and it's a good thing for the US to prevent hostile, autocratic, foreign powers from gaining undue cultural power.

I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us. Don't believe me, we've got lots of data correlating the rise of social media and mental health crisis. As time moves on the evidence linking the two continues to become stronger.

> I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us.

That's pure, shameless whataboutism, and one that desperately tries to hide the fact that totalitarian regimes are using social media service as a tool to control you and your opinions.

You can bring up any bogeyman you'd like, but you are failing to address the fact that these totalitarian regimes clearly are manipulating you to act against your own best interests.

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#639

Post by simoncion »

abeppu wrote: post #230

> The outcome of the shutdown would be different from that mandated by the law. The law would mandate a ban only on new TikTok downloads on Apple or Google app stores, while existing users could continue using it for some time. Does anyone have thoughts on why TikTok would choose to stop for existing users? I.e. why would they choose to do more than the minimum required by the law? It's nice that they want to point p…

> Does anyone have thoughts on why TikTok would choose to stop for existing users?

For the same reason Google or Facebook or many other major players might choose to stop operating in a jurisdiction that's trying to impose restrictions on them that they feel are unconscionable, rather than knuckling under?

The "national security" angle that FedGov is attempting to hang this all on is pretty bullshit... defense contractors that do classified work for the DoD can be foreign owned!

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#640

Post by mywittyname »

some_random wrote: post #624
tnt128 wrote: post #614

Let’s be clear about one thing: it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification. Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion. The U.S. has held a monopoly on this power, leveraging it to gather data on citizens worldwide and projecting our value systems onto others. Banning TikTok is simply an effort by us to main…

That's mostly true and it's a good thing for the US to prevent hostile, autocratic, foreign powers from gaining undue cultural power.

It would be nice if they could also prevent hostile autocratic domestic(ish) powers from leveraging their current cultural power. But they didn't, so naturally those in power are going to build their moat to maintain it.
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