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Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

congress.gov

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Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#641

Post by californical »

mistermann wrote: post #626
anoy8888 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you’re misinformed. The United States doesn’t have great political accountability recently, but China has ~none.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#642

Post by jsdeveloper »

goatlover wrote: post #617
jsdeveloper wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A strong democracy doesn't need to fight "fake news" legally and doesn't need their own propaganda your argument to me sounded like : > Brave people don't fear heights, you are brave and hence you should jump from empire state building. And you don't need protection, remember you are brave.

Since you are straw manning the argument, brave people should be protected from their foolishness by banning rock climbing and base jumping. How does that sound?

Your analogy is again flawed. Brave people are not banned, they are free to do rock climbing and base jumping.

A specific unrelaible/untrusted tool and equipment they use for adventure is banned. You are arguing as if people are banned. But they are not.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#643

Post by all2 »

all2 wrote: post #412
Invictus0 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many things wrong with this comparison. 1) Twitter is not an arm of the US government in the way that Tiktok and most Chinese companies are. 2) The law is not calling for the information on Tiktok to be banned. For instance, an image of a tweet saying "fuck Xi Jinping" could not be viewed in China, but an image/video of a tiktok saying "fuck biden" would be fine to view in America. 3) Tiktok is not benign l…

Re item 1: See [0]. Arguably any corporation involved in government censoring operations (which are by definition extra-judicial) is an active arm of said government. There's a reason people have taken to calling our current state "crony capitalism". Re item 3: TikTok is worse than that. The recommendation feeds are specifically designed to rot the minds of American citizens. [1] [0] https://judiciary.house.gov/media…

I'm curious to hear the position of those who are downing here. I'm not averse to opposing opinions or information.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#644

Post by gonehome »

andrekandre wrote: post #621
dragonwriter wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There’s a distinction between adversaries trying to cause trouble within American companies and a foreign hostile government effectively owning the company and dictating policy in its own interests.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#645

Post by yieldcrv »

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…

> Come on (wo)man.

not inclusive enough, your opinion is invalid /s

yieldcrv explains the substantive nature of this joke: OP believes that people have their priorities wrong in the face of surprise death matters, pointing out opinionated gender inclusion logic that also has not permeated universally outside of the US would be another example of prioritizing in the face of surprise death matters

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#646

Post by gonehome »

groggo wrote: post #522
gonehome wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's it's the meta/instagram tiktok clone.

It's a clone, but you can't directly compare one social network to another like that. There are differences in the culture and community that won't necessarily survive being transplanted.

I don’t claim there is nothing lost, only that the cost is worth it on net.

An even simpler threshold is that banning it is a reasonable position to hold given the issue even if you may disagree.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#647

Post by jacobolus »

fooster wrote: post #547
jacobolus wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America’s political system also has plenty of problems, so any absolute comparison is easy to pick at or "what-about", as other commenters are doing. But more to the point here, the American government responds to pressure from the electorate and U.S.-based stakeholders, which the Chinese government by and large does not.

End of the covid lockdowns say otherwise.

Can you explain what you mean? The USA never had “lockdowns” at all – to some degree because of public pressure though also because for the first year or so of the crisis the federal government flailed around passively/counterproductively due to abject incompetence (plus some grifting) at the top. Meanwhile China’s Covid policy had nothing whatsoever to do with the American electorate or stakeholders, but was instead driven by political pressures internal to China.

If your point is that different American states responded differently despite broadly similar public opinion based on party affiliation of the legislators and governors, that’s true, and part of how our the US system works. Public preferences clearly aren’t the only thing driving policy decisions.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#648

Post by dannydowonahn1 »

mistermann wrote: post #626
anoy8888 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an absolutely ridiculous take - the Chinese government has over 1 million people in literal concentration camps.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#649

Post by theaussiestew »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #316
agilob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please quantify access and freedoms.

Be free to post the equivalent of `Fuck Joe Biden` but about Xi or other leaders without any fear of repercussion. Be free to critique without fear of being disappeared.

This is a warped perspective of censorship in China. Many people do post things like that and they’re completely fine. No one ever got “disappeared” for criticism of the government or complaining about corruption. In fact, I don’t think disappearing is even a thing, it’s more like if you want to subvert the government then you’ll get a visit from the police telling you to pipe down. But if you’re complaining about government performance then you’ll get a free pass. You can Google protests in China and there are hundreds of videos showing mass protests over various topics. What is happening in China isn’t some caricature of Winston getting brainwashed in 1984 - these kinds of stereotypes are frankly disturbing and indicates that the opinion holder has no real relationships with anyone in China. If anything, the US is the real oligarchic dystopia. The passing of the Patriot Act and this bill would only be confirmation of that. If only people could read Chinese and browse the Chinese web, then they would see the much more mundane reality for themselves.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#650

Post by whoisthemachine »

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…

Maybe we should then pass laws restricting what companies can do with our data? What kinds of algorithms they can run if they want to be treated as a platform rather than a publisher?
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