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

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

#741

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #190

shihab wrote: post #8

Is anyone aware of any opinion poll among US population about banning tiktok? This to me feels like one of the issues with potentially largest disconnect between voters and politicians Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.

28% oppose the ban, and 32% support it. So a majority are either in favor or ambivalent. Two years ago a majority supported it: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f... Support has declined and opposition has increased. I don't think there's much of a disconnect here though, since it doesn't seem there are many people with strong opinions counter to what Congress chose to do.

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

#742

Post by gnkyfrg » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #533

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 I don't understand why this is not the primary takeaway. Regardless of the specifics of this issue, it is objectively a huge power grab for a president to vow to not enforce a law that had bipartisan approval of both the legislative and judicia…

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

#743

Post by nemothekid » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 1:48 AM UTC

lumost wrote: post #266

This seems to imply that the president elect can make unilateral guarantees contravening US law. That’s a surprising outcome.

>That’s a surprising outcome.

It's President Trump, what are you going to do about it? The man has been regularly breaking the law since 2016 and there is never any political will to stop him.

Trump v. U.S. established it's not illegal when Trump does it.

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

#744

Post by gnkyfrg » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 1:51 AM UTC

lumost wrote: post #266

This seems to imply that the president elect can make unilateral guarantees contravening US law. That’s a surprising outcome.

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

#745

Post by nemothekid » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 1:52 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…

>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.

Would you argue for Tesla or Apple to sell to China? Do you think Musk would divest his China business? The parallels are almost identical

1. Tesla cars collect a huge amount of data.

2. Tesla is already banned from being driven by government officials.

3. Tesla has the best self driving algorithm

4. Chinese cars are already banned in the US

5. China is Tesla's second largest market

6. Tesla is the 3rd largest EV company in China

Would you be surprised if Elon decided to exist China instead of "receiving tens of billions of dollars" from China?

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

#746

Post by gnkyfrg » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 1:53 AM UTC

nickthegreek wrote: post #327

lumost wrote: post #266

This seems to imply that the president elect can make unilateral guarantees contravening US law. That’s a surprising outcome.

If this stands, it certainly is. It’s a mockery of the whole of the system. Congress better act on overturning it post haste or enforcing it post haste.

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

#747

Post by nemothekid » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 1:56 AM UTC

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…

>It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue.

The catalyst for the ban was Israel/Palestine. You must consider this - TikTok did not adequately censor pro-Palestine content. This was confirmed as a major problem for Israel by the CEO of the ADL.

When an app gets banned because it is not inline with the US military industrial complex you must consider the spirit of free speech laws.

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

#748

Post by gnkyfrg » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 2:02 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…

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

#749

Post by paxys » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 2:05 AM UTC

lumost wrote: post #266

This seems to imply that the president elect can make unilateral guarantees contravening US law. That’s a surprising outcome.

The surprising part is that people are still surprised. Trump can do whatever he wants and there will be no pushback. We are talking about the guy who launched a meme coin a few days before taking office and made $50B+ overnight.

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

#750

Post by BrenBarn » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 2:05 AM UTC

gklitz wrote: post #568

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…

> The negatives of ~Tiktok~short form videos have nothing to do with … It feels silly with this coloring of TikTok as the evil when meta, Google and a dozen other American companies are doing the same, just less successfully because they let advertisers and corporate interests buy priority in the algorithm which literally just boils down to “you likely like the same stuff as people who like the same stuff as you”.

I agree. I'm not saying TikTok is much different than others. I'm saying when we see TikTok banned we shouldn't feel like "Oh no, not that!", we should feel like "Well, it's a start, but let's do more in that direction."