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TikTok goes dark in the US

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Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#851

Post by mfuzzey »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #834
bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

Why are you looking to the US for your outrage, EU members are doing the exact same thing: "Eleven EU countries took 5G security measures to ban Huawei, ZTE " https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/08/12/eleven-eu-countries...

It's not quite the same. The EU has banned those companies from supplying network infrastructure. That infrastructure is used both by private individuals and by companies, ministers etc. AFAIK they have also banned TikTok on official government phones. However they have not generally banned TikTok for everyone.

To me this makes more sense since a back door in network infrastructure allowing governement communications to be intercepted is far more serious than some kid using TikTok.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#852

Post by gardenhedge »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

As a European, I think it makes sense to ban it. The threat is not the same from American companies.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#853

Post by bharrison »

gdubs wrote: post #224

I think a lot of people on here never spent much time on TikTok and it shows. It wasn't just for young people and it wasn't all brain rot. There were vibrant communities, subcultures. Real issues were aired there. Real people connected. From the early days of Covid it provided a window into a broader world.

Vibrant communities are perhaps a product of, but certainly not defined solely by their territory.

Luckily they're comprised of humans (mostly? Probably another discussion), and the ability to migrate is component to their nature; the good ones find greener pastures and adapt as necessary to define their next generation.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#854

Post by timnetworks »

Everyone must keep in mind that the asian continent had a long issue with communism, and although it's almost extinguished, we should still be very careful about it, like a staph (staffing?) infection almost. Also lets not forget China bans all the western stuff outright yea?

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#855

Post by rib3ye »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

Look at the list of sites banned in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

Did you notice something similar about those companies, of which TikTok is included?

Social media is not normal capitalism - it’s defense industry psychological warfare tooling. We’re seeing this play out big time in the Israeli and Ukrainian conflicts right now and it’s time to take a wartime approach to the issue.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#856

Post by mkhpalm »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

It’s important to note that media companies in China are required to have a Chinese partner who holds a majority stake, typically 51% or more.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#858

Post by ncr100 »

banku_brougham wrote: post #799
moviet wrote: post #695

(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 fear our govt more than Chinas. Just put CSPAN on in the background for a while. Our government's north star is war.

Our government is more than that simplistic reduction.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#859

Post by aprilthird2021 »

velcrovan wrote: post #787
bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

> demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held This is a reductive and misleading analysis. The US has already prohibited foreign entities from holding broadcast/common carrier licenses, or from owning significant chunks of equity in holders of those licenses [1]. It should be kind of obvious why a country would not want their biggest media providers to be foreign-ow…

> The US has already prohibited foreign entities from holding broadcast/common carrier licenses, or from owning significant chunks of equity in holders of those licenses

But you don't need a license to put something on the internet. And Americans don't want everything on the Internet to be regulated and censored the way TV and radio are.

It IS wrong for them to determine what we can and can't be influenced by. By saying bad countries "influencing" us is bad for democracy, they are saying democracy isn't really up to us, the voters, it's up to them. And I'll never accept that.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#860

Post by goodluckchuck »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

It’s not like TikTok is competing on the open market. They have massive financial backing irrespective of how much money they lose.
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