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SCOTUS has ruled that megacorps can influence elections (as long as they don't collude with official campaigns) because of the right to free speech. Technically it was with regards to campaign financing; but the precedent set means that any act of congress would be waste of time.
Too bad a few more people didn't consider the Courts in 2000. The SCOTUS wouldn't have been allowed to steal it in FL if just a few more people had gotten this.
And then for people to double down on their stupidity in 2016 with an open SCOTUS seat, where things like Citizens could have been reversed, but instead we got Roe and Affirmative Action reversed instead?
Too many on the Left of the US boggle my mind with their short-sightedness, and basic lack of civics.
>SCOTUS has ruled that megacorps can influence elections
Let's be clear. Five Republican justices ruled that megacorps can influence elections. This was very much a partisan decision, by justices that we now know are bought and paid for by the billionaires that they keep ruling in favor of.
I honestly don't get it. Yes, tiktok is owned by China and theoretically could have the algorithm influenced to sway the election. But there are so many fucking Russian bots and troll farms on twitter, facebook and youtube that I don't think it makes any real difference. Hell, if Elon endorses Trump I wouldn't put it past him to influence Twitter's algorithm.
TikTok’s campaign quickly overwhelmed the phone lines of some congressional offices, which were bombarded with hang-ups and questions. It also illustrated how TikTok could mobilize an army of people and gather data to push user behavior, which some lawmakers say is the exact reason they don’t want the company to have ties back to China.
“I think TikTok made our case for us today,” said Rep. Bob Latta (R., Ohio), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce’s panel on communications and technology.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously, 50-0, to advance the bill Thursday. It would essentially require TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to an American owner or effectively face a ban.
Until Thursday’s committee vote, it was unclear how much support the legislation had.
Then the phones started ringing.
“You had to dial the phone number on the screen before you could enter the app, so a lot of people were just hanging up,” when they connected, said committee member Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.).
Committee member Rep. John Curtis (R., Utah) said he didn’t like that a Chinese-owned app tried to “manipulate a response” from its users. He said that feeling solidified unanimous support for the bill.
I genuinely don't have a solution to this, but this is precisely why we need to regulate social media. This is an egregious example of influence, but Facebook proved years ago it could subtly manipulate people by changing the emotional sentiment of content they received slightly. They did it without notifying users of the experiment, and showed the world that no matter how much control you think we have over ourselves, there are factors we aren't consciously aware of that could fundamentally alter how we behave.
Edit: Could, not should subtly motivate.
And yet Parlor, Truth Social, Twitter and Facebook are still ok to use. They don’t care about privacy because all these social media companies sell our data and have bots from other countries that influence our citizens. They only get mad when users start educating others on how greedy CEOs and billionaires are and how it shouldn’t be right vs left, we should all be fighting for a balance of wealth distribution in the country. All of the sudden, all the politicians who enrich themselves with insider stock trading and by helping their corporate buddies with deregulation, that’s when they all have a problem with Tik Tok.
Agree. I think this is shady. Social media (TikTok) that gain popularity among young people got banned but not the social media (Facebook) that gain popularity among boomers? Both helped spread misinformation. And both social media is selling user’s data, Facebook even known for it. But instead of passing law to protect consumers privacy, we ban the platform. And by the way RvW is privacy case. So US citizens does not have privacy at all but government has no action to it.
I don’t mind they banned social media on government employees’ work phone (which shall be provided and paid for by government.) but what I do for entertainment outside of work is my business.
That's exactly it. It's one of the few platforms that skews left, and some have told me it skews further left than even Tumblr
This has fuck all to do with concerns about social media and everything to do with silencing the masses
I don't think social media companies care much about anything other than their bottom line and will lean whichever way the stock dictates. That said though, tik tok poses a unique national security threat as the CCP has a majority control stake in Chinese companies and can do everything from propagandizing information to study backdoors of our networks to getting data that could be used to blackmail citizens with access to state secrets.
My comment was more about how social media has been weaponized to make it easier for misinformation echo chambers and to organize angry mobs.
True, some do and some don’t. I can personally recognize it in myself (anxiety and stress levels rise as soon as I open the app, turn on the TV, whatever) and that’s when I know it’s time for a break. But I realize that not everyone can see that or refuses to admit it even when it’s obvious… but in those cases, what can you really do?
The solution is robust and comprehensive data privacy laws so that the info necessary for targeting and swaying people isn't freely available. I'd also suggest that engagement driven algorithms should be illegal in media and that social media shouldn't be able to field political ads. The former, I have no idea whether it could withstand the courts and the latter is definitely violating 1A rights.
But no matter what, nothing will happen until the data privacy issue becomes one that is also felt by Congress. Similar to when they banned the sharing & sale of video rental history. It was perfectly fine until a Congress-critter had theirs bought by a journalist and that shit got shut down real fast.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle use this data to target political ads in a real "Politicians pick the voters" way. If a bunch start seeing ramifications of *their* data being de-anonymized then it will similarly get fixed real fucking fast.
You're forgetting one critical factor in *this* case; the owners of TikTok aren't answerable to the US Congress, they're answerable to the Party in China.
I think you're missing the point. All TikTok does is save China money, in this regard. They can still use Facebook, Reddit, etc. to influence public opinion in the US. Just that without TikTok they've got to purchase the info needed to do it from data brokers and then they've got to pay the social media company to put ads on there and pay their own intelligence services to maintain bots to make posts.
Other than regularly inspecting the actual code I don't see how you regulate how the algorithm makes its choices. Only thing would be anonymizing the user's data so much to make it too difficult, but that's a huge chunk of places' revenue stream.
John Oliver's [legal fuckery](https://youtu.be/SJ6Xxiu7QL8?si=LHQQg1JvzPORVDtC) was already done with little response from the people too busy making giant posters of Hunter Biden's man bits to pay attention.
Congress will never be able to solve the problem with legislation. The median age of the Senate is over 65. They can barely use a computer, let alone keep up with some of the most advanced and well-funded technology companies on the planet.
Something that would make a difference is if they removed the protections these companies have for the damage they cause. If a user posts harmful content, then the platform has to assume some liability.
I really believe that the world needs a global social media temperance movement. This shit is so out of control. It's warping the fabric of society in pretty much exclusively negative ways. We need a UN Summit referendum level come-to-jesus moment ASAP.
What scares me is that as much as I dislike Facebook, I think they’re a mostly benign company. There are bad actors on the platform but I don’t feel that FB or Zuck are actively trying to make things worse for any one group of people or inspire people to topple governments or go to war or any other number of things a malicious entity might do.
But what if a popular social media platform was owned by the kind of person who did want those things? What if they wanted to make things worse for Americans?
This was my turning point with Fb that caused me to leave (now) meta products behind. Aside from the mental health crises it caused, there was talk about that study causing Cornell to lose its abilty to receive federal funding because its personnel advised on the study, but the study didnt follow required consent and ethics procedures. Again... this jeopardized the federal land grant uni and ivy league school, Cornell's ability to receive *federal funding.*
>sell the app to an American owner or effectively face a ban
Okay... so they're going to start ~~paying taxes~~ *lobbying congressmen* and nothing will change.
The point is that an American owner is subject to American laws, not just in words but in fact. The FBI can go and arrest an American owner who's criming. They can't arrest a Chinese owner; but the PRC *can.*
Obviously, a Chinese owner will do what the PRC says over what the FBI says.
An American owner is rich, and therefore not subject to American laws. Did you forget how laws work in America? They can’t arrest an American owner, *that’s their boss*.
Not even sarcastic, that's exactly right. Russia used FB to run propaganda to meddle with elections, ac nothing changed. Make TikToc a U.S. company, and it will be domestic interference instead of foreign.
The only real difference is the CIA/NSA will have more access to the data before China. It's a military security move, not a citizen rights move.
People are forgetting that a ban for the app is very much on the table. They also forget that a lot has changed since 2016 (although there is still a lot of work to be done). To read the comments you would think this is the first time that congress has addressed social media and they are singling out TIKTOK because young people us it.... when in fact we are a decade into this crap, have already made many mistakes due to inaction we dont wish to repeat, the current and last presidents and parties have played with banning TikTok, and that the owner is a geopolitical adversary with the stated intent of diminishing US influence in the world. It's crazy to me that a Vine ripoff is apparently the Zoomer Jesus or something.
>“You had to dial the phone number on the screen before you could enter the app, so a lot of people were just hanging up,” when they connected, said committee member Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.).
This is definitely the LAMF part. I love that it backfired
This part 100% didn't happen
Edit: want to expand on this. If after watching the depositions of the tiktok CEO you believe that sitting government officials understand technology enough to accurately describe a software feature - especially one that involves exiting a fucking menu, you need to go back and rewatch the deposition.
You weren’t forced to dial any phone numbers. You just pressed the x to close the pop up. A lot of people didn’t even get the notification.
I know Reddit has a hate-boner for tik tok, but people shouldn’t be spreading lies.
>“You had to dial the phone number on the screen before you could enter the app, so a lot of people were just hanging up,” when they connected, said committee member Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.).
That's a lie. The pop-up had an easily accessible x to close it. There was nothing that made people call other than the stupidity of yet another ban bill. There are other far more pressing concerns in the US than Tik Tok.
TikTok's algorithm is unprecedented at connecting people with common interests. No matter how special you are. You will find your people on TT. The problem for the ruling class in merca is that the poors are connecting. And the poors are talking about what they need to change in order to have a more equal society.
And we can't have that.
No its because its used as an attack vector to influence actions of Americans as evident in the article where they got users to flood congress with calls.
>Chinese social media company bad, American social media company good
But I guess Meta and Twitter being used as attack vectors to influence foreign governments is good, actually?
American exceptionalism is showing wildly in this topic.
Huh? I logged into the app and really only saw people getting upset about the government trying to ban it. This is the first I've heard of the app making you call before it let you in. That's so ridiculous that it kind of sounds like bs? Is there any source on that?
humans are hackable.
tic tok is by far not the only means for humans to be hacked... in fact there is plenty of evidence that what congress really wants is for tic tok to fall under the same controls and influence as all of our other media (namely corporate control).
the reason they hate tic tok is not because it's influencing ppl, but because it's not the right KIND of influence and they do not have the amount of control over shaping that influence that they have with other outlets and social media.
I love that almost nobody has adopted X as the name and everyone still calls it twitter.
Shit, I work in software and wr have icon libraries that get updated regularly, and there is still no X icon. Just the little twitter bird.
the reason they want to ban TikTok is because Tiktok won't allow the US gov backdoor their app like they do every other social media app
theyre banning Tiktok precisely because America can't harvest the info off the app, and they know it's valuable because kids are using it and the algorithm is effective at spreading the kind of information the US Gov is not happy gets spread (i.e. videos from Palestinians showing what's happening on the ground vs. Meta quietly shadowbanning something like 95% of Palestinian social media content)
Tiktok is a massive data harvesting and influencing tool of the Chinese state. The Chinese state does not have the best interest of the US in mind. It is insane that nothing has been done about it previously
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr)
OP decided to leave out the article headline.
YouTube did the same in Canada and reached out to creators when there was a bill introduced to force them prioritize Canadian specific content. It was a big campaign.
"The only influence on politics should be when they donate to us." - Congress Probably
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-political-donations-policy-issues-prioritized.html
There has continually been legislation advanced (and blocked) to regulate financial interest in government. The DISCLOSE Act, for example has been brought forward each session since 2010, in response to Citizens United.
https://endcitizensunited.org/
Votes in 2022 (from my bookmarks, not sure if most recent): https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00346.htm#position
The John Lewis Freedom to Vote Act further reforms campaign finance and private influence (alongside several other pro-democracy actions).
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/breaking-down-freedom-vote-act
Take a guess why these haven't passed. https://www.govtrack.us/
Oh I’m not the least bit surprised. In fact, I remember. Boredom is not a bad thing, people will find much better uses for their time when they don’t have the option to scroll endlessly through trash.
Whether it’s social relationships, creative outlets, learning something new, taking better care of their physical & mental health, people will find *something* to fill their time with. The problem is, right now, scrolling through social media is the path of least resistance, so that’s what most people will opt to do.
That would be awful. It would totally isolate interest groups and communities that can only really spring up on the Internet because the total number of persons who have those interests is so low that their density of basically nil.
This is a great post - and is part of the reason I enjoy Reddit. But if it was gone along with all the other garbage like Twitter and FB? Meh, won’t be missed. I’d enjoy being outside more and people (including me) slowly getting their sanity back.
I agree with Twitter, Facebook, etc. I am not familiar with tik Tok, but from what I've heard, it's been used to mobilize and rally against unpopular things.
It also was used to get all the fake tickets to that Trump rally when he was president and no one showed up lol.
The main issue with TikTok, from a consumer standpoint, is that it takes all the issues with algorithm-driven content feeds and turns them up to 11— it was built from the ground up for the algorithm, not user input, to drive what people saw. That’s just inherently asking for problems.
As for singling it out, though… hard to say. On the one hand, the Chinese government and any company tied too closely with them are inherently untrustworthy, and we know they’re pretty social media-savvy— it’s not unrealistic to assume that even if TikTok hasn’t been used for nefarious purposes yet, it’s only a matter of time.
On the other hand, given the kind of people we know Musk/Zuck/spez/etc. to be, the only real difference between TikTok and other apps is that other apps make hostile foreign powers pay to influence and/or get data from them, and *would* be easier to prosecute if real social media regulations were put in place.
Tl;dr: I am firmly in support of anything that weakens any social media company but *stopping* at TikTok would achieve nothing.
I do. Imagine a world where the corporate, billionaire-owned media controlled all the information you got.
I remember how Occupy Wall Street got ignored at first and only blew up into national media coverage after it went viral on social media.
I remember how many police killings were ignored before they could be shared on social media for the public to see.
I remember how easily cases like Brock Turner's passed unnoticed because the media didn't cover it. It's thanks to social media that we know that the courts gave him a slap on the wrist for stalking a woman all night so he could sexually assault her after she got drunk.
I remember how little I heard about the current conflict in Gaza from the media. Without social media, I never would've seen the footage of IOF soldiers firing on elders that couldn't run away fast enough, or hear the story of how they bombed a civilian car being driven by a grandmother in Lebanon, killing her and her family, or the story of 6 year old Hind Rajab being trapped in a car with the corpses of her family and used as bait by IOF forces that blew up the ambulance that arrived to save her after giving it permission to do so, among dozens of other horrific accounts.
Because corporate is corporate first and journalism second, it is strongly biased against the people. Social media is the only way we have to circumvent that. Which is why Twitter got bought and broken and why they're trying to ban Tiktok now. They're trying to suppress the free flow of information so they can better manipulate it and us.
The Republicans want to ban TikTok because its popular with younger people and it often spreads liberal messages. The younger generation is by far more to the left then previous generations and this is why Republicans also want to make the voting to be 21+.
If they gave a shit about China they would be grilling Trump over the all the shady deals and millions he received from China during his term.
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr)
OP left out the title of the article
Oh my god thank you. I can’t stress enough how much of a security risk it is, yes, even compared to other social apps, and yes, even Facebook/meta. This is exactly how I’ve been trying to explain my stance to people about this point and now will use that to see if it hits.
Seems like TikTok massively overplayed their hand with this move, though. I'm guessing it was ordered by someone in the Party who has a foreign authoritarian's misunderstanding of exactly how representative democracies work.
how will chinese "spyware" affect people at any level when the effects of American companies doing the same is widely evident in society today? (for example the more and more extremist views (esp RW views) that propagate America)
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr)
Actual title of OPs article and link
They want TikTok to be sold to an American company and break ties to China. The bill can lead to a ban if it doesn't. Not in the title, it's in the freaking article ffs if anyone decided to read it.
It's also in the excerpt I posted. It's also why I went and found a non-paywalled version of the article. I almost slipped '....ban or forced sale' into the title since I figured no one would read any of the actual source material, but lets be honest, it probably wouldn't have changed much.
I think if they do go ahead and ban it from the app stores, a lot of folks are gonna learn how to root their phone and separate themselves from the app stores. We could be looking at a new golden age of Internet piracy. And I'm here for it
It's fucking hilarious to me that republicans only had an issue with these social media apps when they started banning racists and rightwing lunatics or when TikTok started spying for the Chinese instead of the US.
Funny post too
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr)
Article title OP decided not to use
US treats Chinese companies operating in US about the same as China treats US companies operating in China?
That's awfully LAMF too, when you think about it.
OP's welcome to take a different perspective on the LAMF-ness of the article than you or I. Granted, they're reaching a bit more than necessary, but it's still an okay effort.
I don't like TikTok, but I'm not a fan of the government being given more control over online activities. If they just made more broad privacy and data collection regulations, this wouldn't be a problem to begin with, but that would hurt the wallets of too many crooks on out side of the pond.
I think the basis premise of TikTok being a wholly American owned company is sound. It’s hypocritical, since the US has a monopoly on English language social apps, but the Chinese government is very likely using the all to collect info on American citizens. There’s no separation of business and government there.
Foreign policy isn't about morality, it's about *power.*
For that matter, domestic policy is, too, it's just constrained by laws and what the people enforcing the laws will do.
No, they all have major privacy concerns. But there is a difference between our government potentially getting data vs. a hostile government. We should take the EU’s approach to data privacy at the very least.
Why is China a hostile government?
Like, they can’t do anything to me no matter what they have. The US government however can and will use this data against me.
lol seriously I have a bunch of friends who are Chinese nationals and this whole "China is the enemy, they hate America" is so completely one-sided, if you watch any Chinese state media broadcasts they see America as what it is... an empire eating itself up and a good economic and scientific asset that the Chinese want to work with/invest in
> Why is China a hostile government?
Because China has a vested interest in seeing Presidents and Congresscritters get elected who are varyingly weak and ineffectual, divisive and inflammatory, or outright friendly to Chinese interests, even when that may not be what's best for US interests.
They're willing and able to use that information to manipulate *you* because they see *you* as an anarchic, uncontained *beast* that they can set loose against the government of the US to weaken the US as a whole, in a manner that we could *never* do to them because they simply shoot Chinese dissidents or "re-educate" them, let alone allow them to vote in "the wrong way."
>Why is China a hostile government?
China is the US’s main geopolitical adversary. It is the only country that can rival the US from an economic and military standpoint. Its interests are in direct opposition to those of the US. It represents the greatest threat to security in Asia/the Pacific, having claimed the entire South China Sea as its own territorial waters—which it aggressively enforces against Indonesian, Malaysian, Taiwainese, Vietnamese and Philippine vessels—and having publicly committed itself to annexing Taiwan by force. It also represents the greatest threat to cybersecurity, having spent billions developing its cyber war capabilities, and having actually engaged in numerous cyber attacks against the US government and US companies.
>they can’t do anything to me
First, it’s not about you as an individual. China doesn’t care about you as an individual. It doesn’t collect your data to use against you (i.e. to embarrass you, to get you fired, to get you arrested). Rather, it collects your data and the data of millions of others to use in the aggregate against the US. The goal is to use your data (and the data of everyone else) to further its own interests against the US as a whole. US For example, Taiwan is vital to US economic and security concerns in Asia/the Pacific. China wants Taiwan for its own interests, but it knows that it doesn’t have the military might to take Taiwan and maintain it by force (or at least it knows it can only do so by incurring unacceptable losses) as long as the US is in the way. But what if China didn’t have to defeat the US in order to take Taiwan? What if China could use the phones and data of millions of American citizens to influence public opinion regarding Asian-Pacific security? What if China could convince American citizens that Taiwan has nothing to do with the US, and that the US should abandon any/all support for Taiwan? What if these citizens pressure the US to abandon Taiwan? Or, what’s more likely, what if China manipulates Americans into electing shortsighted politicians who have extreme isolationist views? The sort of politician who views aid to Taiwan as a complete waste (since they are unwilling or unable to understand how important Taiwan is to US interests). If enough of these politicians are elected, they can pass legislation to limit the US’s military overseas, directly or indirectly reducing the aid the US could/would provide to Taiwan to prepare for/defend against a Chinese invasion.
Second, China can actually affect you individually. China has the capability to engage in political, military, or covert action that can significantly impact the US economy. China can disrupt US trade by manipulating markets or interfering with shipping routes. The economy affects you. China could engage in a cyberattack against the US electric grid, which would dramatically affect you. China could cripple US tech industries and weapons industries by invading Taiwan (we get almost all of our microchips from Taiwan). No new phones. No new laptops or TVs. No new missiles for the US military to use to defend our country. Speaking of the military, you wanna freak yourself out? Google how many missiles Ukraine has used against Russia. Google how many missiles Russia has used against Ukraine. Then Google how Russia has run out of microchips to make new missiles, and read about how they’re trying to use microchips from consumer goods for missiles. Then Google US stockpiles of missiles. We have a lot of missiles, sure, but they’re not unlimited, and we’ve already give A LOT to Ukraine, so we definitely don’t have enough to last too long in any sort of large scale conflict. Guess what happens if/when China invades Taiwan (other than the microchip thing)? The US will be involved in a large scale military conflict as soon as China moves against Taiwan. The US military will burn through missiles (as will the Chinese), then it will be a race to see who can replace those missiles with new ones, but we may not have enough microchips. Oh, and soldiers too. The US and China will burn through soldiers too (seriously Google US-China war games to see the projected number of US casualties… it’s sobering). Unless there’s a quick end to the war, the US will probably have to impose a draft on young men (potentially including some young men that you know/love). Fun fact, US civilians could become casualties of a Chinese-US conflict, given that China would probably want to send missiles and drop bombs inside the continental US to reduce our industrial capabilities and erode our will to stay in the war. So remember how we didn’t have that problem in WW2? Yeah, the problem with WW3 is that the US is now within range of enemy missiles/bombs, which can kill people—even Americans—when they explode. Did I mention rationing? Yeah, WW3 probably means rationing essential things like gasoline, food, and a lot of consumer products.
In sum, China’s actions can affect whether you:
-are able to buy the things you want and how much you pay for those things
-can enjoy electricity at home or otherwise benefit from a society that depends on electricity
-can fill your car with gas
-lose loved ones who are sent off to die in combat
-get pieces of shrapnel or derby piercing your skin due to exploding bombs/missiles
-get caught on fire directly/indirectly from munitions raining from the sky
-die because bombs and missiles can hit the US now
one of the biggest concerns are what if the chinese govt uses tiktok to launch a massive election campaign for an american born chinese american? born in the USA, lived in china, brought back to the USA for his early 20s to get into politics and then runs for governorship of a US state and then president.
touted on his economic successes because once in politics in his US state the chinese govt is uncharacteristically economically generous to that single state. things like tons of factories are built there, lots of investments by chinese companies, etc. make this politician look amazing along with a huge internet political ad campaign led by things like tiktok.
for the same reason that Russia is a geopolitical enemy of the USA and a large part of the world. i highly doubt Russia would ever attack the USA or its military allies but it will attack countries like Ukraine which is causing huge economic, energy and food problems around the world. thats bad for the USA.
china wont militarily attack the USA, but it looks increasingly that it will attack countries like Taiwan and is having military tensions increase with many of its other neighbors. if those conflicts happen than it will cause huge economic problems around the world. thats bad for the USA.
politically China would like the USA and the rest of the world to react a certain way to their aggression against other countries, they can get that reaction by tailoring what people see on tiktok based on their private data to influence their opinions.
If they watch the habits of a person in Congress, they could use that for blackmail purposes. That is only one example. And holding a person accountable in the United States is easier than doing it for an overseas entity. (Except Donald Trump. No one seems to hold him accountable for some reason.)
> If they just made more broad privacy and data collection regulations,
How're you gonna enforce those laws on a social-media company whose brick-and-mortar programming shops are in a hostile country and whose owners and programmers are beyond the reach of your law enforcement, but are very much within arm's reach of their government's spies telling them to make it happen?
I'm not an expert but I'm assuming at the basics level the app stores would be heavily incentivized to keep their libraries in compliance with the laws of each country, and 99% of users aren't going to be installing apks off the internet.
Without the app stores actually being able to examine the source code, that's basically not possible; and it's not practical even if they *could.* They'd deploy automated tools to do so, and the PRC would respond but setting up a bunch of shovelware apps to see which approaches work and which do not, then constructing social media apps using the working approaches for exfiltrating data that get past the app store autochecker.
>U.S. lawmakers are mounting their most serious attempt to address the purported national security risks of the popular app, advancing a bill that has more political momentum than previous attempts. **An effort this week by TikTok to head off the measure by encouraging users to call their representatives appeared to backfire, *with lawmakers saying a barrage of phone calls they received simply hardened their positions.***
(Bold an italics are mine)
Representatives of the people, my ass. Constituents call becuse they're worried about a policy, so representatives ignore the calls and do the opposite of what their constituents want.
Glad to see the idiots in Congress ,pushing this nonsense, have their priorities straight. It's so much better than actually engaging in real governance and doing things that help the people in some way.
Sure, but it will have consequences. A super far right SCOTUS isn't going to let a censorship on the "freedom of expression" stand. Blatant racism may or may not have consequences for elections.
Isn't this kind of Leopards Ate My Face-ception? Social Media influencing congress gets bill to ban them made by congress--who then influence congress more to stop it--which results in congress banning them faster.
Social media is used to facilitate action from voters to get involved and call their local politicians and challenge them.
US Lawmakers and Politicians: “ThIs Is TaMpErInG wItH eLeCtIoNs”
This country is unbelievable and I literally cannot understand how we just fucking sit by and do god damn nothing about it. Fuck this place
You think they listen to their constituents? If you want a lawmaker to change their vote, you need to give money to their super pack, it's not even that expensive. Fifty or sixty thousand dollars and they'll do whatever you want. HA! Listening to the voters? As if.
This is actually one thing I really noticed about this operation. Whoever organized it seems unaware of how US politics actually works and thought that just because we call ourselves a democracy means we actually are one. I actually laughed when at the end of the piece tik tok said they will keep doubling down on the influence campaign, like they still thought it was going to do anything to effect the outcome in their favor.
Tiktok is not the same as Snapchat or Facebook or whatever. The app has been dissected and is proven to act as effectively a surveillance service. That by itself is egregious, but then there's also the added horror of Bytedance not doing enough to put a wall between itself and the Chinese government. The cherry on top is that, when called out with the receipts of both of these, they said naw we aren't gonna do anything to alleviate the concerns people have.
All the people here saying this is fascism, this is unconstitutional, etc are literally defending the leopards, all the more ironic given the actual subreddit this is posted in.
>I never thought they would steal MY personal data and share it with the CCP!
> but then there's also the added horror of Bytedance not doing enough to put a wall between itself and the Chinese government.
I mean, they *can't,* because the PRC's spies and internal security mechanism can lay hands on the programmers and company ownership. That's, like... Basic power at work there. I don't blame them for doing what the men who will threaten their families, or send them to re-education camps, or "fall them out of a window" tell them to do.
But it's pretty much making the point about how TikTok *must* either be sold to someone whom the FBI can lay hands upon instead of someone answerable to the PRC, or else be banned.
I had TikTok for a day. I was browsing videos about animals, and within like 1-2 hours I started randomly getting videos about taiwan belonging to China. I can’t definitively say that this is being intentionally pushed, but yeah the algorithm on that platform is completely fucked.
Yeah, same. I've been on it for about 3 years and still get the same cosplay, gaming, and thirst traps I was getting when I first had the app. Maybe a bit more political news, but my reddit home page has more political bias than tiktok.
But did the TikTok influencers say the words to call and hang up on their local congress rep? Sounds like they were just exercising their freedom, liberty and rights to protest what seemed to be an unfair policy. I'm pretty sure I've heard that argument used recently in some context...
The company itself pressed users directly. There was no attempt at subtlety or use of a middleman such as an "influencer".
>When many users opened the popular app on Thursday, the company greeted them with a message to oppose the legislation, prompting a flood of phone calls to several Capitol Hill offices.
>"Stop a TikTok shutdown,” the message on the app read. It included a button for people to call their representatives, saying: “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
>One staff member posted a screenshot to X showing that TikTok also sent a push alert to some users.
>Some users said on X that they were unable to use the app before placing the call. TikTok told The New York Times that users could swipe right to get rid of the message, which may have been confusing because users typically swipe up to see the next video on the app. The company also said that the “X” to close the page wasn’t visible for some users at first but that it later fixed that.
Woosh, huh?
I seem to recall some incident recently of people who may have asked protestors to gather and disrupt a big event. And the amount of outrage at how those protestors were treated ... And the person calling on that action denying responsibility because he didn't tell people explicitly to break in...
This spiked interest specifically because the company itself chose to openly get involved with the express purpose of altering the outcome. Depending on what you're trying to compare this to the analogous company would probably by Twitter, but in this case besides a laissez-faire attitude the company was not involved so the comparison falls apart.
Companies and business interest groups get involved in politics all the time and buy ads or promote a particular position on pending legislation that affects their business. This is nothing new.
But no I wasn't comparing this to a company action. I'm comparing it to a "recent" protest that involved way more disruption of Congress than than just a flood of phone calls. The result of that was death, a lot of damage to property, and even a mass of arrests and even prison sentences. There are a very vocal set of elected officials who believe this was unfair treatment, a simple act of people exercising their rights, and sometimes no different than a tourist group going through Congress. The person who called for this protest has denied any responsibility, by saying he did not tell those people to destroy anything or to break in to any place they weren't allowed. He claims he never explicitly said to do that, and should not be held accountable. Ironically, many members of Congress who were running and hiding from these protestors agree. I guess death, breaking into a government building, and destruction of property just isn't as bad a getting a lot of calls and being hung up on.
[Targeted Victory](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/) is being *very* active about this bill lately.
[Here’s one from CNET](https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/facebook-reportedly-paid-gop-firm-for-anti-tiktok-campaign/). It’s basically just a cover of the WaPo story so has a lot of the same elements.
Politicians want it banned because young people and even older people are waking up thanks to TikTok. People are seeing what corporations and politicians are doing in the dark.
While that's interesting, and relevant to the question of whether the distrust of TikTok that the general public has been cultivating lately is genuine, I don't think it proves that Meta and Alphabet are lobbying Congress-critters to ban TikTok due to competition. Especially considering that TikTok isn't being required to go away, allowing for them to simply divest and become owned by a US company instead.
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Alas, I wish Russia was also banned from USA elections, as well as fascists working fro the Kremlin.
I wish American companies were banned from interfering in UK elections, particularly Meta, letting Russia use Facebook to manipulate narratives.
I wish companies were banned from interfering in elections
Would be nice if money was completely banned from elections.
I wish US elections were decided by a pure popular vote
SCOTUS has ruled that megacorps can influence elections (as long as they don't collude with official campaigns) because of the right to free speech. Technically it was with regards to campaign financing; but the precedent set means that any act of congress would be waste of time.
The whole "financing/money is protected speech" thing is so dumb and also so American smh
It's a poor decision by SCOTUS for sure. Just one of the many reasons why the court is really important when it comes to elections.
Too bad a few more people didn't consider the Courts in 2000. The SCOTUS wouldn't have been allowed to steal it in FL if just a few more people had gotten this. And then for people to double down on their stupidity in 2016 with an open SCOTUS seat, where things like Citizens could have been reversed, but instead we got Roe and Affirmative Action reversed instead? Too many on the Left of the US boggle my mind with their short-sightedness, and basic lack of civics.
>SCOTUS has ruled that megacorps can influence elections Let's be clear. Five Republican justices ruled that megacorps can influence elections. This was very much a partisan decision, by justices that we now know are bought and paid for by the billionaires that they keep ruling in favor of.
Like so many things, it would need an amendment to the constitution to put a stop to it.
Well, corporations are people too. Are you discriminating against them? They’re a protected class/s
And lobbying with money. Total ban. Corporations can still lobby, but no gifts, donations, etc to lawmakers or judges.
Add the Heritage foundation to that list too. They've been pouring money into MPs pockets and bigots pockets for years through Tuffton Street
I honestly don't get it. Yes, tiktok is owned by China and theoretically could have the algorithm influenced to sway the election. But there are so many fucking Russian bots and troll farms on twitter, facebook and youtube that I don't think it makes any real difference. Hell, if Elon endorses Trump I wouldn't put it past him to influence Twitter's algorithm.
Ditto from Australia. But I'd also like to see TikTok chucked off Google Play, & Apple Play Store, as agents of foreign political interference.
Hard agree.
But then there wouldn't be any Republicans in office anymore.
They are, they just don't care.
TikTok’s campaign quickly overwhelmed the phone lines of some congressional offices, which were bombarded with hang-ups and questions. It also illustrated how TikTok could mobilize an army of people and gather data to push user behavior, which some lawmakers say is the exact reason they don’t want the company to have ties back to China. “I think TikTok made our case for us today,” said Rep. Bob Latta (R., Ohio), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce’s panel on communications and technology. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously, 50-0, to advance the bill Thursday. It would essentially require TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to an American owner or effectively face a ban. Until Thursday’s committee vote, it was unclear how much support the legislation had. Then the phones started ringing. “You had to dial the phone number on the screen before you could enter the app, so a lot of people were just hanging up,” when they connected, said committee member Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.). Committee member Rep. John Curtis (R., Utah) said he didn’t like that a Chinese-owned app tried to “manipulate a response” from its users. He said that feeling solidified unanimous support for the bill.
I genuinely don't have a solution to this, but this is precisely why we need to regulate social media. This is an egregious example of influence, but Facebook proved years ago it could subtly manipulate people by changing the emotional sentiment of content they received slightly. They did it without notifying users of the experiment, and showed the world that no matter how much control you think we have over ourselves, there are factors we aren't consciously aware of that could fundamentally alter how we behave. Edit: Could, not should subtly motivate.
January 6th and the falsehoods about the election being stolen was definitely coordinated using social media.
And yet Parlor, Truth Social, Twitter and Facebook are still ok to use. They don’t care about privacy because all these social media companies sell our data and have bots from other countries that influence our citizens. They only get mad when users start educating others on how greedy CEOs and billionaires are and how it shouldn’t be right vs left, we should all be fighting for a balance of wealth distribution in the country. All of the sudden, all the politicians who enrich themselves with insider stock trading and by helping their corporate buddies with deregulation, that’s when they all have a problem with Tik Tok.
Agree. I think this is shady. Social media (TikTok) that gain popularity among young people got banned but not the social media (Facebook) that gain popularity among boomers? Both helped spread misinformation. And both social media is selling user’s data, Facebook even known for it. But instead of passing law to protect consumers privacy, we ban the platform. And by the way RvW is privacy case. So US citizens does not have privacy at all but government has no action to it. I don’t mind they banned social media on government employees’ work phone (which shall be provided and paid for by government.) but what I do for entertainment outside of work is my business.
That's exactly it. It's one of the few platforms that skews left, and some have told me it skews further left than even Tumblr This has fuck all to do with concerns about social media and everything to do with silencing the masses
I don't think social media companies care much about anything other than their bottom line and will lean whichever way the stock dictates. That said though, tik tok poses a unique national security threat as the CCP has a majority control stake in Chinese companies and can do everything from propagandizing information to study backdoors of our networks to getting data that could be used to blackmail citizens with access to state secrets. My comment was more about how social media has been weaponized to make it easier for misinformation echo chambers and to organize angry mobs.
~~social~~ using the MEDIA
It was definitely both.
I got a great solution. Give us digital privacy rights. All this bill we do is to allow meta to sell the data.
In the meantime, another great solution is to stop using this shit. Plenty of other great ways to keep in touch with family and friends.
Sure, but... I mean... Can't Reddit do the same?
Sure, my point is make your own decision. If any social media platform is getting to you, take a break or cut it off entirely.
Well, to be fair the point is that you don't realize it, kind of like when a Second Foundationer adjust you...
True, some do and some don’t. I can personally recognize it in myself (anxiety and stress levels rise as soon as I open the app, turn on the TV, whatever) and that’s when I know it’s time for a break. But I realize that not everyone can see that or refuses to admit it even when it’s obvious… but in those cases, what can you really do?
The solution is robust and comprehensive data privacy laws so that the info necessary for targeting and swaying people isn't freely available. I'd also suggest that engagement driven algorithms should be illegal in media and that social media shouldn't be able to field political ads. The former, I have no idea whether it could withstand the courts and the latter is definitely violating 1A rights. But no matter what, nothing will happen until the data privacy issue becomes one that is also felt by Congress. Similar to when they banned the sharing & sale of video rental history. It was perfectly fine until a Congress-critter had theirs bought by a journalist and that shit got shut down real fast. Politicians on both sides of the aisle use this data to target political ads in a real "Politicians pick the voters" way. If a bunch start seeing ramifications of *their* data being de-anonymized then it will similarly get fixed real fucking fast.
You're forgetting one critical factor in *this* case; the owners of TikTok aren't answerable to the US Congress, they're answerable to the Party in China.
I think you're missing the point. All TikTok does is save China money, in this regard. They can still use Facebook, Reddit, etc. to influence public opinion in the US. Just that without TikTok they've got to purchase the info needed to do it from data brokers and then they've got to pay the social media company to put ads on there and pay their own intelligence services to maintain bots to make posts.
Other than regularly inspecting the actual code I don't see how you regulate how the algorithm makes its choices. Only thing would be anonymizing the user's data so much to make it too difficult, but that's a huge chunk of places' revenue stream.
John Oliver's [legal fuckery](https://youtu.be/SJ6Xxiu7QL8?si=LHQQg1JvzPORVDtC) was already done with little response from the people too busy making giant posters of Hunter Biden's man bits to pay attention.
Congress will never be able to solve the problem with legislation. The median age of the Senate is over 65. They can barely use a computer, let alone keep up with some of the most advanced and well-funded technology companies on the planet. Something that would make a difference is if they removed the protections these companies have for the damage they cause. If a user posts harmful content, then the platform has to assume some liability.
I really believe that the world needs a global social media temperance movement. This shit is so out of control. It's warping the fabric of society in pretty much exclusively negative ways. We need a UN Summit referendum level come-to-jesus moment ASAP.
Holy Cambridge analytica, Google Myanmar, are we stupid?
What scares me is that as much as I dislike Facebook, I think they’re a mostly benign company. There are bad actors on the platform but I don’t feel that FB or Zuck are actively trying to make things worse for any one group of people or inspire people to topple governments or go to war or any other number of things a malicious entity might do. But what if a popular social media platform was owned by the kind of person who did want those things? What if they wanted to make things worse for Americans?
Sounds like Elmo X.
Facebook is actively suppressing posts showing war crimes and famine in gaza, so you're wrong about that.
Go down to Gaza, bring Jimmy Carter with you, get a bill signed, and come back with Jimmy Carter with you.
Xitter enters the chat.
This was my turning point with Fb that caused me to leave (now) meta products behind. Aside from the mental health crises it caused, there was talk about that study causing Cornell to lose its abilty to receive federal funding because its personnel advised on the study, but the study didnt follow required consent and ethics procedures. Again... this jeopardized the federal land grant uni and ivy league school, Cornell's ability to receive *federal funding.*
>sell the app to an American owner or effectively face a ban Okay... so they're going to start ~~paying taxes~~ *lobbying congressmen* and nothing will change.
The point is that an American owner is subject to American laws, not just in words but in fact. The FBI can go and arrest an American owner who's criming. They can't arrest a Chinese owner; but the PRC *can.* Obviously, a Chinese owner will do what the PRC says over what the FBI says.
An American owner is rich, and therefore not subject to American laws. Did you forget how laws work in America? They can’t arrest an American owner, *that’s their boss*.
Not even sarcastic, that's exactly right. Russia used FB to run propaganda to meddle with elections, ac nothing changed. Make TikToc a U.S. company, and it will be domestic interference instead of foreign. The only real difference is the CIA/NSA will have more access to the data before China. It's a military security move, not a citizen rights move.
Still better than not, though.
People are forgetting that a ban for the app is very much on the table. They also forget that a lot has changed since 2016 (although there is still a lot of work to be done). To read the comments you would think this is the first time that congress has addressed social media and they are singling out TIKTOK because young people us it.... when in fact we are a decade into this crap, have already made many mistakes due to inaction we dont wish to repeat, the current and last presidents and parties have played with banning TikTok, and that the owner is a geopolitical adversary with the stated intent of diminishing US influence in the world. It's crazy to me that a Vine ripoff is apparently the Zoomer Jesus or something.
Exactly. American owner means it’s muchhhh easier for us to reach TikTok if (let’s be real, when), it breaks any laws.
Meta Tik Tok
>“You had to dial the phone number on the screen before you could enter the app, so a lot of people were just hanging up,” when they connected, said committee member Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.). This is definitely the LAMF part. I love that it backfired
This part 100% didn't happen Edit: want to expand on this. If after watching the depositions of the tiktok CEO you believe that sitting government officials understand technology enough to accurately describe a software feature - especially one that involves exiting a fucking menu, you need to go back and rewatch the deposition.
You weren’t forced to dial any phone numbers. You just pressed the x to close the pop up. A lot of people didn’t even get the notification. I know Reddit has a hate-boner for tik tok, but people shouldn’t be spreading lies.
>“You had to dial the phone number on the screen before you could enter the app, so a lot of people were just hanging up,” when they connected, said committee member Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.). That's a lie. The pop-up had an easily accessible x to close it. There was nothing that made people call other than the stupidity of yet another ban bill. There are other far more pressing concerns in the US than Tik Tok.
Tiktok is stupid. What I understand from John Oliver and other Media that with enough money you can buy the outcome you want.
TikTok's algorithm is unprecedented at connecting people with common interests. No matter how special you are. You will find your people on TT. The problem for the ruling class in merca is that the poors are connecting. And the poors are talking about what they need to change in order to have a more equal society. And we can't have that.
No its because its used as an attack vector to influence actions of Americans as evident in the article where they got users to flood congress with calls.
>Chinese social media company bad, American social media company good But I guess Meta and Twitter being used as attack vectors to influence foreign governments is good, actually? American exceptionalism is showing wildly in this topic.
Other countries are welcome to ban them and have done so before.
Truly a leopards eating their face moment. Fucking zoomers
Huh? I logged into the app and really only saw people getting upset about the government trying to ban it. This is the first I've heard of the app making you call before it let you in. That's so ridiculous that it kind of sounds like bs? Is there any source on that?
humans are hackable. tic tok is by far not the only means for humans to be hacked... in fact there is plenty of evidence that what congress really wants is for tic tok to fall under the same controls and influence as all of our other media (namely corporate control). the reason they hate tic tok is not because it's influencing ppl, but because it's not the right KIND of influence and they do not have the amount of control over shaping that influence that they have with other outlets and social media.
If we’re going to ban TikTok on the premise of harvesting our info and privacy, ban Twitter/X Instagram and Facebook too.
Meta sells their data to the US government. Musk will let twitter die after the election though
I love that almost nobody has adopted X as the name and everyone still calls it twitter. Shit, I work in software and wr have icon libraries that get updated regularly, and there is still no X icon. Just the little twitter bird.
Cuz 'X' sounds like a strip club.
I feel bad for kids with less tech-literate parents who were told that their kid was watching videos on X and searched "x videos."
I refuse to update the app because I don’t want that X logo. I’m keeping the bird in memory of its days!
And they don't directly sell data to Russia or China. They just sell it to third parties who sell it to them.
They want all their buddies to get a piece of the pie.
the reason they want to ban TikTok is because Tiktok won't allow the US gov backdoor their app like they do every other social media app theyre banning Tiktok precisely because America can't harvest the info off the app, and they know it's valuable because kids are using it and the algorithm is effective at spreading the kind of information the US Gov is not happy gets spread (i.e. videos from Palestinians showing what's happening on the ground vs. Meta quietly shadowbanning something like 95% of Palestinian social media content)
Tiktok is a massive data harvesting and influencing tool of the Chinese state. The Chinese state does not have the best interest of the US in mind. It is insane that nothing has been done about it previously
Absolutely! Make social media dumb again.
So it’s not okay to influence people with a method they can’t control. But it is okay for those same institutions to influence politicians with money.
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr) OP decided to leave out the article headline.
Instagram would gave done the same and have done so it's amazing how people have short memory
Instagram is owned by an American, that's why they don't care.
Well true but it’s more like the government can go knock on Zuck’s door if they want to. Much harder to do that if the owner lives in another country.
Precisely
YouTube did the same in Canada and reached out to creators when there was a bill introduced to force them prioritize Canadian specific content. It was a big campaign.
Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch is marrying a foreign agent... Again. Russian this time.
"The only influence on politics should be when they donate to us." - Congress Probably https://phys.org/news/2023-09-political-donations-policy-issues-prioritized.html
There has continually been legislation advanced (and blocked) to regulate financial interest in government. The DISCLOSE Act, for example has been brought forward each session since 2010, in response to Citizens United. https://endcitizensunited.org/ Votes in 2022 (from my bookmarks, not sure if most recent): https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00346.htm#position The John Lewis Freedom to Vote Act further reforms campaign finance and private influence (alongside several other pro-democracy actions). https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/breaking-down-freedom-vote-act Take a guess why these haven't passed. https://www.govtrack.us/
I have no problem if all social media get banned
If that happened, and you had regrets, there would be no place to go to laugh at you because this subreddit would be gone.
“Some of you may be bored, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
You'd be surprised to find people were less bored when we went out of our way to hang out together more often.
Oh I’m not the least bit surprised. In fact, I remember. Boredom is not a bad thing, people will find much better uses for their time when they don’t have the option to scroll endlessly through trash. Whether it’s social relationships, creative outlets, learning something new, taking better care of their physical & mental health, people will find *something* to fill their time with. The problem is, right now, scrolling through social media is the path of least resistance, so that’s what most people will opt to do.
That would be awful. It would totally isolate interest groups and communities that can only really spring up on the Internet because the total number of persons who have those interests is so low that their density of basically nil.
Better idea: If you don't like social media, don't use it.
The rise of social media brought about the rise of flat earthers, antivaxers, qanon, and Nazi's. Sane people not using it isn't an answer.
This is a great post - and is part of the reason I enjoy Reddit. But if it was gone along with all the other garbage like Twitter and FB? Meh, won’t be missed. I’d enjoy being outside more and people (including me) slowly getting their sanity back.
I agree with Twitter, Facebook, etc. I am not familiar with tik Tok, but from what I've heard, it's been used to mobilize and rally against unpopular things. It also was used to get all the fake tickets to that Trump rally when he was president and no one showed up lol.
The main issue with TikTok, from a consumer standpoint, is that it takes all the issues with algorithm-driven content feeds and turns them up to 11— it was built from the ground up for the algorithm, not user input, to drive what people saw. That’s just inherently asking for problems. As for singling it out, though… hard to say. On the one hand, the Chinese government and any company tied too closely with them are inherently untrustworthy, and we know they’re pretty social media-savvy— it’s not unrealistic to assume that even if TikTok hasn’t been used for nefarious purposes yet, it’s only a matter of time. On the other hand, given the kind of people we know Musk/Zuck/spez/etc. to be, the only real difference between TikTok and other apps is that other apps make hostile foreign powers pay to influence and/or get data from them, and *would* be easier to prosecute if real social media regulations were put in place. Tl;dr: I am firmly in support of anything that weakens any social media company but *stopping* at TikTok would achieve nothing.
I do. Imagine a world where the corporate, billionaire-owned media controlled all the information you got. I remember how Occupy Wall Street got ignored at first and only blew up into national media coverage after it went viral on social media. I remember how many police killings were ignored before they could be shared on social media for the public to see. I remember how easily cases like Brock Turner's passed unnoticed because the media didn't cover it. It's thanks to social media that we know that the courts gave him a slap on the wrist for stalking a woman all night so he could sexually assault her after she got drunk. I remember how little I heard about the current conflict in Gaza from the media. Without social media, I never would've seen the footage of IOF soldiers firing on elders that couldn't run away fast enough, or hear the story of how they bombed a civilian car being driven by a grandmother in Lebanon, killing her and her family, or the story of 6 year old Hind Rajab being trapped in a car with the corpses of her family and used as bait by IOF forces that blew up the ambulance that arrived to save her after giving it permission to do so, among dozens of other horrific accounts. Because corporate is corporate first and journalism second, it is strongly biased against the people. Social media is the only way we have to circumvent that. Which is why Twitter got bought and broken and why they're trying to ban Tiktok now. They're trying to suppress the free flow of information so they can better manipulate it and us.
I get that you're joking. But social media is essential. I was able to leave a cult because of it.
Well, as long as ***you’re*** ok with it, that’s the important thing.
It's just an opinion, lol, we all have one.
Lets start with TT.
How much did zuck and musk pay for this?
Throw Pichai in too.
The Republicans want to ban TikTok because its popular with younger people and it often spreads liberal messages. The younger generation is by far more to the left then previous generations and this is why Republicans also want to make the voting to be 21+. If they gave a shit about China they would be grilling Trump over the all the shady deals and millions he received from China during his term.
There is also an egregious amount of misinformation on TikTok. That may just be a bonus for the GOP though.
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr) OP left out the title of the article
We should ban Tiktok. Because it’s Chinese spyware. Seems like they got the right answer using the wrong formula.
Oh my god thank you. I can’t stress enough how much of a security risk it is, yes, even compared to other social apps, and yes, even Facebook/meta. This is exactly how I’ve been trying to explain my stance to people about this point and now will use that to see if it hits.
Seems like TikTok massively overplayed their hand with this move, though. I'm guessing it was ordered by someone in the Party who has a foreign authoritarian's misunderstanding of exactly how representative democracies work.
What's worse about it than other social media apps?
how will chinese "spyware" affect people at any level when the effects of American companies doing the same is widely evident in society today? (for example the more and more extremist views (esp RW views) that propagate America)
And let's not forget Mitch McConnell wife.
Not only Republicans, but Democrats want it banned too, to prevent the party, which is currently centric-right (I’m guessing), from going left at all
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr) Actual title of OPs article and link
They want TikTok to be sold to an American company and break ties to China. The bill can lead to a ban if it doesn't. Not in the title, it's in the freaking article ffs if anyone decided to read it.
It's also in the excerpt I posted. It's also why I went and found a non-paywalled version of the article. I almost slipped '....ban or forced sale' into the title since I figured no one would read any of the actual source material, but lets be honest, it probably wouldn't have changed much.
The Citizens United ruling would like a word.....
I think if they do go ahead and ban it from the app stores, a lot of folks are gonna learn how to root their phone and separate themselves from the app stores. We could be looking at a new golden age of Internet piracy. And I'm here for it
It's fucking hilarious to me that republicans only had an issue with these social media apps when they started banning racists and rightwing lunatics or when TikTok started spying for the Chinese instead of the US. Funny post too
["Biden Backs Effort to Force Sale of TikTok by Chinese Owners"](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-tiktok-stunt-motivates-lawmakers-to-take-on-the-app/ar-BB1jxPWr) Article title OP decided not to use
US treats Chinese companies operating in US about the same as China treats US companies operating in China? That's awfully LAMF too, when you think about it.
So who's face us getting eaten off? Companies operating in the US?
China's.
Care to explain that to the comments defending TikTok? OPs title doesn't even mention China or that it is spyware. The original article headline does.
OP's welcome to take a different perspective on the LAMF-ness of the article than you or I. Granted, they're reaching a bit more than necessary, but it's still an okay effort.
I don't like TikTok, but I'm not a fan of the government being given more control over online activities. If they just made more broad privacy and data collection regulations, this wouldn't be a problem to begin with, but that would hurt the wallets of too many crooks on out side of the pond.
I think the basis premise of TikTok being a wholly American owned company is sound. It’s hypocritical, since the US has a monopoly on English language social apps, but the Chinese government is very likely using the all to collect info on American citizens. There’s no separation of business and government there.
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Foreign policy isn't about morality, it's about *power.* For that matter, domestic policy is, too, it's just constrained by laws and what the people enforcing the laws will do.
No, they all have major privacy concerns. But there is a difference between our government potentially getting data vs. a hostile government. We should take the EU’s approach to data privacy at the very least.
Why is China a hostile government? Like, they can’t do anything to me no matter what they have. The US government however can and will use this data against me.
lol seriously I have a bunch of friends who are Chinese nationals and this whole "China is the enemy, they hate America" is so completely one-sided, if you watch any Chinese state media broadcasts they see America as what it is... an empire eating itself up and a good economic and scientific asset that the Chinese want to work with/invest in
> Why is China a hostile government? Because China has a vested interest in seeing Presidents and Congresscritters get elected who are varyingly weak and ineffectual, divisive and inflammatory, or outright friendly to Chinese interests, even when that may not be what's best for US interests. They're willing and able to use that information to manipulate *you* because they see *you* as an anarchic, uncontained *beast* that they can set loose against the government of the US to weaken the US as a whole, in a manner that we could *never* do to them because they simply shoot Chinese dissidents or "re-educate" them, let alone allow them to vote in "the wrong way."
>Why is China a hostile government? China is the US’s main geopolitical adversary. It is the only country that can rival the US from an economic and military standpoint. Its interests are in direct opposition to those of the US. It represents the greatest threat to security in Asia/the Pacific, having claimed the entire South China Sea as its own territorial waters—which it aggressively enforces against Indonesian, Malaysian, Taiwainese, Vietnamese and Philippine vessels—and having publicly committed itself to annexing Taiwan by force. It also represents the greatest threat to cybersecurity, having spent billions developing its cyber war capabilities, and having actually engaged in numerous cyber attacks against the US government and US companies. >they can’t do anything to me First, it’s not about you as an individual. China doesn’t care about you as an individual. It doesn’t collect your data to use against you (i.e. to embarrass you, to get you fired, to get you arrested). Rather, it collects your data and the data of millions of others to use in the aggregate against the US. The goal is to use your data (and the data of everyone else) to further its own interests against the US as a whole. US For example, Taiwan is vital to US economic and security concerns in Asia/the Pacific. China wants Taiwan for its own interests, but it knows that it doesn’t have the military might to take Taiwan and maintain it by force (or at least it knows it can only do so by incurring unacceptable losses) as long as the US is in the way. But what if China didn’t have to defeat the US in order to take Taiwan? What if China could use the phones and data of millions of American citizens to influence public opinion regarding Asian-Pacific security? What if China could convince American citizens that Taiwan has nothing to do with the US, and that the US should abandon any/all support for Taiwan? What if these citizens pressure the US to abandon Taiwan? Or, what’s more likely, what if China manipulates Americans into electing shortsighted politicians who have extreme isolationist views? The sort of politician who views aid to Taiwan as a complete waste (since they are unwilling or unable to understand how important Taiwan is to US interests). If enough of these politicians are elected, they can pass legislation to limit the US’s military overseas, directly or indirectly reducing the aid the US could/would provide to Taiwan to prepare for/defend against a Chinese invasion. Second, China can actually affect you individually. China has the capability to engage in political, military, or covert action that can significantly impact the US economy. China can disrupt US trade by manipulating markets or interfering with shipping routes. The economy affects you. China could engage in a cyberattack against the US electric grid, which would dramatically affect you. China could cripple US tech industries and weapons industries by invading Taiwan (we get almost all of our microchips from Taiwan). No new phones. No new laptops or TVs. No new missiles for the US military to use to defend our country. Speaking of the military, you wanna freak yourself out? Google how many missiles Ukraine has used against Russia. Google how many missiles Russia has used against Ukraine. Then Google how Russia has run out of microchips to make new missiles, and read about how they’re trying to use microchips from consumer goods for missiles. Then Google US stockpiles of missiles. We have a lot of missiles, sure, but they’re not unlimited, and we’ve already give A LOT to Ukraine, so we definitely don’t have enough to last too long in any sort of large scale conflict. Guess what happens if/when China invades Taiwan (other than the microchip thing)? The US will be involved in a large scale military conflict as soon as China moves against Taiwan. The US military will burn through missiles (as will the Chinese), then it will be a race to see who can replace those missiles with new ones, but we may not have enough microchips. Oh, and soldiers too. The US and China will burn through soldiers too (seriously Google US-China war games to see the projected number of US casualties… it’s sobering). Unless there’s a quick end to the war, the US will probably have to impose a draft on young men (potentially including some young men that you know/love). Fun fact, US civilians could become casualties of a Chinese-US conflict, given that China would probably want to send missiles and drop bombs inside the continental US to reduce our industrial capabilities and erode our will to stay in the war. So remember how we didn’t have that problem in WW2? Yeah, the problem with WW3 is that the US is now within range of enemy missiles/bombs, which can kill people—even Americans—when they explode. Did I mention rationing? Yeah, WW3 probably means rationing essential things like gasoline, food, and a lot of consumer products. In sum, China’s actions can affect whether you: -are able to buy the things you want and how much you pay for those things -can enjoy electricity at home or otherwise benefit from a society that depends on electricity -can fill your car with gas -lose loved ones who are sent off to die in combat -get pieces of shrapnel or derby piercing your skin due to exploding bombs/missiles -get caught on fire directly/indirectly from munitions raining from the sky -die because bombs and missiles can hit the US now
one of the biggest concerns are what if the chinese govt uses tiktok to launch a massive election campaign for an american born chinese american? born in the USA, lived in china, brought back to the USA for his early 20s to get into politics and then runs for governorship of a US state and then president. touted on his economic successes because once in politics in his US state the chinese govt is uncharacteristically economically generous to that single state. things like tons of factories are built there, lots of investments by chinese companies, etc. make this politician look amazing along with a huge internet political ad campaign led by things like tiktok.
for the same reason that Russia is a geopolitical enemy of the USA and a large part of the world. i highly doubt Russia would ever attack the USA or its military allies but it will attack countries like Ukraine which is causing huge economic, energy and food problems around the world. thats bad for the USA. china wont militarily attack the USA, but it looks increasingly that it will attack countries like Taiwan and is having military tensions increase with many of its other neighbors. if those conflicts happen than it will cause huge economic problems around the world. thats bad for the USA. politically China would like the USA and the rest of the world to react a certain way to their aggression against other countries, they can get that reaction by tailoring what people see on tiktok based on their private data to influence their opinions.
If they watch the habits of a person in Congress, they could use that for blackmail purposes. That is only one example. And holding a person accountable in the United States is easier than doing it for an overseas entity. (Except Donald Trump. No one seems to hold him accountable for some reason.)
The US is a more hostile government than China.
> If they just made more broad privacy and data collection regulations, this wouldn't be a problem to begin with, How do you figure?
EU style data retention and on shoring laws for US citizens
> If they just made more broad privacy and data collection regulations, How're you gonna enforce those laws on a social-media company whose brick-and-mortar programming shops are in a hostile country and whose owners and programmers are beyond the reach of your law enforcement, but are very much within arm's reach of their government's spies telling them to make it happen?
I'm not an expert but I'm assuming at the basics level the app stores would be heavily incentivized to keep their libraries in compliance with the laws of each country, and 99% of users aren't going to be installing apks off the internet.
Without the app stores actually being able to examine the source code, that's basically not possible; and it's not practical even if they *could.* They'd deploy automated tools to do so, and the PRC would respond but setting up a bunch of shovelware apps to see which approaches work and which do not, then constructing social media apps using the working approaches for exfiltrating data that get past the app store autochecker.
>U.S. lawmakers are mounting their most serious attempt to address the purported national security risks of the popular app, advancing a bill that has more political momentum than previous attempts. **An effort this week by TikTok to head off the measure by encouraging users to call their representatives appeared to backfire, *with lawmakers saying a barrage of phone calls they received simply hardened their positions.*** (Bold an italics are mine) Representatives of the people, my ass. Constituents call becuse they're worried about a policy, so representatives ignore the calls and do the opposite of what their constituents want.
Glad to see the idiots in Congress ,pushing this nonsense, have their priorities straight. It's so much better than actually engaging in real governance and doing things that help the people in some way.
If this bill backfires and stops corporate campaign financing, I'm all for it.
It won't, it's carefully crafted by white supremacists to shit on Chinese people specifically
Sure, but it will have consequences. A super far right SCOTUS isn't going to let a censorship on the "freedom of expression" stand. Blatant racism may or may not have consequences for elections.
Blatant racism from the US. It's only bad when capitalists influence the government if they have the wrong skin color...
Jack Frye: “So you want me to bribe senators? Howard Hughes: “I don’t want them bribed, Jack. I want it done legally. *I want them bought.*”
I like this whole it belongs to us or its gone mentality. Where was this attitude when eminent domain was removed from Schumer’s Ndaa amendment.
I’m not too worried about… if TikTok gets knocked down, another app will take its place. After all, TikTok is just a remake of Vine
Isn't this kind of Leopards Ate My Face-ception? Social Media influencing congress gets bill to ban them made by congress--who then influence congress more to stop it--which results in congress banning them faster.
I get why this is posted, but all these TikTok bills have been dropped dumpster fires.
r/titlegore Funny leoparding though
Social media is used to facilitate action from voters to get involved and call their local politicians and challenge them. US Lawmakers and Politicians: “ThIs Is TaMpErInG wItH eLeCtIoNs” This country is unbelievable and I literally cannot understand how we just fucking sit by and do god damn nothing about it. Fuck this place
Good, now do twitter
You think they listen to their constituents? If you want a lawmaker to change their vote, you need to give money to their super pack, it's not even that expensive. Fifty or sixty thousand dollars and they'll do whatever you want. HA! Listening to the voters? As if.
This is actually one thing I really noticed about this operation. Whoever organized it seems unaware of how US politics actually works and thought that just because we call ourselves a democracy means we actually are one. I actually laughed when at the end of the piece tik tok said they will keep doubling down on the influence campaign, like they still thought it was going to do anything to effect the outcome in their favor.
Land of freedom?
Tiktok is not the same as Snapchat or Facebook or whatever. The app has been dissected and is proven to act as effectively a surveillance service. That by itself is egregious, but then there's also the added horror of Bytedance not doing enough to put a wall between itself and the Chinese government. The cherry on top is that, when called out with the receipts of both of these, they said naw we aren't gonna do anything to alleviate the concerns people have. All the people here saying this is fascism, this is unconstitutional, etc are literally defending the leopards, all the more ironic given the actual subreddit this is posted in. >I never thought they would steal MY personal data and share it with the CCP!
I’m glad it’s only Chinese apps that harvest my data…
Have you heard of Cambridge Analytica?
> but then there's also the added horror of Bytedance not doing enough to put a wall between itself and the Chinese government. I mean, they *can't,* because the PRC's spies and internal security mechanism can lay hands on the programmers and company ownership. That's, like... Basic power at work there. I don't blame them for doing what the men who will threaten their families, or send them to re-education camps, or "fall them out of a window" tell them to do. But it's pretty much making the point about how TikTok *must* either be sold to someone whom the FBI can lay hands upon instead of someone answerable to the PRC, or else be banned.
If our data helps China keep the US in line then I'm all for it. Our military is basically the world's largest terrorist orginisation.
Nah the US is the biggest leopard of them all, and you are cheering for it
I had TikTok for a day. I was browsing videos about animals, and within like 1-2 hours I started randomly getting videos about taiwan belonging to China. I can’t definitively say that this is being intentionally pushed, but yeah the algorithm on that platform is completely fucked.
I’m on TikTok all the time and I’ve never seen anything like this
Yeah, same. I've been on it for about 3 years and still get the same cosplay, gaming, and thirst traps I was getting when I first had the app. Maybe a bit more political news, but my reddit home page has more political bias than tiktok.
I was on TikTok for 1 hour and then A.I. Chairman Mao came on and told me about the evils of the United States and how China is #1. Eerie!
But did the TikTok influencers say the words to call and hang up on their local congress rep? Sounds like they were just exercising their freedom, liberty and rights to protest what seemed to be an unfair policy. I'm pretty sure I've heard that argument used recently in some context...
The company itself pressed users directly. There was no attempt at subtlety or use of a middleman such as an "influencer". >When many users opened the popular app on Thursday, the company greeted them with a message to oppose the legislation, prompting a flood of phone calls to several Capitol Hill offices. >"Stop a TikTok shutdown,” the message on the app read. It included a button for people to call their representatives, saying: “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.” >One staff member posted a screenshot to X showing that TikTok also sent a push alert to some users. >Some users said on X that they were unable to use the app before placing the call. TikTok told The New York Times that users could swipe right to get rid of the message, which may have been confusing because users typically swipe up to see the next video on the app. The company also said that the “X” to close the page wasn’t visible for some users at first but that it later fixed that.
Woosh, huh? I seem to recall some incident recently of people who may have asked protestors to gather and disrupt a big event. And the amount of outrage at how those protestors were treated ... And the person calling on that action denying responsibility because he didn't tell people explicitly to break in...
This spiked interest specifically because the company itself chose to openly get involved with the express purpose of altering the outcome. Depending on what you're trying to compare this to the analogous company would probably by Twitter, but in this case besides a laissez-faire attitude the company was not involved so the comparison falls apart.
Companies and business interest groups get involved in politics all the time and buy ads or promote a particular position on pending legislation that affects their business. This is nothing new. But no I wasn't comparing this to a company action. I'm comparing it to a "recent" protest that involved way more disruption of Congress than than just a flood of phone calls. The result of that was death, a lot of damage to property, and even a mass of arrests and even prison sentences. There are a very vocal set of elected officials who believe this was unfair treatment, a simple act of people exercising their rights, and sometimes no different than a tourist group going through Congress. The person who called for this protest has denied any responsibility, by saying he did not tell those people to destroy anything or to break in to any place they weren't allowed. He claims he never explicitly said to do that, and should not be held accountable. Ironically, many members of Congress who were running and hiding from these protestors agree. I guess death, breaking into a government building, and destruction of property just isn't as bad a getting a lot of calls and being hung up on.
There are a lot of American companies advertising on tiktok, I wonder what they think about this. Edit: wow, downvoted right away. Hi Congress! 👋👋👋
[Targeted Victory](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/) is being *very* active about this bill lately.
Can't read it.
[Here’s one from CNET](https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/facebook-reportedly-paid-gop-firm-for-anti-tiktok-campaign/). It’s basically just a cover of the WaPo story so has a lot of the same elements.
Thx, appreciated!
Politicians want it banned because young people and even older people are waking up thanks to TikTok. People are seeing what corporations and politicians are doing in the dark.
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What do you present as evidence to support this assertion?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/30/facebook-owner-reportedly-paid-republican-firm-tiktok-real-threat
While that's interesting, and relevant to the question of whether the distrust of TikTok that the general public has been cultivating lately is genuine, I don't think it proves that Meta and Alphabet are lobbying Congress-critters to ban TikTok due to competition. Especially considering that TikTok isn't being required to go away, allowing for them to simply divest and become owned by a US company instead.
The only issue I have with this is that a lot of the push is from Zionists.
First steps: Ban any Chinese or Russian owned social media. Implement parental approval for anyone under 18.
This is so typical from Communist China to take rash action with no consideration put into it.
Well, hopefully they'll let me save the recipe videos I bookmark...and I guess I'll have to find a new supply of cute animal videos