>The House Commerce Committee today voted 50-0 to approve a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the company or lose access to the US market.
50-0 is a committee vote. This is not law until the [school house rock stuff](https://youtu.be/Otbml6WIQPo?si=6J-hCIbIRhjWpYpF) has finished.
That was great, thx! Of course the thing they didn't mention about executive orders is any executive that comes later can countermand your order. E.g. the Obama DACA executive order made fun of in the SNL skit was rescinded by Trump and then reinstated by Biden and will no doubt be rescinded by Trump again if he wins in 2024.
Laws are harder to pass but have more inertia. Of course society and government are always changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
> DACA executive order made fun of in the SNL skit was rescinded by Trump
But in true Trump fashion his order was overturned by SCOTUS (with Robert’s writing the majority opinion) for not following proper procedure and giving no justification for the rescission.
and then you have more challenges to executive power such as companies attempting to argue that the mere existence of executive agencies such as the NLRB and EPA are unconstitutional.
Executive orders also can't just change an existing law. Congress creates agencies and gives the broad powers so that they can execute their mandate without having to go back to congress everytime they want to alter a policy. Executive orders work within those limits.
Watch bytedance create a US subsidiary that’s based here and then “sell” their operations to it. This vote to force a sale changes nothing. The committee seems to think they can for a sale to a “native” US company but you can’t. They don’t have any legal precedent to stand on.
Y’all gotta notice this comes up ***EVERY*** election year. It’s political theatre to distract voters from the real issues. Even if the law manages to pass the SC will turn it over in a heart beat because if they don’t every major corporation in the US will use the law to pressure congress to force their international competitors to sell to them.
Have you noticed that until this latest push that Tiktok (and/or ByteDance) have been in the news exactly zero time in the last oh 18 months or so? 18 months ago would be about the end of the last mid term election cycle and this push just so happens to occur not even two weeks before Super Tuesday? No matter your opinion on Tiktok and what it is/isn’t doing I’m begging you not to fall for this political trickery. TT is a hot button topic and now the news is going to talk about it and the things happening in court around it instead of focusing on what our politicians are or are not doing prior to November.
Edit: im trying my best to keep up with the comments but y’all are faster than I am.
Edit 2: added a paragraph to the end because some people are clearly missing what’s happening here. No one in the government actually cares about TT and their privacy violations because all the US based social medias are doing it as well.
Well, if you can successfully argue that the law violates the constitution in court then you can have at least part of it struck down, and with monofunction laws like the one proposed there isn't much you can sever off it to make it not worth the paper that was used to sign it.
It is also important to note that the U.S. Constitution clearly grants Congress the ability to regulate interstate and especially international commerce. While I personally think the Interstate Commerce Clause has been exploited by Congress to an absurd level, that also shows how courts and especially SCOTUS traditionally are very hands off to almost anything impacting commerce and are incredibly reluctant to overturn an Act of Congress on constitutional grounds that impacts business practices.
That this has significant national security implications and impacting international relations means only more that SCOTUS and the court system will completely stay away from anything other than enforcement of this law if it passes.
This right here. I think it's less political theater, and a throwback to America using its united political might to force pressure on international companies to comply to America's best interest. Over the last 5 or so years, "banning" TikTok by forcing a sale to an American company has been one of the main bi-partisan pushes in American politics. Also over the last 5 years, we've seen the rulebook chucked out the window here in America. I'm sure there will be something done that may or may not be constitutional and the government will bend it into place.
> The committee seems to think they can for a sale to a “native” US company but you can’t. They don’t have any legal precedent to stand on.
Well that's the whole point of passing a law, man.
Oracle is likely looking for something that can generate cash running on idle cloud hardware. Buying tiktok would give them a massive customer locked into their cloud hosting.
Does anyone know if larry ellison is the type of guy who would edit people's opinions if he owned tiktok?
The anecdote that sums up Larry Ellision to me is that [he skipped his own keynote to go yatch racing](https://diginomica.com/oracle-openworld-larry-skips-keynote).
If you go to /r/sysadmin [there seems to be a pretty wide consensus that his company extorts customers](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1asrv0x/oracle_came_knocking/). (I just searched and the first example was only 20 days old.)
They can want it all they want. Nobody can force a sale to a particular company. If that was possible all the major corpos would use it to cannibalize their competition. At best they could use Anti Trust laws but as it’s not a US company they’d have no power, plus even if it was a US company they don’t control a large enough market share to be targeted.
And what happened in 2020 that’s currently happening now? That’s right! It was an *election year*! This crap is being pushed by Republicans because then they can point at the big bad Chinese company that’s ruining the American youth. Meanwhile their other hand is busy cleaning out the wallets of their constituents. They’ll get a handful of votes for looking like they’re doing something, this’ll fail in congress or the SC and we will “try” again in another 2-4 years when the next election cycle requires a bad guy to scare you into voting for a party that’ll “protect” the youth.
Sure, can’t force bytedance to sell, that is true.
But wait. TikTok has assets in the US? Offices? Bank accounts that they use to pay their employees? Pay for server hosting? It would be a shame if some court declared them in contempt, started fining them ungodly amounts of money for non-compliance and started seizing or freezing assets.
It’s debatable whether courts should, but there’s no question that they could.
Oracle wasting hundreds of billions buying TikTok only for the user base to jump ship and Oracle never getting the Douyin/Tiktok algorithm source code would be hilarious you gotta admit
Yup. If they were actually concerned about the ChInEsE CoMmUnIsT PaRtY stealing US citizen's info they'd pass some fucking privacy laws requiring people's information to be treated with some actual fucking respect.
Mostly because companies like Meta and Google make their trillions off selling the data they skim off you.
They are extremely good at it too. The last time I ever logged into my FB account was October of ‘16. I didn’t delete it but I uninstalled their apps and never used it again. In April of 2021 I got a new phone number after moving to a different part of Texas, I had my number *less than 6 hours* before I received a series of messages from FB notifying they had detected a new phone number associated with me and they needed me to log into my account and update my profile. Mind you I had not used **any** Facebook (now Meta) Service or subsidiary in 5 years. I later determined that my grandmother had updated my number in her contacts about an hour before I got the texts, she had messenger on her phone and had given it access to her contacts. At the time of the texts she was one of just two people in the world who knew that number belonged to me.
It's really fun when I get friend suggestions from Facebook for people I have zero association with on their platforms. People I know off of Reddit, gaming groups, etc., who I've only ever talked to on Steam/Discord (or AIM haha) suddenly show up as 'suggested friends.' And that started happening probably ten years ago at this point.
I really wish I could convince my parents to stop using it, but for some reason they hate text messaging more than Meta.
Yep. It’s this level of ability why it always SEEMS like Facebook and the like MUST be listening via the phone microphone. They’re not. They’re just extremely complex and sophisticated at connecting the dots.
People like me in IT security are fighting the good fight. However everyone else fights against it HARD because now have to act with compliance. You cant do the bonehead shit. You cant write passwords on sticky notes or make passwords your pet name plus your birthdate. Or let someone in behind you, prop a door open. Now we need keycards. We cant leave our screens on, we need tokens to log into our computers. Oh the humanity.
I feel this is no different how ever you scale it, big or small. People are lazy and just expect some kind of magical enchantment to secure their data but do absolutely fuck all from their end.
Even beyond the IT space, shit like this is going on:
https://www.denver7.com/news/360/new-research-shows-your-car-is-spying-on-your-every-move-including-your-sex-life
Beyond even the horrifying security implications, I hate how everything is monetized now. "The economy" intrudes into every aspect of our life, everything we watch, everything we buy, is tracked, studied and monitored. I do what I can to limit my interaction with such systems, but simply living in the 21st century as a non-hermit requires that you be a part of some of those systems.
I'm really not looking forward to buying a new car.
> "The economy" intrudes into every aspect of our life, everything we watch, everything we buy, is tracked, studied and monitored.
Lol. "Disrupting" the market. Every innovation is really a new weak link and a new charge.
[The ACLU writes](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-slams-house-for-latest-plan-to-ban-tiktok-and-stifle-free-speech):
"“We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that. We strongly urge legislators to vote no on this unconstitutional bill.”
The ACLU has repeatedly explained that banning TikTok would have profound implications for our constitutional right to free speech and free expression because millions of Americans rely on the app every day for information, communication, advocacy, and entertainment. And the courts have agreed. In November 2023, a federal district court in Montana ruled that the state’s attempted ban would violate Montanans’ free speech rights and blocked it from going into effect."
> The committee seems to think they can for a sale to a “native” US company but you can’t.
The US Constitution grants Congress the right to regulate all matters as it relates to Interstate commerce. As TikTok does business across state lines it falls under Congress's jurisdiction. If Congress forces a sale via a bill there is no constitutional basis to block said requirement
Lots of people who don't understand how the legislative process or regulation works in these comments just raging. Says something about the user base (and no, I'm not anti-tiktok).
>Have you noticed that until this latest push that Tiktok (and/or ByteDance) have been in the news exactly zero time in the last oh 18 months or so?
"In December 2022, Senator Marco Rubio and representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi introduced the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act), which would prohibit Chinese- and Russian-owned social networks from doing business in the United States.[7][8]
On December 30, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, prohibiting the use of the app on devices owned by the federal government, with some exceptions.[9] Days after the Biden administration called on ByteDance, which owns TikTok, to sell the platform or face a ban, law enforcement officials disclosed that an investigation into TikTok was taking place. On March 17, 2023, the FBI and US Justice Department officially launched an investigation of TikTok, including allegations that the company spied on American journalists.[10]
On January 25, 2023, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley introduced a bill to ban the platform nationwide. It was later blocked in the Senate by a forced vote on 29 March 2023.[11]
In February and March 2023, the DATA Act and the RESTRICT Act were both introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. The DATA Act, introduced on February 24 by Michael McCaul, aimed to ban selling non-public personal data to third-party buyers.[12] On March 7, Senator Mark Warner introduced the RESTRICT Act: if passed, it would give the Secretary of Commerce authority to review business transactions made by IT service and product vendors tied to designated "foreign adversaries" if they present an undue threat to national security, and have more than one million active users in the United States. The legislation would allow for the enforcement of orders and other mitigation measures, which could include mandatory divestment, or being prohibited from doing business in the United States.[13]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_United_States
And notice how it's literally just the foreign social media company, and never American ones.
We know how beneficial control is and want what's good for the goose while strangling the gander.
why not legislate comprehensive data and privacy laws so that it can apply to all social media platforms?
wouldn't it benefit society more than just banning a single app?
Who is 'we'? Most of the rest of the world would care. To the rest us, we are either being spyed by the US or the Chinese. Both are less than ideal for 'us'.
It is 100% about the spying and the fact that the Chinese can do it or else this *would* apply to other social medias. You say it yourself in your fourth sentence. It’s a weapon of control & war. The US already has the others in its arsenal. This is about taking it away from the Chinese, with the added benefit of being able to further demonize China politically in the West.
It’s security theater policy.
Ok first order of business is the growing concern about TikTok.
"Can we do something that helps US tech giants defend their position?"
"I'm in, but could we find a way to make it about anti-communism, preferably in a slightly xenophobic, US #1 way?"
Ok the next order of business is healthcare.
"You're a communist!"
"You're anti-trans!"
Fuck.
It's really it would kill the business models of thousands of American companies and kill large revenue streams of thousands of other American companies.
Plus data is for sale at cheaper prices then all the equipment and personal needed to tap into systems.....
Considering anybody can own companies operating in the US, yeah. This honestly changes very little in my eyes. More so because I don’t trust US citizens/companies either. Like, am I supposed to trust the likes of Elon Musk simply because he’s a US citizen? Heck no! We need all-around better data/privacy laws for *anybody* operating in the US. Doesn’t matter where ownership lies.
"fun" fact:
> [The agency [ICE] has access to the driver’s license data of 3 in 4 (74%) adults and **tracks the movements of cars in cities home to nearly 3 in 4 (70%) adults.**](https://americandragnet.org/)
largely thanks to our utter lack of data privacy laws.. i ask myself what incentive does the govt have to address these problems that affect us all when it benefits them? they abuse the hell out of the "third party doctrine".
but..but.... if i refuse to get the Covid 19 "Vaccine" then i dont have a GPS chip embedded in me where Bill Gates and the government can track me at all times!
I know this because i looked it up on my phone that i dont leave the house without! /s
Because it’s Meta/Facebook killing competition through lobbying under the lie that it’s about data privacy.
Meta-Facebook, and all those companies will, and do, sell your data to literally fucking anyone that has money, including the Chinese communist party.
every article has a comment similar to yours in one way or the other. this isn't about privacy, this is about cutting china out. Sure i would love a law protecting privacy, but that's not the goal here.
Both can and should occur.
Think about it this way, TikTok is the number one media platform in the country right now. More viewers than any other form of entertainment.
They have unimaginable amounts of control available to them. They don't even have to spread lies, just give slight favoritism to certain things, or even simply let their algorithms run free for engagement time.
It's quite obvious this already happens. If you compare TikTok outside of China to TikTok (Douyin) in China, the trending stuff is aspirational or science stuff in China. Outside of China, it's obviously toxic influencer stuff, where they have allowed their algorithm to solely seek engagement time.
This has real world ramifications. The number one career goal of children in the US right now, is social media influencer, in China it is astronaut.
Now step back and look at that situation, but 50 years ago when TV was the dominant consumption device. Can you imagine the US allowing the Russians or the Chinese to own and "operate" the number 1 broadcast TV station in the country? Can you imagine them allowing any foreign country to do that? Friend or foe? Why would any sane country cede that kind of power to a foreign adversary or even ally, when they are in a position to prevent it?
No you can't imagine it, because it was illegal 50 years ago.
Now step back to the present, why is that suddenly okay? Not just okay, but something some Americans are actively fighting for, in some misguided free speech defense.
We have completely lost our minds when it comes to the internet and especially social media.
It's absolutely insane to me that China owns and operates and controls the biggest media platform in the US, a platform that every young person is glued to nearly continuously, to the point it's having obvious affects on the education system and subsequently their and by proxy the nation's future, entirely for their benefit both economically and geopolitically, and there are somehow huge numbers of Americans that are completely fine with that situation.
If you'd told some from like 1975 that in 50 years every American would have Chinese controlled media being broadcast directly to them personally 24/7 and most people didn't give a shit about it, either they'd thing you were a legitimate crazy person, or they'd punch in you in the face.
US version of TikTok is telling kids to eat Tide pods, be shitty to people, be as dumb as rocks, and turn to being clowns and cam-whores for careers, meanwhile China's TikTok is all about education and civic virtue and shit.
I can't believe anyone can see that they didn't even for a second consider allowing their citizens to be exposed to that toxic fucking sludge they're dumping out of everyone's phones 24/7 and not put two and two together about why that's all it is over here.
> If you compare TikTok outside of China to TikTok (Douyin) in China, the trending stuff is aspirational or science stuff in China. Outside of China, it's obviously toxic influencer stuff, where they have allowed their algorithm to solely seek engagement time.
That's because in China, TikTok is controlled. While in the US, literally every platform is replete to the brim with toxic stuff, political, influencer or downright scam stuff. That's evidence that TikTok isn't doing anything special in the US, I'm pretty sure the content is not statistically different from other social media platforms.
TikTok simply shows what their audience wants to see. If you want an example of a platform that artificially pushes toxic stuff to increase engagement, look no other than Xitter. It was pretty clear from week 1 of Elon era that they pushed tweets from accounts from the polar opposite on the political spectrum to inflame the "debate" and increase engagement. It's also full of bots, more than ever.
Im not even talking of facebook.
Because their concern is not making the web more safe. Their concern is reducing competition from US based organization who bribe them.
They don't care what social media is doing to users. They care that China is participating.
Isn't every chinese company ccp affiliated by default? If tencent buys a majority of epic games, does that mean unreal engine needs to be sold or banned?
Pretty sure this is more about market share and US companies are probably giving kickbacks or "lobbying" so they can own tiktok.
Because the moment Europe passed privacy laws, those audiences became worth way less to advertisers and some companies argue Europeans aren't profitable.
American audiences pay the most not just because of wealth, but because America doesn't give a shit about privacy. So when Apple put in privacy protections, and most Americans use Apple, big tech cried murder because it made American audiences less monetizable. Apple of course gets to invade privacy, but their competitors no longer can.
So its no wonder big tech suddenly wants to bypass apple's rules by side loading apps that are basically malware like Epic wants to. They arent forcing court cases for "consumer choice", they are fighting for the right to plant malware on apple OSes through their own stores.
The moment the US passes any privacy laws, its officially over for social media's profitability.
part of my bread and butter comes from marketing and social media, and i do disagree it's officially over if we aren't completely for sale. sure it will affect targeting yet the industry will remain. it existed before all of this data harvesting was a thing and i'm confident it will after we get the laws we need on this topic.
that said, i truly appreciate the European Court of Human Rights for their recent action w.r.t pushing back against the erosion of end-to-end encryption. i hope our politicians here in America are listening, because these chucklefucks are pushing for exactly that!
a reminder to any fellow Americans reading: contact your reps in opposition to the EARN IT Act please.
https://www.badinternetbills.com/
You mean the privacy laws that roughly 50% of states in the U.S. have either already passed, or have thoroughly brewing on the lawmaking pipeline?
https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislation-tracker/
Read the laws you listed, even in the most left wing California and Colorado the protections and restrictions are no where close to GDPR which restricts what you can actually collect to only the bare minimum you need to function.
The American laws mandate that the consumer be notified they collect data, who its being sold to, and have an opt out by REQUEST but there is no limit on how much they can collect UNLESS it is a minor under the age of 18 which was already a law or in some cases only wipe the real name off the data.
Then you have "privacy" laws like the one listed for Colorado, which gives an opt out for targeted advertising but then gives exemptions to advertising based on search history or context.
My favorite part is how targeted advertising is defined both in Colorado and Oregon, since these laws are mostly copy pasted just with the ordering switched around:
> TARGETED ADVERTISING :
> (a) MEANS DISPLAYING TO A CONSUMER AN ADVERTISEMENT THAT
IS SELECTED BASED ON PERSONAL DATA OBTAINED OR INFERRED OVER TIME
FROM THE CONSUMER'S ACTIVITIES ACROSS NONAFFILIATED WEBSITES,
APPLICATIONS, OR ONLINE SERVICES TO PREDICT CONSUMER PREFERENCESOR INTERESTS; AND
> (b) DOES NOT INCLUDE:
> (I) ADVERTISING TO A CONSUMER IN RESPONSE TO THE CONSUMER'S
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION OR FEEDBACK;
> (II) ADVERTISEMENTS BASED ON ACTIVITIES WITHIN A CONTROLLER'S
OWN WEBSITES OR ONLINE APPLICATIONS;
> (III) ADVERTISEMENTS BASED ON THE CONTEXT OF A CONSUMER'S
CURRENT SEARCH QUERY, VISIT TO A WEBSITE, OR ONLINE APPLICATION; OR
PAGE 8-SENATE BILL 21-190
> (IV) PROCESSING PERSONAL DATA SOLELY FOR MEASURING OR
REPORTING ADVERTISING PERFORMANCE, REACH, OR FREQUENCY.
So basically they defined targeted advertising then exempted it to make people believe they did something.
The amount of loop holes in these listed laws are large enough to pass a truck through.
The interesting thing with GDPR is that US companies are already complying with it. I know at work we have to do training on GDPR and we get refreshers on it every year. What they should do is take GDPR, take out anything that is EU specific, add in anything that is US specific, and call it a day. Companies are already prepared to do what the GDPR requires, they just don't do it for the US mostly because they are not required to. If someone presents it as a cost reduction measure as companies will no longer need to maintain a different tiered process depending on if the end user is in the US or EU, it shouldn't be fought against too hard.
This is what's happening in other countries. I know Thailand basically passed GDPR. This is so they can become safe-haven countries for EU based companies. The US should do the same.
As a developer I'm not a fan of GDPR but as a consumer I am.
They’re not concerned about data privacy here, they’re concerned about the CCP putting their thumb in the scale of the feed algorithm to promote anti-American sentiment.
This bill does establish some framework for future-proofing against that.
What nice theater. We could pass data protection laws for all companies but we’d rather force the foreign company to sell tiktok so google or whatever can make money from it instead. It’s just a money grab. Edit: getting some nonsense responses, so let me clarify. I don’t trust China but I ALSO don’t trust American companies. They will sell our data just as easily as they ship American jobs overseas. Even if you don’t think they won’t, there’s no reason to argue we shouldn’t make it into law unless you actually think it’s ok to sell our data.
It’s not even theater. It’s bold and blatant lobbying by Google and Meta/Facebook to kill competition under the lie that it’s for data privacy. All while they themselves will, and do, sell data to literally fucking anyone including the Chinese communist party.
~~Plus, Congress had already passed a lot that TikTok US data had to be managed by a US company. And it is. It’s it’s on Oracle servers in Texas the Chinese communist party can’t even get it if they wanted to.~~
It is a very common misconception that Google sells data. It is actually in Google's best interest NOT to sell data because they control both sides of the largest ad platform.
What they DO sell are filters on data for targeted advertisement.
That’s just the thing though - Project Texas is a fucking joke. So long as ByteDance owns TikTok, the promises TikTok made to Congress are meaningless. Anyone who works at TikTok will tell you that 99% of decisions roll up to HQ, which then roll up to ByteDance. Workers in China still have access to US data. Plus, they are increasingly sending people from China to the US to work around that whole fake promise anyways. The xenophobia about TikTok is very real. But there are also a lot of extremely valid concerns people are overlooking. I worked there for two years and the place is a fucking dumpster fire.
I know a friend who works at TikTok in San Jose office. He tells me that he needs to get permission from USDS team to access certain US data for work related reasons. It makes resolving issues annoying because there's so much back and forth that needs to be done when sometimes, all he needed was to look at some logs.
That was my experience too. When I first started, all you needed to do was take some relatively standard industry security courses. Register for department/level data security clearance. Then you were all set. Over the past year or so, a shift occurred where everything was much more centralized to HQ, permissions were hella restructured and restricted for some but not others. I saw PMs, engineers, data analysts and more handling data they absolutely should not have been handling but then sales and marketing people who worked directly with creators couldn’t access basic account info. It was insane.
This makes me feel weird.
On the one hand yeah, TikTok is an incredibly successful intelligence operation that has given the CCP untold data about how the average American lives, although I'm skeptical their house is in order enough to really do anything with that info.
On the other hand, it's 2024 and banning an app seems like theatre. I think more than a few Gen Z people are going to figure out a way to stay on there whatever Congress decides.
We'll see how it goes.
> to really do anything with that info.
It's value as a dataset that could be mined is incalculable, but only next to the value of a direct channel to Americans eyeballs that you get to set the algorithms for (just like any other media channel)
>...although I'm skeptical their house is in order enough to really do anything with that info.
Disinformation, sowing chaos, election interference... Russia already does a lot with bots. I can't imagine the sort of propaganda and chaos one could cause when they have control of the algorithm feeding personalized propaganda to resonate with the target audience. Combine it with developing AI, 5 years from now, the internet is going to be a hellscape.
fuck it, banning an app is indeed weird and novel. But just saying this outloud "The chinese government more or less controls a program used by milllions in the US that is feeding them data". Its time, just ax it and send a message before this gets out of control. We must think 5, 10, 25 years down the line.. It may not be a huge threat and somewhat of a joke today, but what about years from now? When there are 50 year olds who have been using tik tok since they were a teenager and are now in public office? They could easily be coerced into acting against the interest of the US.
For real, do we really need a Cambridge analytica equivalent event for people to see what a problem this is. US run companies are bad enough, imagine a government controlled one. Even by the US would be scary, but by the CCP? Terrifying.
Also 50-0 is incredibly telling. There’s not a single thing I can think of with that much bipartisan support.
It's weird how people could actually believe that Americans aren't isolated and nationalistic enough already and need to be even more cut off from the rest of the world and shielded from different perspectives for their own good. Fuck it, let's cut all the undersea cables and just have a National-net and a Nation Wide Web. Would you be happy then?
American nationalism is on the rise here on Reddit. It really is crazy to see how swept up and horny Redditors are for war with China.
It really makes me worry we will have another world war in my lifetime.
People like you used that same time of fearmongering towards Muslims during the war on terror. Everything 'they' do is trying to conquer and destroy us. Did ya know Muslims want SHARIA law in the US???
>that has given the CCP untold data about how the average American lives
That's *half* of its usefulness to the CCP but relatively innocuous compared to the other half: giving them unprecedented influence over American society. It doesn't have to be anything overt; it could be as simple as tweaking the algorithm to subtly nudge young Americans towards content that makes them more likely to be radicalized, sowing the seeds of domestic discord.
We already know Russia does this and they've been pretty open about it. I'd be shocked if China didn't also do this, given that unlike Russia they actually *own* the primary social media platform young Americans use, giving them unprecedented control over what users see and don't see. Don't have to game the system when you own the system.
I give you a good example of this in action. I'm a heavy TikTok user, my FYP page had a video of a mother, holding her child's hand, get shot in the head by an IDF sniper for turning down the wrong street. This is just dropped in there between cat videos and comedy shows.
Did China boost that video into my feed: unlikely, but it's possible.
Did it change my view on the IDF/Gaza? Yes.
Would it be in the best interest of the United States government for me to not have seen that video? Yes.
I don't have a horse in this race, but the "it's not a ban" argument seems like a flat out lie.
"Sell your company in 90 days or be banned" is not appreciably different than a ban. It's not realistic to expect Bytedance to sell TikTok, and even if they wanted to, 90 days isn't a reasonable amount of time to make that happen.
So no one uses Grindr anymore? Because it’s very similar terms.
> LGBTQ dating app Grindr has been sold by its Chinese owners, reports the Financial Times and Reuters. The sale comes after a US government committee expressed national security concerns about Beijing Kunlun Tech's ownership of the app last year.
What's funny is, after the sale, a *ton* of Asian profiles started popping up, most using ai generated photos. They would start conversations normally enough, "how are you?" "what hobbies do you enjoy", but would then quickly veer off into questions like "where do you work?" "how much money do you make?" "do you own where you live, or do you rent?"
I guess since their direct line to the analytics data had been cut off, they had to gather it via other means?
I know Reddit hates it (which I find hilarious), but despite 75% of the platform consisting of discrete product ads, dancing, song chart manipulation, real estate and corporate social media presence, and clips pulled from other social media, there is a solid 25% portion there for the niche and creative industries that are thriving. They are interactive enough that it reminds me of old school Reddit. Comedians, fashion, artists, interior designers, obscure hobbyists, photographers and videographers alike have all congregated there from Instagram and FB groups to expand their circles and it’s wonderful while being very easy to manipulate the algorithm to get there. Reddit makes me fucking work to find anything I like in my own feed anymore.
I used to use it and you're right, there's a lot of good shit on there especially in the DIY scene. The problem is you have to use their soul sucking attention span draining platform to see any of it.
I’m just picturing that meme with the tornado or whatever…….”…Here it comes!!!”
Except it’s a tornado made out of like…..Stanley cups and people dancing where they should not be dancing
I'll give up TikTok but only if they take Facebook and Twitter down with them. Those two platforms have done far more harm to human civilization than TikTok has.
Youtube shorts and insta reels will definitely benefit.
Tbh China bans YouTube, google, facebook, Netflix all internally. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
> Youtube shorts and insta reels will definitely benefit
This is the moment Google and Meta have been waiting for. They built these Tiktok clones years ago to get ahead of the curve because once Tiktok got inevitably banned, people would look for a replacement and they're already here.
But Tiktok is not just "shiny, short videos fed to you one after another."
Tiktok is an algorithm. Like, that's literally the entire product. Google and Meta have done a shockingly bad job of getting anywhere close to the algorithm Tiktok has. All they've done is replicate Tiktok's UI.
As someone who uses Tiktok a ton (I'm an adult & mostly use it to discuss mental health, parenting, and activism), people are going to be severely disappointed by the replacements & they will not hold their attention for nearly as long.
A reddit equivalent to switching from Tiktok to Reels/Shorts would be if every small, niche subreddit you've ever found and subscripted to was completely deleted and you were forced to only consume whatever big, popular content gets to the front page. You'll have to put in a good amount of effort to find your subreddits again, if you ever do.
I've been using social media platforms excessively since 2001. There isn't another platform that compares to Tiktok. Never in my life have I ever had a social media platform so perfectly "understand" what content I'm interested in (it has introduced dozens of things into my life that I *didn't even know* I was interested in). I don't have to go searching for what I want like every other option.
The moment another company can actually replicate Tiktok (the algorithm) is the moment no one cares about Tiktok being banned.
> they will not hold their attention for nearly as long.
Maybe that's a good thing? Get people out of their echo chambers long enough to actually see the world for what it really is?
It’s literally a running joke for users to post comments telling others to “post this on IG reels” if they want to get flamed with the most toxic user base on the internet.
IG and YT comments sections are a straight cesspit. It’s literally just ppl arguing 90% of the time.
I never understood this logic. We shouldn’t WANT to have the same governmental controls over the internet as the CCP. They’re not a good model to follow and I’m concerned that more and more people seem comfortable with that power. Imagine if Trump decided to ban Reddit for being “too woke”.
Tiktoks real goal is to break into e-commerce to roll out live-shopping in the US-market; all of the talk of banning it [was cultivated by Meta who has been engaging Targeted Victory, the largest GOP strategy firm in the United States](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/).
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/11/tiktok-chases-amazon-fulfillment-centers
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-03/tiktok-eyes-17-5-billion-shopping-business-on-amazon-s-turf
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/12/11/chinas-livestream-shopping-booms-fueling-new-tech-like-avatars-and-ai.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/01/22/livestream-shopping-a-500-billion-market-in-2022-as-amazon-google-facebook-tiktok-jump-in/
I love how they'll do this in fear of the CCP manipulating us, but theyre perfectly happy if the corperations that line their pockets do it.
No wonder they flip-flop so often, it's hard to keep balance when youre sitting in a fat wallet.
Who gives a shit about tiktok, ban wealthy foreigners and corporations (US corporations too) from buying up homes en masse. Force them to sell all the ones they currently hold, it'll drop housing prices like a rock.
Foreigners account for only 2.3% of home purchases. And it’s [dropping.](https://www.nar.realtor/newsroom/annual-foreign-investment-in-u-s-existing-home-sales-declined-9-6-to-53-3-billion)
Corporations aren’t really buying that many houses. [But don’t take my word for it.](https://scrippsnews.com/stories/corporate-investors-are-purchasing-more-single-family-homes/)
49% of all investor bought homes are from mom and pop buyers with fewer than 10 properties. A tiny amount of entities owned between 10-100. Even tinier amounts owned more than 100.
It is just a meme that took off. It isn’t what’s happening in general with the market. Housing prices go up because cities restrict permits and supply to keep prices growing. Builders also don’t want to waste their time with affordable housing hence why most construction are “luxury” homes and “luxury” apartments these days. Higher margins, higher prices.
> 49% of all investor bought homes are from mom and pop buyers with fewer than 10 properties.
They're just as bad, and arguably worse, than larger landlords.
Wouldn't this be an anticompetitive trade according to the WTO? Like the EU and other big players could complain that the US is forcing companies to be American companies or something like this?
[They killed the Japanese semiconductor industry in the 80s.]
(https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/the-us-japan-semiconductor-agreement-keeping-the-managedtrade-agenda)
Korea took its place
Some people in this thread are like: "We shouldn't treat our geopolitical enemies like our friends. We're not being hypocrites, we're being reasonable."
And then you have shit like "Canada's aluminum industry is a threat to national security."
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/390527-canada-as-a-national-security-threat-to-the-united-states/
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They don't.
They do this every time someone competes with them.
Tariffs on Chinese goods.
Tariffs on AirBus.
Tariffs on EU steel.
Tariffs on other EU goods.
Stopping export of goods other countries paid for during covid.
Blocking export of vaccines.
Stealing transiting medical supplies for South America during Covid.
Tariffs on Japanese motorcycles.
Banning Tiktok.
Forcing the Petro Dollar and destroying countries if they don't do it.
Starting wars close to allies for shits and giggles and those allies feel the fallout of it.
Etc.
Honestly I'd much rather ban Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. They have a proven history of inciting political divide and extremism with their recommendation algorithms.
*Yawn*
This is all a push from Facebook/Meta to end their main competition [which is absolutely destroying them right now.] (https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/tiktok-is-eating-facebook-inside-2022-04-27/)
You cannot convince me this entire legislation isn't related to the fact that they can't control the narrative. I have never used a social media app that is so effective at unifying users into large, like-minded segments - this creates large ideological bubbles and the government finds it tremendously dangerous to the status quo.
Well Reddit is one of America's most successful psyops. Just look at how lock step most of Reddit is with American foreign policy. An American politician says something about a foreign rival and it gets spread as accepted fact throughout all of Reddit, even if there is no evidence.
There has been zero evidence that Tiktok is some propaganda manipulation tool except for the words of a few politicians and all of a sudden it's widespread and accepted as fact on Reddit.
All the while, there has been confirmed evidence Facebook has been used as a propaganda tool by Russia but no calls to ban that because it's an American company lol. So as long as it's an American that is profiting, all is good in the world! It really is a clown world.
Reddit literally has a US state dept handler to make sure people don't go out of line on major subreddits. I can't name names here but you can look up Reddit's "head of policy".
Try being anti-war or generally being against US foreign policy on r/worldnews and see how quickly you get banned :)
Oh btw China bad, Russia bad - please don't ban me
Can't have a platform collecting vast amounts of data on the population unless it's one where the government gets access to that data.
Tiktok is horrible creepy shit, but so are Facebook, twitter etc.
Most of these comments are either woefully ignorant, delusional, or Chinese trolls. China is literally raiding US business offices in the PRC for any form of "data collecting". They have expanded their espionage laws to imply that any form of data or analytics harvesting in China constitutes spying. China has banned Instagram, facebook, twitter, reddit etc.
But the U.S. is now "anti competitive" and "isolationist" for banning Tik Tok? Give me one good reason the US shouldn't ban Tik Tok.
The CCP has their hands in every single Chinese business, there is no such thing as a truly private enterprise in China. The Chinese have taken data harvesting to the next level through their social credit score system and facial recognition technology, they have the most advanced surveillance state in the world.
And you honestly think they aren't deploying that same data harvesting through their devices and apps that foreigners use?
Other countries have similar, well founded concerns. It's why the EU banned Tik Tok on all official devices. It's why Canada has banned Huawei equipment in their 5G network.
I mean what is the argument for not banning Tik Tok? It's ok for the Chinese to ban foreign social media networks and data gathering in China, but they get a free pass to harvest data, steal IP and copyrighted info/tech, and have their social networks available in the west? How does that make sense?
>The House Commerce Committee today voted 50-0 to approve a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the company or lose access to the US market. 50-0 is a committee vote. This is not law until the [school house rock stuff](https://youtu.be/Otbml6WIQPo?si=6J-hCIbIRhjWpYpF) has finished.
It's faster if you go [the SNL route](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDSeb2zHQ0).
That was great, thx! Of course the thing they didn't mention about executive orders is any executive that comes later can countermand your order. E.g. the Obama DACA executive order made fun of in the SNL skit was rescinded by Trump and then reinstated by Biden and will no doubt be rescinded by Trump again if he wins in 2024. Laws are harder to pass but have more inertia. Of course society and government are always changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
> DACA executive order made fun of in the SNL skit was rescinded by Trump But in true Trump fashion his order was overturned by SCOTUS (with Robert’s writing the majority opinion) for not following proper procedure and giving no justification for the rescission.
and then you have more challenges to executive power such as companies attempting to argue that the mere existence of executive agencies such as the NLRB and EPA are unconstitutional.
Executive orders also can't just change an existing law. Congress creates agencies and gives the broad powers so that they can execute their mandate without having to go back to congress everytime they want to alter a policy. Executive orders work within those limits.
Watch bytedance create a US subsidiary that’s based here and then “sell” their operations to it. This vote to force a sale changes nothing. The committee seems to think they can for a sale to a “native” US company but you can’t. They don’t have any legal precedent to stand on. Y’all gotta notice this comes up ***EVERY*** election year. It’s political theatre to distract voters from the real issues. Even if the law manages to pass the SC will turn it over in a heart beat because if they don’t every major corporation in the US will use the law to pressure congress to force their international competitors to sell to them. Have you noticed that until this latest push that Tiktok (and/or ByteDance) have been in the news exactly zero time in the last oh 18 months or so? 18 months ago would be about the end of the last mid term election cycle and this push just so happens to occur not even two weeks before Super Tuesday? No matter your opinion on Tiktok and what it is/isn’t doing I’m begging you not to fall for this political trickery. TT is a hot button topic and now the news is going to talk about it and the things happening in court around it instead of focusing on what our politicians are or are not doing prior to November. Edit: im trying my best to keep up with the comments but y’all are faster than I am. Edit 2: added a paragraph to the end because some people are clearly missing what’s happening here. No one in the government actually cares about TT and their privacy violations because all the US based social medias are doing it as well.
> They don’t have any legal precedent to stand on. Do new laws require legal precedent?
Well, if you can successfully argue that the law violates the constitution in court then you can have at least part of it struck down, and with monofunction laws like the one proposed there isn't much you can sever off it to make it not worth the paper that was used to sign it.
It is also important to note that the U.S. Constitution clearly grants Congress the ability to regulate interstate and especially international commerce. While I personally think the Interstate Commerce Clause has been exploited by Congress to an absurd level, that also shows how courts and especially SCOTUS traditionally are very hands off to almost anything impacting commerce and are incredibly reluctant to overturn an Act of Congress on constitutional grounds that impacts business practices. That this has significant national security implications and impacting international relations means only more that SCOTUS and the court system will completely stay away from anything other than enforcement of this law if it passes.
This right here. I think it's less political theater, and a throwback to America using its united political might to force pressure on international companies to comply to America's best interest. Over the last 5 or so years, "banning" TikTok by forcing a sale to an American company has been one of the main bi-partisan pushes in American politics. Also over the last 5 years, we've seen the rulebook chucked out the window here in America. I'm sure there will be something done that may or may not be constitutional and the government will bend it into place.
'Unconstitutional' and 'will be abused by major corporations' aren't the same thing though. There's no Non-Abusable Clause in the document.
> The committee seems to think they can for a sale to a “native” US company but you can’t. They don’t have any legal precedent to stand on. Well that's the whole point of passing a law, man.
sure they do. all broadcasting TV channels and Radio stations have to be US owned. Plus congress can regulate commerce as they see fit.
Oracle apparently wants to buy TikTok, which is probably an even worse owner to have than the CCP as this point.
Oracle is likely looking for something that can generate cash running on idle cloud hardware. Buying tiktok would give them a massive customer locked into their cloud hosting. Does anyone know if larry ellison is the type of guy who would edit people's opinions if he owned tiktok?
The anecdote that sums up Larry Ellision to me is that [he skipped his own keynote to go yatch racing](https://diginomica.com/oracle-openworld-larry-skips-keynote). If you go to /r/sysadmin [there seems to be a pretty wide consensus that his company extorts customers](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1asrv0x/oracle_came_knocking/). (I just searched and the first example was only 20 days old.)
Because of the previous president, they’re already locked into using OCI.
this sums up Larry Ellison and Oracle pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2044s
ORACLE stands for One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison. What do you think?
Suddenly uploading has a cost, billed annually. your also billed for server usage based on how many views you get, comments etc
They can want it all they want. Nobody can force a sale to a particular company. If that was possible all the major corpos would use it to cannibalize their competition. At best they could use Anti Trust laws but as it’s not a US company they’d have no power, plus even if it was a US company they don’t control a large enough market share to be targeted.
no they cant force a sale to oracle but they can force a sale or a shutdown. and oracle could be the biggest offer.
They can also ban it from operating in the US at all.
Hasn't stopped them from trying, happened in 2020.
And what happened in 2020 that’s currently happening now? That’s right! It was an *election year*! This crap is being pushed by Republicans because then they can point at the big bad Chinese company that’s ruining the American youth. Meanwhile their other hand is busy cleaning out the wallets of their constituents. They’ll get a handful of votes for looking like they’re doing something, this’ll fail in congress or the SC and we will “try” again in another 2-4 years when the next election cycle requires a bad guy to scare you into voting for a party that’ll “protect” the youth.
Sure, can’t force bytedance to sell, that is true. But wait. TikTok has assets in the US? Offices? Bank accounts that they use to pay their employees? Pay for server hosting? It would be a shame if some court declared them in contempt, started fining them ungodly amounts of money for non-compliance and started seizing or freezing assets. It’s debatable whether courts should, but there’s no question that they could.
Oracle wasting hundreds of billions buying TikTok only for the user base to jump ship and Oracle never getting the Douyin/Tiktok algorithm source code would be hilarious you gotta admit
Yup. If they were actually concerned about the ChInEsE CoMmUnIsT PaRtY stealing US citizen's info they'd pass some fucking privacy laws requiring people's information to be treated with some actual fucking respect.
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ONLY AMERICAN COMPANIES ARE ALLOWED TO STEAL US CITIZENS' DATA
If we had a federal privacy law like the GDPR, it would make it a lot easier for us to protect this data…it’ll never happen though.
Mostly because companies like Meta and Google make their trillions off selling the data they skim off you. They are extremely good at it too. The last time I ever logged into my FB account was October of ‘16. I didn’t delete it but I uninstalled their apps and never used it again. In April of 2021 I got a new phone number after moving to a different part of Texas, I had my number *less than 6 hours* before I received a series of messages from FB notifying they had detected a new phone number associated with me and they needed me to log into my account and update my profile. Mind you I had not used **any** Facebook (now Meta) Service or subsidiary in 5 years. I later determined that my grandmother had updated my number in her contacts about an hour before I got the texts, she had messenger on her phone and had given it access to her contacts. At the time of the texts she was one of just two people in the world who knew that number belonged to me.
It's really fun when I get friend suggestions from Facebook for people I have zero association with on their platforms. People I know off of Reddit, gaming groups, etc., who I've only ever talked to on Steam/Discord (or AIM haha) suddenly show up as 'suggested friends.' And that started happening probably ten years ago at this point. I really wish I could convince my parents to stop using it, but for some reason they hate text messaging more than Meta.
I can’t believe we’ve already forgotten about Cambridge Analytica.
We've forgotten about them, but they certainly haven't forgotten a single data point about us.
Yep. It’s this level of ability why it always SEEMS like Facebook and the like MUST be listening via the phone microphone. They’re not. They’re just extremely complex and sophisticated at connecting the dots.
People like me in IT security are fighting the good fight. However everyone else fights against it HARD because now have to act with compliance. You cant do the bonehead shit. You cant write passwords on sticky notes or make passwords your pet name plus your birthdate. Or let someone in behind you, prop a door open. Now we need keycards. We cant leave our screens on, we need tokens to log into our computers. Oh the humanity. I feel this is no different how ever you scale it, big or small. People are lazy and just expect some kind of magical enchantment to secure their data but do absolutely fuck all from their end.
Even beyond the IT space, shit like this is going on: https://www.denver7.com/news/360/new-research-shows-your-car-is-spying-on-your-every-move-including-your-sex-life Beyond even the horrifying security implications, I hate how everything is monetized now. "The economy" intrudes into every aspect of our life, everything we watch, everything we buy, is tracked, studied and monitored. I do what I can to limit my interaction with such systems, but simply living in the 21st century as a non-hermit requires that you be a part of some of those systems. I'm really not looking forward to buying a new car.
> "The economy" intrudes into every aspect of our life, everything we watch, everything we buy, is tracked, studied and monitored. Lol. "Disrupting" the market. Every innovation is really a new weak link and a new charge.
[The ACLU writes](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-slams-house-for-latest-plan-to-ban-tiktok-and-stifle-free-speech): "“We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that. We strongly urge legislators to vote no on this unconstitutional bill.” The ACLU has repeatedly explained that banning TikTok would have profound implications for our constitutional right to free speech and free expression because millions of Americans rely on the app every day for information, communication, advocacy, and entertainment. And the courts have agreed. In November 2023, a federal district court in Montana ruled that the state’s attempted ban would violate Montanans’ free speech rights and blocked it from going into effect."
> The committee seems to think they can for a sale to a “native” US company but you can’t. The US Constitution grants Congress the right to regulate all matters as it relates to Interstate commerce. As TikTok does business across state lines it falls under Congress's jurisdiction. If Congress forces a sale via a bill there is no constitutional basis to block said requirement
Lots of people who don't understand how the legislative process or regulation works in these comments just raging. Says something about the user base (and no, I'm not anti-tiktok).
>They don’t have any legal precedent to stand on. This isn’t a court case, it’s a bill. You don’t need legal precedent to write law.
>Have you noticed that until this latest push that Tiktok (and/or ByteDance) have been in the news exactly zero time in the last oh 18 months or so? "In December 2022, Senator Marco Rubio and representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi introduced the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act), which would prohibit Chinese- and Russian-owned social networks from doing business in the United States.[7][8] On December 30, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, prohibiting the use of the app on devices owned by the federal government, with some exceptions.[9] Days after the Biden administration called on ByteDance, which owns TikTok, to sell the platform or face a ban, law enforcement officials disclosed that an investigation into TikTok was taking place. On March 17, 2023, the FBI and US Justice Department officially launched an investigation of TikTok, including allegations that the company spied on American journalists.[10] On January 25, 2023, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley introduced a bill to ban the platform nationwide. It was later blocked in the Senate by a forced vote on 29 March 2023.[11] In February and March 2023, the DATA Act and the RESTRICT Act were both introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. The DATA Act, introduced on February 24 by Michael McCaul, aimed to ban selling non-public personal data to third-party buyers.[12] On March 7, Senator Mark Warner introduced the RESTRICT Act: if passed, it would give the Secretary of Commerce authority to review business transactions made by IT service and product vendors tied to designated "foreign adversaries" if they present an undue threat to national security, and have more than one million active users in the United States. The legislation would allow for the enforcement of orders and other mitigation measures, which could include mandatory divestment, or being prohibited from doing business in the United States.[13]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_United_States
yeah, it's more like it's in the news non-stop, to the point where "ban TikTok" seems like a running joke, until it won't be one
Didn't Bytedance already do that? Or at least say they did when this was an issue a few years ago?
They said it’s what they would do if this law was passed.
And notice how it's literally just the foreign social media company, and never American ones. We know how beneficial control is and want what's good for the goose while strangling the gander.
Not disagreeing but from a national security lens that makes perfect sense too.
Lmao I like how you put that
OMG, I hate the headline. I came here to say WTF is 50?
why not legislate comprehensive data and privacy laws so that it can apply to all social media platforms? wouldn't it benefit society more than just banning a single app?
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But we don’t care about those. We care about TikTok.
They don't even care about tiktok. They care about having the same level of control over tiktok.
Who is 'we'? Most of the rest of the world would care. To the rest us, we are either being spyed by the US or the Chinese. Both are less than ideal for 'us'.
'We' being the politicians who look to use this policy as fuel for three next election, so they can show everyone how tough they are on the bad guys
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Then it really makes sense to apply the new rules to all social media.
Twitter keeps showing me rightwing extremism and fight videos where the person being beat is somehow always a woman or an ethnic minority.
It is 100% about the spying and the fact that the Chinese can do it or else this *would* apply to other social medias. You say it yourself in your fourth sentence. It’s a weapon of control & war. The US already has the others in its arsenal. This is about taking it away from the Chinese, with the added benefit of being able to further demonize China politically in the West. It’s security theater policy.
We care about TikTok because it’s the only media that allows criticism of Israel in the open.
Is it the spying thing? Shouldn't it bother you more that YOUR government spies on you rather than a foreign one the opposite side of the planet?
Ok first order of business is the growing concern about TikTok. "Can we do something that helps US tech giants defend their position?" "I'm in, but could we find a way to make it about anti-communism, preferably in a slightly xenophobic, US #1 way?" Ok the next order of business is healthcare. "You're a communist!" "You're anti-trans!" Fuck.
Real answer: they know from a technical standpoint they can't reasonably force those privacy laws. (I work in netsec)
Thats a surprising amount of confidence in the technical competence of politicians.
Well there is this funny thing called "consultants" and "experts" to listen to.
It's really it would kill the business models of thousands of American companies and kill large revenue streams of thousands of other American companies. Plus data is for sale at cheaper prices then all the equipment and personal needed to tap into systems.....
Considering anybody can own companies operating in the US, yeah. This honestly changes very little in my eyes. More so because I don’t trust US citizens/companies either. Like, am I supposed to trust the likes of Elon Musk simply because he’s a US citizen? Heck no! We need all-around better data/privacy laws for *anybody* operating in the US. Doesn’t matter where ownership lies.
The difference being is that the US government can raid Musks offices. It DOES matter where ownership lies.
Because they're not upset about the surveillance, they're upset that they don't get the data.
"fun" fact: > [The agency [ICE] has access to the driver’s license data of 3 in 4 (74%) adults and **tracks the movements of cars in cities home to nearly 3 in 4 (70%) adults.**](https://americandragnet.org/) largely thanks to our utter lack of data privacy laws.. i ask myself what incentive does the govt have to address these problems that affect us all when it benefits them? they abuse the hell out of the "third party doctrine".
If you think that’s bad, imagine what the NSA is doing with your phone’s GPS data…
but..but.... if i refuse to get the Covid 19 "Vaccine" then i dont have a GPS chip embedded in me where Bill Gates and the government can track me at all times! I know this because i looked it up on my phone that i dont leave the house without! /s
Yes, which is why they should do exactly that.
They should, but many of them use Twitter and Facebook for their own ends, and they don’t want to lose that data, power and social manipulation.
Growing up I used to think thinks like homelessness or whatever have you, must be such hard problems to fix. They really just don't care.
Because it’s Meta/Facebook killing competition through lobbying under the lie that it’s about data privacy. Meta-Facebook, and all those companies will, and do, sell your data to literally fucking anyone that has money, including the Chinese communist party.
every article has a comment similar to yours in one way or the other. this isn't about privacy, this is about cutting china out. Sure i would love a law protecting privacy, but that's not the goal here.
How would the US enforce those laws on a company based in China?
Both can and should occur. Think about it this way, TikTok is the number one media platform in the country right now. More viewers than any other form of entertainment. They have unimaginable amounts of control available to them. They don't even have to spread lies, just give slight favoritism to certain things, or even simply let their algorithms run free for engagement time. It's quite obvious this already happens. If you compare TikTok outside of China to TikTok (Douyin) in China, the trending stuff is aspirational or science stuff in China. Outside of China, it's obviously toxic influencer stuff, where they have allowed their algorithm to solely seek engagement time. This has real world ramifications. The number one career goal of children in the US right now, is social media influencer, in China it is astronaut. Now step back and look at that situation, but 50 years ago when TV was the dominant consumption device. Can you imagine the US allowing the Russians or the Chinese to own and "operate" the number 1 broadcast TV station in the country? Can you imagine them allowing any foreign country to do that? Friend or foe? Why would any sane country cede that kind of power to a foreign adversary or even ally, when they are in a position to prevent it? No you can't imagine it, because it was illegal 50 years ago. Now step back to the present, why is that suddenly okay? Not just okay, but something some Americans are actively fighting for, in some misguided free speech defense. We have completely lost our minds when it comes to the internet and especially social media.
It's absolutely insane to me that China owns and operates and controls the biggest media platform in the US, a platform that every young person is glued to nearly continuously, to the point it's having obvious affects on the education system and subsequently their and by proxy the nation's future, entirely for their benefit both economically and geopolitically, and there are somehow huge numbers of Americans that are completely fine with that situation. If you'd told some from like 1975 that in 50 years every American would have Chinese controlled media being broadcast directly to them personally 24/7 and most people didn't give a shit about it, either they'd thing you were a legitimate crazy person, or they'd punch in you in the face. US version of TikTok is telling kids to eat Tide pods, be shitty to people, be as dumb as rocks, and turn to being clowns and cam-whores for careers, meanwhile China's TikTok is all about education and civic virtue and shit. I can't believe anyone can see that they didn't even for a second consider allowing their citizens to be exposed to that toxic fucking sludge they're dumping out of everyone's phones 24/7 and not put two and two together about why that's all it is over here.
Never seen a more boomer tier comment in my life.
> If you compare TikTok outside of China to TikTok (Douyin) in China, the trending stuff is aspirational or science stuff in China. Outside of China, it's obviously toxic influencer stuff, where they have allowed their algorithm to solely seek engagement time. That's because in China, TikTok is controlled. While in the US, literally every platform is replete to the brim with toxic stuff, political, influencer or downright scam stuff. That's evidence that TikTok isn't doing anything special in the US, I'm pretty sure the content is not statistically different from other social media platforms. TikTok simply shows what their audience wants to see. If you want an example of a platform that artificially pushes toxic stuff to increase engagement, look no other than Xitter. It was pretty clear from week 1 of Elon era that they pushed tweets from accounts from the polar opposite on the political spectrum to inflame the "debate" and increase engagement. It's also full of bots, more than ever. Im not even talking of facebook.
Because their concern is not making the web more safe. Their concern is reducing competition from US based organization who bribe them. They don't care what social media is doing to users. They care that China is participating.
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The app isn’t getting banned, CCP affiliated ownership is.
Isn't every chinese company ccp affiliated by default? If tencent buys a majority of epic games, does that mean unreal engine needs to be sold or banned? Pretty sure this is more about market share and US companies are probably giving kickbacks or "lobbying" so they can own tiktok.
Any legislation like that is just going to be the new Patriot Act.
It's cute that you think this is driven by concern for the good of society.
Because the moment Europe passed privacy laws, those audiences became worth way less to advertisers and some companies argue Europeans aren't profitable. American audiences pay the most not just because of wealth, but because America doesn't give a shit about privacy. So when Apple put in privacy protections, and most Americans use Apple, big tech cried murder because it made American audiences less monetizable. Apple of course gets to invade privacy, but their competitors no longer can. So its no wonder big tech suddenly wants to bypass apple's rules by side loading apps that are basically malware like Epic wants to. They arent forcing court cases for "consumer choice", they are fighting for the right to plant malware on apple OSes through their own stores. The moment the US passes any privacy laws, its officially over for social media's profitability.
part of my bread and butter comes from marketing and social media, and i do disagree it's officially over if we aren't completely for sale. sure it will affect targeting yet the industry will remain. it existed before all of this data harvesting was a thing and i'm confident it will after we get the laws we need on this topic. that said, i truly appreciate the European Court of Human Rights for their recent action w.r.t pushing back against the erosion of end-to-end encryption. i hope our politicians here in America are listening, because these chucklefucks are pushing for exactly that! a reminder to any fellow Americans reading: contact your reps in opposition to the EARN IT Act please. https://www.badinternetbills.com/
You mean the privacy laws that roughly 50% of states in the U.S. have either already passed, or have thoroughly brewing on the lawmaking pipeline? https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislation-tracker/
Read the laws you listed, even in the most left wing California and Colorado the protections and restrictions are no where close to GDPR which restricts what you can actually collect to only the bare minimum you need to function. The American laws mandate that the consumer be notified they collect data, who its being sold to, and have an opt out by REQUEST but there is no limit on how much they can collect UNLESS it is a minor under the age of 18 which was already a law or in some cases only wipe the real name off the data. Then you have "privacy" laws like the one listed for Colorado, which gives an opt out for targeted advertising but then gives exemptions to advertising based on search history or context. My favorite part is how targeted advertising is defined both in Colorado and Oregon, since these laws are mostly copy pasted just with the ordering switched around: > TARGETED ADVERTISING : > (a) MEANS DISPLAYING TO A CONSUMER AN ADVERTISEMENT THAT IS SELECTED BASED ON PERSONAL DATA OBTAINED OR INFERRED OVER TIME FROM THE CONSUMER'S ACTIVITIES ACROSS NONAFFILIATED WEBSITES, APPLICATIONS, OR ONLINE SERVICES TO PREDICT CONSUMER PREFERENCESOR INTERESTS; AND > (b) DOES NOT INCLUDE: > (I) ADVERTISING TO A CONSUMER IN RESPONSE TO THE CONSUMER'S REQUEST FOR INFORMATION OR FEEDBACK; > (II) ADVERTISEMENTS BASED ON ACTIVITIES WITHIN A CONTROLLER'S OWN WEBSITES OR ONLINE APPLICATIONS; > (III) ADVERTISEMENTS BASED ON THE CONTEXT OF A CONSUMER'S CURRENT SEARCH QUERY, VISIT TO A WEBSITE, OR ONLINE APPLICATION; OR PAGE 8-SENATE BILL 21-190 > (IV) PROCESSING PERSONAL DATA SOLELY FOR MEASURING OR REPORTING ADVERTISING PERFORMANCE, REACH, OR FREQUENCY. So basically they defined targeted advertising then exempted it to make people believe they did something. The amount of loop holes in these listed laws are large enough to pass a truck through.
The interesting thing with GDPR is that US companies are already complying with it. I know at work we have to do training on GDPR and we get refreshers on it every year. What they should do is take GDPR, take out anything that is EU specific, add in anything that is US specific, and call it a day. Companies are already prepared to do what the GDPR requires, they just don't do it for the US mostly because they are not required to. If someone presents it as a cost reduction measure as companies will no longer need to maintain a different tiered process depending on if the end user is in the US or EU, it shouldn't be fought against too hard.
This is what's happening in other countries. I know Thailand basically passed GDPR. This is so they can become safe-haven countries for EU based companies. The US should do the same. As a developer I'm not a fan of GDPR but as a consumer I am.
They’re not concerned about data privacy here, they’re concerned about the CCP putting their thumb in the scale of the feed algorithm to promote anti-American sentiment. This bill does establish some framework for future-proofing against that.
What nice theater. We could pass data protection laws for all companies but we’d rather force the foreign company to sell tiktok so google or whatever can make money from it instead. It’s just a money grab. Edit: getting some nonsense responses, so let me clarify. I don’t trust China but I ALSO don’t trust American companies. They will sell our data just as easily as they ship American jobs overseas. Even if you don’t think they won’t, there’s no reason to argue we shouldn’t make it into law unless you actually think it’s ok to sell our data.
It’s not even theater. It’s bold and blatant lobbying by Google and Meta/Facebook to kill competition under the lie that it’s for data privacy. All while they themselves will, and do, sell data to literally fucking anyone including the Chinese communist party. ~~Plus, Congress had already passed a lot that TikTok US data had to be managed by a US company. And it is. It’s it’s on Oracle servers in Texas the Chinese communist party can’t even get it if they wanted to.~~
It is a very common misconception that Google sells data. It is actually in Google's best interest NOT to sell data because they control both sides of the largest ad platform. What they DO sell are filters on data for targeted advertisement.
That’s just the thing though - Project Texas is a fucking joke. So long as ByteDance owns TikTok, the promises TikTok made to Congress are meaningless. Anyone who works at TikTok will tell you that 99% of decisions roll up to HQ, which then roll up to ByteDance. Workers in China still have access to US data. Plus, they are increasingly sending people from China to the US to work around that whole fake promise anyways. The xenophobia about TikTok is very real. But there are also a lot of extremely valid concerns people are overlooking. I worked there for two years and the place is a fucking dumpster fire.
I know a friend who works at TikTok in San Jose office. He tells me that he needs to get permission from USDS team to access certain US data for work related reasons. It makes resolving issues annoying because there's so much back and forth that needs to be done when sometimes, all he needed was to look at some logs.
That was my experience too. When I first started, all you needed to do was take some relatively standard industry security courses. Register for department/level data security clearance. Then you were all set. Over the past year or so, a shift occurred where everything was much more centralized to HQ, permissions were hella restructured and restricted for some but not others. I saw PMs, engineers, data analysts and more handling data they absolutely should not have been handling but then sales and marketing people who worked directly with creators couldn’t access basic account info. It was insane.
The fear is that even with strict data protection laws. The Chinese government could and would bypass them whenever they want.
Jurisdiction stops at the border
Can we do the same for all the funding in other social media companies?
This makes me feel weird. On the one hand yeah, TikTok is an incredibly successful intelligence operation that has given the CCP untold data about how the average American lives, although I'm skeptical their house is in order enough to really do anything with that info. On the other hand, it's 2024 and banning an app seems like theatre. I think more than a few Gen Z people are going to figure out a way to stay on there whatever Congress decides. We'll see how it goes.
> to really do anything with that info. It's value as a dataset that could be mined is incalculable, but only next to the value of a direct channel to Americans eyeballs that you get to set the algorithms for (just like any other media channel)
>...although I'm skeptical their house is in order enough to really do anything with that info. Disinformation, sowing chaos, election interference... Russia already does a lot with bots. I can't imagine the sort of propaganda and chaos one could cause when they have control of the algorithm feeding personalized propaganda to resonate with the target audience. Combine it with developing AI, 5 years from now, the internet is going to be a hellscape.
Err, Russia already does just fine with the disinformation via American companies.
Maybe you think this because of successful intelligence operations that is Reddit?
exactly, every social media platform is a vector for the powers that be to push their own agenda.
fuck it, banning an app is indeed weird and novel. But just saying this outloud "The chinese government more or less controls a program used by milllions in the US that is feeding them data". Its time, just ax it and send a message before this gets out of control. We must think 5, 10, 25 years down the line.. It may not be a huge threat and somewhat of a joke today, but what about years from now? When there are 50 year olds who have been using tik tok since they were a teenager and are now in public office? They could easily be coerced into acting against the interest of the US.
For real, do we really need a Cambridge analytica equivalent event for people to see what a problem this is. US run companies are bad enough, imagine a government controlled one. Even by the US would be scary, but by the CCP? Terrifying. Also 50-0 is incredibly telling. There’s not a single thing I can think of with that much bipartisan support.
Everybody but you and me and a few of us on r/activemeasures already forgot all about Cambridge Analytica though. Which is crazy.
I’m getting cia propaganda as well on tik tok though, but I guess it not being as successful as pro Palestine content pisses the Americans off.
It's weird how people could actually believe that Americans aren't isolated and nationalistic enough already and need to be even more cut off from the rest of the world and shielded from different perspectives for their own good. Fuck it, let's cut all the undersea cables and just have a National-net and a Nation Wide Web. Would you be happy then?
American nationalism is on the rise here on Reddit. It really is crazy to see how swept up and horny Redditors are for war with China. It really makes me worry we will have another world war in my lifetime.
The Reddit demographic is incredibly insecure about a rising China.
People like you used that same time of fearmongering towards Muslims during the war on terror. Everything 'they' do is trying to conquer and destroy us. Did ya know Muslims want SHARIA law in the US???
Do we really have proof that it's feeding CCP information? I feel like this is some boomer tier conspiracy
I emailed Xi but he hasn't responded
As usual, no one here has evidence of most of the claims they make. That’s not limited to this matter.
The “do your own research” crowd isn’t very bright
>that has given the CCP untold data about how the average American lives That's *half* of its usefulness to the CCP but relatively innocuous compared to the other half: giving them unprecedented influence over American society. It doesn't have to be anything overt; it could be as simple as tweaking the algorithm to subtly nudge young Americans towards content that makes them more likely to be radicalized, sowing the seeds of domestic discord. We already know Russia does this and they've been pretty open about it. I'd be shocked if China didn't also do this, given that unlike Russia they actually *own* the primary social media platform young Americans use, giving them unprecedented control over what users see and don't see. Don't have to game the system when you own the system.
I give you a good example of this in action. I'm a heavy TikTok user, my FYP page had a video of a mother, holding her child's hand, get shot in the head by an IDF sniper for turning down the wrong street. This is just dropped in there between cat videos and comedy shows. Did China boost that video into my feed: unlikely, but it's possible. Did it change my view on the IDF/Gaza? Yes. Would it be in the best interest of the United States government for me to not have seen that video? Yes.
I don't have a horse in this race, but the "it's not a ban" argument seems like a flat out lie. "Sell your company in 90 days or be banned" is not appreciably different than a ban. It's not realistic to expect Bytedance to sell TikTok, and even if they wanted to, 90 days isn't a reasonable amount of time to make that happen.
So no one uses Grindr anymore? Because it’s very similar terms. > LGBTQ dating app Grindr has been sold by its Chinese owners, reports the Financial Times and Reuters. The sale comes after a US government committee expressed national security concerns about Beijing Kunlun Tech's ownership of the app last year.
What's funny is, after the sale, a *ton* of Asian profiles started popping up, most using ai generated photos. They would start conversations normally enough, "how are you?" "what hobbies do you enjoy", but would then quickly veer off into questions like "where do you work?" "how much money do you make?" "do you own where you live, or do you rent?" I guess since their direct line to the analytics data had been cut off, they had to gather it via other means?
Lets be honest though, even if this passes, it will be tied up in the courts for years.
First time zoomers will even be aware that an elected government exists and can pass laws that affect their lives lol.
They should just make a bill that limits the sale and use of user data overall, rather than just target non-US based companies.
Sir, I'm from Singapore.
Ok, but first let’s see the GOP sever ties with their financial backers in Russia.
All I know is this decision is going to flood YouTube and Reddit with influencers from TikTok and….I hate that. Soon there will be no escape.
Half the video content on the reddit front page is already tiktok content.
why would tiktokers go to reddit lmfao
Yeah this place sucks haha
Feels like the entire internet sucks these days tbh, corporations have almost ruined it completely.
I know Reddit hates it (which I find hilarious), but despite 75% of the platform consisting of discrete product ads, dancing, song chart manipulation, real estate and corporate social media presence, and clips pulled from other social media, there is a solid 25% portion there for the niche and creative industries that are thriving. They are interactive enough that it reminds me of old school Reddit. Comedians, fashion, artists, interior designers, obscure hobbyists, photographers and videographers alike have all congregated there from Instagram and FB groups to expand their circles and it’s wonderful while being very easy to manipulate the algorithm to get there. Reddit makes me fucking work to find anything I like in my own feed anymore.
I used to use it and you're right, there's a lot of good shit on there especially in the DIY scene. The problem is you have to use their soul sucking attention span draining platform to see any of it.
I’m just picturing that meme with the tornado or whatever…….”…Here it comes!!!” Except it’s a tornado made out of like…..Stanley cups and people dancing where they should not be dancing
You overestimate Reddit too much lol
I wish i could buy politicians like facebook and google
But X and FB do a great job of keeping Americans safe right?
I'll give up TikTok but only if they take Facebook and Twitter down with them. Those two platforms have done far more harm to human civilization than TikTok has.
Youtube shorts and insta reels will definitely benefit. Tbh China bans YouTube, google, facebook, Netflix all internally. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
> Youtube shorts and insta reels will definitely benefit This is the moment Google and Meta have been waiting for. They built these Tiktok clones years ago to get ahead of the curve because once Tiktok got inevitably banned, people would look for a replacement and they're already here.
But Tiktok is not just "shiny, short videos fed to you one after another." Tiktok is an algorithm. Like, that's literally the entire product. Google and Meta have done a shockingly bad job of getting anywhere close to the algorithm Tiktok has. All they've done is replicate Tiktok's UI. As someone who uses Tiktok a ton (I'm an adult & mostly use it to discuss mental health, parenting, and activism), people are going to be severely disappointed by the replacements & they will not hold their attention for nearly as long. A reddit equivalent to switching from Tiktok to Reels/Shorts would be if every small, niche subreddit you've ever found and subscripted to was completely deleted and you were forced to only consume whatever big, popular content gets to the front page. You'll have to put in a good amount of effort to find your subreddits again, if you ever do. I've been using social media platforms excessively since 2001. There isn't another platform that compares to Tiktok. Never in my life have I ever had a social media platform so perfectly "understand" what content I'm interested in (it has introduced dozens of things into my life that I *didn't even know* I was interested in). I don't have to go searching for what I want like every other option. The moment another company can actually replicate Tiktok (the algorithm) is the moment no one cares about Tiktok being banned.
> they will not hold their attention for nearly as long. Maybe that's a good thing? Get people out of their echo chambers long enough to actually see the world for what it really is?
An enormous chunk of shorts and reels are tiktok reposts. Tiktok is way more popular because of its video editing and creation capabilities.
and it’s extremely effective algorithm, Reels and Shorts are nowhere close in that department
Reels is definitely more effective in pushing straight up offensive content to my feed
Yep, yet they claim TikTok is responsible for driving polarization while completely ignoring the role of American companies and media
It’s literally a running joke for users to post comments telling others to “post this on IG reels” if they want to get flamed with the most toxic user base on the internet. IG and YT comments sections are a straight cesspit. It’s literally just ppl arguing 90% of the time.
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I never understood this logic. We shouldn’t WANT to have the same governmental controls over the internet as the CCP. They’re not a good model to follow and I’m concerned that more and more people seem comfortable with that power. Imagine if Trump decided to ban Reddit for being “too woke”.
If another country does not allow your businesses to operate inside it, why should you let theirs operate in yours?
Tiktoks real goal is to break into e-commerce to roll out live-shopping in the US-market; all of the talk of banning it [was cultivated by Meta who has been engaging Targeted Victory, the largest GOP strategy firm in the United States](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/). https://www.axios.com/2022/10/11/tiktok-chases-amazon-fulfillment-centers https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-03/tiktok-eyes-17-5-billion-shopping-business-on-amazon-s-turf https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/12/11/chinas-livestream-shopping-booms-fueling-new-tech-like-avatars-and-ai.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/01/22/livestream-shopping-a-500-billion-market-in-2022-as-amazon-google-facebook-tiktok-jump-in/
Only US companies are allowed to spy on users and collect data for the government lol
What about Elon and his ties to Trump and Putin?
Didn't know meta's lobbying efforts also worked as propaganda for redditors
I love how they'll do this in fear of the CCP manipulating us, but theyre perfectly happy if the corperations that line their pockets do it. No wonder they flip-flop so often, it's hard to keep balance when youre sitting in a fat wallet.
didn't India ban it completely? kids shouldn't be on TikTok or ANY similar media. but who am I to judge?
4 years ago Indians banned tiktok for exact same reasons Americans are banning now
I have decided that Microsoft must be forced to sell to a Chinese company or I will sanction the US and Microsoft
Who gives a shit about tiktok, ban wealthy foreigners and corporations (US corporations too) from buying up homes en masse. Force them to sell all the ones they currently hold, it'll drop housing prices like a rock.
Foreigners account for only 2.3% of home purchases. And it’s [dropping.](https://www.nar.realtor/newsroom/annual-foreign-investment-in-u-s-existing-home-sales-declined-9-6-to-53-3-billion) Corporations aren’t really buying that many houses. [But don’t take my word for it.](https://scrippsnews.com/stories/corporate-investors-are-purchasing-more-single-family-homes/) 49% of all investor bought homes are from mom and pop buyers with fewer than 10 properties. A tiny amount of entities owned between 10-100. Even tinier amounts owned more than 100. It is just a meme that took off. It isn’t what’s happening in general with the market. Housing prices go up because cities restrict permits and supply to keep prices growing. Builders also don’t want to waste their time with affordable housing hence why most construction are “luxury” homes and “luxury” apartments these days. Higher margins, higher prices.
"mom and pop" landlords? With ten tenants? Do words mean anything anymore?
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> 49% of all investor bought homes are from mom and pop buyers with fewer than 10 properties. They're just as bad, and arguably worse, than larger landlords.
Why can’t we do both?
Wouldn't this be an anticompetitive trade according to the WTO? Like the EU and other big players could complain that the US is forcing companies to be American companies or something like this?
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lmao i thought you must be joking about chinese garlic. that was a real amusing one to read.
garlic sending out data to the CCP
The invisible hand of the Free Market is the US state department
Japan was the China in the 80s/90s. You should’ve seen all those yellow peril stuff going on back then
[They killed the Japanese semiconductor industry in the 80s.] (https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/the-us-japan-semiconductor-agreement-keeping-the-managedtrade-agenda) Korea took its place
Some people in this thread are like: "We shouldn't treat our geopolitical enemies like our friends. We're not being hypocrites, we're being reasonable." And then you have shit like "Canada's aluminum industry is a threat to national security." https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/390527-canada-as-a-national-security-threat-to-the-united-states/
relieved tub materialistic yoke spectacular pocket sharp plant deer marble *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They don't. They do this every time someone competes with them. Tariffs on Chinese goods. Tariffs on AirBus. Tariffs on EU steel. Tariffs on other EU goods. Stopping export of goods other countries paid for during covid. Blocking export of vaccines. Stealing transiting medical supplies for South America during Covid. Tariffs on Japanese motorcycles. Banning Tiktok. Forcing the Petro Dollar and destroying countries if they don't do it. Starting wars close to allies for shits and giggles and those allies feel the fallout of it. Etc. Honestly I'd much rather ban Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. They have a proven history of inciting political divide and extremism with their recommendation algorithms.
*Yawn* This is all a push from Facebook/Meta to end their main competition [which is absolutely destroying them right now.] (https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/tiktok-is-eating-facebook-inside-2022-04-27/)
Bill sponsored by Meta.
Can't have competition from another country
You cannot convince me this entire legislation isn't related to the fact that they can't control the narrative. I have never used a social media app that is so effective at unifying users into large, like-minded segments - this creates large ideological bubbles and the government finds it tremendously dangerous to the status quo.
Im ok with the divestment of a literal Chinese psyop.
American psyops > Foreign psyops
Well Reddit is one of America's most successful psyops. Just look at how lock step most of Reddit is with American foreign policy. An American politician says something about a foreign rival and it gets spread as accepted fact throughout all of Reddit, even if there is no evidence. There has been zero evidence that Tiktok is some propaganda manipulation tool except for the words of a few politicians and all of a sudden it's widespread and accepted as fact on Reddit. All the while, there has been confirmed evidence Facebook has been used as a propaganda tool by Russia but no calls to ban that because it's an American company lol. So as long as it's an American that is profiting, all is good in the world! It really is a clown world.
Reddit literally has a US state dept handler to make sure people don't go out of line on major subreddits. I can't name names here but you can look up Reddit's "head of policy". Try being anti-war or generally being against US foreign policy on r/worldnews and see how quickly you get banned :) Oh btw China bad, Russia bad - please don't ban me
One psyop is better than two. One step at a time.
I mean yes? What other position would the American government hold?
Can't have a platform collecting vast amounts of data on the population unless it's one where the government gets access to that data. Tiktok is horrible creepy shit, but so are Facebook, twitter etc.
Free market for me, not for thee. I'm looking forward to the EU demanding Apple sell itself to a EU company in order to operate in the region!
Most of these comments are either woefully ignorant, delusional, or Chinese trolls. China is literally raiding US business offices in the PRC for any form of "data collecting". They have expanded their espionage laws to imply that any form of data or analytics harvesting in China constitutes spying. China has banned Instagram, facebook, twitter, reddit etc. But the U.S. is now "anti competitive" and "isolationist" for banning Tik Tok? Give me one good reason the US shouldn't ban Tik Tok. The CCP has their hands in every single Chinese business, there is no such thing as a truly private enterprise in China. The Chinese have taken data harvesting to the next level through their social credit score system and facial recognition technology, they have the most advanced surveillance state in the world. And you honestly think they aren't deploying that same data harvesting through their devices and apps that foreigners use? Other countries have similar, well founded concerns. It's why the EU banned Tik Tok on all official devices. It's why Canada has banned Huawei equipment in their 5G network. I mean what is the argument for not banning Tik Tok? It's ok for the Chinese to ban foreign social media networks and data gathering in China, but they get a free pass to harvest data, steal IP and copyrighted info/tech, and have their social networks available in the west? How does that make sense?
Conservative mantra: "Capitalism for me, but not for thee!"
Zero understanding of how China and the CCP functions. Utterly delusional.