• Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    once again - not a ban, a seizure. Steve Mnuchin is heading a group of government insiders who want to buy TikTok, and this bill bans it if and only if they don’t sell. The government has decided that TikTok is a dangerous propaganda and espionage network and intends to steal it and run it themselves. Even if you think that TikTok is that dangerous you have to ask yourself: why is it legal for everyone else and why does our government want so badly to do it themselves?

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yup. And the precedent this sets is horrifying. Even monopolies get due process. Being able to declare a company as a foreign enemy and force them to leave the market or be bought out is a ridiculous measure in a supposedly free society.

    • Buttons@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      If China really is using TikTok for psyops, then they will refused to sell, flood TikTok with anti-government sentiment for its remaining days, and then direct people to just use the TikTok website hosted in China (is our government going to start blocking access to websites too?).

      One silver line here is “the youths” will learn, in an unusually clear way, that the government effects their lives and can screw up their lives.

        • Buttons@programming.dev
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          7 months ago

          I can understand your frustration. I currently feel that way towards a certain political party, but I have to keep an open mind because things change.

          For example, I don’t doubt what you said Democrats was true in past decades, but today I believe the Democrats are more friendly towards LGBT rights than Republicans are. It appears things have changed on those specific issues.

          Maybe we wont agree, but let’s at lets at least find clarity: Do you believe Republicans or Democrats are currently more friendly towards LGBT people?

            • Buttons@programming.dev
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              7 months ago

              Also, to get that clarity I was seeking. Do you:

              1. Recommend people vote for Democrats (sounds like no).
              2. Recommend people vote for Republicans.
              3. Recommend people vote for third-parties or not vote at all.

              These are the only 3 possibilities. Which are you?

              For example, if you believe that Republicans are better for LGBT issues, then I want to hear you say it: “I think Republicans are better on LGBT issues”. I have my own opinion on this which I will keep to myself, I really just want you to be clear about your view and then let everyone judge for themselves what they think is right.

            • Buttons@programming.dev
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              7 months ago

              All fair criticisms of Democrats in my opinion.

              The only thing I have a problem with is your “never vote Democrat” rule. You do you, but I believe voting in a way that will most help LGBT people, and most help women’s reproductive rights, etc–I believe that if you want to cast votes that most support those causes, it will sometimes require voting for a Democrat.

                • Buttons@programming.dev
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                  7 months ago

                  Earlier you said:

                  i’m permanently anti democrat party

                  and I read that as “I will never vote democrat”. I see now that’s not what you said.

                  I too would love to see us do better than the two deeply flawed parties we have now. I wish we had a better voting system that allowed better parties.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          i’m permanently anti democrat party.

          thats a person issue not a democrat issue.

          to be fair the people who bitch about “both sidesing” generally have a point, centrists fucking suck dude.

          Centrists will pull some shit like “well maybe, we shouldn’t ban gay marriage, but we should still restrict their rights, it’s only fair right?”

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          this happened to be back in the 90’s & 00’s when biden et al. spearheaded non-dischargeable student loan debt; anti-gay marriage; and a ban on gays in the military and now i’m permanently anti the party that rolled back don’t ask don’t tell, embraced marriage and healthcare rights for queer people and have forgiven tons of student loan debt. I’m definitely not a psy-op. Pay no attention to the fact that no one calls them ‘the democrat party’ except people who have 1000+ hours viewing fox news.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        You know TikTok is global right?

        But yeah Biden is just over here casually giving Trump better chances.

        • bamboo
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          7 months ago

          If ByteDance doesn’t divest of TikTok 9 months, then it will be blocked from being distributed from App Stores. Nothing will be blocked before the election, so it’s not really something which will affect the typical voter who isn’t following the news, causing them to change their vote.

    • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      First off, source? Second, the npr interview I heard mentioned specifically that China has to approve the sale because the algorithm is proprietary to a Chinese company. So anyone “buying TikTok” is buying a name and none of the actual bones of the social media platform

        • bamboo
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          7 months ago

          Not who you were replying to, and not an interview, but here’s an NPR article that explains that the content-recommendation algorithms would be difficult to sell

          Chinese officials have placed content-recommendation algorithms on what is known as an export-control list, meaning the government has additional say over how the technology is ever sold.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Aren’t the bones the cheap part now? Think truth social for instance, why was it supposedly worth so much if anyone can spin up a Mastadon instance and make it the same restrictions over the weekend. The userbase numbers are all that mattered there I assume. Why is reddit worth more than Lemmy? Is it because the bones are expensive? Or is it that they have access to a large userbase already.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          the reason truth social was so highly valued is probably related to trumps chronic addiction to over valuing his assets by about 10-100x the original value of them.

          you would think the userbase of truth social would be big, it’s not. It’s several orders of magnitude smaller than twitter, and it’s value is theorized to be heavily independent of the actual user count, the board of truth literally said as much. I.E. basically fucking bullshit.

    • melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      so they can do the death penalty on a company, they have a model

      they just don’t do it to Exxon or Facebook or Monsanto or…