TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users • Hacker News Board

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

#701

Post by ori_b » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:12 AM UTC

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #466

BrenBarn wrote: post #418

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…

Where's the smoking gun for these privacy issues? Why hasn't the FBI or anyone else investigated and discovered these issues, if they exist?

This isn't about privacy; it's about who gets to promote what ideas to Americans. Do you think that a post about Tienanmen Square, about Uyghur persecution, or about Taiwanese independence, will get nearly as far on a Chinese controlled media platform?

They don't. https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...

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

#702

Post by Zak » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:15 AM UTC

bearcobra wrote: post #523

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…

I won't argue against the idea that Trump is on a dangerous political path based around patronage and personal favors, but the law does grant him the authority to give TikTok a 90 day extension. If TikTok has not sold by then and he fails to enforce the law, that's a bigger problem.

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

#703

Post by dagss » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:15 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #242

hcurtiss wrote: post #224

By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda? I sometimes cannot believe it's those who so loudly cry about threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process. Rather than tackle the narratives substantively, they'd argue about who gets to manipulate the…

If TikTok was only targeted at voters then I think there would be less of a concern. My issue is more with what it shows to children. Science and law recognize that children aren't yet fully individual agents and are more susceptible to propaganda than most adults. Thus legislators and courts have been more willing to restrict commercial speech targeting children.

I feel this is way too optimistic about the typical adult. Adults are most definitely affected by propaganda.

Problem is reality is so complex and usually all sides of a topic are right at the same time, in some way.

For any viewpoint A, there will be reels made by people in any demographic group who cares deeply about it for excellent and solid reasons. The same will be the case for anti-A.

Both of them will be convincing and TikTok can just choose which one of them to subtly nudge.

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

#704

Post by afiori » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:18 AM UTC

Jare wrote: post #668

bearcobra wrote: post #523

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…

> 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 The very dangerous path started a long time ago, or at least that's how it feels from abroad. "He can't" followed by "He wouldn't" then "He did".

IMHO this is the reason things should be laws not weird tradition and conventions if they really matter, (same reason that the fault of things like SCOTUS upturning Roe v Wade is in Congress for never making it a law instead of just a precedent

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

#705

Post by TeaBrain » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:21 AM UTC

nico wrote: post #661

Brystephor wrote: post #34

What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it? Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?

> a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement They were following the law. Anything else is just promises by people who are not exactly known for following through with them Shutting down because the law says it, and to prevent really big penalties, is not making “a big political statement

The law didn't require them to shut the service off for those who already had the app installed. It just prevented new updates or downloads. Shutting off the app immediately was just theater and reinstating the app with no changes to the law is just the second act.

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

#706

Post by afiori » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:22 AM UTC

ikiris wrote: post #552

bearcobra wrote: post #523

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.

Prosecutorial discretion is not a "check and balance" it is a cost cutting approach that allows worse laws to last longer

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

#707

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:23 AM UTC

Brystephor wrote: post #34

What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it? Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?

[deleted]

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

#708

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:25 AM UTC

warner25 wrote: post #604

bearcobra wrote: post #523

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…

Yes, and what's even worse to me is Trump's explicit motivation for supporting TikTok now. Like there are some interesting philosophical, moral, and maybe legal arguments against the TikTok ban but what he's seized on is simply that TikTok was a useful tool (as far as he's been told) for gaining votes. Keeping it around just benefits him politically and personally, so that's it.

You know what, that’s is actually correct.

Practically necessarily trumps concerns of fictitious and imaginary constructs

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

#709

Post by YurgenJurgensen » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:27 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #225

Buttons840 wrote: post #45

The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech. We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced. Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.

It's an absolute win for the content creators who relied on TikTok for their livelihoods and the small businesses who relied on it for marketing. And for Gen Z, for whom content creation is one of the few viable ways to earn a good income now that tech grad hiring has completely collapsed.

It’s kind-of not. A ban would have given them all the opportunity to go wherever their audience went. The demand for their content wouldn’t simply disappear, it’d just be displaced to some other platform. And said other platform would almost certainly be less capricious and better for creators than TikTok.

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

#710

Post by protocolture » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 12:27 AM UTC

sekai wrote: 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…

"You may speak if..."

Is a freedom of speech issue.