Sounds great to me. Now EU authorities should ban Xitter in the EU. Stop foreign election interference!
TikTok goes dark in the US
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#702> In the meantime, alternative Chinese-owned apps like RedNote and Lemon8 have received a boost as TikTok users search for alternatives.
Why does it seem that there's no non-Chinese alternative to TikTok popular enough to warrant any mention?
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#703It's a shame that it's come to this. I feel that all arguments that TikTok is unhealthy or spyware and bad for our general public are valid, but the same arguments also apply to Instagram/Twitter/Whatever. Rather than have some sort of further regulation for what data any application can collect and present to Americans, we've just brought the hammer down on the millions of people that use this application for their…
Please be serious. Any suggestion that TikTok poses no real threat to U.S. interests is staggeringly naive. Imagine if CBS, NBC, FOX, and ABC were all owned and operated by the government of America’s greatest adversary—that’s essentially what we’re dealing with. Meanwhile, Chinese citizens are explicitly barred from accessing TikTok in China, and American social media companies are shut out of China’s market altoget…
Why is China your enemy? China couldn’t care less about the US. They’re doing their thing now, and they’ll keep doing their thing when China overtakes the US as the top global power.
Why are you so afraid of China?
Do you think there will be a war with the US? I find that extremely unlikely given both nations have atomic bombs and nothing to gain from war.
Do you think the US is gonna get economically bullied by China? Well, that’s what the US does to the rest of the world right now. Ironically, that’s why most of Africa would rather partner with China for economic development than with the western powers. But even then, the US is big enough that it can insulate itself from most of that.
Are you afraid that China will start a war in Taiwan? They might, but didn’t the US start a war in Iraq as recently as 20 years ago. Not to mention all of the other middle east conflicts the US is involved in.
You can’t stop China. They have 4x as many people as the US, and just as big a landmass with plenty of resources. China will become the top global power. But that doesn’t mean that your life will be any worse.
It means that your politicians won’t be able to act with impunity as they have for the past century. It means your billionaires will have to compete with China’s billionaires for investment. It means companies will have more competition.
But at the end of the day, your life won’t change. It will probably get better if we’re being honest. China is not your enemy.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#704(Perspective from an American) Information is the gold of the 21st century. Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power. Therefore, data is the greatest currency in the world. This outcome was never intended to happen, but ByteDance is taking a chance that the American government will relent. We’ll see in a few months who wins the stalemate. TikTok has an immense amount of cultural p…
I'm an American too, and I trust an app that has "china" somewhere in it's org chart more than Zuckerberg or any meta product.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#705The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…
I wonder how much ByteDance got from the incoming administration to pull that stunt. Super shady. "We voluntarily shut down our service in your country (er, I mean, we HAD TO, for real!) but don't worry, a true hero is soon arriving to save the day!"
And it's ironic because this is a perfect example of what the law is intended to prevent -- a Chinese-owned company boosting Trump in front of a hundred million Americans.
If that's not foreign influence, I don't know what is.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#706(Perspective from an American) Information is the gold of the 21st century. Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power. Therefore, data is the greatest currency in the world. This outcome was never intended to happen, but ByteDance is taking a chance that the American government will relent. We’ll see in a few months who wins the stalemate. TikTok has an immense amount of cultural p…
We should have consumer freedom under equal protections. Imagine if the FDA only regulated imported food and drugs, and if those regulations were only related to trade wars.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#707The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…
> If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing Most likely, the rationale will be similar to Huawei and Kaspersky. Not based on actual historical misbehaviour, but rather the amount of power you’re allowing their respective governments to have over US citizens / infrastructure. There are very few “from first principals” thinkers in the world, especially amongst TikTok’s younger audience. Most people take…
The easiest real example I'm aware of is that there was a scandal around the Houston rockets and China (years ago) and you could not find their content or content related to them on TikTok. (You could for every other NBA team)
In this example: who cares? But the problem is how implicit everything is.
Imagine that a major US ally (like Israel) were attacked by a globally recognized terrorist organization. Imagine if, for some reason, a high percentage of people on TikTok ended up being opposed to the US government's support of their ally. Imagine if there were protests across college campuses. And counter protests.
Would we know whether TikTok was behind the scenes, sowing discord? This is the kind of thing - weakening our alliances - that china would love to do. If china can reduce our willingness to defend our allies (think the Philippines in the south china sea, or Taiwan which.... there's explicitly a project 2027 in China to be ready to invade Taiwan)
Do we want the Chinese government to have the ability to do this?
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#708It's a shame that it's come to this. I feel that all arguments that TikTok is unhealthy or spyware and bad for our general public are valid, but the same arguments also apply to Instagram/Twitter/Whatever. Rather than have some sort of further regulation for what data any application can collect and present to Americans, we've just brought the hammer down on the millions of people that use this application for their…
Do people believe that the US government's control over Instagram/Twitter/whatever are similar to the level of control China's government has over TikTok? I'm not that educated on the subject (I think most people who are making claims either way about this aren't), but all my priors indicate to me that China's government collects data from and controls content (to be shown only to the western populace) in TikTok much…
> Do people believe that the US government's control over Instagram/Twitter/whatever are similar to the level of control China's government has over TikTok?
Control comes in different flavors. Is the US government covertly and directly compelling corporations like they did during Snowden era? Probably less today if I were to guess, and certainly less than China.
I think today the threat is not government overreach but rather that the tech industry and government have so many shared interests and back-channels that coercion is no longer needed, and probably the big ones would throw hissy fits if so. Instead, I think it’s a mutual back-scratching operation. During covid, the infrastructure was laid out, with corporations running the information errands. I think both sides found that to be much more comfortable, and yes I do believe that became the prevailing MO afterwards.
Race riots? Palestine protests? Luigi support, and similar current uncomfortable issues transcending culture war daily jabs? ”Lightly suppressing” such speech has corp-govt incentive alignment, and frankly might be necessary to keep people in check given the growing inequalities and dissent. Any large uncontrolled social media operation is a risk, even without amplifying or suppressing anything inorganically and deliberately.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#709(Perspective from an American) Information is the gold of the 21st century. Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power. Therefore, data is the greatest currency in the world. This outcome was never intended to happen, but ByteDance is taking a chance that the American government will relent. We’ll see in a few months who wins the stalemate. TikTok has an immense amount of cultural p…
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Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#710The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…
Trump just posted this on Truth Social:
I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark! I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.
Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations.
I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe trillions.
Therefore, my initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever purchase we so choose.
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Basically the same thing - I will extend (so I’m hero) but you need to sell.