Only US tech companies can harvest all that data from their products, I mean, customers.
I mean let’s be honest, that’s slightly better than US companies plus the Chinese Communist Party being able to do so.
I don’t know about you, but if I must leak my private data like a sieve to use the internet, I’d much rather that data go to a government that isn’t governing me!
A government that isn’t governing you … yet and that has no ambitions (/s) to take over as much power as possible in the country you live in, you mean?
Ahh yes, I should be worried about how they could in the future, do something while my current government can make me a fucking slave, legally if they decide to.
Look, I don’t know which country you live in but if you’re worried it might make you a slave, you should riot (if at all possible, that is). Be part of the opposition.
So what…?
Not everybody is living in the “default country” and also, with the US we see how well it all works for them and how slavery is not a thing there at all.Damn I thought private prisons were a loophole and not in the constitution to punish people with slave labor.
Everybody Sucks Here
They still can, they just have to go back to buying that data lmao
It’s obviously more of a problem when a government that actually has agency over you harvests your data. If you can’t even understand this, then you’re truly lost.
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Because your government can use the information against you while a government on the other side of the planet can’t.
Used to be true. See countries affecting populations in foreign countries. Propaganda is not local.
Because definitionally, fewer people doing a bad thing is better than more people doing a bad thing?
Not having the choice is slightly worse I’d say.
What can China do to you? You don’t live there.
TikTok enacted a very obvious influence campaign to fight this legislation that resulted in congressional phone lines becoming jammed. So what China can do is directly influence our laws.
Problems with this app go beyond just privacy and bleed into national security.
You as a citizen of your country have an obligation to not freely offer yourself up as an attack vector for cybercriminals all so you could fry your brain with garbage media.
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Case in point: all the college protests. All the arrests happening are from people being encouraged on TikTok to become aggressive and angry towards apartheid. But the question is how the fuck is protesting at a college going to change what a government in another country is going to do in any way? The Israeli government gives little to no fuck about kids opinions protesting at a college campus in the United States. It’s likely civil unrest being spread by TikTok.
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Israel is dropping US bombs. 🙄
How is protesting at a college going to stop it?
The US government provides weapons for the genocide.
One of the main campuses in the protests is opening a campus in Israel, which students are opposing until Israel ends genocide and apartheid.
Many of the campuses donate money to or have partnerships with candidates and organizations that are also complicit in the genocide.
Of course Israel isn’t going to stop genocide because a bunch of college students in the US don’t like it. But that doesn’t mean students have to sit idly as their tuition dollars go to fund genocide.
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They have very simple demands, they’re not giving some pie in the sky stuff like “have Joe Biden tried for war crimes and abolish capitalism” or something; the protests all have demands along the lines that their university boycott Israeli companies and cut ties with weapons manufacturers aiding the genocide. To claim otherwise is completely infantalising to the protestors who are risking their university positions and physical health to protest despite the police crackdowns.
Here’s a link to the list of demands of the student protest in new York, for instance
And here’s a picture of the list of the demands of the columbia faculty protest:
All the arrests happening are from people being encouraged on TikTok to become aggressive and angry towards apartheid.
THEY ARE TRYING TO STOP THE GENOCIDE BEING PERPETRATED IN THEIR NAME
WTF is wrong with you?
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College protests have been a thing since Vietnam. Look up Kent State.
It wasn’t China that gave them the idea, it was history.
And it’s working. More and more people are sympathizing with Palestine the more the government overreacts to peaceful protests.
I’m not sure it’s true that the Israeli government doesn’t care about American public opinion, since they do benefit from American military support, but let’s assume what you said is true.
Even if Americans protesting won’t stop the genocide, won’t end apartheid, I’d prefer that those atrocities are not committed with my tax dollars, with support from my government, in my name. The lesson learned from 9/11 shouldn’t have been “we need to enact regime change anywhere in the world where American interest are opposed”. It should have been “Americans better make sure they are OK with the things that their government is doing abroad”.
I’m not OK with it, I’m not willing to risk dying in a terrorist attack so that Gaza can be levelled with “made in America” munitions. I’m not willing to risk dying in a terrorist attack so that oil companies and other big business interests have friendly regimes to collude with in the region as they scam the people out of their resources and freedoms.
If they don’t care then why did satanyahu come out in a speech against it? Protesting does work and does matter. You only need to look at history to see that
Pretty sure people protesting in the US are trying to influence the US govt.
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just a case of the mask falling off
As if all these other social medias don’t have garbage media or propaganda
We must return to AOL and Friendster.
That’s not the point
Problems with this app go beyond just privacy and bleed into national security.
Entire world should ban US based apps in this case.
The U.S government doesn’t have the same ability as the CCP to just get whatever info they want out of corporations with no due process. The two are completely incomparable.
Do you seriously believe in this?
Do I honestly believe China has an easier time getting corporations to bend over and violate their citizens rights? Why do you need to clarify this??
What is the difference if both countries access to user data at the end no matter easier or harder way? US is trying to block Tiktok under the name of national security but US itself has been violating other countries’ national security and privacy of people of these countries for years. What bothers me is people like you support this hypocritical action.
Hypocritical action? China’s internet hasn’t allowed external companies to offer services since its inception. All I’m saying is if the US wants to treat Chinese companies like China has treated US companies that should be perfectly fine.
You’re out here complaining that China’s not receiving the same rights it fails to extend to other people and calling that hypocritical??
Here’s Bernie Sanders from a year ago talking about how a handful of companies control the news people see, read, and hear. TL:DR - He makes the argument that it’s not fake news, that journalists are usually hard-working and honest. He says the problem is the limitation of allowed discussion - what topics make it to the consumer. He says for instance that he’s never asked about wealth and income inequality.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control. If the issues justifying a potential ban were truly data security or mental health as some argue (not without merit mind you), then the legislation to address those issues would look a lot different and include companies like Meta, Google, Instagram, etc. Those are valid concerns but the new measure is clearly not designed around them.
Finally, we’ve seen how Trump can tie up the courts for months on end even after all his self-snitching. Thus I very much doubt we’ll see any actual action in the 9 months + 3 months grace period laid out for the resolution of the TikTok matter. There are too many constitutional and business law challenges in my (admittedly layman’s) reading of expert opinion.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control
I mean, if this were true, that would mean you wouldn’t be able to find similar content on Western platforms. Are you really saying similar content isn’t readily available on YouTube? If so, what content?
That’s a solid criticism and I upvoted. I hadn’t thought about YouTube. Anecdotally I’ve had factual comments about how many kids are killed, what Israeli politicians say, etc. auto-moderated into oblivion on YouTube. But at the same time I get a lot of the facts I use from YouTube (basically never been on TikTok) so it holds water. I also get a lot of info from other sources, but I can’t think of something specific I’d get from them that I could never find on YouTube.
In my defense, I’m basing my opinion on why TikTok is particularly targeted on interviews like this one with Ted Cruz. He talks about how TikTok is specifically designed to push messages that are harmful to America, including what he calls pro-Hamas content but I suspect is actually anti-Israeli policy, pro-Palestine content. That is why I would argue there’s some evidence of a campaign against TikTok in particular that might skip over YouTube or other major platforms. Perhaps the Western powers feel that YouTube is still acceptably moderated towards their interests whereas TikTok isn’t. Perhaps Google is just too influential domestically.
Edit: I found a video I was looking for: Biden talking about passing the TikTok/Israel funding/Ukraine funding package. A bit of language he uses that I think is telling is “it continues America’s leadership in the world and everyone knows it” which could signal US dominance as a motivation and thus TikTok as a target and not US companies.
That doesn’t mean your point isn’t worth discussion, or that my points aren’t opinion. I’m interested to see how it develops. I’ve based my opinion on the conversations I can find and language used, but I’m open to adjusting my view if evidence prompts that.
I think this ban is completely agnostic re: content. The issue is more fundamental – it’s fully owned and operated by people in China. This is a geopolitical battle that is currently playing out across many industries. Social media grabs headlines where less sexy industry battles do not.
I think Tom Nicholas gives a great overview.
Also, fuck Ted Cruz with a 20 inch dildo. Don’t take anything that sniveling carcass has to say seriously.
it’s fully owned and operated by people in China
US private equity firms own more than anyone. WSJ: What Is TikTok Worth? Some Say $20 Billion, Others Say $100 Billion
[ByteDance founder] Zhang owns 20% of ByteDance, according to the company, though super shares have given him larger voting rights. Roughly 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors including Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group. The remaining 20% is owned by company employees.
The CEO is Singaporean Shou Zi Chew and the VP is American Michael Beckerman.
TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, and that the Chinese government exerts significant political influence over ByteDance really is not a question
I think it’s a many birds with one stone situation - an industrial battle, a move to monopolize for Facebook after years of lobbying, Censorship etc.
For one the YouTube algorithm is absolute dog shit compared to TT, which is literally the gold standard at this point.
If you haven’t tried, you’re seriously missing out. It’s legit incredible how good it is. I hardly use it because I prefer long-form content (and don’t honestly have much time) but I absolutely can respect what they created
Fuck all the algorithms, I don’t need any of that bullshit.
Nice username, btw 👍🏽
K… you alright? lol. What’s with the aggression 😂
Can you show us on the doll where the algorithm touched you?
Western SM is already in the pocket of the state and any content that goes against their values is suppressed.
Pro-Palestinian content on Tiktok can easily get traction and receive over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.
Considering that younger people are not watching regular media news, channels like fox just do not have comparative reach and they aren’t buying into the zionist propaganda like previous generations.
There are a lot of content creators who are articulate, succinct and organisation has come out of it. People have created sites & apps that list all corporations and products to boycott because of their support for Israel and it’s had an impact.
Sure, TTs algorithm can easily push you down unpleasant rabbit holes but that’s the nature of algorithms, not just specific to TT.
So there might be similar content on western SM but it’s being held down and isn’t showing on people feed ‘organically’.
I just did a brief search on YouTube and found pro-Palestinian content posted over the past week with hundreds of thousands of views too. I’m not arguing about the quality of the platforms, I’m saying this has more to do with geopolitical corporate hegemony (aka money) than with any specific content, as evidenced by the fact that this has been on the table since well before the Oct 7 attacks
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I just randomly selected this Channel 4 (3.8 million subscribers) video with 370K views on YouTube: Israeli soldier speaks out on war in Gaza. The next video it played was In Gaza now, it’s worse than ethnic cleansing from Al Jazeera. Then it gave me another Al Jazeera video, Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The US could have stopped Israel on day one. From where are you driving your accusation that YouTube is delivering you any more pro-Israel content than TikTok?
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Just one of the first 20 hits when I searched for “Palestine.” I have to admit I’m struggling to find any pro-Israel content among those search results. Searching for “Israel” gives a more mixed bag, but still plenty of pro-Palestinian content mixed in
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Israeli soldier speaks out on war in Gaza
In Gaza now, it’s worse than ethnic cleansing
Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The US could have stopped Israel on day one
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
TikTok is being banned for a bunch of different reasons all added together.
Republicans agreed to it, among the other reasons, because Democrats will get the blame for it and it will hurt Biden at the election.
Republicans and Democrats supported its ban because of sinophobia. It’s a big, successful business in America, there’s scaremongering around what data it’s collecting or ways it could be used to manipulate people’s opinions—ByteDance did not do itself any favours by coming out and telling all its American users to tell their Congresspeople to vote against this, which was spun as a demonstration of that power.
They also support the ban as part of an ongoing backlash against “big tech”. Republicans are angry at big tech because they think it’s too liberal. Democrats are angry at it for being addictive, abusing monopolistic powers, and other quite legitimate issues. The problem is that neither party is very good at actually dealing with the problem, so they just lash out wildly at whatever comes along that looks vaguely tech. Not realising that in this case, that will give way more power to Meta and Alphabet.
I think the reason it’s happening now is because of the growing protest movement against the genocide in Gaza.
All the other US media companies actively sensor pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content and TikTok doesn’t. Unacceptable!
That’s a bingo.
Maybe, but I don’t think so. The US govt is infamously slow and inefficient. I’ve been following this and it’s been a drumbeat that’s been growing for years, since long before Israel’s latest genocidal push began last October.
If there’s any particular reason that it’s succeeded now, I’d put it more down to the upcoming election.
Here’s US Senator Pete Ricketts saying that we need to ban TikTok because pro-Palestine videos “have more reach than the top 10 US news websites combined”
The reason it’s succeeded now is because of Gaza. Crediting the election makes no sense, how does this help anyone’s election chances?
how does this help anyone’s election chances
It doesn’t help. It hurts Biden among younger voters. Because he gets the blame for this.
So why are Democrats doing this? This isn’t just a Republican thing, it’s bipartisan and Biden signed it. Why?
So why are Democrats doing this?
For all the other reasons already listed?
Kinda like the not-so-unsupported conspiracy theory that musk bought Twitter to silence protest coordination. That Twitter was too useful to the ‘masses’ and the “sinister cabal” (not my words) said it needed to be taken out.
To reiterate: this is not my position but it is one I’ve heard that matches the sentiment expressed in the parent comment
What we certainly do know is that Musk bought twitter not to enable free speech, but to control speech according to his personal whims and beliefs.
I imagine the Saudi’s went in with Musk on the twitter deal to also control and dilute unfavorable speech. The Saudi ruler is the guy that assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi on foreign soil because he wasn’t exactly a team Saudi ruler kind of guy.
I 100% admit that my take on the TikTok ban is opinion based on the hearings and arguments + the scope of the bill, so you aren’t being unfair. I have never heard that about the Twitter purchase - I had read it was a poor decision Musk made only half-seriously and then was basically forced to follow through with.
The conspiracy theory, which I must again say is not my opinion, states the reluctance of the purchase was either: (A) A show put on to obfuscate “the truth”, or (B) An internal power struggle between the ruling elites and Musk
Just explaining, not advocating. Please don’t @ me.
Oh shit, how did I miss the Noam Chompsky Bernie Sanders crossover episode!?
Thanks for sharing!
I agree with this. I think you’re right.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time on TikTok knows this is true. The narrative is beyond their control there, lots of eyes see. That terrifies them.
That is some top level propaganda. Mixing facts with half truths and fiction. Nice.
Banning TikTok in an election year is proof Democrats don’t want to win.
Lol it was bipartisan. Not just democrats, Republicans as well.
So what? This only pisses off the Democrat’s base and it will make them stay home.
Notably the ban doesn’t kick in until after the election, after which it may not even be Biden’s problem. Maybe ByteDance will shut it down sooner. Maybe the next administration won’t follow through with the ban. 🤷
It was smart to delay the ban. The original bill would have banned it before the election - monumentally stupid! This, at least, delays the impact.
People are paying attention, though, and TikTok has been buying ads to campaign against this law. It’s still going to have an impact.
And Biden himself has a tiktok account that pumps out content.
The whole thing is very cynical and weird.
It’s a piss poor attempt to try control tiktok and ensure they play along. They don’t really want it banned, they just want to control the flow of information and it’s absolutely destroying the illusion of the first amendment!
Ehhh…I doubt it.
What’s the overlap between people who vote Republican and people who use Tiktok? I’m actually curious.
The age range skews younger, so probably not huge. It’s definitely there though - lots of “tradwife” thinly disguised fetish content. 😒
There’s a reason Trump came out against this ban, he knows it’s going to be unpopular and he loses nothing by flip-flopping on it.
This is just a free W for Trump and an L for Democrats with literally zero upsides. It accomplishes nothing besides pissing people off!
Well, unless there’s a credible national security angle that’s being kept confidential. I kind of suspect there is, since Trump tried to push through similar legislation, but worded it so badly that it never got out of debate… and the likes of Wyden voted for it even while they said it was the wrong legislation to solve the problem.
Please don’t tell me you actually believe them when they cry about national security. It’s almost always a lie.
Usually it’s about economics. But in this case, it may actually be true.
Generally, I consider real natsec issues to be things they can’t tell the public. So when I see privacy minded reps joining in with reps from both side of the aisle, I’m willing to lend a bit of credence to a security angle.
Assuming it’s not just the US being upset that some other autocratic government is controlling the medium du jour.
… and so by whining about natsec they can get you to support anything, as long as they don’t tell you about it?
No, I ignore the whining and consider it may be an issue based on actual behavior, as I originally stated.
Hence the “in this case, they might be actually telling the truth” from the original statement.
Just because they over-use an excuse doesn’t mean that it isn’t true on the odd occasion.
The problem is that so much crying wolf makes it more difficult to tell when it’s real.
It’s actually already banned in multiple countries, especially for anyone in government positions.
According to the world map in this link the countries that have banned it outright are: North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Krzykstan, India, Nepal, and Somalia.
(For anyone else like me who has trouble with unlabeled maps).
What about according to the text on that damn page?
The text is poorly organized, the map is faster.
lots of “tradwife”
Wild, I’ve never stumbled on any of that. But it has a really sensitive algorithm and I’m pretty firmly entrenched in the science-travel-pets axis.
They’re both dumb as hell and love to be influenced by autocratic governments
You’re saying that 1/3 of Americans are dumb as hell while repeating BlueAnonsense.
- IT Pro: Cambridge Analytica models were exaggerated and ineffective, [UK Information Commissioner’s Office] claims
- Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia
- Jacobin: Democrats and Mainstream Media Were the Real Kremlin Assets
- Washington Post: FEC fines DNC, Clinton for violating rules in funding Steele dossier
- Washington Post: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters
- Jacobin: It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election
- Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
- Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big Deal On the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
- MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
- Jeff Gerth at Columbia Journalism Review on Russiagate: Editor’s Note | Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four
- Matt Taibbi: WMD, Part II: CIA “Cooked The Intelligence” To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016
- Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away
- Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You’d be surprised. I used to work in a rural factory. All the big burly red-neck older men were on tiktok during their smoke breaks.
Who votes for the dictator because of losing TikTok?
They’re just going to stay home.
Which is the same as a vote for a dictator. And that is super cool if you are looking forward to Project 2025, and selling out loved ones so they can be put in camps as political prisoners.
🤡
Is a vote for Trump actually two votes for Trump? Oh! Is every dollar you don’t donate to Biden a dollar donated to Trump?
I’m not following your logic here. Not voting, or actually voting for Trump both work in his favor because his base is going to vote for him no matter what. You would only be hurting the side that wants us to continue to have future elections. But at the end of the day if you can look in the mirror and be ok with selling out democracy more power to ya.
They just passed a fascist bipartisan bill to censor TikTok because it was showing the truth about Gaza and because it was disrupting the preexisting media cartel that already exists in the US. This was part of a larger fascist foreign aid package meant to help Israel carry out its genocide and prolong the war in Ukraine instead of seek a peace deal and help provoke a war in Taiwan by arming them to the teeth and pushing us to fucking WW3. By voting for them you are making it clear that they can do anything they want to you and you’ll beg for more.
I already decided not to vote for genocide Joe a while ago. If I’m going to vote at all, I’m going to vote the way Bushnell did.
Mathematician here, I can answer this. Equivalence relations are symmetric, so if staying home is a vote for Trump then showing up to vote for Trump is the same as staying home on election day.
Okay, but then isn’t staying home also a vote for Biden by the same logic?
This isn’t a binary relation, there’s clearly three options (vote for Biden, vote for Trump, vote for neither).
That doesn’t make any sense. The idea that staying home could be a vote for Biden seems pretty silly on its face. If that were true, there wouldn’t be any point in going out to vote for him, because the majority (or at least a plurality) of the country stays home regardless. He’d win in a landslide.
Have you thought maybe the democrats themselves own some responsibility for the jeopardy the election is in? Maybe banning one of the most popular social media sites right before an election was a bad move?
Pretty sure that funding, aiding and abetting a genocide while denying there’s money for anything that benefits their own citizens is what’s losing the democrats support.
It had votes/support from both sides. And giving away democracy because you’re upset about a social media site seems like a bad take. Imagine telling future generations you traded the country’s democracy because you were mad at them because they took away your short video sites.
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Can you not comprehend what i said? Tiktok is more popular with younger people, and younger people have historically voted more for democrats. Of course republicans would help democrats shoot themselves in the foot here. How can you see this and not give any responsibility to the democrats?
No, it’s not.
Abstaining from voting is an option the voter is given.
I bet you have a heck of a time differentiating apples, oranges, and pears.
“A pear is basically just an orange because you didn’t pick the apple.” - TimLovesTech
The guy you replied to has replied in a similar variant of “x event happened, therefore dems don’t want to win.”
Can’t fault them though, he’s just doing his job and following orders. The opposite would be …. Unthinkable
By the dictator, you mean the one running the genocide and expanding spying on the civilian population as we currently speak, right?
Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet; the real reason TikTok is being banned.
Sure. Ignoring that this started in 2020 during Trump’s presidency.
Yes. This has been ongoing since TikTok acquired musical.ly. The CFIUS didn’t care as much until it became popular. TikTok has tried to comply, so why isn’t the CFIUS and there considerations being heeded?
You have got to be kidding. Did you really just link the canary? The same canary that got banned from Twitter for making antisemitic remarks.
They also failed dozens of fact checks.
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The ban on tiktok was going through before palestine attacked Israel. This article is just pure speculation and conspiracy theories.
The Canary has faced criticism for claiming that Israel is an apartheid state for its occupation of the West Bank. According to the Jewish Chronicle, Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the editor-in-chief, had her Twitter account suspended when she compared Jewish Labour Supporters with South Africa’s Apartheid “Imagine if during a day of international solidarity with the oppressed of Apartheid South Africa the Labour leadership opted instead to spend the day with white supremacists. That’s what Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are doing today.”
What great journalists.
I did. Because the leaked phone call is real.
That’s incredibly damning.
I enjoy your YouTube channel. You read Blackshirts and Reds to me.
Nice, thx! I’ve got 2 more books recorded recently, just gotta do the work of tagging and uploading them (should be ~week or so).
- Zak Cope - The wealth of (Some) nations.
- Domenico Losurdo - Nonviolence - A history beyond the myth.
And irrelevant. You are grasping at straws trying to connect all the dots in your conspiracy theories.
fact checks
Opinion disregarded.
This move against TikTok predates the Hamas attacks and Israel’s military action. It’s insane that TikTok’s ban is because teens are more likely to be pro-palestine.
It does. But there are mechanisms within CFIUS that TikTok was working through. Trump and Congress decided to circumvent CFIUS and go after TikTok, which is their right, but why?
So CFIUS would be a good process that would be short of a ban. You know, they could look at the app. They could decide whether or not there are other things that the company could do. But I think Congress has basically gone and kind of short-circuited that process and said, no, we’re not going to have the Committee on Foreign Investment look at this. We’re not going to have other processes look at it. We’re just going to make a decision as the Congress that this app needs to be sold in a short time, or it will be banned.
And so why is it that we’ll still be able to access apps like the clothing company Shein in in the U.S. - that’s also Chinese owned - Temu, which sells all sorts of stuff - clothing and housing goods? These apps are also Chinese owned and are on a lot of American phones. source
It’s because of TikTok’s popularity and influence.
This is the same conclusion Second Thought came to a while back in one of his youtube videos. While I don’t disagree with the conclusion, I also wouldn’t say it’s mutually exclusive to reasoning promoted by the mainstream media of "foreign influence. " What’s really wild is the idea that the ban is also being pushed by “foreign influence.”
Plausible deniability, 2 birds with 1 stone. There are hundreds of companies with foreign investors and influence. TikTok has tried to work with investigators and even spent $1.5 billion on a server framework for Project Texas. If TikTok was a crappy app and wasn’t the primary source of news for young adults, the government wouldn’t care.
Sayonara
Good fucking riddance.
Good riddance? Not really cause US still has clones of tiktok present like reels and shorts.
Nothing will change. Data will still be collected. China can easily buy data from the open market. Mental health will still be affected.
In fact, due to lack of competition, things will only get worse.
US and India are 2 moronic countries
Shorts fucking suck. It keeps recommending to me exactly four types of videos:
- stuff I have already watched, liked and commented – sometimes a few minutes prior
- videos I’m wildly uninterested with and systematically mark as irrelevant or instantly skip, yet it keeps bringing up videos of the same subject
- very old old “news” shorts
- stuff of people I’m subscribed to – which is fine, just not what makes great algorithms
Meanwhile, in a very short time, tiktok has managed to make me discover communities I had no idea I’d like to watch content from, while subtly managing to stop showing me some of the content from those communities I don’t enjoy
Idk why so many people assumed they would its a data gold mine even with the USA blocked
If we could have it banned in Europe or just Germany I would be happy for my people.
Just don’t use it if you don’t like it.
I dislike it. But no. Don’t be authorjtarian like China. Bann it on phones of those with security clearances, but that’s all.
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Ok boomer
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Where do we start and where do we stop with that kind of stuff?
If we ban TikTok we also would need to ban a lot of Social media platforms from the US for the same reason.
Edit: I don’t live in the United States.
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Then force them to add a disclaimer of that whilst signing up. That simple.
And the US is everyone’s friend that would never use big tech to spy on people or spread propaganda in foreign countries.
what does this do to the press freedom index ranking of the united states? nothing im guessing
TikTok is a platform, not press. I just wish they were banning the other walled gardens too.
These are advertisement platforms. Not free speech platforms.
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A government ultimately does control TikTok though…
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The only difference between Lemmy and Reddit Is Lemmy is smaller and its down way more often
'Cuz here on Lemmy, only the US gov’t matters. Which is, of course, similar to what 95% of people on Reddit think
That’s your words
Can we have like serious discussion without these sensationalising but dumb quips? Is there any adult here at all in this room who would be willing to have a nice conversation about the dangers of safety vs control?
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You draw some false equivalency strawmans and look down upon thinking you are so smart. It’s idiotic. Are you able to have mature conversation at all?
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We should make an Adult in the Room bingo card.
Do you not want lemmy to succeed? People from reddit should be welcomed.
Yall are acting like Voat did when the_donald got banned and the MAGAs tried to migrate to voat. Hows voat doing these days?
I feel like this ban WILL start a monopoly. Since Facebook does the same amount or more data mining than TikTok, Facebook will have to be banned alongside Instagram, making YouTube Shorts a monopoly, as there really isn’t any other alternatives that are relevant.
This isn’t about privacy or Meta and Google would be slapped too, this is just about the newest boogeyman for americans.
Seriously this smacks of McCarthy’s grocery list in the House Unamerican Activities Committee.
If there is evidence then they need to show us. We’ve learned some hard lessons about not trusting our government with this stuff.
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Where is it then? Where is the evidence? Can you link to it? Is there a CSPAN broadcast of it or some talking head making shit up?
I would be very surprised if there was evidence because the newspapers haven’t turned up any and they aren’t about to just let it sit on YouTube.
Here’s the full hearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1xEuK0Fxu8
There are also many articles across tech sites on the internet that you can find evidence of how the TikTok app is a data mining monster. If you haven’t read any about it yet, it’s probably just because you don’t want to hear it. It’s certainly not because the evidence is not out there, as there is a shitload of it.
Oh wow. All you could find is the entire 5 hour hearing? You don’t have any time marks? Articles referencing it? Are you seriously just hoping I’ll give up because you threw 5 hours of raw footage at me?
If there’s so many articles then link them. If they proved something in that 5 hours then give me the time stamp. You don’t get to make assertions that destroy people’s jobs and rights to speech without actually citing something.
Oh wow, I provided literally what I said I would provide, and all you can do is complain like a brat? Go find your own shit, I have already wasted enough time attempting to help you.
Long story short, there’s plenty of evidence out there and you will never look for it. Anything that I send as a reply will not be good enough, because you already have chosen what you want to believe about it.
They don’t care about monopoly. They care about evil China. It doesn’t seem to be an issue to strenghten evil Meta and Alphabet.
This makes sense as there still billions of other potential users around the world. Add to that the fact that other nations like content of their own cultures in their own languages. It means even if they will feel the change the platform won’t collapse because it is missing US users. Now If other countries follow in the US footsteps then it becomes a different story.
If you as a content creator have a choice between a platform with 3 billion people (US and India included), like Shorts and Instagram Reels, and one without (TikTok), where would you post?
This is a clear disadvantage given to tiktok only to protect its own companies cause if US actually cared about data and mental health, homegrown Tech companies would also face repercussions.
LETS NOT FORGET, China can VERY EASILY buy most of the data it needs from the open market which many US companies, including Big Tech contribute to.
This has done nothing for citizens. Only protected innovation less US companies.
Won’t people just continue using the app? Wouldn’t it be as easy as side loading future installs?
You overestimate the tech literacy of the majority.
If the tutorial can’t be boiled down to a 30 second video, tiktok users aren’t going to be able to comprehend it.
It’s excruciatingly easy to side load on android, to the point where it is outright dangerous for laymen.
All it will take is a 30s tiktok showing how to side load and they’re done, tech literate or not
I expect that Tiktok will strart distributing the app as an apk on their website.
Worse. Unless they’re going to start the Great American Firewall you can just go to the website.
iPhone has enormous market dominance in the US and no sideloading.
Shhh, you’re not supposed to point out Apples fla… uh, features.
iPhone has left the chat.
Or use it as a Progressive Web App. This could be a good thing for awareness of PWAs and for them being seen as a killer feature that people won’t buy a smartphone unless they support them well. A transition away from app stores to PWAs can only be good.
If they are doing TikTok, maybe they should do Facebook, Reddit and YouTube next.
But but but… the American government HATES having a light shined on it.
Bye felecia
Still think it’s a baited headline given their stated intention to go to court to fight the “unconstitutional ruling”. I’m not so sure the constitution gives foreign companies many legal rights so in that regard they’d perhaps be more protected if they were an American company. Whoops.
TikTok’s 80% of investors who aren’t ByteDance won’t pass up billions of dollars in cash either if the alternative is that they forever get zero from the American market.
They’ve been investing heavily in the US market for the last couple years too, so I doubt they are in the black.
They’ve just all around played politics the American way very poorly. I can’t really comment on whether that’s good or bad but I’m blown away this Shou Chew CEO dude still has a job after this came down.
A thing never mentioned in these debates is that noone in the world is buying tiktok without buying the underlying algorithm, the same algorithm the app runs on worldwide, the algorithm is the special sauce. They are not going to sell the basis for their app just for a single payday in the US market, which after buying it, they could rebrand and then once successful in the US, compete in the global market against tiktok but with the income of the most lucrative app market in the world behind them. It’s an extremely stupid business move.
They’re probably going to find themselves having to explain what it means that a social media platform is itself engaged in speech, instead of functioning as a platform for others to speak. TikTok users, whose voices are allegedly curtailed by the ban, aren’t exactly prevented from going to another platform.
If they say that it’s Tiktok’s speech that’s curtailed, they’re going to have to explain carefully how they’re not a foreign influence operation.
The language of the first amendment is pretty stark, but the courts have always understood it has various limits.
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It never went away.
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Uh yeah? Destroying people’s careers and lives just because they might be a communist is a massive breach of our rights.
Sounds like some progressive commie hippie dippie talk!
Type a 2,000,000 word essay on why democrats are better then Republicans and say “Joe Biden is the most pro union president in American history” 69 times as penance for your transgressions against the congregation.
/$
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the TikTok community?
It would be if McCarthy’s hearings were full of actual KGB agents.
i don’t use tik tok and think this is all hilarious. watching you all fight over it is even funnier.
I don’t protest so watching the government arrest protestors is hilarious. No way this will ever blow back on me!
this has nothing to do with tik tok
Nothing gets by you 🤣
no. it doesn’t
🤣
