[HN Gopher] Senate Bill to Ban TikTok
___________________________________________________________________
Senate Bill to Ban TikTok
Author : WUMBOWUMBO
Score : 399 points
Date : 2023-03-28 21:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.congress.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.congress.gov)
| humanistbot wrote:
| If the concern is privacy and security, which apply to all social
| media platforms, then why not pass actual privacy and security
| laws that would apply equally to all social media platforms,
| regardless of who currently owns it or may own it in the future?
| remote_phone wrote:
| It's not about privacy and security it's about propaganda and
| controlling what our citizens are influenced by.
| tzs wrote:
| Actual privacy and security laws aren't passed because this is
| not a sufficiently bipartisan issue to get enough votes.
|
| One party is largely in favor of stronger privacy laws, but
| with enough dissenters that when that party is the majority
| party they still would need help from the other party.
|
| The other party is largely against stronger privacy laws,
| without enough dissenters to overcome the more pro-privacy
| party dissenters when the more pro-privacy party has the
| majority.
|
| So nothing passes.
| rvz wrote:
| The US regulators and government is not tired of collecting
| money from and imposing fines on all social media and tech
| platforms, hence why Facebook, Google (YouTube), Instagram,
| Snap, etc all have been fined by the FTC for privacy
| violations.
|
| Facebook and TikTok are of similar sizes and have both violated
| the privacy of its users and since FB has paid a giant billion
| dollar fine to the FTC, it already makes sense to also fine
| TikTok on similar grounds including overseas access to US data
| by specifically targeting US journalists.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| that would be reasonable, wouldn't it?
| than3 wrote:
| The concern is subversion and malign influence, which is a very
| real problem. USMC University has a book on political warfare
| that covers the topic fairly.
|
| The politicians don't want to touch privacy or security laws
| since that would negatively impact their benefactors as opposed
| to actually doing their jobs for their constituents.
|
| Its a power grab, hopefully it won't get passed because of the
| loose undefined wording that could apply to anything they so
| choose like in ways described in Ayn Rand.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Tencent also has a very large stake in Reddit, I wonder if
| there's any plan to investigate influence operations there.
| beezle wrote:
| Yes but Twitter and Facebook have already been used for that
| purpose and continue to be used in that manner.
|
| I get that it is not appropriate on government phones in case
| they manage to leverage a zeroday but for the average Joe I'm
| not seeing the risk of TikTok being any greater than the rest
| of the social media world - the same info is
| shared/available.
| beebmam wrote:
| Because other social media companies aren't owned or controlled
| by an authoritarian state, one which expresses threats of
| violent aggression to its neighboring countries.
| Quinner wrote:
| This is America, we follow through on our threats of violent
| aggression, no matter how far away other countries are. And
| when we ban speech, it's not authoritarianism, it's Freedom.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Congress is also working on privacy legislation, it just takes
| forever because it's massive and complex. I imagine that
| legislators feel they have urgency/momentum behind the TikTok
| stuff to get something focused done. From the article below:
| "The House Energy and Commerce Committee last year advanced a
| bipartisan bill backed by Rodgers and sponsored by ranking
| member Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., that would produce a
| national data privacy standard, but the measure didn't get a
| House floor vote, and no similar measure has passed in the
| Senate."
|
| https://rollcall.com/2023/02/02/lawmakers-stumble-on-data-pr...
| gretch wrote:
| That's not what the concern of the bill is and it's completely
| transparent. Just read the first 2 pages of the bill and you
| can see the concern is, in the words of the bill, a "foreign
| adversary" and their ability to "sabotage or subversion of the
| design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution,
| installation, operation, or maintenance of information and
| communications technology products and services in the United
| States".
|
| It's quite simple - the US and China don't get along.
|
| It's never been about privacy nor internal (to the US)
| security. It's very openly about cross pacific adversaries.
| Only meta-tech commentators have tried to apply some weird
| narrative of privacy.
| kneel wrote:
| That's a lot of words to say authoritarianism.
| waboremo wrote:
| When you are also banning VPN access to whatever tools you
| deem under the control of "foreign adversaries" (which, more
| people should look up the government's actual definition on
| this lol), then privacy is very much a core narrative. If it
| was just about China then Chinese apps would have been banned
| off Apple and Google stores years ago.
|
| This is going to be one of those things Americans look back
| at, like the PATRIOT act, and wonder how the hell they
| allowed it to happen all because of one app/event.
| goldfeld wrote:
| These guys are ridiculous, they represent the "I'm losing now
| so gonna take my ball home crying" mentality. Oh what a pity
| the US is not able to always win and have all the hot new
| toys made of american silicon! Of course it's very fine and
| dandy for all social networks that matter to be controlled on
| their soil, of course it's great that US is phone code #1!!1
| and that .com is such an american thing at its birth. The
| land of freedom and opportunity cannot stomach that Zuker
| could not buy TikTok too? Come on give me a break. Also, even
| Rome fell. It's better not to start playing the loser's game,
| it just accelerates decadence.
| charlieflowers wrote:
| The real concerns, in order of importance, are:
|
| 1. This is a way of getting memes to the masses that we (the
| US political establishment) can't fully control.
|
| 2. Meta and others are getting their asses kicked revenue-
| wise by Tik Tok. Like any business, they'd use anything they
| could to fight back. Turns out they can use China fear
| mongering, so they are.
|
| 3. (Added) Believe it or not, there's nationalistic pride
| here. There is a reluctance to admit that an app from "the
| other side" (China) is more appealing to the masses than
| _our_ social media apps. Surprising then that we don't ban
| Hondas and Toyotas, even though they're far superior to
| American cars (but at least they're made by Asians who are
| _allies_ I guess).
|
| No matter that banning an app is completely against the
| principles we claim, such as freedom for individuals,
| competition in a free market, and freedom of information.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > Surprising then that we don't ban Hondas and Toyotas,
| even though they're far superior to American cars (but at
| least they're made by Asians who are _allies_ I guess).
|
| Both Honda and Toyota build a lot factories in the US,
| creating a lot of jobs for US Citizens that actually show
| up to vote. All while American brands move to Mexico,
| Canada etc.
|
| TikTok might as well be the same as "BigTech" but with the
| bonus of being Chinese--that is something politicians can
| work with. I think the root of the problem, though, is we
| (humans) are easy to manipulate, but I dont even know how
| we can even begin to tackle that.
| kalleboo wrote:
| > _Surprising then that we don 't ban Hondas and Toyotas_
|
| This is a holdover from the US supporting the development
| of industry in Japan to keep them from turning communist
| (which was a real threat back in the 60's and 70's)
| mulmen wrote:
| > Surprising then that we don't ban Hondas and Toyotas,
| even though they're far superior to American cars
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
|
| We _do_ ban some import vehicles. Specifically light
| trucks.
|
| Harley-Davidson famously tried to get Japanese V-Twins
| banned for not leaking oil. Er, I mean, for "stealing their
| signature exhaust noise".
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I think you're conflating the reasoning of the ban to be
| against Asians, when in fact it's purely against China.
| Japanese car manufacturers have done absolutely nothing
| wrong.
| kirse wrote:
| Actual #1. TikTok is banned in China, but in their similar
| app (Douyin) their kids are limited to 40min a day and
| restricted from a lot of the digital opium drip that US
| kids are receiving in infinite quantities. Sounds like it'd
| only be fair to follow suit if China itself is limiting the
| poisoning of their own citizens:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2023/03/24/douyin-
| tiktok...
| charlieflowers wrote:
| It is mind boggling, and at the same time not surprising
| at all, that China is enforcing a humane policy to
| protect its children when we are not willing to do the
| same.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >It is mind boggling, and at the same time not surprising
| at all, that China is enforcing a humane policy to
| protect its children when we are not willing to do the
| same.
|
| By whose standards? The United States has never been an
| ideologically cohesive nation outside some basic
| principles of representative democracy - and even those
| have been challenged at moments in our history. The
| moment you get beyond the basics of a unified military,
| postal service, weights and measures, and currency, you
| quickly get into the social issues that have plagued our
| cohesion since the founding of the nation. Is Uncle Tom's
| Cabin a seminal work in understanding US history, or
| subversive and dangerous? We can't even decide that as a
| nation at the moment, so "how much social media is good
| for our kids?" would be a very, very ugly discussion to
| have at a national level.
|
| I don't have Tik Tok installed, my kids only get the
| "reruns" off YouTube, but frankly I find it a bit
| extremist that the US government wants to ban an app that
| looks to me like people doing funny dances in their
| living rooms.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I don't have Tik Tok installed, my kids only get the
| "reruns" off YouTube, but frankly I find it a bit
| extremist that the US government wants to ban an app that
| looks to me like people doing funny dances in their
| living rooms.
|
| There is a wide variety of content on TikTok. One
| category is (tens/hundreds of) thousands of people who
| watched the Congressional "democracy" theatre on the
| TikTok ban realizing that their so-called democracy is
| fake, a laughing stock, pick your pejorative. Millions of
| people who formerly had no clue, now realize _absolutely_
| that what is on the label does not match what is on the
| tin.
|
| Of course, they _could have_ realized this via other
| means since it has been the case for ages, but whether
| they _would have_ is another story.
|
| If I was running an illusory regime, I'd take out TikTok
| too, it's just old fashioned common sense.
| natdempk wrote:
| We need to move past the "TikTok = people dancing" stage
| of discussion.
|
| TikTok has expanded to be the dominant short form video
| platform for every interest, niche, and micro niche you
| can imagine that exists, and even ones you can't imagine.
|
| Please anyone reading this comment replace "TikTok =
| people dancing" with "TikTok = feed + discovery for short
| form video tailored to your specific interests no matter
| how niche". Yes this includes programming, science,
| education, dancing, gaming, cooking, acrobatics,
| painting, arguing, politics, news, weather, etc.
| basically anything you can imagine that isn't against
| their content policies.
| philsnow wrote:
| > feed + discovery for short form video tailored to your
| specific interests no matter how niche
|
| It is this and also that young people are especially
| malleable, so content that they see can cause long-term
| psychological and emotional damage, or--more pertinently
| to governments' interests--can introduce ideological
| change that they don't control.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| That's fair - but if that's the case, how is that
| actually different from YouTube, Instagram, or any number
| of other platforms? It appears in two ways:
|
| 1) TikTok is really good at what they do.
|
| 2) They are a Chinese-owned company.
|
| It certainly feels like if it weren't for #2, they would
| be praised for their innovation and held up as a great
| American success story. I'm not saying that there
| shouldn't be skepticism in the name of national security,
| but of all the things threatening to destroy the planet
| on any given day, this feels low on the list.
| blincoln wrote:
| While I think some of it is the UX, the main thing in
| TikTok's favour is the massive number of people creating
| concise, interesting content for it.
|
| YouTube videos are frequently 30-120 seconds of relevant
| content padded to 10-15 minutes. Most TikTok videos are
| close to just those 30-120 relevant seconds.
|
| If Congress bans it, they'll probably lose the trust and
| interest of a massive percentage of Americans under the
| age of 30.
| [deleted]
| Quinner wrote:
| Humane by who's standards? Should the government be
| mandating how to raise children? Maybe the government
| would think compelling church attendance is a humane
| policy to protect children. Or we could let parents
| decide how to raise their kids.
|
| Never mind that the policy here is actually not about
| protecting children at all, since its banning an app
| entirely where the vast majority of users are adults.
| electrondood wrote:
| I mean... _gestures at latest mass school shooting_
| harvey9 wrote:
| USA and China have very different societies so the best
| you could expect in the former is an opt in facility for
| parents to limit time in an app. Much as I think these
| apps are the junk food of tech, I still prefer a less
| authoritarian state.
| goldfeld wrote:
| It is also surprising to realize that China and the
| chinese actually think as a nation and have a sense of
| collectivism, whereas the US is to each their gun and
| their million dollars in the bank. China has always had
| this sense of being one thing, historically, and even the
| atrocious regimes, emperors, and dictators are always
| representative of a populace wish to centralize and
| control things fluidly and efficiently. Who knows, maybe
| it will work out, even with the price it has that
| westerners won't ever consider, or ever let go of a
| philosophical individuality.
| ddoolin wrote:
| ...because they killed or chased away any dissenters, now
| and historically. Look at Taiwan, or Hong Kong, the
| revolution, or Xinjiang. It isn't some innate
| characteristic of the Chinese, it is intentional.
| harvey9 wrote:
| That's a pretty superficial take on both countries.
| goatlover wrote:
| [flagged]
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Only if you think
|
| a) the Chinese goverment is right
|
| and b) TikTok is notably worse than American social
| media.
|
| I, for example, disagree with both. I think the Chinese
| government is wrong about a lot of things, including the
| right way to raise kids. And I think TikTok is no worse
| than Instagram.
| kirse wrote:
| _a) the Chinese goverment is right_
|
| The Chinese government is right in the sense that drug
| cartels generally avoid getting too high on their own
| supply.
| Gigachad wrote:
| When the memes involve destroying the school bathrooms and
| stealing cars. It's probably worth considering what control
| is had over it.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Those aren't really relevant to the topic of Chinese
| ownership, unless you believe the government told TikTok
| to actively promote those videos. The stupid destruction
| trends seem organic to me, and did not require CCP
| interference.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Tiktok is not just a dumb video host. They chose the
| content they show to users. And the content their system
| is shoving in users faces is destructive.
| lurker919 wrote:
| Are you saying there are engineers sitting behind their
| laptops who upvote the "bathroom destruction" trend in
| some kind of global dashboard? You sound very certain
| about the degree of control they have over recommendation
| systems.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| [dead]
| hi5eyes wrote:
| google devious lick
|
| tiktok incentivizes teenagers to create content, and
| makes going viral extremely easy... as long as you can up
| the ante on current edgy activity
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| tiktok doesn't actually incentivize it.
|
| they hosted the videos and banned them as they were
| reported.
|
| you can't even search the term anymore as it shows a get
| help button instead.
|
| however i can go on youtube and watch all of the ripped
| tiktok that people downloaded before it was removed.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I'm not saying they specifically coded in a "bathroom
| destruction" function, but they coded a function which
| results in promoting destruction videos more than any
| platform before it.
|
| The amount of brainrot content that tiktok pushes is
| staggering. The other video platforms don't come close.
| sph wrote:
| We have proved time and time again that governments have
| propaganda and astroturfing teams deployed on all major
| social media, why is it so hard to believe that CCP
| through TikTok has a mechanism to promote some content
| over another?
|
| I am no conspiracy theorist, but at some point we need to
| accept the countless proof we keep reading about tech
| used maliciously once your app reaches a significant mass
| of users, especially if those users live in a country you
| are in a bona-fide economic war with.
|
| Some degree of skepticism is healthy, but propaganda
| thrives any time a skeptic dismisses valid concerns.
| winternett wrote:
| Make no mistake, they let everything sensational trend
| until it makes the news because it makes them look edgy
| to a younger audience and that makes them lots of
| money... Covering your tracks is easy when there's no
| algorithm/operational transparency.
|
| Social media is the puts when it comes to moral
| bankruptcy... It is a casino based on popularity, and so
| many people are dumping money into it on a regular basis
| that it's really too late to do anything to stem the way
| it manipulates our world. Congressional action is far too
| late and futile to the maximum in encouraging any sort of
| ethics, they did nothing with all the damning evidence
| presented about Facebook, The only reason they'd ban
| TikTok is to satisfy the anti-competitive lobby of US
| competitors if you ask me.
|
| TilTok is a corrupt platform nonetheless, and I really
| wouldn't be sad if it got banned, the basis of it has
| already infected everything else, including YouTube to
| the point of useless overload, so the entire ideal of
| going viral and getting paid on platforms is actually way
| past anything meaningful any more.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Yeah, that's where the Toyota/Honda comparison breaks
| down to me. Toyota and Honda sell cars to users. TikTok
| sells users.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| Toyota and Honda both assemble cars here in the US and
| have a huge network of US-based suppliers. No one
| believes that those companies operate under Japanese
| government direction nor that the Japanese government has
| the ability to influence company management to the degree
| the CCP clearly can with TikTok. It is well documented
| that the "Golden Shares" owned by the CCP and the board
| seat on they have give them fundamental control of the
| company.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Saying that the CCP is in control due to board seats is a
| bad reason. China gives CCP membership to the top
| students in schools, and most people try and join the CCP
| if they can. The people that make up the tops of
| companies are most likely to be CCP members because of
| the fact that highly driven people are most likely to be
| in or join the CCP. Yes the Chinese government has a lot
| of control, but members of the CCP being on the board is
| nonsense. It is extra nonsense when you consider how many
| US companies have government members on the board.
| Condoleezza Rice is a board member of Dropbox for
| example.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Would love to see the overlap of people concerned about
| threats to the conditional right to own guns, and those
| who are completely unconcerned about this direct attack
| on freedom of speech.
| [deleted]
| harvey9 wrote:
| Being able to post videos in a walled garden owned by a
| corporation is not free speech. freedom of speech,
| regardless of where you are on the political compass, is
| in platforms like Mastodon.
| paxys wrote:
| You are overestimating how much of a concern 2 is for
| lawmakers. Meta getting its ass kicked is a happy bonus for
| both political parties.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >Meta getting its ass kicked is a happy bonus for both
| political parties.
|
| Frankly, it _should_ get this treatment. Its executives
| have been consistently hostile toward government
| inquiries and in public statements about its users. The
| hubris it has shown in its treatment on political speech
| and _disdain_ for paid advertisers is revolting. The
| stock structure of the company is a physical
| manifestation of everything wrong - we can treat the
| public and the law with disdain and you can 't touch us.
| charlieflowers wrote:
| Agree, but then Meta and others are lobbying (throwing
| money at those politicians), which buys concern from the
| lawmakers.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| To correct #1, it is a way that China can fully control.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| You are also ignoring the fact that China does not allow
| our social media companies to operate in their
| jurisdiction. So part of this is a sense of fairness. Why
| do they get to operate here if we can't operate there?
| vetinari wrote:
| Because they have seen how EU's social media companies
| ended up.
|
| What EU's social media companies? Exactly.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Ok, so you gave a good reason for China to ban US
| companies and you haven't given a good one for why the US
| shouldn't ban TikTok.
| vetinari wrote:
| China never claimed that they value freedom, (whatever
| you define as freedom). They value harmony instead,
| (whatever you define as harmony).
|
| By US banning TikTok, US is acting against claimed
| values, turning out to be hypocrite. China, by banning US
| social media, doesn't. Might be seen unfair, but it is a
| dead end that US painted itself into.
|
| For the sake of argument, _if_ we agree that banning is
| OK, EU should ban social media from both, and subsidize
| their own the same way as US subsidized theirs.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Why do people have this delusion that empowering
| oppressive governments promotes freedom in any way?
| vetinari wrote:
| It is not about "empowering oppressive government".
|
| It is being true to what I claim that I'm, what my values
| are. If I start playing opportunist, how I'm better that
| the other guy?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Because open markets and free speech are national values,
| not tit-for-tat teenage diplomatic drama. We're supposed
| to be better than that.
| lazyeye wrote:
| But its not open markets if one partner blocks all access
| to it's own market?
|
| In what other trade context would this scenario be
| acceptable?
|
| And how does giving access to an authoritarian regime,
| famous for controlling speech, promote free speech?
| [deleted]
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Consumer choice is unequivocally good.
|
| Besides, the problem is already solvable. People could
| simply stop using TikTok if they agreed that its
| disadvantages outweigh its benefits. No one is forcing
| them. This is a vote with your feet issue, plain and
| simple.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| > People could simply stop using TikTok if they agreed
| that its disadvantages outweigh its benefits
|
| A democratically elected government banning something is
| the people deciding.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Ridiculous argument.
|
| A lot of people choose meth.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It sounds like your argument is, The government can be a
| force for good for people who aren't capable of making
| rational decisions.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Exactly and young people lack the life experience to
| comprehend the long-term risks associated with
| surrendering their private data to the CCP or being
| exposed to sophisticated disinformation campaigns over
| time. So it is incumbent on the govt to protect their
| long-term interests.
|
| And to also ensure that trade relationships are fair and
| equitable (which it currently isnt).
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I fail to see how free markets work if people aren't
| rational actors. We might as well have a communist
| economy if we can't count on that.
|
| Besides, anytime we see the government intervene on
| matters like this, we're reminded how they make it worse.
| goatlover wrote:
| Because the US isn't China, not should it try to be.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| What US value is being respected by allowing a different
| authoritarian country operate uncontested on American
| soil?
| holler wrote:
| China has banned nearly all US social networks already so is
| this really surprising given the current status quo?
| vkou wrote:
| If we're using China as a role model for our information
| hygiene, then I think it's fair to say that the free speech
| experiment that some liberal democracies have practiced
| over the past few centuries has ran its course, and can be
| considered a failure.
|
| Pack it up, folks, as it turns out, there are some things
| that are too dangerous to let the public hear.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I think you need to study WW2 a little bit more. The
| Office of Censorship opening up letters to destroy pro-
| Nazi sentiment, and the Office of War Information buying
| up Disney Cartoons to show Donald Duck / Popeye / etc. as
| a Navy Sailor and encourage us to buy War Bonds through
| very overt propaganda.
|
| Free Speech comes and goes in the USA. We tend to lean
| towards the freer-side of things, but if we need to, we
| clamp down on it to meet our other goals.
|
| -----
|
| WW2 is hardly an outlier either. WW1 had Espionage Act of
| 1917, Civil War didn't even have a law, Censorship and
| seizure of printing presses was just so common. Pre-Civil
| War, the Postmaster General of slave states commonly
| censored pamphlets from abolitionists. I mean, the "Alien
| and Sedition Acts" were passed within a year or two of
| the Bill of Rights, allowing the President to arrest
| various members of the press in the 1780s. Etc. etc. This
| stuff has been going on since the dawn of the USA as a
| country.
|
| Book burnings and other such events were also widespread
| in the USA throughout our history... and even have legal
| precedent like the Comstock laws
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws
|
| IMO, we've gone too far into the free-speech side of
| becoming absolutely idiots about the subject in recent
| years and all of us can benefit from researching the
| actual history of the USA.
|
| Free Speech, both opening up, and restricting it, has its
| uses. And if you're a student of history, you'll be able
| to feel the ebbs and flows of this subject throughout
| time.
|
| -----------
|
| Censorship is a tool. A tool best used rarely, maybe only
| a few times a century. But I unfortunately think we're
| coming to the point where we need to start using it
| within this decade or so. And no, not for the stupid AP
| African American class crap. I mean for the part that
| matters right now, the China-Taiwan conflict that is
| obviously brewing up.
| goatlover wrote:
| > Censorship is a tool. A tool best used rarely, maybe
| only a few times a century. But I unfortunately think
| we're coming to the point where we need to start using it
| within this decade or so. And no, not for the stupid AP
| African American class crap. I mean for the part that
| matters right now, the China-Taiwan conflict that is
| obviously brewing up.
|
| How about the Red Scare or Huckleberry Finn? Problem with
| censorship as a tool is that it will be abused. What
| makes you so sure that the party censoring AP African
| American studies won't be back in power next?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Because China has strict censorship laws, so should the US?
| sph wrote:
| There is no honour in (economic) war. You don't win by
| holding the moral high ground.
|
| Sucks for us Westerners to see our Internet firewalled,
| but that's what happens when you're in a war, whatever
| its nature. Everybody pays for it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is not an effective war strategy though. The same
| influence American politicians swear the Chinese
| government has over Tiktok can easily be obtained through
| any number of social media companies.
|
| Moral high ground and fairness is the best strategy here.
| If it's illegal for all companies to capture this
| information, it makes enforcement easier and prevents
| foreign adversaries from merely infiltrating other
| companies.
|
| There are plenty of influential people in the tech world
| that would sell America out for a quick Renminbi.
| gretch wrote:
| We shouldn't adopt 'general censorship' positions, but if
| China censors US media, then the US should center Chinese
| media.
|
| I believe in reciprocity. If someone treating you poorly,
| there's no reason you need to keep allowing them to walk
| over you.
| bas wrote:
| In what sense is TikTok "Chinese media" when the majority
| of the creators (consumed in the US) are in the West?
| lazyeye wrote:
| Bytedance is a Chinese company that is required by law to
| take direction from the CCP. The CCP may find it useful
| to promote/suppress particular content regardless of the
| geographic location of the creator.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I don't think it's specifically China. I think it's
| retribution because ByteDance won't open US offices and be
| beholden to the US government like other large corporations
| do. I think this is the US gov using them as an example of
| what happens when a corporation such as this dares not fall
| in line.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| That's absolutely incorrect. TikTok has plenty of US
| personnel and is doing something called "Project Texas" to
| try to assuage US regulator concern. This is about China
| controlling a channel that millions of Americans use to get
| their news
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I don't think it's specifically China. I think it's
| retribution because ByteDance won't open US offices and be
| beholden to the US government like other large corporations
| do. I think this is the US gov using them as an example of
| what happens when a corporation such as this dares not fall
| in line.
|
| The bill affects multiple countries, not just China.
|
| In fact, it encompasses "any foreign government or regime,
| determined by the Secretary [to be]... significantly
| adverse to the national security of the United States or
| the security and safety of United States persons"
|
| Depending on how much (or little) you trust the Secretary
| of Commerce, that's incredibly far-reaching and could
| easily be abused.
| starfallg wrote:
| Bytedance absolutely has US offices. Their Mountain View
| office being branded Bytedance, while their LA office is
| TikTok. They also have office in many cities in the US like
| Nashville and NYC.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The issue is that tiktok told congress that US data was
| inaccessible in China but there is evidence of Chinese
| nationals accessing american journalist's data in China. Also
| I'm sure big tech lobbying is playing a large role here too,
| but that's the cover story at least.
| kube-system wrote:
| Regardless of anything TikTok's management says, Chinese law
| functionally allows them to force ByteDance to supply any
| data they want.
| florbnit wrote:
| Do you have a link or reference to that evidence?
| kube-system wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-
| by...
|
| "TikTok spy journalist" returns a lot of results in your
| favorite search engine
| freewizard wrote:
| (10) ICTS COVERED HOLDING ENTITY.--The term "ICTS covered holding
| entity" means any entity that-- (A) owns, controls, or
| manages information and communications technology products or
| services; and (B) (i) has not less than 1,000,000 United
| States-based annual active users at any point during the year
| period preceding the date on which the covered holding is
| referred to the President; or (ii) for which more than
| 1,000,000 units have been sold to persons in the United States
| before the date on which the covered holding is referred to the
| President. (11) INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
| PRODUCTS OR SERVICES.--The term "information and communications
| technology products or services" means any hardware, software, or
| other product or service primarily intended to fulfill or enable
| the function of information or data processing, storage,
| retrieval, or communication by electronic means, including
| transmission, storage, and display.
|
| this seems pretty broad, not just TikTok, but WeChat, Little Red
| Book, Yandex and any cellphone made by Chinese companies has 1M+
| unit sold may all be subject to same restrictions
| alephnerd wrote:
| Good. If American software companies face anti-competitive
| restrictions on accessing the Chinese market, then we may as
| well do the same. Paradox of Tolerance and whatnot.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I hope it passes
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| ouch, the youth not going to like that..
|
| Also a terrible message for foreign companies investing in the
| US, you can get banned if you don't give up ownership/control of
| your own company if you become too big..
| [deleted]
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is a frustrating issue because there's so much bad
| information and poor arguments that has caught on. Top of this
| list is that Meta is behind it. Meta doesn't have this kind of
| pull. Meta also doesn't want the Commerce Secretary to be able to
| ban platforms because that could be weaponized against all of
| Meta's properties in the future.
|
| If you want to point the finger at anyone, Google might be a
| better bet. Google has been very good at keeping out of the
| public eye, like successfully arguing "it's the algorithm" about
| search results to gloss over the human element in that.
|
| But there are several aspects to this that have varying levels of
| validity:
|
| 1. China doesn't provide reciprocal access to their market to US
| companies like FB, IG and Youtube. To me, this alone is
| justification to ban Chinese companies. You need go no further
| than this;
|
| 2. Data protection is a real issue. Having data within US
| jurisdiction is a valid concern but as many have pointed out,
| this would better be served by a Federal data protection law,
| which will never happen. Tiktok has been singled out here;
|
| 3. As much as the US government can gain access to data on FB,
| IG, etc, there is still a rule of law. Even FISA courts have a
| process. There is not even a pretense of separation between
| Chinese companies and the Chinese state;
|
| 4. Influence by any company through the algorithm is a valid
| concern. This is more of a concern with a foreign adversary but
| is still an issue with US companies. We've seen how quickly
| misinformation can spread (and affect elections) since at least
| 2016;
|
| 5. Some point out you can just get this data from data brokers.
| Data brokers sell audiences. In some cases you can tie that back
| to an individual but the platform has way more data than any
| broker would. I can't go to a broker and get WSJ journalist DMs.
| The platform owner obviously can;
|
| 6. The risk of a foreign government targeting individuals with
| 0-days and the like is a real one. We've seen Saudi Arabia and
| other authoritarian governments target journalists. It's a valid
| concern.
|
| But instead of a nuanced conversation we get reactionary "China =
| bad" antics from some of the dumbest people (in Congress) I've
| ever witnessed.
| bioemerl wrote:
| The operatives in China's social manipulation groups are laughing
| while reading this thread because you all are doing their work
| for free.
|
| I don't think you guys understand here how important a bill like
| this is, and how much of a threat China is to us. This bill could
| be modified to restrict its usage more, and that would be good,
| but at the end of the day we must take action against the fact
| that China has such a massive social and cultural entry point
| into our culture, because China has spent the last 10 decades
| ensuring that they are protected from any social exchange from us
| to them.
|
| They will use that tool against us. It is not a matter of if,
| it's a matter of when, and it's probably already happening.
|
| Do not hand our people's minds to a country that would destroy
| us. Pay attention to what Russia was able to do with nothing but
| a couple of troll farms. China won't just have that, they'll have
| the entire platform and the algorithm which determines everything
| you see every day.
|
| This cannot be allowed to continue.
| tryauuum wrote:
| I hear you, and at the same time I know nothing good comes out
| of government interfering with internet. Another 10 years and
| they will ban news websites with "fake news about war", as
| Russia did in 2022
|
| Luckily I live in a small country now and shouldn't care much
| about us politics
| retinaros wrote:
| sure fb and instagram are better or even vine was better.
| onlyfans? beautiful app definitly lifting people out of
| poverty.
|
| I remember the trump days. the same democrats pushing for a ban
| where calling trump racist for his anti-china policies. what a
| 180 from all our enlightened benefactors and democrats thinkers
| bioemerl wrote:
| It's a 180 I'm sure happy with.
|
| This isn't about lifting people out of poverty or the quality
| of the other apps. There are very big systemic problems that
| still need to be solved with regulations on American
| applications.
|
| This is about making sure an enemy state doesn't have a
| little window to half the people in the country, with the
| ability to exert total control on what they see every day.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Considering that China bans all US social networks or search
| engines over which it does not have full censorship control, I'm
| totally okay with the US responding by banning TikTok.
| dahwolf wrote:
| In select countries (China, Turkey, India, many more) apps
| regularly get banned. In the west we frown upon this practice
| based on the principle of freedom of speech and free markets and
| competition.
|
| The second-order effect of this is interesting to ponder about as
| it creates an asymmetrical situation. Those countries get the
| "good" parts of social media (as in, good for their government)
| whilst we get the bad parts of every app ever.
|
| My main point is that these bad parts should not be
| underestimated. Misinformation campaigns, election interference,
| calls for violence, addiction, mental health issues,
| radicalization, polarization, dysfunction, the normalization of
| degenerate behavior, a cultural breakdown, mob justice, the list
| is long.
|
| If in China Tiktok users get a cap of 2 hours of usage in which
| only productive/interesting (science) content is shown whilst in
| the US teenagers use it for 5-7 hours leading to a mental health
| crisis, then we're talking about radically different outcomes.
|
| This doesn't mean that social media is only bad, nor does it mean
| we should ban it. I'm just saying that we should stop seeing it
| as an unimportant toy. It potentially is a weapon of mass
| destruction.
| late2part wrote:
| @dang - please change the misleading title of this article from
| "Senate Bill to Ban Tik Tok" to "Senate Bill to Criminalize VPNs
| and Enhanced Governmental Wiretaps"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| @dang - if you are going to chance it from one piece of
| editorialized misleading clickbait, don't change it to another.
|
| Unfortunately, the bill's _official one-line summary_ ("To
| authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit
| certain transactions between persons in the United States and
| foreign adversaries, and for other purposes") and _title_
| ("Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk
| Information and Communications Technology Act") are also
| misleading, though perhaps not clickbait (they are more to
| discourage looking inside by making it seem bland than to
| encourage attention.)
|
| The summary is factually misleading, because the Secretary of
| Commerce isn't authorized to prohibit anything by the bill, the
| President is, and the bill specifically prohibits delegating
| except to the Attorney-General, and that only for litigation
| purposes, and it is an obscurant because it is vague about what
| kind of transactions and why. And the title is basically word
| salad to fit a forced acronym, though it does hint about the
| business domain of concern.
| salimmadjd wrote:
| Curious how many here have actually read this bill?
|
| If you've read it and you still support it (as a US citizen) I'm
| going to be so heartbroken by today's tech community.
|
| This is authoritarianism in the name of protecting our children.
|
| I understand, TikTok is projected to overtake Alphabet's and
| Meta's video ad revenue [0] and it won't surprise me if they even
| lobbied for it. I just see it as a shortsighted move by these
| companies not to strongly come against this bill.
|
| [0] https://www.fiercevideo.com/advertising/2027-tiktok-video-
| ad...
| [deleted]
| The_SamminAter wrote:
| RESTRICT Meta
| sbarre wrote:
| This is like tabling a bill that bans only one brand of
| cigarette.
| user3939382 wrote:
| If anyone's gonna spy on the public it's gonna be _us_!
| abeppu wrote:
| What I don't get is why we didn't pursue something in the WTO
| years ago.
|
| China doesn't allow FB, Insta, Twitter, etc to operate in its
| market, but its companies can provide such a service to US
| customers? Is that not protectionism?
|
| If we're afraid that China will use TikTok to push their
| propaganda in the US, we should be appropriately concerned that
| banning a platform to stop targeted speech is in conflict with
| our own norms around free speech. But instead insisting that
| TikTok can only operate in the US if FB/Snap/Twitter can operate
| in China on equal terms seems like it would be more in line with
| our rhetoric around wanting a rules-based international order,
| and freedom of both trade and speech under most circumstances.
|
| If western social media companies were able to offer their
| services in China, their fear of our propaganda would be much
| worse than our fear of theirs.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Because the WTO was and is a joke.
|
| They'd have sided with China who on their official books says
| "they can come back they just have to follow our laws", while
| in practice continuing to ban and restrict these companies
| regardless.
| zarzavat wrote:
| WTO regulation of services is very limited. It mainly regulates
| the flow of goods. Unilateral domestic regulation or bilateral
| agreement with China are the only options.
| alephnerd wrote:
| PRC has "developing nation" status in the WTO. This allows the
| PRC to get special and differential treatment in a number of IP
| and general trade related agreements.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Why can't the US throw it's weight around and get "developing
| nation" status as well. It certainly seems beneficial.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > China doesn't allow FB, Insta, Twitter, etc to operate in its
| market
|
| > If western social media companies were able to offer their
| services in China
|
| I've seen this meme floating around a lot recently and feel the
| need to add in some relevant history.
|
| Between the mid and late aughts Google, Facebook, and Twitter
| were all operating in China. Around this time the Chinese
| government got very serious about content filtering and imposed
| new restrictions on what could be shown/uploaded. There was a
| very strong backlash from _the US side_ that American companies
| might be helping to build the Great Firewall. Many Americans
| were outraged and US politicians warned the companies _not to
| build_ infrastructure that could be used for censorship. So the
| American companies acquiesced and either left the market or
| were banned (Twitter).
|
| I remember the outrage back then. It's like what I see now but
| with the facts reversed! Back then the concern was that
| American tech companies would export infrastructure that could
| be used by China for social control. Now it's "China won't
| allow American tech companies!".
|
| "We've always/never been at war with EastAsia."
|
| Kind of disturbing stuff. Watch the congressional hearing of
| the TikTok CEO and tell me that the powers who are pushing this
| care about facts.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| >or were banned (Twitter)
|
| So companies that refuse to build tools for compliance with
| China's unique censorship/control policies are not allowed in
| the country. Most American tech companies opted to leave
| voluntarily rather than implement these controls, and at
| least one that did not implement the controls or voluntarily
| leave was instead forcibly banned.
|
| I see the point you're making here, but at the same time, I
| think the situation as explained here can still be viewed as
| China not allowing American tech companies to operate in
| China the way those companies want to do business.
|
| Has the US provided ByteDance with an opportunity to become
| compliant with this country's requirements that it has opted
| against? That would seem very similar to what transpired with
| Twitter in China.
| ozymandias12 wrote:
| Allow me to elaborate a bit more: by implementing the
| firewall, China not only isolated itself, it enabled the
| western internet to concentrate western investment on Silicon
| Valley firms, that with no big Chinese companies around,
| established today's western world internet monopolies. Or in
| plain English, by closing itself, China literally helped US
| companies dominate the www.
|
| China on the other hand, not only had their domestic market
| entirely for their own domestic giants, creating their own
| expertise and talent pool, they also didn't even had to think
| on what to do, as they could just copy US apps "with Chinese
| characteristics", making A LOT of money too.
|
| There was a lot of talk about technology transfer, but you
| right, the narrative 100% changed from helping the CCP to
| "China bad", but how bad they really are when they allowed
| America to make a true empire on the www without the Chinese
| companies as competitors?
|
| How America is reacting to its very first Chinese competitor
| says a lot about America true sportsmanship on the market,
| it's very childish and lame if you ask me.
| srcreigh wrote:
| I'm having trouble finding useful info about size of china
| online sector vs USA in terms of GDP. But it definitely
| isn't US dominating. Some sites say china is close 2nd to
| USA, but when I look at numbers china is 3x USA (7.1T
| Chinese digital economy vs apparently 2.1T in USA).
| ribosometronome wrote:
| You're making the opposite argument of the comment you're
| replying to, though. China can't simultaneously have
| isolated itself (as you say) and it be the fault of Western
| companies choosing not participate in China (as the person
| you're replying to) says.
|
| It sounds like you both agree China made a market that was
| specifically hostile to American companies, including
| intentionally banning some, though. Which is kind of the
| point most people are making when they talk about market
| reciprocity.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| The problem there is that Google, Facebook and Twitter
| refused to export American values abroad and chose to comply
| with the censorship laws of foreign governments. I do regard
| it as morally unacceptable for an American tech company to
| collaborate with political repression in a foreign country
| either by silencing dissidents or by helping that foreign
| government track down dissidents.
|
| I also think it is quite reasonable that American tech
| companies should be allowed to operate in China and uphold
| American values in China if TikTok is allowed to operate in
| the US. I don't see a contradiction. The entire point of
| letting China into the WTO and allowing China to help Walmart
| and Amazon acquire inventory to offer "low prices" was to
| bring freedom to China by opening the country up to
| capitalism (this was stated more or less openly by western
| neoliberal policy makers at the time). It definitely wasn't
| to strengthen the CCP and weaken the USA but that's what the
| actual result of 2 decades of "free trade" with China has
| been.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Google, Facebook, and Twitter didn't have that choice. They
| could either agree to follow Chinese censorship, or be
| steadfast and get banned. They did the latter.
|
| TikTok is not asking to be allowed to operate in the US and
| uphold Chinese values. It's just asking to be allowed to
| operate in the US, and agreed to public oversight on its
| algorithms and data storage. This is essentially equivalent
| to what the Chinese government asks of American companies,
| and what they declined to do, in large part due to moral
| disagreement from their employees.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > This is essentially equivalent to what the Chinese
| government asks of American companies, and what they
| declined to do, in large part due to moral disagreement
| from their employees.
|
| Sigh, it isn't just this: China doesn't do rule of law,
| so American companies have to follow rule by law when
| operating in China, but they are also subject to American
| anti-corruption laws even for their operations in China,
| which makes doing business in China difficult (unless
| they can be isolated from that like they are in
| manufacturing). If it were just "moral disagreements due
| to employees", the CEOs would find a way around that, but
| technically it is just hard to do social media in China
| under Chinese rules that you won't even be told what they
| are.
|
| But I agree TikTok should be treated fairly, even if that
| fairness is definitely not reciprocated in China.
| ecshafer wrote:
| There has been a very large increase in aggressive talk vs
| China. It feels very strange considering these same areas
| were _against_ economic warfare with China when Trump was in
| Charge, and I would be money were against the Iraq and /or
| Afghanistan wars at some point. The "facts" don't matter. For
| what its worth, my memory is in line with yours, the back
| lash was absolutely on the US side.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Chinese containment has been a bipartisan agenda since the
| Obama presidency at least. It was the "trade war" being
| fought through used tariffs that certain people disliked
| and placing them on our allies that was overwhelmingly
| rejected.
| tzs wrote:
| If those companies were willing to obey the same rules that
| Chinese companies have to obey in China (censoring what the
| government tells them to censor, sharing personal data that the
| government asks for, sharing technology that the governments
| asks for) they could operate in China.
|
| It's not all that different from how US restaurant chains
| cannot operate in the UAE unless they take things off the menu
| that violate Islamic dietary rules. So Wendy's in Dubai does
| not sell The Baconator.
|
| So there's nothing really to pursue via the WTO. It's not a
| protectionism issue when domestic and foreign companies have to
| obey the same or similar restrictions, even if those
| restrictions are onerous.
| batch12 wrote:
| I am no tiktok fan, but this may spawn a new generation of
| crackers and rebels. At least maybe infuse new blood into the
| ranks of people who really understand how technology works. Most
| users don't know how to bypass a ban like this, but when they're
| sufficiently angry and motivated... maybe thats temporary.
| sircastor wrote:
| I heard on a podcast yesterday a suggestion that the reason the
| intelligence community doesn't like TikTok is that, unlike with
| Twitter, Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc, they can't just hand a
| warrant over to ByteDance get the data they want. If there's one
| thing the intelligence community hates, it's not getting the data
| they want.
|
| Back in the previous administration, I figured this was all a
| temper-tantrum being thrown by an executive who got embarrassed
| when outsmarted by a bunch of kids. It may have started like
| that, but somehow in D.C. everyone's been convinced of the danger
| a foreign-owned social-media network poses. I'm still not sure I
| get it...
| throwawaythekey wrote:
| I'm still unconvinced that tiktok holds much data that is
| valuable to any government. As a node in the information tree
| it might have some marginal utility but my understanding of
| tiktok is that the data primarily is how much you enjoy cat
| videos. Maybe the chinese government can work out your sexual
| orientation, or that you are anti communist, but this is only a
| problem if you live in China.
|
| Even if the data is valuable, as far as I know there are no
| backdoors available to tiktok that aren't available to other
| apps (e.g any tencent game). The security model at the os level
| seems to be the proper place to ensure privacy, and the witch
| hunt against tik tok seems to only exist because it is popular.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they can 't just hand a warrant over to ByteDance get the
| data they want_
|
| Of course they can. Bytedance is keeping American TikTok data
| in the U.S. The problem is that it's _also_ filtering out to
| China.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| TikTok has a US business presence and definitely can be
| subpoenaed for information.
|
| This is not something you have to speculate about, they clearly
| outline the process for law enforcement to get information:
| https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/global/law-enforcement/en
| Miner49er wrote:
| I think OP is talking about the backdoor, full access that US
| companies give agencies like the NSA. Not subpoenas.
| srcreigh wrote:
| PRISM w gag order preventing USA companies from publicly
| discussing it
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| TikTok has a US business presence, their US user data is
| stored in the US. All of this is subject to US jurisdiction
| and court orders. TikTok can't tell US marshalls and
| federal agents to take a hike if they show up at TikTok's
| US headquarters with court documents--their leadership can
| be arrested and their servers seized.
| justapassenger wrote:
| You know what's the thing intelligence community hates even
| more? Giving data on the silver plate to the adversaries.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > they can't just hand a warrant over to ByteDance get the data
| they want
|
| Are there any examples of ByteDance refusing to hand over data
| in response to a warrant?
| bombcar wrote:
| It's not the warrant data they want. It's the absolute access
| to all data anytime just by asking.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| This bill is soooooo much worse than just banning tiktok - flood
| your representatives and senators with phonecalls.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| I don't feel any sympathy for Tiktok considering they block and
| remove content that goes against the CCP's narratives. So yeah,
| it's fair game when they do shit like that.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Ah yes - the old you can fight censorship with more censorship
| adage
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| I could argue the logic can be applied to the gun debate,
| abortion, so on and on. Both for and against, so I find this
| comment irrelevant.
| ggfdgfwww wrote:
| what is being censored? arent there a million other platforms
| where you can post video content?
| remarkEon wrote:
| The media coverage of this (and the title of this submission,
| which I argue should be changed to the actual title of the bill)
| are really confusing everyone - both in here and elsewhere.
|
| There is a Senate bill[1] called "S.85 - No TikTok on United
| States Devices Act", which is very short and seems to only do one
| thing, and that's ban TikTok. This bill is in committee.
|
| There is another Senate bill[2], called "S.686 - RESTRICT Act",
| which is the one linked in this submission and is the one
| everyone is - imo rightly - quite concerned about, because a
| bunch of stuff seemingly unrelated to TikTok is getting the
| Department of Homeland Security treatment. TikTok _isn 't even
| mentioned in the text of the act_. This bill is also in
| committee.
|
| I'm honestly left wondering if the RESTRICT Act is being
| intentionally amplified as "The Bill to Ban TikTok", because of
| how shitty it is, to give people the means to say "no we
| shouldn't pass this if the cost of banning TikTok is Patriot Act
| Part Deux", when in reality we shouldn't pass this bill anyway
| because it sucks.
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-
| bill/85/...
|
| [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-
| bill/686...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I think the RESTRICT Act is the one being held up as the ban
| bill because it's bipartisan and considered most likely to 1)
| actually move to a vote because of that and 2) creates a legal
| framework for a ban rather than just implementing one which is
| likely to be unwound by a court and found unconstitutional
| without it
| remarkEon wrote:
| Why is S.85 likely to be unwound by the courts? It's with a
| different committee and cites a different act for its legal
| authority.
| ddoolin wrote:
| Courts (especially the current SCOTUS) seem pretty wary of
| expanding executive authority granted ambiguously under
| acts like the "International Emergency Economic Powers
| Act." Just my 2c.
| eternalban wrote:
| 1. _(D) TIMING.--The term "covered transaction" includes a
| current, past, or potential future transaction._
|
| 2. _(I) A group, subgroup, or other association or organization
| whether or not organized for profit._ [like an OSS project on
| github?]
|
| 3. _(1) IN GENERAL.--It shall be unlawful for a person to
| violate, attempt to violate, conspire to violate, or cause a
| violation of any regulation, order, direction, mitigation
| measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive
| issued under this Act, including any of the unlawful acts
| described in paragraph (2)._
|
| 4. _SEC. 5. Considerations._ [the star of the show - read it]
|
| Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are definitely touching
| more than 1M personal records and/or providing "communication".
| They are all subject to this bill. All their "transactions" are
| now subject to approval of Secretary of Commerce.
|
| For example:
|
| "State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (powered by the open
| source Signal Protocol) keeps your conversations secure. We
| can't read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one
| else can either. Privacy isn't an optional mode -- it's just
| the way that Signal works. Every message, every call, every
| time."
|
| Isn't Signal also subject to this bill? Or better, _who isn 't_
| subject to this bill?
|
| Will starting/contributing to an OSS project in any of the Sec.
| 5 areas require consulting an attorney?
| bioemerl wrote:
| > All their "transactions" are now subject to approval of
| Secretary of Commerce.
|
| That's half the point. A lot of people here are saying
| "Facebook will just sell your data to China".
|
| Here's the line saying they can't.
| yed wrote:
| The bill only applies to companies where a foreign national
| from an adversary country has a "controlling holding". i.e.,
| none of the companies you listed or any other American owned
| company are subject to it at all.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| >TikTok isn't even mentioned in the text of the act.
|
| Because that would make it a bill of attainder which is
| unconstitutional.
| comment_ran wrote:
| Please change the title, it's not directly related to TikTok.
| satao wrote:
| Its sad that the chans are running free while TikTok is the thing
| being banned. Americorp is the worst leader of the west that
| there could be.
| snake_plissken wrote:
| These things are pretty dense and generally difficult to read but
| here are a few nuggets/hot takes.
|
| Could potentially apply to VPNs - Sec 2-3-(B) -
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
|
| General leeway for The Secretary of Commerce to classify things
| as they see fit. Chevron Deference, the idea that courts defer to
| executive branch agency interpretations of the law, might go away
| so this hedges against that - Sec 3-(a)-1-2 -
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
|
| Judicial Review in Section 12. I think this is the section most
| resembling what we think of with respect to The Patriot Act.
| Basically feels like it will be very hard to challenge decisions
| made under this law. I don't read these things often tho so
| perhaps I am way off base. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-
| congress/senate-bill/686...
| yed wrote:
| I think the VPN concern comes from a misreading of what is
| meant by "holding". A "holding" in this context is a financial
| asset like a stock. The section you highlighted:
|
| > (B) includes any other holding, the structure of which is
| designed or intended to evade or circumvent the application of
| this Act, subject to regulations prescribed by the Secretary.
|
| This is referring to intermediary holding companies intended to
| disguise an ownership stake by foreign nationals (like a shell
| company). Nothing to do with VPN or any other technology.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| While it wouldn't blanket ban VPNs, a VPN is fairly clearly a
| "communication technology" and a provider could be targeted
| by this bill. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't even need to do
| anything malicious, just be large enough and have some
| malicious users.
| smm11 wrote:
| Congress is full of idiots, I agree, but I also agree that this
| app has to go. Byte Dance is far too sketch. Something will
| replace it overnight, so no worries.
|
| And at least they finally did something.
| tistoon wrote:
| Did you know that all american (or even western) social networks
| are banned in China?
| justinzollars wrote:
| > To authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit
| certain transactions between persons in the United States and
| foreign adversaries, and for other purposes.
|
| > The term "transaction" means any acquisition, importation,
| transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and
| communications technology product or service, including ongoing
| activities such as managed services, data transmission, software
| updates, repairs, or the provision of data hosting services, or a
| class of such transactions.
|
| > includes, unless removed by the Secretary pursuant to section
| 6--
|
| (i) the People's Republic of China, including the Hong Kong
| Special Administrative Region and Macao Special Administrative
| Region;
|
| (ii) the Republic of Cuba;
|
| (iii) the Islamic Republic of Iran;
|
| (iv) the Democratic People's Republic of Korea;
| gorwell wrote:
| Did anyone notice that the bill doesn't even mention Tiktok??? If
| it's a "bill to ban TikTok" why doesn't it name the target?
|
| It's a red herring.
|
| This is the Patriot Act for the Internet. Ironically they're
| copying the CCP playbook and want the same level of sweeping
| control with the implementation of a Great Firewall. It's
| extremely broad and includes everything connected to the internet
| that has >1M users in a year period.
|
| Edit: If you don't want to read it, Louis Rossmann does a good
| flyover here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xudlYSLFls8
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Honest question,did the Patriot act ever get misused
| intentionally in a grossly negligent way?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Yes. Between 2003 and 2006, nearly two hundred thousand
| National Security Letters were issued to obtain
| personal/financial history of US citizens without any
| judicial review. This data was only used for one terrorism
| related conviction, and it is generally considered that this
| conviction would have happend even without the act.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I mean I'm not for the act, but it sounds like the letters
| were used within the context of the law.
|
| I'm just trying to gauge the difference between what people
| were saying Patriot act will allow, versus what actually
| happened.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Why would you expect NSL's to be used in criminal
| convictions? What does that have to do with national
| security?
|
| Isn't the whole point of an NSL to get something for
| legitimate national security purposes that couldn't be
| legitimately acquired for criminal prosecution?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| If you're doing something that threatens the nation's
| security, you're probably committing a crime.
| rglover wrote:
| Go ahead and take your belt and shoes off for me.
| [deleted]
| revscat wrote:
| lol ridiculous.
| rglover wrote:
| It's not at all. Give it a read:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35345064
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| > the same level of sweeping control with the implementation of
| a Great Firewall
|
| The same level ?
| jedberg wrote:
| Because it's unconstitutional to make a law that targets a
| specific person or company. They have to be subtle and use
| generic terms to describe who is affected by the law in a way
| where TikTok ends up being the only company that qualifies
| right now.
|
| It's also good practice because it prevents TikTok from just
| making a new company that is exactly the same.
|
| Edit: changed illegal to unconstitutional because someone below
| was confused.
| setgree wrote:
| It is not illegal for Congress to target specific products. I
| do not know where you got that impression. Laws can be deemed
| _unconstitutional_ upon review, but Congress literally
| defines what is legal or not.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| That's just being pedantic. The constitution explicitly
| bans bills of attainder so any law targeting a specific
| person or company will be struck down.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Explain Coca-Cola and Walt Disney
| djha-skin wrote:
| Interesting that the senator from Virginia introduced the bill.
| After all how many of us have a great portion of our traffic
| being served out of us-east-1?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Read twice and referred to the Committee on
|
| I'm so cynical, I bet even that is a lie.
|
| Diving in, the list of "foreign adversaries" is amusing. China
| and Russia have to be on there. Iran and North Korea I guess.
| Cuba and specifically a Maduro led Venezuela are a stretch.
|
| What this bill actually seems to do is allow the Secretary of
| Commerce to review any communication technology, including both
| apps and hardware, used by a million Americans, and then suggest
| the president punish it if it poses an "unacceptable risk" of
| stealing IP, damaging infrastructure, interfering with elections,
| extorts a person in power, or just "otherwise poses an undue or
| unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States
| or the safety of United States persons."
|
| Then it discusses what penalties the President can enact, which
| are banning the thing, confiscating their assets, and
| confiscating their collected data (and code? not 100% on this.)
|
| Next, how to designate a communication device needing review or
| foreign adversary, basically someone high up says so. Then how to
| remove a foreign adversary, which seems much more difficult
| though it may just have more possible methods.
|
| The rest seems to deal with the minutia of enforcement. I also
| can't be bothered to read this once, let alone twice, but it also
| means I'm not quite sure what investigative powers the Secretary
| of Commerce has without getting a warrant.
|
| So it's called a bill to ban TikTok, but it seems to give the
| government a fairly clear path to banning any foreign
| communication technology widely used. The adversary part doesn't
| even seem necessary, the only time the foreign adversary comes up
| is if they are undermining the democratic process. Which means
| Russia can't interfere in elections, Israel and Saudi Arabia can.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| We already have CFIUS and have for years.
| shredprez wrote:
| So we can just calling time-of-death on the United States' social
| tech dominance now, right?
|
| Domestic tech companies shamelessly sold access to American users
| for manipulation by "foreign adversaries" for years, made
| billions, suffered no lasting consequences. Then Chinese Vine
| walks in, smokes everybody else in ~24 months, the mad South
| African buys and destroys Twitter, and Mark toddles off the cliff
| of irrelevance with a social network in each pocket and an Oculus
| strapped to his face.
|
| I guess it was fun while it lasted.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| No, we do the most American thing imaginable. Just like we did
| with the space race, we got to the moon first therefore we won,
| even though we weren't first in much anything in the space race
| at the time. So I fully expect we ban TikTok then declare one
| of the American social media networks the winner of the social
| media race.
| metachris wrote:
| Well written... sounds like a Dall-E prompt :-)
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I feel like they could have done this by creating a bill saying
| that US social media companies must be given the same access and
| freedoms to the Chinese market as TikTok has to ours. It would
| put the onus back on the CCP, they would never allow it and they
| would get TikTok banned in the US without being the ones to
| directly ban it. I am sure someone smarter than I can tell me why
| this is not a viable strategy.
| agilob wrote:
| Please quantify access and freedoms.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Be free to post the equivalent of `Fuck Joe Biden` but about
| Xi or other leaders without any fear of repercussion. Be free
| to critique without fear of being disappeared.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I agree, but it's not a viable strategy because Congress
| doesn't have jurisdiction over what China does and does not
| allow in their country. So you would then have no trade, but in
| what categories? Does it include software for vehicles, a major
| market for Detroit automakers? Does it include software like
| Oracle? It's just not that clean to have tit for tat
| reciprocity
| dirtyid wrote:
| Because US/western social media has same market access to
| PRC... all they have to do is follow PRC regulations. Literally
| why FB and Google had internal projects to engineer compliant
| products to re-enter PRC market, but killed due to internal
| dissent. The narrative that PRC bans US platforms was always
| cope. Google pulled out because they didn't like dissidents
| being hacked, when operationally and eventually they should be
| cooperating on data sharing at PRC gov requests like in US.
| FB/Twitter got booted post 2009 minority riots for not
| complying to filtering (censorship) requirements on inciting
| violence that every PRC platform had built large and onerously
| expensive moderation teams to fulfill. Simply wasn't worth the
| headache for what little market share they had, and it wasn't
| until western platforms got hammered into improving their own
| moderation pipelines due to social media incited violence that
| they started thinking bout re-entering PRC. There's a reason
| Microsoft outlasted them for almost a decade until they also
| said fuck this to regulation and optics costs. Sure the game is
| rigged for domestic incumbants, it's not PRC's fault FB/Google
| employees killed efforts to move back into PRC, or that the SV
| was drunk on free speech (cheap moderation) until western
| society realized (but won't admit) PRC regulators were
| prescient.
|
| Forward to today, somehow TikTok operating in US while
| compliant to US laws managed outcompeted US platforms. At this
| point even putting the finger down on some sort of joint
| venture like Oracle proposal, like how icloud in PRC is under
| domestic management (a very PRC solution) isn't enough to tip
| scales back to domestic incumbents. Hence bill to ban, or
| divest, which to be clear, even PRC hasn't resorted to because
| they already had regulations to limit influence / scope of US
| platforms. Playing "fair" is not viable anymore because TikToks
| is too big, as is the associated risk, so nothing left but
| nuclear option because TikTok won playing fair.
| gman83 wrote:
| But China actively blocks all US social media companies,
| right? The social media companies aren't the ones blocking
| Chinese users from joining. They just don't operate any
| offices in China.
| jpgvm wrote:
| They aren't prevented from entering the market but their
| existing products are banned because they don't abide by
| PRC censorship and data sharing requirements.
|
| The post you are replying to explains this in detail.
|
| Google, Facebook, etc all either had products in China or
| planned products in China but all voluntarily withdrew for
| various reasons. I imagine low market share vs domestic
| services was probably the largest reason.
|
| Remember that as soon as you release a service in the West
| a Chinese clone will spring forth almost instantly. That
| clone will be much more Chinese then your eventual adaption
| and as such will you likely struggle to compete with it.
| Worse yet said clone is probably built by either Alibaba or
| Tencent both of which have armies of extremely smart
| engineers, near unlimited cash to sink into new ventures
| and a near duopoly on the ecosystems necessary to thrive in
| China.
|
| At the end of the day the Chinese market is just incredibly
| tough and Western companies (perhaps rightly) don't think
| it's worth the effort.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Oi - where to start - let's go one by one.
|
| >> Because US/western social media has same market access to
| PRC
|
| I do not believe that the preferred platforms of the CCP,
| owned and operated by the same people, would not be favored
| in China. There is no open or transparent lobbying in China.
| Rather, overnight, someone from the CCP can decide that your
| platform should be shut down and your employees harassed,
| arrested and/or prosecuted. Yes, the market is huge, but why
| would any western company take that chance. For all its
| flaws, the US doesn't have these issues to this level. The
| TikTok debate is happening relatively slowly and a lot of it
| in the open (So our politicians can showboat, but still).
| TikTok also has access to the best lawyers, lobbyists, as
| well as grounds for appeal. Those in power will also be
| politically assailed by their opponents on behalf of those
| under 35 for shutting down their favored platform. People
| could conceivably lose office for the decision.
|
| >> Forward to today, somehow TikTok operating in US while
| compliant to US laws managed outcompeted US platforms.
|
| No argument here - TikTok has done amazing and has played by
| the rules (though if you have pile of nearly infinite money
| from a powerful government, you can do a lot). I'd argue that
| realpolitik, is alive and well, always has been and always
| will be. TikTok can both influence (which I'm less worried
| about thanks to the other avenues of free speech) but TikTok
| can also collect and retain the moral and legal trespass of
| the young for decades to then use it as blackmail when they
| are the ones seeking positions of power. You could argue the
| same for all the other socials, and I think their data
| retention is what should really be limited, but they are at
| least within the confines of a legal system, that yes, has
| flaws, but is open enough.
|
| I'm not naive enough to believe the US is devoid of
| corruption, backroom deals, people whose rights are denied or
| trampled on etc. But compared to the CCP's framework, there
| is no debate.
|
| Personally, I think TikTok has a first amendment right to
| exist regardless of who owns it. It's the data retention that
| really worries me, and unless you count data as property
| (which I could be convinced of), there is not right to data
| retention.
| somedude895 wrote:
| Because market access is not the reason they're banning it. It
| wouldn't be very believable to now act like it's about a
| different issue than national security. You'd basically be
| saying "if you give us market access, then we'll let you spy on
| our citizens."
|
| In a democracy you get the types of discussions that we've been
| seeing about TikTok, so that door's shut now. This sort of
| "trickery" only really works for authoritarian countries, where
| the discourse is exclusively behind doors.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Washington operates on fig leaves and I feel like the market
| access argument is an overcoat.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I feel like they could have done this by creating a bill
| saying that US social media companies must be given the same
| access and freedoms to the Chinese market as TikTok has to
| ours.
|
| If you read the bill, it's very transparent that it's not about
| market access, and that it's not specific to China. It
| explicitly names five other countries and also authorizes the
| Secretary of Commerce to include any country that they feel is
| an adversary to "national security" interests.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Yes, that's my point, I disagree with the approach and
| justification they took.
| rsync wrote:
| I am peripherally aware that there has been political movement
| toward "banning" tiktok ...
|
| I've been busy lately, however, so I don't know how this is
| shaping up politically in the US.
|
| Is banning tiktok a red team thing and blue team will have to
| oppose it ?
|
| Or is it a blue team thing and red team will have to oppose it ?
|
| This is a serious question I am asking in good faith.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| It's moving pretty fast, so it hasn't become a scissor
| statement yet. Both sides have reasons for disliking TikTok,
| red because of Cold War China rhetoric and blue because of fake
| news and children's mental health rhetoric.
| robmusial wrote:
| No this is a red and blue thing to give themselves more power.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gabereiser wrote:
| The reality to me is that they want to suppress the Gen Z vote
| (who predominantly vote democratic) by banning "their" platform.
| They guise it under a "China vs USA" intelligence war (who makes
| all the phones and computers we use? Riiiight). It's simply to
| dumb down the next generation to suppress the vote so that
| sitting house members can continue to be sitting house members.
| Prove me wrong.
|
| There's a bunch of 18-28 year olds who are going to be super
| pissed off.
| remarkEon wrote:
| This bill is sponsored and cosponsored by numerous Democrats.
| seydor wrote:
| Bill Ban Tik Tok there must be a joke there
| winter_blue wrote:
| This bill is like a joke. It's like the lawyers who wrote this
| intentionally wrote it to be so Machiavellian, horrible, and
| 1984-esque, so that this bill would not pass.
|
| This bill literally references parts of the Atomic Energy Act of
| 1954, and the Controlled Substances Act. It's beyond absurd. A
| good video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xudlYSLFls8
| bendbro wrote:
| From my quick reading of this bill doesn't it only possibly apply
| if a foreign entity owns or controls some impactful US tech? The
| gate of the owner being a foreign entity seems like a strong
| enough protection for US citizens from this bill.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| politics aside and taking into consideration that all of our
| governments suck in their own special ways...it pains me greatly
| that China is considered an adversary with the US..and Russia
| too..what good could come to the world if the three had a healthy
| relationship and pooled our greatest minds and resources toward
| the betterment of mankind.
| causality0 wrote:
| US congressmen being morons is nothing new. What I want to know
| is whether these acts could stand up Constitutional scrutiny.
| karmajuney wrote:
| Couldn't this be used to prevent VPN use? If so, this is
| drastically overstepping into dangerous territory regarding
| online surveillance.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Wouldn't it be refreshing if Congress could identify exactly what
| is scary about Chinese-connected social media and legislate
| against it in such a way that it would prevent every other scary
| monster from doing exactly what they wish to deny China?
|
| It seems silly to legislate "thou shalt not do really scare thing
| #1 if name == TikTok" or "thou shalt not allow any third party to
| have really scare access if name == China". Just leave out the if
| clauses.
|
| Don't target China or Russia or Iran or North Korea. Don't exempt
| Virginia or Maryland or any three letter acronym. If it is
| dangerous for the Chinese government to do it, it is dangerous
| for the U.S. government to do it and for the sales department of
| Amazon to do it.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Wild that I can't rule out whether or not this is because they
| can't get an FBI agent onto the internal content policy team.
| yumraj wrote:
| What'll that do? The concern is about data being siphoned off
| to CCP data centers in China.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Good. Letting Bytedance operate in the US does not serve US
| interests.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Not what this bill is about. You got tricked by the surrounding
| rhetoric and you're repeating it like propaganda.
| empressplay wrote:
| I find a certain sense of irony in the Chinese propagandists
| touting arguments such as 'this is authoritarian", "this is anti-
| competitive", "this is because TikTok won't let the US spy on its
| citizens" and so forth when ALL OF THESE THINGS are done by the
| CCP and worse.
|
| The reason for banning it is simple: it can be used as a first-
| strike weapon to influence an entire generation (or two) of
| Americans in a conflict with China that is almost certain to
| happen. Keeping it under Chinese control is a bad idea.
|
| China has the option to sell it to an American company, take the
| money and build more guns to shoot at us. Honestly, it's a win-
| win.
| Animats wrote:
| It's not just TikTok. It's WeChat, too. WeChat has over 1 million
| US users.
|
| Also, probably, Alibaba, AliExpress, and Yandex.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Do I support TikTok? No, not in the least bit. Their privacy
| controls are horrendous and, at this stage, user info and content
| is undoubtedly siphoned and delivered straight to the CCP. Where
| it goes beyond that is undoubtedly in some Tom Clancy novel, of
| which likely pales in comparison to some even more grim reality.
|
| Was TikTok a net good to American society? Depends on who you
| ask, but if anything I think most people would agree that it only
| exaggerated the decline of the average attention span. This moves
| with the larger movement to commodify clicks, quick ads and
| lowers the threshold towards late stage capitalism. In short,
| this speeds cultural decline ("I said what I said").
|
| Would I support an American TikTok? No, see above.
|
| Should TikTok be banned by the US congress? When is the last time
| you ever saw a ban of something that didn't include any overt
| pocket lining or omnibus-style overreach? Read the bill, the
| language is broad and sweeping; certainly kin to the CFAA and
| COPPA.
|
| So what then? Well we're certainly at an impasse here, right? We
| can't rely on tech businesses to turn their shoulders to cold
| hard cash. We can't rely on our elected officials to "Do the
| right thing" without lining their pockets and sharpening their
| knives. Truly a conundrum with no good solution.
| decremental wrote:
| You know they wouldn't be doing this unless the point was to
| expand the government's ability to harm its citizens. Which
| sweeping and terrifying powers does this one introduce?
| breck wrote:
| Bingo!
| amrb wrote:
| Cold war 2: boogie
| bastard_op wrote:
| Aside from the politics, I can't say I disagree starting with
| TikTok, but what about all the countless other Chinese
| applications they otherwise still allow that do even worse things
| unknown yet? Much as the other recent incident with Pinduoduo
| randomly adding spyware to their feature set. Every gadget with
| wifi, every game/app on our phones from random unknown
| International sources are a potential weapon of unknown potential
| payloads with a remote update.
|
| As a Network/Security engineer, I personally trust American
| companies as little or less than anything Chinese, but I know
| nothing good comes from anything connecting to or from there for
| 99% of everything most of my non-international customers of mine
| or I do. They simply do not play by ours or any rules but their
| own. Given my druthers or by request with a capable firewall with
| geolocation, I gladly block anything to/from China and most
| anything outside the the US, particularly SLED/FED or regionally
| local to US only businesses. Not that I endorse isolationism, but
| as a practical engineer, it would likely save our incumbent non-
| security-savvy sheeple (or simply lazy businesses) from more
| blatant direct attacks and siphoning of data at least from the
| less tricky foreign villains without their own domestic botnets.
|
| If later I actually _do_ need to send something to /from blocked
| geolocations, there will be an exception policy for it that shall
| be documented.
| yed wrote:
| The point of the bill is to give the executive branch the power
| to do exactly that: investigate and potentially ban or force
| divestment on any large technology business owned by a US
| adversary like China and determined to pose a serious security
| risk.
| concernedsoft wrote:
| Putting aside questions of whether TikTok deserves this or not, I
| really worry this is the beginning of the end of general purpose
| computing. Given how locked down our machines are today, whether
| on account of walled gardens or increased security, we're almost
| at the point where it may actually become possible to "ban
| software" with a few policy decisions, which backers of this bill
| seem to intend. ("We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach
| that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous
| technology before they gain a foothold in America, so we aren't
| playing Whac-A-Mole and scrambling to catch up once they're
| already ubiquitous.")
|
| Wrote some brief thoughts about it here:
| https://concernedsoftwareuser.github.io/software-freedom/
| n0tahacker wrote:
| What about the free market and internet freedom?
| tzs wrote:
| What happens when one or both of these happen:
|
| 1. Apple adds easy support for non-Apple app stores and side-
| loading to iOS to comply with the recent EU regulations that
| require opening things up in 2024, and then people can download
| TikTok from outside the US and install it?
|
| 2. TikTok users switch to using the TikTok website instead of the
| app?
|
| It looks like the main thing the app gives you that the website
| can't is a convenient way to film short video and edit it and add
| music all on your phone and then post that. Surely someone could
| write a social network agnostic app just for filming, editing,
| and adding music that can upload that short video to any of your
| social media accounts (TikTok, YouTube shorts, and whatever other
| ones allow video). The destinations could be entirely user
| configurable and support any social network that provides a
| halfway decent upload API.
|
| What's the US going to do? Try to make a US equivalent of China's
| Great Firewall? I don't think that would work here, because our
| free speech laws make it too easy to circulate circumvention
| information.
|
| If I was a company that does mobile apps I'd be seriously looking
| right now into making that general short video maker/uploader
| app. If the US does successfully cut off TikTok all those users
| aren't going to just stop wanting to post and read the kind of
| things they are now doing there. They are going to try to move to
| other platforms. Done right, maybe my app would be something they
| use as part of that.
| nbar1 wrote:
| The vast majority of people will not use the website even when
| the app is not available.
| ozymandias12 wrote:
| [flagged]
| AustinDev wrote:
| The language on what constitutes a violation is vague, but it
| does appear you could face hefty fines and jail time for this
| behavior under the current draft of the act.
|
| "Hence anyone using a VPN to access TikTok would be in trouble
| --specifically, subject to up to $1 million in fines, 20 years
| in prison, or both."[1]
|
| [1]https://reason.com/2023/03/29/could-the-restrict-act-
| crimina...
| pakyr wrote:
| If you believe the Senator who wrote it (up to you I guess),
| this doesn't meet the bar for prosecution.
|
| > Warner's office says this isn't so. Spokesperson Rachel
| Cohen told Newsweek that the provisions only apply when
| someone is "engaged in 'sabotage or subversion' of
| communications technology in the U.S., causing 'catastrophic
| effects' on U.S. critical infrastructure, or 'interfering in,
| or altering the result' of a federal election in order for
| criminal penalties to apply."
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I can't find that language in the act. It seems to apply to
| any violation of the act. The linked article goes over the
| language of the act and it seems to have the same
| impression thereof.
| falcolas wrote:
| They can say that until they're blue in the face, but if
| those conditions are not in the law, it's up to prosecutors
| discretion.
| bioemerl wrote:
| They can amend it before it gets passed into law.
|
| And this bill without question needs to be passed into
| law in some form.
| calme_toi wrote:
| This somehow reminds me when China banned Google.
|
| "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the
| end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
| yumraj wrote:
| Can someone explain why a _bill_ is needed to ban TikTok?
|
| Can't the administration or a governmental agency (such as but
| not limited to FTC, FCC etc.) ban it?
|
| I think that's how it works in many other countries.
| marcell wrote:
| This is how it's supposed to work, Congress makes laws and the
| President enforces them.
|
| The reverse, where government agencies ban things without
| Congress, is the unusual thing from a Constitutional
| perspective.
| parineum wrote:
| In effect, an action by the "FTC, FCC etc." is the same
| thing.
|
| Those bodies were created by congress to delegate the duties
| of congress to the Executive branch.
|
| They work for the Executive but are given authority by the
| Legislature.
|
| The thing you may be conflating as the reverse is executive
| orders.
| chongli wrote:
| But isn't this a bill of attainder? It's a bill specifically
| against one company.
| 34679 wrote:
| I've never used TikTok, and I very strongly disagree with banning
| it. They should ban whatever activities they have a problem with,
| but that won't happen because then US companies would be subject
| to the same rules, and the US government would lose some access.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| While I don't personally mind banning Tik Toc since I think that
| it is a drain on our culture and is likely addictive, I do have
| serious concerns:
|
| Why nothing about US media companies pushing advertising based on
| data that really should be protected by privacy laws?
|
| Why nothing about the material released from Twitter by Matt
| Taibi, et. al.? Very concerning stuff for a country talking the
| talk about democracy.
|
| Why not enforce limits on what kids can watch and for how long,
| as China does? While I am all for free speech and liberty for
| adults, I think it is necessary for parents to put some
| guardrails on their kids.
|
| There is a lot more at stake here: the USA (my country) is
| struggling to maintain the dollar hegemony, has some severe
| looming economic problems, and has the same general problems
| shared by all countries. The USA has been very successful by
| carrying a big stick and hitting other countries with it. But,
| what was once a successful strategy is, I think, now a very poor
| strategy. An Empire like ours should sometimes orchestrate a
| graceful exit, on terms best for our country. Now when I say best
| for our country, I mean best for people, and not what is best for
| Wall Street, Our Military Industrial Complex, etc.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| > Why not enforce limits on what kids can watch and for how
| long, as China does? While I am all for free speech and liberty
| for adults, I think it is necessary for parents to put some
| guardrails on their kids.
|
| This is the parent's job. Kids can't even play in the front
| yard without CPS being called, and adding more complexities
| like this sounds like an even worse nightmare.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The US is "the ship of Theseus"'ing itself, replacing parts
| that have worked in the past, but are no longer serving the
| ruling class to their satisfaction, with parts (policies)
| plagiarised from China that do better serve the ruling class.
|
| Carefully selected to keep the ship distinctly itself, but
| still ever so slightly different each time.
|
| (I just like the irony of plagiarising policy from China as a
| parallel to their plagiarising IP from the US - and likely
| elsewhere).
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Why nothing about US media companies pushing advertising
| based on data that really should be protected by privacy laws?
|
| Privacy is not the major concern here.
|
| > Why nothing about the material released from Twitter by Matt
| Taibi, et. al.? Very concerning stuff for a country talking the
| talk about democracy.
|
| Twitter is subject to the US courts and legal system and while
| there are issue we can work to resolve them.
|
| > Why not enforce limits on what kids can watch and for how
| long, as China does? While I am all for free speech and liberty
| for adults, I think it is necessary for parents to put some
| guardrails on their kids.
|
| Again not the issue.
|
| Seriously, read at-least the start of the bill it makes it very
| very clear the main concern is limiting foreign powers ability
| to mass influence the general USA population.
| sct202 wrote:
| I'm fine if TikTok gets banned, but I feel like Facebook and all
| the other social media incumbents owe Americans a bunch of money
| for their biggest competition being banned.
| spiderice wrote:
| > I'm fine if TikTok gets banned
|
| How are so many people (especially on HN) fine with this?
| Haven't we criticized "The Great Firewall of China" for
| literally decades? How is this not the start of that? Genuine
| question. This ban seems to set horrible precedent to me. Bet
| everyones "coolness" with it makes me think I'm not
| understanding something.
| NLPaep wrote:
| The media is the fourth branch of government. It is wildly
| considered to be essential for a healthy democracy. You don't
| want to have it controlled (for many people) by an
| untrustworthy and adversarial party, especially when they
| have a long track record of censorship and are trying to
| extend their own influence and rules globally.
|
| We can still say and post what we want - it's not content
| that's being censored.
| symlinkk wrote:
| How about I choose for myself what I want to read? Why do
| you think you know better than me?
| saurik wrote:
| Isn't this exactly what China says about us? (And no: I
| don't believe them... but that frankly isn't the point. We
| normally get to dislike their position on indirect
| _philosophical_ grounds--that people should get to see and
| do whatever they want and if freedom is dangerous to you
| then you are the aggressor--irregardless of whether they
| are "correct", and so we lose the moral high ground and
| will have to sit around in a direct mud-slinging argument
| if we try to use the same kind of "for the good of the
| people we must all lose our freedom" argument.)
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| You're understanding everything just fine. Speech advocates
| should be livid about this, but their silence on the question
| is quite telling.
|
| As the sibling post mentions, the public is too stupid to be
| allowed to be communicated at by an untrustworthy and
| adversarial media. Of course, untrustworthy and adversarial
| refers to _foreign_ enemies, not domestic[1] ones.
|
| [1] Fox and friends, et al, would be the poster children[2]
| for untrustworthy and adversarial, but they are _our_
| untrustworthy and adversarial media firms, so mysteriously,
| they get a free pass.
|
| [2] Just imagine if the 'batshit right-wing conspiracy' half
| of the US media landscape were ran by the Kremlin (Or some
| other boogieman of the week), instead of a billionaire from
| Australia. Same content, different source, would drive people
| utterly _livid_.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Depends on the "We"
|
| I personally was deep into digital privacy back in grade
| school and college when the Arab Spring began, but my own
| thinking shifted after learning about and working with people
| who blue teamed incidents like Operation Aurora and Titan
| Rain, as well as censorship of FB and Whatsapp in the PRC
| following unrest in East Turkestan in 2009.
| localplume wrote:
| because some people understand geopolitics and the threat of
| foreign propaganda undermining the nations security?
|
| but sure, lets not ban it. lets not stop any foreign
| interference in our institutions and lets let our adversaries
| brain wash our population into destroying our country, but as
| long as we feel righteous that we have freedom right? thats
| all that matters?
|
| every time someone brings up a whataboutism as a rebuttle to
| that, "what about american social media companies?? they are
| much worse", they are doing exactly what China wants. China
| will gladly sit by and watch our destruction, prodding it
| along, as we eat each other. Most people are just oblivious
| to it and will deny it because of how much peace we've had,
| and how far we've gone without a near-peer enemy. at least
| with this bill we can stop the bleed.
|
| I was once a diehard defender of digital privacy and a small
| government, but over time I realized that the world really is
| not peaceful and countries exist out there that want to see
| our people dead. I understand it, I get it. But so many
| people are oblivious to foreign threats that they are willing
| to undermine their own country just so they can be on their
| high horse. It's not worth it.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| TikTok was essentially the only platform that had information
| about the Ohio train derailment. It was censored heavily on US-
| jurisdiction platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
|
| The move to ban TikTok is because it's a liability to the
| propaganda apparatus that wants you to be misinformed about
| what's actually happening in the US. TikTok is the only place to
| get real, uncensored information about events as they're
| unfolding, because the algorithm lies outside of US control.
| codazoda wrote:
| >Read twice and referred to the Committee...
|
| That's how most bills die for _years_.
| breck wrote:
| 1) I understand that the CCP bans sites and apps. Let's not sink
| to their level. (Instead, let's build more and more technologies
| to enable their people to get around said bans).
|
| 2) This is embarrassing. You don't like TikTok? Man up and
| compete. Don't ban it.
|
| 3) The complexity in this bills makes it reak of corruption.
| There will be winners and losers in this bill. The losers we can
| bet are 99% of the population.
| CSSer wrote:
| Could you highlight any particular complexity you're referring
| to? I read this bill and, independent of my thoughts and
| feelings about it, I do not find it overly complex.
| whythre wrote:
| I am fine with banning what is, effectively, a Chinese psyop
| marketed as a social media app. I don't really think we should
| be competing to make the most addictive doomscroller possible.
|
| However, I do agree about point 3, wholeheartedly. This makes
| it seem like envy, where our government is salivating at the
| prospect of doing this themselves under the guise of protecting
| us from foreign powers.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I am fine with banning what is, effectively, a Chinese
| psyop marketed as a social media app.
|
| As a non-American, I would argue the last 70 years of
| Hollywood _and_ social media has been a psyop by a foreign
| power. The DoD literally aids in the making of Hollywood
| movies as long as their ideological content is "correct"[1].
| After all that it's pretty funny to see this kind of pearl
| clutching about "psyops" coming from American citizens.
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-hollywood-became-the-
| unof...
| ramenmeal wrote:
| > a Chinese psyop marketed as a social media app
|
| Do you personally use tiktok?
| silisili wrote:
| Re: 1 and 2, I'm not sure this is as tit-for-tat. China has a
| -lot- of business regulations unfair to outsiders that the US
| doesn't and hasn't retaliated much on, even if it puts us on
| uneven grounds so to speak. And it's not like TikTok is so
| advanced and the US can't compete so we're banning it. There
| are many apps from foreign countries which are popular and not
| banned. It's a fear, legitimate or not, about data access and
| data harvesting and potential device control to what's becoming
| a direct adversary.
|
| Re: 3, can't argue there.
| Entinel wrote:
| This bill is so awful it cannot be allowed to pass. It reminds me
| of the Patriot Act.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| It's MUCH WORSE than the Patriot act. This bill is absolutely
| horrific. And calling it at bill to "ban TikTok" is extremely
| disingenuous as it egregiously goes well beyond that.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Why? It seems focused on only applications/products from a
| few countries of concern
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Why? It seems focused on only applications/products from
| a few countries of concern
|
| ...or any country that the Secretary of Commerce
| unilaterally decides is a "national security" concern.
|
| That's an incredibly sweeping power to grant.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Sure, but there are natural guardrails within that... for
| instance if we decided to call the UK a country of
| national security concern it would trigger massive
| diplomatic and trade ramifications. Other than China
| you'll notice everyone else on the list basically has 0
| trade volume with the U.S., so there's not much damage to
| the U.S. economy, but doing it to other countries would
| be a major escalation with economic consequences.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| No it wouldn't because the decision wouldn't be
| publicized.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| How would that be possible? I've read the text and didn't
| see any ability for them to not publish it, but more
| practically as soon as they ban an app from X country not
| already on the list, wouldn't it become clear in their
| justification for doing so that the country of origin
| would have been added?
| realce wrote:
| You can't read books from Eurasia, it's against the law.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| That's silly of course, but what about a Ractive? I think
| something that actively tries to collect data on you and
| shape your perception controlled by a geopolitical
| competitor should be handled carefully and potentially
| outlawed.
| realce wrote:
| So you agree that the Chinese government is doing the
| right thing when they block a Chinese citizen from
| viewing Twitter?
|
| You agree with the usage of the Great Firewall? You agree
| with the ability for the government to tell you what
| websites you can visit? If you use a VPN to read a
| Chinese newspaper article, you agree that the government
| should be allowed to imprison you and take all of your
| possessions? That's madness IMO.
|
| We should be making Super-TOR instead of this.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| There are many things wrong with this comparison.
|
| 1) Twitter is not an arm of the US government in the way
| that Tiktok and most Chinese companies are.
|
| 2) The law is not calling for the information on Tiktok
| to be banned. For instance, an image of a tweet saying
| "fuck Xi Jinping" could not be viewed in China, but an
| image/video of a tiktok saying "fuck biden" would be fine
| to view in America.
|
| 3) Tiktok is not benign like a book is. It extracts
| information from the user and sends it to the company
| servers.
|
| 4) It is trivial to use the platform to perform psyops;
| the company could easily mix subtly pro-china content
| into the feed from time to time.
| all2 wrote:
| Re item 1: See [0]. Arguably any corporation involved in
| government censoring operations (which are by definition
| extra-judicial) is an active arm of said government.
| There's a reason people have taken to calling our current
| state "crony capitalism".
|
| Re item 3: TikTok is worse than that. The recommendation
| feeds are specifically designed to rot the minds of
| American citizens. [1]
|
| [0] https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/house-
| gop-want...
|
| [1]
| https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-
| betwe...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Like I said, things "should be handled carefully and
| potentially outlawed." Personally I don't think your
| comparison holds because Twitter for instance isn't
| controlled by a state actor so the geopolitical issues
| don't really apply (unless you consider Elon controlled
| by China because of his dependencies on their critical
| mineral supply chains and market for Tesla... or by Saudi
| because of their funds ownership in Twitter).
|
| I don't think the hyperbole here is particularly helpful;
| there is clearly a national security risk to allowing a
| foreign competitor unfettered access to your market and
| control over what amounts to a major media property.
| Maybe you believe that this doesn't matter and shouldn't
| be addressed, but if you do believe it should be
| addressed in some way, you need the legal framework to be
| able to do so
| [deleted]
| quasarj wrote:
| We need a good breakdown of it. I read it, but don't think I
| really understood.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I don't need a breakdown, I already hate it.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Jeremy Hambly does a decent job breaking parts of it down:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6AynjtnJG8
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Thanks! The worst part of this is all the comments about
| social networking when this bill is about punishing
| people who want privacy or end to end encrypted
| communication on their devices with 1 million dollar fine
| and 20 years of jail time.
| petilon wrote:
| > _This bill is absolutely horrific._
|
| In what way? Explain that, and let readers decide if it is
| horrific.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > In what way? Explain that, and let readers decide if it
| is horrific.
|
| The bill allows the Secretary of Commerce to unilaterally
| ban products _associated with_ countries of their choosing,
| with a 20 year prison sentence for any US citizen who
| attempts to use a VPN to circumvent the access ban.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| > a 20 year prison sentence for any US citizen who
| attempts to use a VPN to circumvent the access ban
|
| That's fucked up and insane. It should also fail a First
| Amendment test easily, but that all depends on the courts
| falcolas wrote:
| It's also worth noting that the Secretary of Commerce is
| not an elected position.
| bratsche wrote:
| Wow, really? That's crazy!
|
| My wife and I use WeChat because her family lives in
| China and we want to be able to chat and do video calls
| with her. If Secretary of Commerce declares that WeChat
| is illegal that is going to put an enormous strain on my
| family.
| goatlover wrote:
| Fuck the US government. There should be mass civil
| disobedience over this if it somehow passes. Let them try
| to prosecute millions of citizens. This is no better than
| what the CCP or Putin's regime does to it's own citizens.
| I see that the EU and UK have similar designs to control
| the internet.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Hyper-partisanship has created an army of citizens who
| are quite ok with the government being authoritarian with
| no limits on its power as long as they're convinced that
| their ideology will be the one in control of the monster
| being created. The monster of course will follow its own
| path, crushing all that get in its way, not giving a damn
| about the ideological fantasies of those who allowed it
| to be created.
| all2 wrote:
| The problem is that the people who kick off an
| authoritarian government are typically the ones who die
| first. The revolution eats its own. See the brown shirts,
| the multiple rounds of beheadings during the French
| revolution, the Bolsheviks, and so on. So whoever hopes
| the government will continue to support them generally
| hopes in vain. The machine has two goals: continue
| existing, and expand its power.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The problem is that the people who kick off an
| authoritarian government are typically the ones who die
| first. The revolution eats its own. See the brown shirts,
| the multiple rounds of beheadings during the French
| revolution, the Bolsheviks, and so on.
|
| But, except for maybe some of those in the French
| Revolution, those are mostly foot soldiers, or leaders
| who fell victim to distinct subsequent revolutions, not
| the people who kicked off the resolution getting eaten by
| it.
| all2 wrote:
| > foot soldiers
|
| That's who I was referring to in GGP. Generally the
| masses don't fare well in revolution.
| revscat wrote:
| That have a million or more users and are owned by
| adversaries of the United States.
|
| Seems reasonable.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > are owned by adversaries of the United States
|
| Its not "are owned by", its "has a current, pending, or
| potential future controlling interest, direct or
| indirect, that is, will be, or will come to have been
| held by an adversary of the united states" (and, yes, the
| bill itself explicitly and separately refers to both
| simple future and future perfect, for some reason.)
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > That have a million or more users and are owned by
| adversaries of the United States.
|
| No, it is not _only_ restricted to services that are
| owned by adversaries of the United States. The text of
| the bill is very clear and much broader.
| revscat wrote:
| (10) ICTS COVERED HOLDING ENTITY.--The term "ICTS covered
| holding entity" means any entity that--
|
| (A) owns, controls, or manages information and
| communications technology products or services; and
|
| (B) (i) has not less than 1,000,000 United States-based
| annual active users at any point during the year period
| preceding the date on which the covered holding is
| referred to the President; or
|
| (ii) for which more than 1,000,000 units have been sold
| to persons in the United States before the date on which
| the covered holding is referred to the President.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Maybe someone will scroll all the way down to this comment.
| Probably not.
|
| For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've
| watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. I make a decent
| chunk of income in USD and this terrifies me... but this. This
| move saddens me.
|
| There are only so many hours that congress has to make real
| decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on?
| Talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm when
| they're being influenced every day by how they might get shot up
| in math class? Come on (wo)man. This shit is fucking stupid.
|
| It's just sad to me, sad to watch the country I grew up in, the
| one I went to war for ... do this level of stupid shit.
|
| That's my 2 bucks, spend it how you want it.
| skee8383 wrote:
| It's a social engineering tool designed, built, and ran by the
| Chinese government.
| nbar1 wrote:
| "might be" is not the concern, it's that they are.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| And before that it was the TV, and before that it was the
| radio, and before that it was the newspaper, and before that
| it was the printing press, and so on. Nothing new under the
| sun.
| nbar1 wrote:
| The new thing under the sun is that the Chinese government
| has a heavy hand in TikTok.
| realce wrote:
| So we should respond by making it a 20 year imprisonment
| for using a VPN to access Wikileaks?
| withinboredom wrote:
| My son's cousin (who lives in the US) was talking to him
| about 'gun drills' and my son asked, 'what is that, do you
| get to practice shooting a gun? That sounds fun!'
|
| To us, this was a funny question, to my sister-in-law ... she
| was like 'wtaf.' I can't imagine having my son worried about
| that kind of stuff and I can't imagine the internal stress.
| That's why I said 'might' because it 'might' be normalized to
| the point that it's just background noise; a joke. Until it
| isn't.
|
| My son and his friends run around in the streets like when I
| was a kid; they don't stop until the street lights come on. I
| could never take that away from him, and I feel like if we
| were to move back to the US, I would be doing that.
| nbar1 wrote:
| That has nothing to do with TikTok.
| eganist wrote:
| Speaking at least with my background:
|
| Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our
| free and open internet against our own people. Regardless of
| the fact that our kids are most vulnerable, China's seemingly
| made a point of outsourcing their most polarizing algorithmic
| decisions to the rest of the world but not to their own
| population, which is essentially a tacit admission of their
| awareness of the dangers of social media to their own people.
|
| At this point, I'd venture that politicians in the US are
| trying to grasp at whatever they can to mitigate the risk while
| still maintaining their election chances. Easier to "blame
| China" and get re-elected than it is to dump on their own
| constituents for not monitoring their kids' social media
| habits.
|
| And frankly, I'm okay with that. Even if a parent does their
| best, there'll be second-hand influences through all the kids
| raised irresponsibly through their parents, and nothing can be
| done about that aside from homeschooling or going off-grid,
| which is unsustainable for nearly everyone.
|
| I'm fine with a combination of the bill introduced + bills like
| the one passed in Utah placing curfews on kids since parents
| have proven to be so bad at parenting their own kids as to
| present the nation with an emergent aggregate risk to national
| security.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > China's seemingly made a point of outsourcing their most
| polarizing algorithmic decisions to the rest of the world but
| not to their own population
|
| Exactly how most social media execs handle it with respect to
| their own kids.
| alexose wrote:
| > China's seemingly made a point of outsourcing their most
| polarizing algorithmic decisions to the rest of the world but
| not to their own population
|
| Exactly. We're a decade into the social media experiment now,
| and it's _absolutely_ clear that it in its current form it
| doesn 't make us smarter, it doesn't make us happier, and it
| doesn't bring us closer. If anything, it makes people sick
| and it weakens the social fabric. The proposed solution of
| "more free speech better" is clearly not working in the face
| of organized, AI-fueled, nation-state manipulation efforts.
|
| Hacker News is made up of people with a birds-eye view of
| social media technology. Most of us understand how it works
| and who operates it. I think it's important to know what an
| incredible position this is to be in, and to remember that
| most people aren't like us. Most people can't just say,
| "screw it, I'll get my information elsewhere."
|
| I think we'll improve over time, but we're at least a
| generation away from any kind of widespread media literacy.
| What do we do in the meantime?
| olkingcole wrote:
| Thank you for this comment. I would like to add that social
| media and foreign manipulation thereof has been
| demonstrated to be spectacularly capable of affecting
| peoples' mental states and beliefs and by extension our
| stability as a country. We haven't figured out how to deal
| with it yet in a way that balances with our values of free
| speech and enterprise but a platform with tiktok's
| pervasiveness taking orders directly from the Chinese
| government is a huge, bright and shining risk that our
| government knows it needs to address.
|
| Not to mention the data collection.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I think it's important to know what an incredible position
| this is to be in,
|
| The old saying goes that knowledge is power; everyone here
| with deep knowledge of computers and the things they enable
| really are in a blessed position.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Yes, telling parents (who are the voters) that actually they
| should just be doing a better job monitoring their kids
| activities online seems like a losing political strategy!
| alexose wrote:
| Maybe it's not a binary choice. Parents can do a better job
| monitoring their kids _and_ the state can make it mildly
| harder for kids to spend all day on social media.
| Mezzie wrote:
| We could also educate the parents/adults. I feel like a
| lot of these issues come from the fact that the newer
| generation(s) have so much more knowledge of what they're
| using than their elders. Society has changed things and
| implemented safeguards in the past (seatbelts, driving
| laws, etc.) Yet for _some_ reason the social media
| discussion always ends up only presenting two options:
| Censorship or anarchy.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Fair enough, but I'm not sure that parents would want to
| hear the former message from their elected representative
| gus_massa wrote:
| Hi from the rest of the world!
|
| > _Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize
| our free and open internet against our own people._
|
| Do you think that we should ban all the Chinese apps and also
| all the American apps?
| graeme wrote:
| Possibly. But, many countries are formally US allies, with
| deep security integration. So an American owned application
| is not as threatening as a Chinese owned application.
|
| America also generally allows businesses and media from
| foreign companies to take part, whereas China has no such
| reciprocity.
|
| Security arrangements are real things that can't be merely
| handwaved away as something that "should" not exist in
| one's ideal world.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Put more bluntly: Even the likes of Facebook and Google
| are, ostensibly and ultimately, operating for western
| interests.
|
| The likes of Tiktok operately strictly for Chinese
| interests, and Chinese interests do not align with
| western interests.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| Western media firms don't operate for 'western'
| interests. Fox and friends, for instance, are actively
| trying to undermine western civilization[1], and I'll be
| damned if they are doing it for my own good.
|
| They operate for their own interests, which are almost
| always directly at odds with the interests of the people
| who actually live in the west.
|
| [1] I have exactly as much evidence for this as you do
| for your claim.
| tablespoon wrote:
| But in any case, given that AI and automation will soon make
| the majority of US workers economically unnecessary, it's more
| important than ever for the powers-that-be to ban end-to-end
| encryption and guns and maintain full control over social
| media. Otherwise, the obsolete workers may resist their
| obsolescence and cause problems for capital instead of being
| gracefully attrited from society.
| jasmer wrote:
| The Congressional Hearing was a clown show, but there are
| hugely material issues of National Security and trade parity to
| contend with.
|
| China is putting itself on a direct 'war footing' path with
| respect to Taiwan and the likelihood of conflict is worriesome.
| That conflict will make Ukraine look like a side show, and will
| involve Japan, Korea, Philippines, Australia, US - and
| incidentally Vietnam, Singapore, Canada - and everyone will be
| affected.
|
| For example the CCP has made deep inroads in influencing
| Canadian politics along a number of vectors.
|
| Xi's stated policy (and what we can infer from actual
| behaviour) is that 'all assets are geared towards state
| objectives) and that will 100% include TikTok - to varying
| degrees.
|
| Even from purely a 'trade parity' perspective, outside
| countries would simply not be allowed to have the kinds of
| influence in China that they somehow expect in other states and
| that there are bunch of conflating factors there as well.
|
| And most of that applies to pretty much all Western nations,
| and frankly, a bunch of others that would be powerless to do
| anything anyhow.
|
| I think the only reasonable solution would be to have TikTok
| sold off and run separately, from Singapore, US, or any place
| with commercial, regulatory, judicial transparency etc..
|
| It was hilarious to watch clueless clowns in Congress, but I
| think that was mostly a populist display for the general
| population so that the 'creator furor' is tempered to some
| extent by the headlines they read on CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc..
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Yeah, I'd be skeptical that an event like a Congressional
| hearing with a 5 min format per speaker was ever going to
| really drill down into nuanced issues, if only by nature of
| the time limit.
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| > For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've
| watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion.
|
| Then you no longer know the place. According to media the US is
| nothing but school shootings and government censorship.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I had a meeting last summer with some Americans and I
| jokingly said "meh, it's a free country." They all quickly
| pointed out that it wasn't, any more.
|
| I still have family there and still visit for nearly a month
| out of the year. The number of people running red lights has
| gone up significantly the last few visits. To the point where
| I feel like I'm driving in Bali and not the US. People are
| more rude now than they used to be, and scared.
|
| It took months after moving here to brush off the fear you
| have living in the US. Fear of the government taking your kid
| because your neighbor gets pissed off, fear of car accidents,
| fear of getting pulled over, fear of getting stabbed/shot
| while walking down the street, fear of seeing someone else
| getting stabbed/shot, fear of getting fired for no reason,
| fear of going to the hospital or getting seriously sick
| because even if you survive, you're going to be broke af.
|
| I've had cops plant evidence in my car, I've been hit by
| trucks running red lights, I've gotten in a knife fight with
| a hobo, I've been shot at on the highway, I've been fired for
| no reason, I've gotten in a motorcycle accident that fucked
| me over seven ways to Sunday.
|
| I haven't had to worry about any of those things since
| leaving. Not a one.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > I've had cops plant evidence in my car, I've been hit by
| trucks running red lights, I've gotten in a knife fight
| with a hobo, I've been shot at on the highway, I've been
| fired for no reason, I've gotten in a motorcycle accident
| that fucked me over seven ways to Sunday.
|
| While I think I can understand many of your feelings about
| US culture, I'm a bit lost here. I was married to a US
| citizen and have lived a significant amount of time there,
| although never settled permanently. But I never experienced
| any of these things, nor felt an overwhelming need to worry
| about them. Is it something about your chosen lifestyle?
|
| (For context, I have also lived and worked in a place where
| many of my neighbours employed armed guards to sit at their
| gates. And I watched from my office window as an armed bank
| robbery took place across the way. It ended with corpses
| lying in the street. And I was far more worried when
| dealing with police there than in any of my several US
| interactions with them. Think the US is bad? Well, in some
| ways it is... but it could be a lot worse.)
| [deleted]
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdote
|
| Your experience is not everyones experience. For example,
| the country you describe has 0% resemblance to the one I
| know. Why should your experience matter more than mine?
|
| Are you actually proposing that your experiences are in
| some way typical ?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Every American expat I know has a similar-ish process
| where they have to get over the fear/anxiety from living
| in the US. It's a proper dinner topic. So yes, I assume
| it's typical. Perhaps not 1:1, but there are always
| similar elements.
|
| Edit to add: everyone says they never noticed it while
| living there. They only noticed it after the first few
| months/years when it was no longer present.
| nateoearth wrote:
| My feelings are very much the opposite. Republicans and
| Democrats can hardly ever work together to get something
| positive accomplished. Banning TikTok--an app which is perhaps
| the largest psyop against the US population in history--is a
| breath of fresh air.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| You don't see anything wrong with all that data being slurped
| up by the communist regime of China? That's the main reason
| behind all of this. Nothing to do with "kids attention".
|
| It would be wrong for the US to do nothing.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Chinese regime is in no way communist. It is only in the name
| and has been so for years.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids'
| might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they
| would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social
| media services that have the _exact same effect_ as TikTok on
| children.
|
| This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China.
| US government does not want any possibility of US citizens'
| data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew
| made that clear. The narrative of child safety, for example the
| story about the kid who commit suicide because of their "for
| you" page, is being used as a kind of legal "pretext" so they
| can ban TikTok.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Well yeah, ByteDance directly takes orders from the Chinese
| government. Big Tech can also take orders from the American
| government, but America is bound by the rule of law and isn't
| actively imprisoning millions in concentration camps so it's
| way better
| jacobolus wrote:
| America's political system also has plenty of problems, so
| any absolute comparison is easy to pick at or "what-about",
| as other commenters are doing.
|
| But more to the point here, the American government
| responds to pressure from the electorate and U.S.-based
| stakeholders, which the Chinese government by and large
| does not.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > America is bound by the rule of law
|
| People keep saying this, but the Snowden leaks make clear
| this is a fantasy.
|
| > America... isn't actively imprisoning millions...
|
| It's a good thing you said "in concentration camps" or that
| would have been a doozy!
| [deleted]
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| America actually has a greater percentage of it's citizens
| in prison than any other country, including China.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > but [the USA] is bound by the rule of law
|
| Of course it is! and storks deliver babies and the moon is
| yellow because it's made of cheese.
|
| > [The USA] isn't actively imprisoning millions in
| concentration camps
|
| It's actively imprisoning millions in prisons. What's the
| difference between a prison and a concentration camp?
| Perhaps the guards twirling their evil mustache more?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You are able to write your comment criticizing the US
| government (Congress) because we follow the rule of law
| and that rule of law includes the 1st Amendment guarantee
| to freedom of speech and expression.
|
| China has no such protections and guarantees.
| retinaros wrote:
| yeah ask how people who backed trump fared once he lost?
| ban from social circles, political oponents "tracking"
| the people who worked with him or under him so that "they
| never have jobs anymore". its just one example. just like
| china, if you are on the bad side you don't exist
| anymore. see assange.
| jasmer wrote:
| They both take orders from their respective governments,
| but the nature of those orders, the nature of the business,
| the relative power, the domain over which the information
| is valid, transparency, proportionality etc are all very
| different.
|
| ByteDance isn't under the direct authority at any given
| moment of CCP, but, they will, at any time, receive
| arbitrary orders for any particular reason, and they will
| follow them. Notably 1/2 of the Western world uses this
| app.
|
| Google isn't under the thumb of US Gov. but with a court
| order, the FBI can obtain specific bits of information.
| Notably, Google does not operate in China.
|
| Now - the more secretive relationship with NSA/CIA/FBI aka
| national security has with Google is a different question,
| it's a bit guesswork, but just given the nature of the two
| regimes, and the fact that again Google has no material
| presence in China it's plain to see the difference.
|
| The Congressional Hearing was a farce in the wind, but the
| underlying issues of both security and trade are really
| serious.
|
| It would have been better to create comprehensive
| legislation a decade ago about data and corporate ownership
| so companies could make progress. Even if ByteDance owned
| 49% of a US company that was 'TikTok' and it was based
| anywhere but China, that would probably be fine.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I agree with the concentration camps. But imprisoned...
| yes. I don't live there, but I still have to file my taxes.
| I can't go back longer than 35 days, or I have to pay taxes
| like I live there for five years, even if I don't. Every
| banking institution that is willing to do businesses with
| me has to report my activity to the IRS. I'm not allowed to
| invest because I'm an American, I'm also not allowed to
| invest in America because I'm not a resident.
|
| If I didn't have family there, I'd probably give up my
| passport, because outside of America it is more of a
| hindrance than a boon.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids'
| might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they
| would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social
| media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on
| children.
|
| Do they? My Impression is a bit different here. TikTok is
| much more focused on the automatically selected content, and
| has fewer options for letting users make their own choices.
| The format itself (video) also strongly boosts the connection
| between people. And both combined let TikTok-Trends move much
| faster and ingrain deeper in the minds of people. It was
| quite interesting to see how fast and deep the brainwashing
| on TikTok was spreading after the CEOs appearance in senat,
| and also kinda concerning.
|
| > US government does not want any possibility of US citizens'
| data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew
| made that clear.
|
| But isn't that legit concern of any country regarding other
| countries with even less security than you have yourself? I
| mean in Europe we also have strong concerns against the USA
| and their poor handling of data.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids'
| might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they
| would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social
| media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on
| children.
|
| This overlooks the "possibility" that those platforms have an
| "agreement" of sorts with the US Government. The Twitter
| Files have gone into some of that, _but be careful_ : it is
| possible for things to exist that each individual/civilian
| may not have knowledge of, even though most people seem to be
| strongly under the impression that this is impossible,
| perhaps because it could be considered (or, _has been
| marketed as_ ) [only] a conspiracy theory.
|
| > This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against
| China. US government does not want any possibility of US
| citizens' data being in the hands of China and their
| questions to Chew made that clear. The narrative of child
| safety, for example the story about the kid who commit
| suicide because of their "for you" page, is being used as a
| kind of legal "pretext" so they can ban TikTok.
|
| It is plausible that there are certain ideas that they would
| not like the minds of the American Public exposed to, certain
| conversations they would prefer they do not have, etc. There
| is a surprising amount of detail to reality, but we miss out
| on most of it (and often do not realize it), for a variety of
| reasons.
|
| The thinking on these sorts of matters one reads in this
| thread is rather eye opening....I suspect a lot of the styles
| of logic that are perfectly acceptable in threads on this
| topic would be _very unwelcome_ when writing software.
| bmarquez wrote:
| > This overlooks the "possibility" that those platforms
| have an "agreement" of sorts with the US Government.
|
| Of course they do, it's called Prism and it's been around
| for over a decade.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-
| giants...
| withinboredom wrote:
| > [The] US government does not want any possibility of US
| citizens' data being in the hands of
|
| China. Yeah, except that any business can just buy that
| information. I can buy your day-to-day movements for dirt
| cheap. I own a non-American company (though I'm still an
| American citizen, but that isn't a factor), and it is
| insanely cheap to get information about any American you
| want. Hell, BingBot will tell you all about me, what I do for
| a living and where I live.
|
| This is about China, but it is a stupid and pointless zero-
| point game. This bill would get shot down in 30s for being
| unconstitutional, especially if the company has an American
| LLC or corporation (making it a legal entity protected by the
| constitution). Further, you'd think congress would have
| learned from prohibition that banning something ... hmm,
| doesn't work? At all? How would you even enforce something
| like this, stop people randomly to violate their privacy
| further and search their phone? Will this be another thing to
| get arrested for when you have a 'broken tailight'?
| Aunche wrote:
| Anyone can get your address and phone number from just
| about anywhere. What you can't purchase are the thousands
| of data points that Facebook or Google has about your
| habits, location, and preferences. That's their secret
| sauce after all.
| hgsgm wrote:
| You can't get it _from Google_ , but you can get it from
| other data harvesters and brokers with a different
| business model.
| dotancohen wrote:
| What keywords should I search for, for more information?
| ipaddr wrote:
| buy customer data
|
| Information isn't organized by your name but by your
| quadrant(s) you fall under
| seaners wrote:
| Seems to be a suspicious number of people in this thread
| purposefully "point missing" and slinging whataboutisms
| instead of talking about what the CCP (specifically) can do
| with that type of information...
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I don't really know anything about buying data or whatever,
| but how would you actually go about buying my day-to-day
| movements and how much does it actually cost?
|
| I was always under the impression that when people say
| 'Google collects all your data and sells it', or whatever,
| they really mean that google sells ads which may be
| targeted based on the data they collect, and it's only
| small companies with much less data who might sell it.
| yed wrote:
| The bill doesn't directly ban data sharing but instead
| focuses on foreign ownership in US companies. It would be
| enforced similar to anti-trust laws today, by preventing
| Chinese nationals from purchasing or having an ownership
| stake in certain large technology companies deemed a
| security risk. I don't like the bill because I think it's
| unnecessary but it has nothing to do with searching
| people's phones or regulating actual data in any way.
| boopmaster wrote:
| I'm not sure which part of our national security
| surveillance state apparatus is endangered by foreign
| ownership, but I assume at face value that there is some
| very embarrassing facts that our local spooks are not keen
| to share with China. What does the great firewall of
| America look like, from the infrastructure & interface
| angle? Would we want to share that with China? Your Google
| searches and all your metadata that can likely be accessed
| with relative ease... is there a similar surveillance
| capability that we'd wish to share with China in how spooks
| make data requests?
|
| China has no jurisdiction over you... there's no real
| punishing to relate to what you have viewed on TikTok, so
| why are your viewing habits a threat to national security?
|
| I don't believe this to be a zero sum game. This is further
| extension of authoritarianism from a government that is
| terrified of anything short of pervasive colonoscopy-tier
| data collection.
| NLPaep wrote:
| No jurisdiction? They threaten your family back home.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >China has no jurisdiction over you... there's no real
| punishing to relate to what you have viewed on TikTok, so
| why are your viewing habits a threat to national
| security?
|
| I mean, I mostly agree with what your saying above this,
| but this particular line I disagree with.
|
| People get blackmailed all the time for different
| reasons. If I'm looking for a person in a
| hardware/software company that has weaknesses, having a
| full view of their social media is a great starting
| place.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >I'm not sure which part of our national security
| surveillance state apparatus is endangered by foreign
| ownership,
|
| The propaganda part.
|
| Remember a month ago when everyone's feed had a video in
| it from the TikTok CEO encouraging people to side with
| TikTok.
|
| They are scared shitless of not being mostly in control
| of that kind of power when applied to Americans. They are
| worried that the next Saddam is going to pay TikTok, or
| some future foreign competitor to torpedo whatever the
| next WMD lie is (and this will be done with Chinese
| blessing because that will be in their geopolitical
| interest).
|
| The possibility was easy to ignore back when all the
| social media giants were American and the feds had
| jurisdiction and soft power over them. Now there's a new
| entrant that China has jurisdiction and soft power over.
| They want the status quo back. Hence why all the bill
| language is mostly about preventing foreign ownership.
| ddoolin wrote:
| TikTok disappearing from tens of millions of iPhones
| overnight (I have no idea about Androids) would probably
| work pretty well. If I had to guess, almost none of those
| people can jailbreak their iPhone to get it again, either.
| Your option would be to switch to Android and learn to
| sideload apps (which I think is pretty damn easy these
| days).
|
| The point is not to enforce against individual users, just
| to remove it from the main distribution channels.
| withinboredom wrote:
| You can freely install apps on your iphone. All you need
| is an Apple computer. It only can be used for a week?
| before you have to install it again. I don't pay apple a
| dime and still develop software for iPhones occasionally
| without any issues.
|
| Also, websites are pretty powerful. Apple even allowed
| websites to send notifications now.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| What percentage of TikTok users are you expecting to do
| either of those two things in order to access the app if
| it's banned by the federal government?
| ddoolin wrote:
| The government has multiple tools it can use to ban
| websites as well.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| If you believe that a significant portion of iOS users
| are going to set up an Apple development account and
| manually reinstall TikTok every week then I have a bridge
| to sell you.
|
| They will just switch to a different social network,
| which is equally destructive but not Chinese.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I didn't do anything special. I just installed Xcode, and
| bam. Done.
|
| We ripped CDs so we didn't have to buy them. Hell, we sat
| by boomboxes until the right song came on the radio just
| to push record on the tape player.
|
| Kids will do whatever it takes to get what they want. I'd
| buy that bridge.
| [deleted]
| jrsj wrote:
| Except a MacBook costs $1000+ when TikTok clones are free
| murukesh_s wrote:
| I guess many of us underestimate how many teenagers own a
| smartphone but not a laptop/desktop computer. In older
| generation it was the reverse, people owned a
| laptop/desktop before owning a smartphone..
| belval wrote:
| > I just installed Xcode
|
| I think you are overestimating the tech know-how of the
| average person and how driven the average teenager is.
| TikTok a year ago was pretty unique, but now you have
| YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. I'd bet a hard money
| that 99% of people will just switch to those in a
| heartbeat if TikTok was banned.
|
| > Kids will do whatever it takes to get what they want.
| I'd buy that bridge.
|
| What they want is cheap dopamine hit from the smartphone.
| It's really close to drugs, make heroin hard to get and
| people will go to an analog like fentanyl.
| weard_beard wrote:
| Did anyone else notice this bill includes a provision
| that requires the department of Commerce to inform the
| president _Quiet part_ when wall street has made such a
| cockup of gambling _Quiet part_ that it becomes a
| national security risk and gives him the power to issue
| an Executive Order requiring the general investing public
| sell that particular stock so hedge funds can pay off
| their debt?
|
| S.686 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-
| congress/senate-bill/686
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Which section is that in? I didn't read anything that way
| but maybe I need to re-read
| weard_beard wrote:
| Re-reading, I may be mistaken. S.686 is still in
| committee and it looks like S.1143 looks to have passed
| the Senate. I read an article this morning that suggested
| S.686 is meant to be a rider, can't find it now.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Ah okay, thanks!
| mattmcknight wrote:
| It has a website. I've used the website, never the app.
| ddoolin wrote:
| True, but those can also be banned (in a literal or
| practical sense).
| next_xibalba wrote:
| The federal government has many tools by which they could
| accomplish this ban. The Committee on Foreign Investment in
| the United States has a long, successful history of forcing
| divestiture by foreign owners of domestic assets.
|
| Additionally, app stores and ISPs are a pretty obvious
| route for blocking 99% of U.S. users from circumventing the
| ban. Any users who are able to circumvent those measures
| will be using an app whose network effect has been
| destroyed.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This. I had this very conversation today. I dislike applying
| rules not across the board. I would love if the same argument
| applied to TikTok, were applied to other social media.
|
| However, this is not about the arguments presented. Those are
| merely talking points as a way to get an upper hand on China.
| That is it. It is annoying, because there is actually a dire
| need to make children a little less addicted to screens ( not
| to mention the chance to get some privacy ).
| fossuser wrote:
| The data isn't the risk, it's more the ability for CCP to
| leverage influence.
|
| https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
|
| Dialing up things to cause unrest, dialing down stuff
| critical of the CCP. It's not an issue about data, or even an
| issue about speech, it's an issue of ownership of a media
| company by an adversary that will weaponize it against you.
|
| Who controls and owns media companies is a reasonable
| national security question. The CCP knows this risk, they
| don't play fair.
| n0tahacker wrote:
| I think this attitude is wrong. A strong democracy doesn't
| need to fight "fake news" legally and doesn't need their
| own propaganda op in foreign states like Radio Free Asia
| etc. If you are banning foreign media in your own country,
| you are doing the same as China in the end. Why not
| establish a great firewall?
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| [dead]
| collaborative wrote:
| A strong democracy does as it pleases within its
| democratic laws
| fossuser wrote:
| Do you think the USG would have allowed the USSR to buy
| NBC?
|
| These aren't new issues, there are certain types of
| corporations where there is a national security interest
| in American ownership and capability (see also: Intel).
| Ownership of airlines is another example, you can't have
| a foreign controlling interest in a domestic airline
| (Richard Branson couldn't save Virgin America due to
| this).
|
| There are good reasons for a nation to have rules about
| foreign control in certain types of companies that carry
| a national security risk.
| solarpunk wrote:
| This is just censorship apologia.
| Hilarity1 wrote:
| TikTok is one vehicle for influence - and there are
| hundreds.
|
| Millions use TikTok. To them, you're not removing their
| "adversary", you're removing their fun.
|
| From the outside, this looks like the United States is
| controlling the media - something it's already accused of
| by 1/2 of Americans.
|
| This action will reiterate that for some and make it true
| for more.
| rayiner wrote:
| > There are only so many hours that congress has to make real
| decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on?
| Talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm
| when they're being influenced every day by how they might get
| shot up in math class?
|
| What do you think causes kids to shoot up their math class?
| YellOh wrote:
| According to Washington Post data, there were 393,289 students
| enrolled at schools during shootings in the past 10 years[0].
| (Note this is total enrollment, not those present or injured)
|
| In 2022, there were ~25.1 million teens[1], of whom ~67% used
| TikTok[2], for a total of ~16.8 million on TikTok (totally
| ignoring anyone under 12 or over 17).
|
| I know the numbers are hacky because the first group includes
| younger children and the second group doesn't (and 1/3 of
| TikTok's users could be under 14[3]), but I was trying to get a
| sense of scale for each category. Assume the TikTok user count
| is probably an underestimate.
|
| My hacky numbers come up with a bit over 40x more teens being
| first-hand infuenced by tiktok. To make the numbers even more
| hypothetical, the next step of deciding how many times worse
| you think being enrolled at a school that has a shooting is for
| students and plugging that in to get how much more
| attention/resources should be used on shootings is left as an
| exercise for the reader.
|
| [0] https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings [1]
| https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp [2]
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social...
| [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-
| underag...
| satellites wrote:
| The person you're replying to said that the _possibility_ of
| being shot at school is psychologically taxing. This would
| apply to all students at all schools, not just ones where a
| shooting literally happened. It is relevant because of how
| frequent school shootings are now, compared to say, 30 years
| ago. Columbine shook the country when it happened, now we're
| at a couple Columbine-style incidents per year. You can say
| "well that's still a low overall percentage of students who
| get shot" and be technically correct while ignoring the
| gravity of the situation and the fact that other first world
| countries don't have this problem.
|
| The fact that school shootings have been so normalized that
| we're sitting here and discussing the math around whether
| they're worse than social media is... so profoundly sad it's
| hard to describe.
| spamlettuce wrote:
| This idea sorta goes against this other HN post i saw today
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35359271
| satellites wrote:
| I think we can safely say that social media hurts mental
| health worldwide, and school shootings are also really
| bad for people. It's almost like they're separate issues
| and we don't have to pick one or the other to deal with.
| Does that sound reasonable?
| YellOh wrote:
| I agree shootings do large societal harm past the students
| at the school (though to be fair, I'd say the opposite side
| could correctly argue that TikTok makes lasting changes to
| children/society beyond just the ones that use it (and may
| be correlated with depression/suicide, which is also
| profoundly sad))
|
| Surely you have to do some kind of math eventually, or else
| you'll end up prioritizing whatever sounds the most
| dramatic instead of the things that actually matter
| (consider people who are more afraid of sharks than
| drowning, even though shark deaths are 1 in 4,332,817 and
| drowning deaths are 1 in 1,134)
|
| I acknowledge that the numbers I'm using are not, by any
| means, conclusive. And I'm not saying we should prioritize
| TikTok above shootings just because it's more common. But
| this seems like a reason to _get better evidence_ about the
| way the world is, not refuse to touch numbers because some
| harms are too sacred to attempt to quantify.
| sottol wrote:
| > Surely you have to do some kind of math eventually, or
| else you'll end up prioritizing whatever sounds the most
| dramatic instead of the things that actually matter
| (consider people who are more afraid of sharks than
| drowning, even though shark deaths are 1 in 4,332,817 and
| drowning deaths are 1 in 1,134)
|
| TSA? Or any other "but think of the children"-type bill?
| Or look at water-scarcity "solutions" in the south west
| for something different.
|
| I'm serious, "prioritizing whatever sounds the most
| dramatic instead of the things that actually matter" is
| literally 90% of the politician's playbook.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Debating the minutiae of the number of school shootings is
| just...sad.
|
| The total number of children who should die in school
| shootings should always be 0.
|
| It's not even particularly hard. Practically every country in
| the world manages to achieve that target.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Incorrect. Some do, many don't, unless of course you're
| racist and don't consider quite a bit of the developing
| world worth your notice. Is that the case?
| rayiner wrote:
| How common are school shootings in the developing world?
| OzyM wrote:
| And the ideal number of suicides is 0, and the ideal amount
| of spyware is 0, etc. All of these are targets, but an
| ideal doesn't give you further information on how to
| prioritize
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Giving too much power to out of touch, senile old men seems to
| be a global issue.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| You will of course, in the name of gender equality, monitor
| how many women vote each way on this bill, right? Were you
| even aware that women are allowed in Congress?
| tomcar288 wrote:
| It's worse than you think. This bill isn't really about Tik
| Tok. Read the fine print: people caught using a VPN could be
| thrown in jail for 20 years! It's about giving govt unchecked
| authority to throw people in jail.
| spogbiper wrote:
| can you point out where the bill says this? I'm not practiced
| in reading this kind of thing and struggling to find it
| tomcar288 wrote:
| FYI: i heard about that in a news article, I didn't
| actually read the bill.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| There was reporting on "news" site Reason to this effect.
| So, it is very likely false.
| yed wrote:
| I've read the bill and while I'm not a fan for more
| general reasons, it doesn't say anything like this at
| all. The bill is strictly about foreigners from
| designated US "adversaries" having an ownership stake in
| large technology companies operating in the US. The text
| cherry picked in some of these news articles is just a
| list of the types of technology companies the bill
| specifies should be the prioritized when evaluating which
| foreign owned companies should be scrutinized.
| akerl_ wrote:
| The bill doesn't require an ownership stake, it even
| includes provisions to consider an entity hostile if the
| holding is indirect.
| yed wrote:
| The intent there is to deal with people trying to get
| around the provision via intermediary holding companies.
| At its core there still must be some ownership stake or
| controlling interest by a foreign national, whether
| direct or indirect.
|
| Edit: the key parts of the bill that specify it applies
| only for controlling interests:
|
| > Sec 2-2: CONTROLLING HOLDING.--The term "controlling
| holding" means a holding with the power, whether direct
| or indirect and whether exercised or not exercised, to
| determine, direct, or decide important matters affecting
| an entity.
|
| > Sec 2-3-a (emphasis mine): COVERED HOLDING.--The term
| "covered holding"-- means [...] a _controlling holding_
| held, directly or indirectly, in an ICTS covered holding
| entity by-- [...]
| akerl_ wrote:
| The bill doesn't seem to require that an interest be
| controlling, nor define any boundaries on what counts as
| indirect stakes
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| That claim seems to be making the rounds.
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=restrict+act
|
| Some of the the more accusatory headlines:
|
| > The Restrict Act would allow the Feds access to all the
| data on our devices
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362848
|
| > The "anti-TikTok" RESTRICT act seems to apply to nearly
| every U.S. tech company
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35318956
|
| > The RESTRICT act may let the government control any
| public tech company
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35324114
|
| > The TikTok Ban Act, RESTRICT, will give Gov't
| unprecedented privacy access
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35342797
|
| > Could the Restrict Act Criminalize the Use of VPNs?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35358761
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Because it doesn't say it. It instead lays out a series of
| new designations and powers handed to the President.
| Specifically the President can now designate new kinds of
| national security threats and demand various mitigations to
| stop them. Anyone who does not obey is facing fines and
| prison time.
|
| So for example, President Biden could designate TikTok a
| national security threat under the RESTRICT Act, and then
| order VPN companies to block outbound traffic to TikTok. If
| the VPN companies refused they would be liable.
|
| Don't blame yourself for not finding it, I had the same
| reaction last night. The libertarians who caught onto this
| are not very good at explaining themselves to people who
| don't care.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| They're compounding problems, we have alarming increases in
| teenage depression rates (especially amongst girls), and
| there's some correlation with the rise of social media as well
| as other things like school shootings.
|
| I agree with you that there are more important things, but we
| do lots at once. Honestly if shooting up congresspeople,
| kindergartners, and kindergartners shooting teachers hasn't
| changed anything in regards to guns... I don't know what will.
|
| This isn't really about protecting kids anyway though, it's
| mostly fearmongering about China, which is one of the rare
| things most of our legislature agrees on these days.
| secabeen wrote:
| They are spending their time on this because they know that
| with a divided Senate and House, there is no bill that will
| pass without extensive negotiation behind closed doors. While
| that happens, something has to happen on the floor of the house
| and senate, so they debate stuff like this, which might get
| traction, or might not.
| djha-skin wrote:
| Really HN? The top voted comment is "this country has gone
| downhill"? This isn't Reddit. We're supposed to at least say
| something novel here, and hopefully interesting. _How_ has the
| country gone downhill? Why is this decision so uninteresting?
| This comment also completely ignores the very interesting
| geopolitical aspects of this bill. On the surface it does look
| like something innocuous, as implied, which is why people might
| double-take and want to look deeper.
|
| Pathos-heavy comments like this one with no real meat
| disappoint me. Surely we can do better.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) The government can do more than one thing at a time.
|
| b) There is zero appetite from the GOP for gun control. Until
| that changes the status quo persists.
|
| c) Information about US citizens (which can be used to
| manipulate them) being handed over to the Chinese government is
| something that the government should be concerned about.
| psychlops wrote:
| > b) There is zero appetite from the GOP for gun control.
| Until that changes the status quo persists.
|
| There have been many years of Democratic control where they
| didn't prioritize gun control. The status quo persists for
| some other reasons, not just the GOP bogeyman.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Just like legalizing abortion, the Dems haven't wanted to
| touch guns (ostensibly) because it radicalizes the other
| side.
| falcolas wrote:
| FWIW, that data is being stored on Oracle servers in the US,
| with provisions on how it can be accessed as part of some of
| the agreements reached under Trump.
| threeseed wrote:
| But according to leaked audio from more than 80 internal
| TikTok meetings, China-based employees of ByteDance have
| repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users
| [1]
|
| It is irrelevant if the data is stored in the US if Chinese
| government have tools they can use to search for
| dissidents, journalists etc
|
| [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/ti
| ktok-...
| withinboredom wrote:
| I mean, you can buy that information for 'practically free'
| (amortized per person), you don't need an app for that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| Please tell me where I can purchase information about the
| sexual preferences of Republican politicians and leading
| religious figures. I... have... reasons.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm sure you could run some targeted ads on pornhub and
| figure it out.
| threeseed wrote:
| Please provide me a dataset I can buy that has video feeds,
| so I can do facial recognition, as well as deep behavioural
| insights.
| withinboredom wrote:
| There are webcam feeds all over the earth, most can be
| found by just scanning ip addresses. There are even
| websites dedicated to finding them. You'd probably have a
| better dataset than TikTok simply because it is more
| realistic. The best part: it is free.
| threeseed wrote:
| No you said a comparable dataset to TikTok was
| commercially available.
|
| Few random webcams which would be illegal to take video
| from is not substantive and does not provide any insight
| into their interests, likes etc.
|
| The whole issue with TikTok is that the Chinese
| government is able to personally identify people who
| disagree with them.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I'm not in the business of selling datasets. But it also
| sounds like you don't know what problem you're actually
| trying to solve yet. That's a problem I can help you
| with.
| etrautmann wrote:
| It's not just the data, it's bidirectional. The concern is
| that by adjusting the algorithm they can influence the
| population (e.g. to make math and science perceived as
| uncool). Not sure how seriously to take that but in
| principle it seems like a large vulnerability that is
| challenging to close off without actions like what we're
| seeing.
| Adraghast wrote:
| > Not sure how seriously to take that
|
| I can help with that: not seriously at all. Calling
| someone a nerd has been a thing for the better part of a
| century. How long has TikTok been around?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| It's a fair bit more complicated than that. They could
| choose to show all of the "you're a nerd!" videos to
| youths in other nations and all of the "look at what I
| did using science and engineering!" videos to youths in
| their own nation. It might be considered that such a move
| would put them in a more competitive position years to
| decades down the line.
| narrator wrote:
| There are people who look at crime statistics to figure out
| how likely they are to get murdered based on their
| circumstances and optimize that, and there are people who
| watch the news.
|
| There are people who look at data to determine how likely
| they were to die from covid vs. the risk and effectiveness of
| a vaccine authorized for emergency use, and there are people
| who watch the news.
|
| You can't have a good argument with people who watch the news
| because they get convinced of their position emotionally
| through anecdotes that the news focuses on, not data. You end
| up arguing with that person's emotional reaction to
| anecdotes. It's never a good idea to criticize another
| person's emotions if you expect to remain friends with them
| or not get flagged on HN.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Don't worry about the US. It is still the greatest country and
| will remain so for at least 50 years.
|
| It's reddit/HN who have never traveled or lived outside US that
| has jaded your view of US.
|
| You know which country released chatGPT? or NVIDIA A100 or made
| a huge step towards Quantum Computing / Nuclear Fusion?
|
| I'd rather congress focus on irrelevant details, while startups
| solve / tackle important issues. When it really comes to it,
| Congress will get their act together, but anything before is
| pure meddling in one of the greatest systems that is producing
| unbelievable innovations at an alarming rate.
| [deleted]
| withinboredom wrote:
| It's a pretty decent country. Beautiful even. Very obviously
| not the greatest country (or were you being sarcastic?).
|
| I have some jaded views. Perhaps my jading moment was when my
| unit was used as a political pawn by Obama to get re-elected.
| That pissed me off to no end and broke my rose colored
| glasses.
|
| I sincerely miss US startups sometimes. I work at a startup
| here and they actually (somehow) have a work/life balance, 20
| days paid vacation, and other perks with no gimmicks, like a
| chef who cooks us lunch every day, but no shenanigans (like
| "unlimited" vacations that aren't actually unlimited).
|
| I (sometimes) miss working weekends and impossible deadlines
| while devouring cheap pizza and passing out on the couch. But
| there's a good chance even US startups have evolved in the
| last ten years... but the last US startup I worked at in the
| early teens was like that. My then-girlfriend-now-wife would
| come hang out with us nerds for dinner before we got back to
| work. Hell, I fixed a rare database issue on my honeymoon
| because everyone else was asleep and I wasn't while my new
| wife cussed out my CEO on the phone. He ordered us a really
| nice bottle wine from the hotel, so I can't complain...
|
| Meh, maybe I don't miss it, but you make some valuable
| points.
| badrabbit wrote:
| The majority of americans agree with this decision. You may not
| like it but HN audience is very tech savvy and is influenced by
| popular thinking in tech.
|
| The sentiment against assamge, patriot act, even the iraq war
| was popular at the time.
|
| Now I have tried to make a rational argument for this ban but
| all I got was downvotes even bots/people downvoting every
| unrelated thing I post probably including this post.
|
| You need to engage in polite discourse with others and change
| their minds not complain about the government.
|
| And believe me when I say, having seen how things are in other
| countries, as bad as things are in the US I wouldn't trade it
| for any other country.
|
| You've all chosen to whine in your bubbles instead of a healthy
| debate. Enjoy the result.
| korroziya wrote:
| China's psyop is far more harmful to the US than its gun
| culture. Touch grass and don't forget to flag this comment for
| hurting your paper-thin progressive political ideology.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I agree with your comment but if you think banning TikTok is
| about stopping China's psyops you are not paying attention.
| This is protectionism for the US social media industry.
| Removing American made content from TikTok will also make it
| less appealing for other western countries as it will have
| less of the wealthy empire-grown "influencers" everyone
| loves, hence giving an alternative to US alternatives by
| Google/Facebook/Snap to cut into their market.
|
| China can psyops on any social media platform, Tencent owned
| Reddit for longer than anyone in congress has been worried
| about this only that no US based Reddit competitor makes
| enough money to pay for national security lobbyists in DC.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Psyops is fun, and fairly close to some of the stuff I had
| fun with in the military. But to say I have any political
| ideology that fits into a box, is rather funny.
|
| Thanks for that!
| pessimizer wrote:
| Don't worry, it's just a first step. After this, they will more
| easily be able to ban any public media not accepting direct
| government requests for censorship (or censorship immunity) and
| reduction of reach (or artificial boosting of reach.)
|
| That this is auxiliary to US goals to antagonize China is the
| sugar. The real goal is to continue the progress made when when
| breakaway Trump-supporting networks like Parler were directly
| attacked by Congress, and app stores _informally threatened_ if
| they wouldn 't ban them. Twitter is being continuously
| threatened by Congress just because they changed ownership from
| movement Democrats to an "independent" rich guy.
|
| TikTok will be the precedent. It's _obviously_ just racist to
| attack TikTok alone; in order to retroactively make it not
| racist, it 's important to attack companies that amplify
| Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Palestinian messages, the alt-
| left, the alt-right, or anyone that might inspire disloyalty to
| the homeland. Which is why Homeland Security will be overseeing
| social media.
|
| > they might get shot up in math class?
|
| The safest place that a child is at all day is at school (home
| and family are far more dangerous), and more people die in a
| day in Ukraine or (until fairly recently) Yemen, or because
| asthma inhalers were re-patented in the US through active
| corruption and their price went from $5 to $75, _than have ever
| died in a school shooting._ Middle class paranoia is being
| exploited by dragging the discussion of 6 deaths in this
| suburb, 10 deaths in that suburb, over _years_ , with public
| wailing and gnashing of teeth, energetic and aggressive shaming
| of dissenters (with state support), and constant press releases
| from an industry that relies on advocacy for income.
|
| Upper-middle class liberals can only be focused on issues that
| affect them directly, which is why gun control (and gun rights,
| classical liberals are liberals too) is an easy way to
| manipulate them. I wish they could be pushed back to important
| things, like our failed healthcare system that will ruthlessly
| bankrupt them with the slightest provocation.
|
| Gun control pandering is just Republican law & order pandering
| in a Democratic style. It's pretending that there's some
| magical incantation that will make desperate people both not
| violent, and also not easy targets for violence and
| exploitation. The solution is systemic infrastructure, rather
| than distraction. I'd take a school shooting that kills 6
| _every week_ in exchange for a compassionate, functional
| healthcare system. It 's 300 lives versus hundreds of thousands
| of lives.
|
| edit: Americans live in a country that shut down most public
| mental health care from 2008-2010.
| theRealMe wrote:
| "Why are we talking about X when we could be talking about Y"
| is some classic whataboutism. You really seem to be trying to
| push a pro China agenda by discounting the importance of this.
|
| You're stance on this is actually "I don't believe that the CCP
| would try to harm the US population". I can tell that is your
| stance because if it wasn't then you are effectively saying "I
| believe the CCP may potentially feed the US population mental-
| illness-inducing content via targeted algorithms, but I don't
| think it's worth caring about and we should be mad that
| lawmakers are even trying to do anything about it."
|
| I mean, it's not like we're talking about something meaningless
| here. If you believe that there is a chance of the CCP doing
| something nefarious with their Golden Shares power, then that's
| a pretty big deal.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| * * *
| korroziya wrote:
| [flagged]
| satellites wrote:
| Can you explain how TikTok (a Chinese "psyop") is more
| harmful to the average citizen than Facebook or Instagram (a
| corporate American "psyop?")
|
| Can you explain how TikTok is more harmful to the average
| citizen than the constant mass shootings that happen in the
| U.S.?
|
| Touch grass, indeed.
| henriquez wrote:
| Because China is dumb and bans all U.S. tech companies from
| doing business in China? Why should we let their tech
| companies do business here?
| aikinai wrote:
| And now this low brow distraction is on top (at least for me),
| even above the next comment which has very insightful
| information about the content of the bill.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _There are only so many hours that congress has to make real
| decisions_
|
| That's not how Congress works. We're taught in school that
| Congress debates bills one at a time, but the reality is that
| all the real debate and drafting and work happens behind the
| scenes, massively parallelized.
|
| Time spent during a session of Congress is mostly just the very
| end of the process, discovering where the votes fall and some
| last-minute negotiations. Also grandstanding.
|
| There are lots of factors that have been making Congress less
| "productive" in recent history, depending on how you view it,
| but the total hours available per year isn't really one of
| them.
| ononon wrote:
| [flagged]
| withinboredom wrote:
| I grew up in a time that there were 0.~ kids per year getting
| murdered in school. School was a 'safe place' (insofar you
| weren't a target for bullies). A place to have fun and learn
| things. The first time that happened, where a school was shot
| up. It literally (collectively) fucked us up for days/weeks.
|
| I'm not advocating for guns to be taken away, I believe that
| ship sailed a couple hundred years ago. But Americans need to
| get their shit together, that's for sure.
| dataflow wrote:
| This isn't about kids or their health, or even about
| information gathering (though those certainly make things
| worse). It's about widespread _manipulation_ of the population
| and about national security. It 's about letting an adversarial
| government have the ability to influence your population
| through a direct communication channel, whether it's 6-year-
| olds or 60-year-olds. Hurting or helping children's mental
| health or collecting information on a population is not a
| prerequisite for manipulating people, showing them propaganda,
| or otherwise influencing them in a dangerous way.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Its about industrial protectionism with National Security as
| a paper thin pretext.
| dataflow wrote:
| I don't know if that's also true or false, but I don't see
| why it's relevant. Giving an adversary a potent weapon is
| not something you should do regardless of whether you
| manufacture the same thing domestically or not.
| pc_edwin wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer nor a legal/constitutional expert.
|
| TLDR: The bill doesn't ban TikTok, it gives the executive branch
| the power to ban companies like Tiktok. IMO this is an entirely
| reasonable measure.
|
| As someone with strong libertarian leanings, I am generally
| opposed to the trend of the executive branch gaining arbitrary
| legislative authority but this bill appears entirely reasonable
| to me despite some concerns of vagueness.
|
| It gives the Secretary of commerce the responsibility of
| consulting with agencies to determine if software companies from
| "foreign adversaries" pose a national security threat. If the
| secretary seems it does then it gives the president the authority
| to ban the company.
| pc_edwin wrote:
| I'll also add that its pretty interesting to see China in the
| list of "Foreign Adversaries".
|
| I think this probably the first time they are recognised as
| such in an official capacity in recent times.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| A strategy doomed to failure: kick the far-right off Twitter so
| they can plan a revolution on Parler. Kick the QAnon people off
| Facebook so they can reorganize on Gab. All this will ever
| achieve is to scatter people into deeper and darker ideological
| echo chambers.
| dymk wrote:
| Good, they're doing more harm on Twitter and Facebook anyways
| [deleted]
| ReptileMan wrote:
| How do you square this circle with the first amendment?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _square this circle with the first amendment_
|
| It's authorizing the President to ban certain classes of
| transactions. Not behavior let alone speech.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Do you think that the President banning people to sell paper,
| ink, electricity and internet access to the NYTimes has any
| chance to fly as not violating the 1A? I mean they can shout
| from the windows and write on the glass windows with
| lipstick.
| paxys wrote:
| A better analogy is - is it a violation of the first
| amendment if the government intercepts and holds a shipment
| of newspapers sent from China at customs?
| timeon wrote:
| > President banning people to sell paper, ink
|
| Is this what is happening? This seems to me like free
| speech absurdism.
| wincy wrote:
| Right he's just closing down one of the "public squares" then
| saying "of course you can talk on these other less popular
| public squares!"
|
| This is mind boggling that every single person on HN isn't
| terrified of this.
|
| Surely most of us were around in the 2000s when the Bush
| Administration demonized people who spoke against the war?
| Aren't we the same people who were railing against censorship
| then? What HAPPENED to that community I grew up with that
| wouldn't put up with censorship, who held free speech as the
| backbone of democracy? Where are all of those people now?
|
| I have a few hunches, and I'm not sure I'd like to know the
| answer.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _he's just closing down one of the "public squares" then
| saying "of course you can talk on these other less popular
| public squares_
|
| Let's be real. Nobody is closing anything down. This is a
| bizarre game of brinksmanship between D.C. and Beijing that
| ends in one place: divestiture. The only reason it's
| getting so much attention is because the object of concern
| is a social media property, not _e.g._ a port asset or
| power plant.
| boshalfoshal wrote:
| Theres a fair precedent if you use the clear and present danger
| doctrine.
|
| Not that I agree that it is actually an immediate threat to US
| national security, but anti-TikTok pundits claim it is and can
| spin their argument that way. Its not unreasonable following
| that premise.
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