[HN Gopher] House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese ...
___________________________________________________________________
House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban
the app
Author : jbegley
Score : 388 points
Date : 2024-03-13 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| organsnyder wrote:
| It's amazing the lengths we'll go in the United States to avoid
| passing a comprehensive national privacy protections law.
| rusty_venture wrote:
| A Chinese company isn't bound by US laws, so this is a
| necessary precursor to that.
|
| Edit: I stand corrected, they are bound by our laws, but it's
| orders of magnitude easier to enforce those laws on a company
| based in the US than a company based in China.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| If they operate in the US, they certainly are.
| tivert wrote:
| > If they operate in the US, they certainly are.
|
| Theoretically, yes. But the US isn't a police state where
| their activities would be constantly monitored in great
| detail for compliance. There's a lot they could do under
| the radar, and a lot of groundwork they could lay for some
| future inappropriate action.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| If it wants to operate in the US, yes it does. For the same
| reason that US companies are complying with EU GDPR/DMA laws.
| barrkel wrote:
| Normally how this works is that national laws dictate what an
| app can do when operating in the nation's territory, and it's
| then up to the app owner to decide whether they want to do
| business in that nation's territory or not.
|
| This is how EU rules apply to US tech companies. US rules for
| Chinese tech companies is no different in principle.
|
| IMO however the problem isn't privacy, it's being able to
| stick a thumb on the algorithmic feed and control the
| information consumption of a slice of society. And TikTok
| isn't the only problem, it's broadly applicable across
| consumer tech.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| One could hope that this is a brick in the path towards a
| solid, comprehensive privacy law at the national level.
| Especially given bipartisan criticism of "home grown" spying
| platforms such as Facebook and Google, it certainly doesn't
| seem impossible (just unlikely).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _to avoid passing a comprehensive national privacy
| protections law_
|
| It's unclear there is support for that. I've worked on privacy
| issues. Virtually nobody calls in support of them.
|
| This, on the other hand, is a national security bill. Every
| elected I know is being inundated from both sides.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Privacy is not an _engaging_ issue. It isn 't controversial
| to most people.
|
| The problem is that our first-past-the-post voting system
| naturally prioritizes _engagement_ over everything else. That
| 's why our elections are always about controversy, and never
| about progress.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Privacy isn't the main problem. Having an mildly adversarial
| nation state wielding a massive propaganda firehouse on US
| citizens is the bigger issue.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| https://archive.is/m3UUO
| dang wrote:
| Also https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-house-vote-force-
| byted...
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39692202, but we
| merged those comments hither)
| finfrastrcuture wrote:
| I understand this would theoretically stop the CCCP from getting
| info on US Consumers, but is there anything to this that actually
| limits the data collected? I assume not.
| a1o wrote:
| Soiuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| CCP - "Chinese Communist Party"
|
| CCCP - "United [Soyuz] Soviet Socialist Republic"
| rbanffy wrote:
| Would be convenient to do the same with FOX News and other far-
| right propaganda outlets as well...
| strictnein wrote:
| The one outlet you called out by name is already a publicly
| traded company, not one that is controlled by a foreign
| country. 63% of it is owned by institutional investors
| (Vanguard, Blackrock, etc).
| rbanffy wrote:
| I know that, and that doesn't exempt them from accusations of
| using their reach to actively manipulate the population to
| gain political power.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Just make US a hostile county to US(tm).
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'd qualify the MAGA crowd as that, but that's me.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Rupert Murdoch had to become US citizen to start a US TV
| network.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I gather he's not a great US citizen.
| EasyMark wrote:
| He isn't, I'm sure he's sewn more discord and hate than
| perhaps any other person in US history except perhaps 1 or
| 2 others (Trump being one).
| 2four2 wrote:
| As much as I don't care about tiktok going away, and acknowledge
| the privacy and security risks, there's something about banning a
| highly popular website that doesn't sit right with me. Is there
| precedent in the USA for anything like this?
| bmau5 wrote:
| It's important to note this isn't banning TikTok. It's forcing
| the sale of it from a CCP-linked parent company. The precedent
| for this would be US pressuring sale of Grindr from Chinese
| ownership due to privacy concerns:
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/grindr-sold-china-national...
| pavon wrote:
| I don't disagree that the way TikTok is operated is
| problematic for the US. But will making TikTok a US
| corporation prevent any of the problems? Couldn't the company
| still legally send private information to "partners" which
| indirectly makes it's way to the CCP? And couldn't it still
| freely choose to moderate and promote posts according the
| priorities and values of the company? Being staffed by a
| large number of CCP-friendly employees, those will reflect
| CCP policies. For this to have any impact we need privacy
| laws to restrict this US company anyway.
|
| It still seems like security theater to me, which is
| particularly unfortunate because it is a real security
| threat.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Are you opposing the divestment law? If so, and you think
| TikTok is a real security threat, what is the alternative
| measure?
|
| I don't agree that this is security theater. Divestment
| will put the entity which controls TikTok under the
| jurisdiction of U.S. law, and no, it isn't obvious that the
| company would still legally be able to export data to the
| CCP. I also don't understand arguing against a measure on
| the basis that it won't work well enough - you have to
| argue that the measure itself is bad.
| vundercind wrote:
| Not banning, forcing a change in ownership (or else a ban,
| sure).
|
| I'm for this for tit-for-tat economic reasons alone,
| personally. China forces similar crap on foreign companies
| trying to operate there. May as well give them some of their
| own medicine.
| robg wrote:
| I didn't know that Rupert Murdoch had to become a U.S. citizen
| to own a U.S. newspaper. So precedents for old school media but
| of course the problem is new media not needing physical
| distribution that can be readily monitored.
| rchaud wrote:
| Good thing that rule was in place, otherwise it could have
| opened the door for some unscrupulous person profiting off of
| national division and disharmony.
| robg wrote:
| Sarcasm aside, it was the end of the fairness doctrine that
| led to this era.
| beezle wrote:
| A better middle ground at this stage could have been requiring
| TikTok to daily display to users (and require they
| confirm/accept) a message stating the indirect CPC ownership,
| the risk to their personal info, and the serious risk of seeing
| state directed disinformation campaigns. Most would still use
| TikTok but perhaps it might get drilled into their heads to
| actually question some things they see on it.
|
| Personally think the data protection issue are overblown. The
| ability to influence through disinformation campaings, whether
| for CPC, Russia or whomever is their friend, is a way bigger
| thing for me.
| htrp wrote:
| so every gdpr cookie modal
| hawthornio wrote:
| Has there been any evidence of disinformation campaigns on
| TikTok?
| javajosh wrote:
| Uncertainty and doubt is a good and honest position. It is an
| unusual situation, and it could potentially create a dangerous
| precedent, particularly in other countries where US-owned
| software is dominant. There is strong evidence that TikTok is
| being used to spy on Americans, especially those in the
| military and those in power, and that this represents a real
| risk to American interests. The downside is this may unleash a
| waive of retributive banning (e.g. other countries banning US-
| owned apps). I personally don't think that's necessarily a bad
| thing, globally: geographically partitioned services (and
| therefore power) are fine by me. Of course rich donor corps in
| the US won't like having their addressable market reduced.
| We'll see if they can convince us to invade another country to
| force them to use eBay though.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| How about china ... do not just look inside guys.
| emursebrian wrote:
| Yes, it was done with Grindr in 2019.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/us-pushes-chinese-owner-of-g...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| China bans a shitton of Western websites. What's wrong with
| reciprocating? Free trade should go both ways, shouldn't it?
|
| I would definitely be more okay with allowing Chinese
| websites/apps in the US if China wasn't banning so many Western
| ones:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
| grecy wrote:
| I think that is a slippery slope race to the bottom of
| morals/ideals.
|
| Pretty soon you have "China doesn't let people say bad things
| about their leader, neither should we"
|
| and
|
| "China uses force to take things from other countries, why
| shouldn't we"
|
| Your ideals and morals should be strong enough they don't
| change based on a bad actor.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Ridiculous comparison when we're literally talking about
| trade with that country. Reciprocal free trade _is_ the
| principle.
| kyleamazza wrote:
| I think you totally missed the argument: it's not about
| copying anything China does, it's about reciprocating
| restrictions that they place on your country. If China
| places a tariff on US imported goods, then the US places a
| tariff on Chinese goods.
|
| This is and has been the case even for non-adversary
| countries, and is bread-and-butter foreign policy
| grecy wrote:
| > _it 's not about copying anything China does, it's
| about reciprocating restrictions_
|
| Your justification is literally "They're doing it to us,
| so we should do it to them".
|
| Apply that logic to everything China does. Do you want to
| behave like them?
|
| Wait a few years and it will be about reciprocating other
| things China does.
| kyleamazza wrote:
| Reciprocating tariffs has been a thing for hundreds of
| years before the US even existed. The justification isn't
| "they're doing it, so let's just copy them", it's
| "they're inflicting economic impact on us by reducing the
| profit of our exports to them, we'll put pressure on them
| to stop that by reducing the amount that we import for
| them".
|
| It's not simple "but he hit me first" logic: it's
| macroeconomics with an actual strategy in mind.
|
| Reciprocating =/= literal copying.
| angio wrote:
| Why would you want to live in a country that bans apps like
| dictatorships do? I'd rather live in a free country.
| kyleamazza wrote:
| "Free" doesn't mean no restrictions. For example,
| apps/websites like Myspace and Facebook and anything that's
| been used to spread hate, cause bullying, or threats have
| always been a target of regulation, albeit never an
| outright ban.
|
| In the case here, it's ostensibly being done with national
| security considerations in mind. What remains to be
| determined is whether or not these concerns are valid. But
| the idea that "free" means the government has no power to
| ban things, including apps, borders naivety.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm talking about free
| trade.
| jiggyjace wrote:
| More or less. Since the 1790s the USA has regulated banks,
| communications, energy, and technology situations in similar
| fashion: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/tiktok-vote-
| house-5-things-1.7...
| bmau5 wrote:
| I thought this was DOA once Trump came out against it (after
| speaking with major donor Jeff Yass). Wondering who will end up
| being candidate buyers - Microsoft? Google?
| jayknight wrote:
| It will be bought by Truth Social /s
| andiareso wrote:
| I'm a big proponent of free speech and the first amendment, but I
| agree with the reasonings for banning it or forcing US owners.
|
| China most definitely has their hands in the data that TikTok
| amasses and given its popularity it's not an insignificant risk
| to U.S. citizens. We all know how easy it is to manipulate
| users... aka Cambridge Analytica.
|
| It'll be interesting to see what legal challenges come up if the
| bill passes the senate because that is where the real discussion
| will occur. I ultimately see it being reversed, but I can also
| see a solid framework for future bills being illuminated via the
| courts.
| Nesco wrote:
| Why shouldn't Europeans do the same with US social networks
| then?
| richbell wrote:
| Europe _is_ concerned about the influence and data-collection
| of American tech companies, and would be fully justified in
| doing something similar.
| politician wrote:
| They should, and viewed in a certain light that is what the
| GPDR and DMA are trying to achieve-- make room for native
| companies.
| bonzini wrote:
| Not necessarily making room for native companies, as the
| Silicon Valley giants have adapted. But they enforce
| certain rights, for example privacy, and if US companies
| (not just social media) do not want to comply they _are_
| forced to leave the EU. Some newspaper websites are not
| visible from Europe for that reason.
| gretch wrote:
| 1) wouldn't blame them if they did 2) we are in this military
| alliance called NATO; if you are depending on each other for
| military help, you're not thinking about social media based
| threats
| bhaney wrote:
| They're welcome to if they think it's worthwhile.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why shouldn't Europeans do the same with US social
| networks then?_
|
| We're not your foreign adversary? (If we are, we shouldn't
| have an obligation to defend you.)
|
| This bill permits TikTok's sale to a European owner. It just
| bans its ownership by a foreign adversary country.
| dbspin wrote:
| You're not a foreign adversary - you're a colonial
| overlord. If a European or other US 'ally' nation attempts
| to act against American 'national interest' their
| government is swiftly toppled - https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the...
|
| More often they don't get elected at all due to coordinated
| media campaigns influencing elections https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_United_K...
|
| The US Army literally have an entire army unit dedicated to
| running propaganda campaigns on social networks
| internationally. It's ludicrous to suggest this isn't
| employed to impact political and social policy in
| 'friendly' nations.
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-
| op...
|
| That being said, there are worse things than Pax Americana.
| I'd certainly rather living under US influence than CCP.
| I'd be the first to argue that NATO has prevented another
| war in Europe. But lets not deny the reality on the ground.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| You're making some extremely strong claims, with minimal
| evidence. I don't deny that the CIA can be pretty nasty
| to 2nd and 3rd world governments, but claiming the US is
| a "colonial overlord" over our European allies is just
| not true. The first priority of our European allies is
| domestic politics; just like us, everyone wants to get
| re-elected. Sometimes domestic politics push countries
| towards the US, sometimes they pull them away. Countries
| like Hungary and Turkey make diplomatic trouble for the
| US, and we don't launch coups against them. The US would
| love it if Germany built up a decent military, but
| Germany isn't because the political will just isn't
| there. Between the 60s and the 90s, France literally left
| NATO. Europe in general has been extremely slow to scale
| up artillery production to support Ukraine (the US has
| been better, although but not by much); if the US had as
| much power over Europe as you think we do, we would have
| just told Europe to up production and they would have.
| But this did not happen.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Gangs also offer to "defend" local businesses from other
| gangs.
| andiareso wrote:
| I'm under the impression they already do. There are lots of
| data collection rules that US companies have to follow. This
| I see as an alternative to outright banning. I'm sure
| Facebook, et. al. are audited by EU agencies to make sure
| they are in compliance.
|
| I think the reason for the outright ban is more due to it
| being a Chinese product. China isn't known to be very
| transparent.
| almatabata wrote:
| There has been a lot of attempts with multiple iterations
| (see https://www.burges-salmon.com/news-and-insight/legal-
| updates...).
|
| Sadly European intelligence services actually want US to
| spy on their citizen in order to gain access to the data
| legally.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| If they feel their relationship with the US is similar to the
| US's relationship with China in the relevant ways, then they
| absolutely should do the same. My understanding is that they
| don't feel that way, generally speaking.
|
| They _do in fact_ impose less extreme controls on data from
| these platforms, that lesser extremity presumably reflecting
| their lesser perception of the US 's use of that data as
| highly dangerous, as compared to the US's perception of
| China.
| s_dev wrote:
| >My understanding is that they don't feel that way,
| generally speaking.
|
| US tech companies currently getting slapped around with
| large fines in the EU for similar infringements of privacy
| etc.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| If they feel there is a sufficient security threat posed by
| US based social media/apps, then I see no reason why they
| shouldn't.
|
| But its pretty clear that the security threat posed by US
| based services vs certain others is starkly different,
| especially since the US is generally seen as a
| beneficial/friendly state.
| yaky wrote:
| Not Europe, but around 2015, Russia passed a law requiring
| foreign companies to store data on servers in the country.
| Then banned LinkedIn in 2016 [0], and tried to get Twitter
| and Facebook to comply in 2017-2019 [1]. All of which were
| met with ridicule from many people in the US (IIRC from
| article comments and reddit).
|
| IMO, somewhat similar situations - popular social media,
| known for data gathering, based in another country that is
| viewed as a geopolitical and/or ideological opponent and is
| often villified.
|
| 0: https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/17/technology/russia-
| linkedin-...
|
| 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/russia-tries-
| to-...
| lupusreal wrote:
| They should and I wish they would!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I can't imagine who would genuinely ask this- and it's
| suspiciously plastered in every single thread on this topic.
| Think hard! In which way is Europe and the US's relationship
| different than China and the US's relationship?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The fact that Facebook and Twitter were US-owned companies did
| nothing to stop Cambridge Analytica.
| tqi wrote:
| > We all know how easy it is to manipulate users... aka
| Cambridge Analytica.
|
| There is little to no evidence that CA was able to manipulate
| anyone other than gullible campaign managers. And frankly the
| idea that a list of pages someone liked could be used to create
| a skeleton key that turned people into Republican voters is...
| far-fetched.
| ProxCoques wrote:
| https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-
| cr...
| tqi wrote:
| > We all know how easy it is to manipulate users... aka
| Cambridge Analytica.
|
| There is little to no evidence that CA was able to manipulate
| anyone other than gullible campaign managers. And frankly the
| idea that a list of pages someone liked could be used to create
| a skeleton key that turned people into Republican voters is...
| far-fetched.
|
| Similarly, I haven't seen anyone actually articulate what the
| risk from TikTok actually is. They will eavesdrop on users? App
| store review is supposed to catch that. Promote videos about
| controversial topics to users? That's cable news. See what
| videos you have watched or liked? Doesn't seem like a big
| risk...
| piva00 wrote:
| > Similarly, I haven't seen anyone actually articulate what
| the risk from TikTok is.
|
| Profiling of a large population, you put them in cohorts, and
| slowly shift what you show to these cohorts (based on their
| preferences, worldviews, etc.) to slowly nudge them into a
| worldview you'd like. It won't be 100% effective but it can
| definitely shift perceptions, if each cohort is siloed into
| their own reality bubbles through what you show them you can
| stochastically nudge them into a view you want them to hold
| based on their preferences.
|
| If marketing works even to the people aware of how it works,
| a concerted effort to use someone's profiling data telling
| what do they like, dislike, will definitely work on a
| majority of users.
|
| It's not like it will be blunt, it only has potential if you
| use this data to slowly shift views by using what's most
| effective to each cohort, with a large amount of data you can
| be quite precise in defining these cohorts and using
| different strategies/tactics for each one depending on what's
| most effective.
|
| Have you ever worked on anything that did profiling based on
| accumulated data? I've worked on a few projects back in the
| early 2010s and even at the time it was scary how much you
| could infer about your users based on some 100-200 data
| points collected over a period of 2-5 years. Weaponising that
| is not the complicated part, the data collection is.
| rusty_venture wrote:
| This is fascinating. I think this nuanced approach to
| shifting the perspectives and beliefs of the population of
| an adversarial nation is exactly the threat that is being
| missed by other commentators saying "what does TikTok do
| that's so bad anyway?" The point is that it is extremely
| subtle and yet very powerful...if China can convince US
| citizens that China deserves to rule Taiwan, for instance,
| the US government may find itself without the popular
| support or political will to take action to protect
| Taiwanese democracy in the event of an incursion by China.
| trogdor wrote:
| >if China can convince US citizens that China deserves to
| rule Taiwan, for instance, the US government may find
| itself without the popular support or political will to
| take action to protect Taiwanese democracy in the event
| of an incursion by China
|
| What is so awful about the idea that people in the United
| States might be convinced of something? What does it
| matter who is doing the convincing? You just don't like
| the hypothetical outcome you suggested.
|
| Are you opposed to a Taiwanese propaganda campaign,
| conducted through a newly popular Taiwanese social media
| app and directed at convincing U.S. citizens to support
| Taiwan in the event of an incursion by China? What's the
| difference?
|
| I find scary the idea that the U.S. government would try
| to protect its citizens from anyone's speech or ideas.
| The best response to speech you don't like is to argue
| forcefully against it; not to suppress it. We can make up
| our own minds.
|
| I don't want the government trying to suppress or protect
| me from _thoughts_ or _ideas_ it thinks are bad.
| corimaith wrote:
| Because it's 10x harder to debunk bullshit than to claim
| it. You don't know what you don't know, and unfortunately
| the majority of people are too lazy to critically
| evaluate their views. For example, how many people
| actually read linked articles as opposed to just
| commenting based on the title?
|
| That's how modern misinformation works, you simply
| bombard social media networks until the truth is lost in
| a sea of misinformation.
|
| The difference between the truth and the lie though is
| that in the end when you actually have to implement
| policy or predict something, lies tend to eventually
| collapse in on themselves. Credibility as such emerges
| for the people/insitutions/frameworks that can
| consistently predict or give results that reflect reality
| more. But that can take years or even decades, while
| gepolitical decisions need to made today.
| basiccalendar74 wrote:
| Yes, it's cable news. But US has restrictions on foreign
| owned news.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| It's the user's choice who they want to give their data to. I'm
| way more worried about US corporations having my data. It's
| also absurd to talk about Chinese influence when Zionist
| influence is 100x worse and more dangerous.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > China most definitely has their hands in the data that TikTok
| amasses and given its popularity it's not an insignificant risk
| to U.S. citizens.
|
| At least according to their website, it seems like US data does
| not leave US data warehouses: https://usds.tiktok.com/our-
| approach-to-keeping-u-s-data-sec...
|
| I don't know the details of course but if China wants the data
| there are umpteen companies who engage in data brokerage and
| can get the info they want.
|
| I'm not for or against this bill, but it seems like really the
| issue is data collection in general, which obviously the
| Congress has no interest in regulating.
| basiccalendar74 wrote:
| Even if data doesn't leave US, we want to avoid algorithmic
| manipulation via TikTok feed.
| hawthornio wrote:
| Yeah it's sickening how the CCP is able to push their hoof
| cleaning agenda on americans /s
| hellojesus wrote:
| It's not a push. It's a pull.
|
| Americans are ejecting to get this information. You have
| to download software, optionally allow it to send you
| notifications, the purposefully open and interact with
| it.
|
| It's rational consumption. Simple as.
|
| Edit: I now realize what /s means.
| RGamma wrote:
| It's digital crack. My mind melts when I see what's going
| on there (American social media too though).
|
| Surely letting someone make your populace addicted and/or
| stupid is problematic? In a way I consider it China's
| late payback for the opium wars.
| hellojesus wrote:
| If you know your mind melts when you see it, then why
| consume it? Why install it at all?
|
| There are plenty of companies that offer digital crack:
| video games, porn, social media (including this site).
| But we must give agency to humans. We must acknowledge
| that they make decisions voluntarily.
|
| Regardless of the source, either we should regulate data,
| including streaming videos of all kinds, or we don't.
| Singling out a company seems like a political stunt with
| zero real world impact. And a bad policy at that.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| This logic is not going to hold up in court. You cannot ban
| access to propaganda in the US.
| LargeWu wrote:
| This isn't about regulating what content American
| citizens are creating. It's about regulating the
| involvement of adversarial foreign governments to
| distribute that information. These are quite separate
| concerns.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| That page does say data does not leave the US.
|
| _minimizing employee access to U.S. user data and minimizing
| data transfers across regions - including to China._
|
| It is "minimized", or in other words, accessible from China.
| LargeWu wrote:
| I think there's probably no way we can trust the data isn't
| going to China. This is China we're talking about.
|
| But I don't even think the real problem is videos of high
| school girls doing choreographed dances going to China. The
| problem is psyops and disinformation. I think it's much more
| likely TikTok could be, and probably has been, used to sow
| political discord. It's not hard to imagine the Chinese
| government "suggesting" to TikTok that they alter their
| algorithm to promote content that, say, discourages people
| from voting, or promoting political violence, or eschewing
| vaccinations.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Funnily enough, this is why I prefer Chinese devices and apps
| as a Westerner living in the West. My threat vector is my local
| security apparatus coercing my data or my devices.
| Correspondingly, If I were living in China, I'd consider it
| safer to use Western tech. Meanwhile, I don't really care what
| China does with my stuff _while I 'm not in China_, I just hope
| that China doesn't collude with my local authorities.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| It's not what China does with _your specific information_ but
| what it does with the aggregate and how it can manipulate
| that aggregate.
| dmos62 wrote:
| What happens to your argument if you consider that Western
| actors can manipulate you the same as China? Even more so,
| given that they have more power over you (presuming you're
| based in the West).
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| My argument isn't assuming there is no manipulation from
| the West and as someone who lives in the West, I'd rather
| to have one less avenue for manipulation.
| LunaSea wrote:
| And this is how your fridge sent spam emails and your
| thermometer took part in a DDoS attack.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Would be interesting to know if there is any data regarding
| the degree of cooperation between hostile countries. If I use
| two VPNs from countries who hate each other am I completely
| untrackable?
| esoterica wrote:
| If you truly believe in the principles of free speech, no
| matter how offensive and evil and cynically motivated, then the
| logical conclusion of that belief is that adversarial foreign
| governments have the right to propagandize in America and to
| Americans. If you abandon your principles the moment someone
| invokes the foreign menace then you don't really have
| principles.
|
| People like to think of themselves as being pro-freedom because
| it's hip and cool and they are brainwashed from a young age to
| be proud to live in "the land of the free" but the moments you
| interrogate those beliefs a little they start to fall apart.
| It's more of a political aesthetic than a true belief system.
| riversflow wrote:
| I don't think freedom of speech should be given to any
| collective. _Individuals_ should enjoy it as an absolute
| right, but a corporation is a legal construct undeserving of
| such natural rights.
|
| A similar example, people should be able to freely assemble,
| corporations should not be able to form cartels.
| chzblck wrote:
| Is there anyone who is actually upset about this?
| nekoashide wrote:
| My wife, me on the other hand? I don't use it
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| The people who work there are probably not happy about this.
| ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote:
| Tankies
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Nurses.
| bhaney wrote:
| The millions of people addicted to the platform probably
| include at least a few who don't want it banned.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| Yes, I am. I should get to use any app, under any ownership
| that I choose. This is a violation of my rights.
| oasisaimlessly wrote:
| Errr, you don't currently get to choose who owns your apps.
| _record scratch_
| bluefishinit wrote:
| I get to choose the apps I use and certainly can (and do)
| take who owns them into consideration.
| ooterness wrote:
| It's government overreach. No law should ever target a specific
| company; this is not how free-market capitalism works.
| endtime wrote:
| Yes, just read through this thread.
| hawthornio wrote:
| Yes, this is a bullshit distraction issue. Our congresspeople
| should be focused on other things, e.g., stopping the genocide
| of Palestinians, protecting LGBTQ/trans rights, reducing the
| cost of living for average americans.
| quyleanh wrote:
| Such a freedom. But it's understandable that the US election day
| is coming.
| kshacker wrote:
| Precisely. Not sure it gets passed but let's say it does. Today
| is March 13th plus a week for senate and President. Takes
| effect in 6 months. Right in the middle of the campaign.
| Someone will say we did it. Someone else will say not enough.
| But we get the freedom to not use it :)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Amazing how quickly they can pass these kinds of bills and yet
| how long they take to pass ones that would better help the
| average person.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| To be honest, I think they've been talking about this since the
| Trump campaign or sometimes shortly thereafter, quickly
| wouldn't be the adjective coming to mind thinking about this
| situation
| throwaway237289 wrote:
| Don't be fooled by talk about security or privacy.
|
| This is simple Nation State realpolitik. TikTok is a propaganda
| threat controlled by a non-friendly state to the US.
|
| Any other way to look at this is naive.
| xxpor wrote:
| Nation State realpolitik _is_ security.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| You know they can both be true simultaneously, right?
|
| It's a perfectly well understood fact that our nations use
| businesses, and literally every other avenue possible to spy on
| and propagandize each other's populations
|
| As a result, each nation has to counter that it does so mostly
| privately, but sometimes very publicly.
|
| This is all part of the totally broken, absolutely run by
| children, international relations system.
|
| It's exceptionally mundane and exceptionally bad for all
| citizens as a result. However it's great for business. So
| you're not going to see a change until citizens demand
| different international economic, political, communications and
| relations structure that isn't based on competition.
| rusty_venture wrote:
| What's your point? China literally has a nationwide firewall to
| prevent Western ideas from entering the minds of its subjects.
| Why should we throw open our digital borders to Chinese
| influence campaigns? "The supreme art of war is to defeat the
| enemy without fighting", e.g. to undermine Americans' faith in
| our democratic institutions, to gain the ability to compromise
| our critical infrastructure, and to influence our politics. All
| explicitly stated goals of both Bejing and the Kremlin, and the
| misinformation and distraction campaigns carried out by Russia
| in the last presidential election are about to ratchet up
| again. I don't believe we should be making these objectives any
| easier for our ideological rivals.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| The point is that the West painted itself as the defender of
| freedom, democracy and free markets. Going beyond, it claimed
| that (in the post Reagan/Thatcher era) that free markets are
| a prerequisite for being a rich country. Yet, the moment free
| markets became inconvenient, the west dropped that narrative
| and went full protectionist. As a result, China gets a
| propaganda victory in the eyes of non-Western nations.
|
| All things considered, it's a minor problem for the US/West.
| Just looking like hypocrites. Compared to, say, the 2003 Iraq
| war it's a nothingburger.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It's not hypocrisy to expect free trade to go both ways.
|
| China blocks many major Western websites and apps.
| Reciprocating is far from unfair: https://en.m.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _West painted itself as the defender of freedom, democracy
| and free markets_
|
| China is not free, not a democracy, and not a free market,
| so there no hypocrisy. What was crazy was supporting the
| one sided relationship where we export our industry and
| production capacity to China while they block and steal
| from our businesses.
|
| I'd support TikTok in the US if China gets rid of their
| firewall.
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| > Why should we throw open our digital borders to Chinese
| influence campaigns?
|
| Because we are not China and our institutions are built on
| presumption of freedom of speech and freedom of thought and
| democracy. If we start emulating China, we will become China.
| Our institutions are supposed to be robust enough to handle
| local and foreign propaganda and if they are not, then
| censorship is certainly not a solution that would be
| compatible with the liberal democratic values that we are
| supposed to hold.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Free trade should go both ways.
|
| It's ridiculous to let Chinese apps and websites operate in
| the West when China blocks so many Western sites and apps:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in
| _...
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| The basic benefits of free trade (based on comparative
| advantage) do not require both parties to engage in it
|
| They make a superior dancing video app, so then engineers
| in silicon valley can go work on something else instead
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The point is that they get to access the Western market
| with their dancing video app, but Westerners aren't
| allowed to access _their_ market with the apps they make.
| That gives those Chinese companies an unfair advantage in
| potential market reach.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| And it turns out that that's irrelevant in terms of net
| benefit to the citizen of a country
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
|
| Resources are reallocated elsewhere
| zone411 wrote:
| A simplistic economic model that overlooks hundreds of
| important factors may provide a basic Econ 101
| understanding but it does not reflect how the world truly
| operates and proves nothing.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Sure it's a simple model. But the burden of proof lies
| with the person claiming that free trade needs to be
| bilateral. That's not some inherent property of it, or
| something immediately obvious. A basic look at it past
| "It's not faaiiiiiir" actually shows quite the opposite
| tzs wrote:
| Free trade generally does not mean you have to let
| foreign companies operating in your country do things
| that domestic companies are not allowed to do.
|
| Most of those sites are not in China not because China
| says that they cannot operate there but rather because
| China say they would have to obey the same rules Chines
| companies do. That generally involves things like storing
| data on Chinese citizens only on servers in China,
| censoring things the government wants censored, and
| giving the government easy access to information
| including identifying information to unmask anonymous
| posters.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| This is post hoc nonsense. China blocked US tech
| companies so that they could copy what the US companies
| do without any threat of superior competition.
| rwmj wrote:
| That's nice, but you have to defend democracy from people
| who wish to overthrow it.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| Is every heterodox narrative immediately "intolerance" in
| your view?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| US Citizens still have the same freedom of speech and
| freedom of thought and democracy. Those rights don't extend
| to foreign adversaries. If you want to relay Chinese or
| Russian or Ukrainian or Israeli or Hamas propaganda, you
| are completely free to do it, without censorship. Limiting
| the ability of any of those countries to project it within
| the US is reasonable stance.
| grecy wrote:
| You're limiting the information US Citizens can get from
| the outside world - therefore you are limiting their
| freedom of thought and access to information.
|
| I think it's a dangerous road to go down, the US is
| already extremely inwards facing and suffers from not
| knowing much about the outside world. I've had hundreds
| of US Citizens talk to me face to face who don't know
| what language we speak in Australia, don't know we use
| different money, not know the seasons are backwards, not
| know it's a 15 hour flight, not know we don't have a
| president, etc. etc. (this list is endless). US Citizens
| are not very well educated about how things work in other
| countries, clearly to their own detriment.
|
| Just yesterday I was talking to a friend in the US saying
| my friend has 18 months fully paid maternity leave and he
| almost fell over. His wife got 10 weeks. Many countries
| do things better than the US, and it's dangerous to limit
| US Citizens learning about that, else they will have no
| notion things can be (and are) better elsewhere, and
| should be improved.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _limiting the information US Citizens can get from the
| outside world_
|
| Nothing is being censored. TikTok.com will still work.
| This bill limits TikTok's distribution, not existence nor
| even access to Americans.
| grecy wrote:
| > _This bill limits TikTok's distribution, not existence
| nor even access to Americans._
|
| Wait for it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| By that logic we shouldn't have speed limits because it's
| a slippery slope to banning cars.
| lancesells wrote:
| Where is freedom of speech involved with changing the
| ownership of a company?
| tzs wrote:
| > All explicitly stated goals of both Bejing and the Kremlin,
| and the misinformation and distraction campaigns carried out
| by Russia in the last presidential election are about to
| ratchet up again. I don't believe we should be making these
| objectives any easier for our ideological rivals.
|
| Those campaigns mostly took part on platforms owned and
| operated by US companies.
| basisword wrote:
| >> China literally has a nationwide firewall to prevent
| Western ideas from entering the minds of its subjects. Why
| should we throw open our digital borders to Chinese influence
| campaigns?
|
| Emulating the policies of a country 'we' think 'is bad' isn't
| great policy.
|
| >> undermine Americans' faith in our democratic institutions
|
| It seems like Americans did a pretty good job of this
| themselves at the last election cycle. A highly politicised
| Supreme Court, a violent attack on the Capitol, a lot of
| people who don't accept or believe the election result. How
| much worse can TikTok make things?
| rusty_venture wrote:
| >> Emulating the policies of a country 'we' think 'is bad'
| isn't great policy.
|
| The paradox of tolerance.
|
| >> A highly politicised Supreme Court, a violent attack on
| the Capitol, a lot of people who don't accept or believe
| the election result.
|
| 2 out of 3 of these were precipitated by foreign influence
| campaigns on social media actively undermining Americans'
| trust in our political institutions, so yeah, prohibiting
| foreign-owned social media networks in advance of the
| upcoming election is definitely a step in the right
| direction.
| basisword wrote:
| >> 2 out of 3 of these were precipitated by foreign
| influence campaigns on social media actively undermining
| Americans' trust in our political institutions
|
| Why is nothing being done about Facebook, Instagram,
| Twitter, Truth Social, etc. etc? There are more users on
| Facebook alone.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| What propaganda is TikTok pushing?
|
| Besides if your country is strong enough you should be able to
| shrug it off. France recently put the right to abortion in the
| Constitution despite American media.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _TikTok is a propaganda threat controlled by a non-friendly
| state to the US_
|
| Yes. Would you have been offended when during the Revolutionary
| War we restricted British propaganda? German and Nazi
| propaganda in the World Wars? Soviet propaganda in the Cold
| War?
|
| Let's reverse the roles. How thrilled would we be if _we_ could
| have had a propaganda arm active and accepted in Nazi Germany
| or the CCCP? If we had person-by-person profiles of interests
| and affiliations for every person in Russia or Iran?
| which wrote:
| I wouldn't be offended but we didn't really do any of that,
| at least not as a systematic government effort. We required
| registration of foreign agents which the government used as a
| basis to stop Nazi propaganda newspapers when they didn't
| register. But they had the option to register. Sputnik radio
| is registered and broadcasting today in the US. The strict
| interpretation of the Espionage Act that Wilson et al wanted
| was later overturned.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| We absolutely restricted distribution of state-controlled
| news.
|
| We didn't block it. Same as, even if ByteDance refuses to
| divest, this bill wouldn't block TikTok from being accessed
| on the web. It's just taking it out of American app stores
| and off American hosting services.
| hellojesus wrote:
| What do you think will happen when all Americans start
| side-loading it?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What do you think will happen when all Americans start
| side-loading it?_
|
| We will have a new debate.
|
| Nobody wants to kill TikTok. There is simply way too much
| money in it.
| hellojesus wrote:
| If nobody wants to kill TikTok, then what is the point of
| removing it from the app store?
|
| Has anyone considered that the content pushed on TikTok
| is _actually_ the content Americans want? Perhaps the
| reason TikTok is super popular is precisely because of
| their tailored content.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Is there any evidence it's been used for propaganda? I don't
| use TikTok a lot, but it seems very non-political (maybe it's
| my filter bubble). The real cesspool of hatred and madness is
| Facebook - but of course Congress doesn't care too much about
| that.
|
| As far as I remember from the previous elections the Russian
| bots were operating on US based platforms
| catskul2 wrote:
| non-political is political. Do you imagine that there aren't
| people making political TikToks? Or that non-political themes
| don't affect politics? Or that bubble control doesn't affect
| politics?
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Sorry, what? How are my dancing Korean girls and cat videos
| affecting politics?
| itishappy wrote:
| You're focusing on them instead of politics. "Panem et
| circenses" is a political tactic.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Gosh, no politics in my relaxing doom-scrolling video
| app. Is it some nefarious plot to pacify the evil
| capitalists.. or wait... maybe they just know what
| consumers want?
| itishappy wrote:
| Doesn't have to be a ploy or even intentional, but if
| boomers watch Fox while zoomers watch dancing... that has
| political implications.
| colpabar wrote:
| It's confusing, but I think I can explain. If you are
| able to enjoy your life and not worry about something for
| any period of time, you are actually making a political
| statement that everyone else is wrong and you think they
| deserve to die. Every problem in the world must be your
| problem too, forever and always.
| hn_acker wrote:
| catskul2's comment was very ambiguous, but a charitable
| interpretation of the first part
|
| > non-political is political. Do you imagine that there
| aren't people making political TikToks?
|
| is that you are indeed in a filter bubble of non-
| political content which exists alongside political
| content. One example of political content on TikTok
| within the larger Israel-Hamas war topic was the brief
| trend of commenting on Osama bin Laden's manifesto called
| "Letter to America" [1]. If you were (not saying that you
| are) knowingly ignoring the existence of political
| content on a specific topic on TikTok, then you would be
| making an inherently political decision (which does not
| mean that you should change your decision).
|
| [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/osama-bin-
| ladens-lette...
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| >Non-political is political
|
| Is war also peace and freedom also slavery?
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > Is war also peace
|
| Si vis pacem, para bellum
|
| > freedom also slavery
|
| Total freedom for one includes their ability to enslave
| others.
|
| My point is, you're presenting false dichotomies to
| justify another (the political and the non-political).
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Uuuh, _yes_?
|
| If your populist parties aren't on it, they're incompetent.
| mathgorges wrote:
| I suppose that depends on what you mean by "propaganda".
| Personally I think it can be convincingly argued that any
| message transmitted to you from a State is propaganda
|
| (Note: that means that I don't believe that all propaganda is
| inherently evil, sometimes your interests align with a State.
| For example governments paying for advertising to discourage
| smoking is a great thing, IMO!)
|
| I've never lived in China, but I've spoken with many people
| that have and my understanding is that allegiance to the
| State (eg, the State's sole stewards the CCP) is a big part
| of life there. I've even been told that staying in the good
| graces of the State's only official political party is
| important if you want to do things like buy property or start
| a business.
|
| TikTok is administrated by humans, many of whom live in
| China.
|
| Those humans are, I assume, ambitious and want to do well for
| themselves and therefore likely want to appease the State.
|
| Therefore, when I read articles about how the administrators
| of TikTok can effectively decide what goes viral it makes me
| fear what I've begun calling 'incidental' propaganda.
|
| Probably those China-based administrations at TikTok don't
| want to actively harm American society, but it's certainly
| true that America and China have different interests in the
| world. I assume that any administrators in China will never
| choose to make something go viral if it is critical of the
| Chinese State or its interests.
|
| You can see how that might skew things for those that only
| get their news from TikTok, right?
|
| (This is my understanding and thinking on things right now
| given the information I have. I gladly welcome any new
| information if someone reads this and disagrees. But please
| be kind :))
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Having lived there for several years I didn't find the
| state some ever-present aspect of life - but it doesn't
| seem particularly relevant
|
| Your line of reasoning seems fine, but it basically applies
| to any "other". If some European decides what goes viral,
| he is going to subject poor stupid american viewers to
| their nefarious European biases - and those biases may harm
| our society!
|
| Furthermore the biases of US based company executives may
| harm our society as well. I'll grant you that they may be
| less inclined, but gosh, rage bait and selling sweets to
| children does make them a whole lot of money.
|
| So the logic isn't wrong, but it seems to be applied
| selectively in cases that just happen to benefit large
| American tech companies - who are incapable of providing US
| consumers a product that's nearly as good as Tiktok
|
| Maybe biases in algorithms need to addressed.. But that
| should be done in a thoughtful unbiased holistic that
| applied equally to everyone - instead of this embarrassing
| kneejerk "the commies are taking over" kind of way
| mathgorges wrote:
| That is a fair critique of my current thinking :)
|
| I'll certainly agree that the 'red scare' vibe to this
| bill makes me uncomfortable -- even if I agree with the
| action overall.
|
| I certainly am biased towards companies that operate in a
| way that I'm familiar with. In the companies I've worked
| in delivering value to shareholders trumps all else at
| the end of the day. (I don't love it but it's
| predictable)
|
| As you allude to that causes some quite nefarious
| behavior, but it's predictable to me for the most part.
|
| To me, this is in contrast with what I see happening in
| the Chinese market. Again, this is colored by my
| experience. From the outside looking in it appears that
| companies based in China bend much further to appease
| their government than in the markets I've worked in (US,
| UK and Japan) and that makes me less inclined to trust
| them.
| falcolas wrote:
| Are folks using it to distribute propaganda? Yes.
|
| Is there evidence - any evidence whatsoever - that CCP or
| bytedance is using tiktok to push a particular flavor of
| propaganda? No.
|
| That said, TikTok's moderation is quite unfriendly to LGBTQ+
| and Palestine creators (even though they find ways around
| it).
| tempsy wrote:
| The 60 minutes episode last year (?) insinuated that the
| CCP's main goal is social disorder eg they heavily restrict
| the Chinese version for kids to be education oriented where
| the American version is basically all ages softcore porn
| and ragebait.
| rchaud wrote:
| In other words they have content restrictions in their
| country as with TV and other media, while the
| international version is more similar to its competition
| in Instagram?
| harkinian wrote:
| The YouTube and Facebook short-video recommendations I
| got when those features launched were mostly young women
| wearing very little and doing something that I'm guessing
| is not the main point of the video. YouTube knows I like
| music, so it gave me women playing violin in tiny skirts,
| though I think this stopped happening at some point.
|
| I didn't even watch the videos, they insisted on putting
| them on the home page despite me giving 0 engagement. I
| finally adblocked the element.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| As someone who has actually used douyin (about one or two
| years ago) I can say for certain that that isn't true in
| the general case. Perhaps the rules are a bit stricter
| but I saw absolutely zero educational content at all in
| any form. I did see some military videos which seemed
| like propaganda as they showed up randomly but its hard
| to say if those only showed up because I watched the
| first one to its end for example. The only possibility is
| that they only enable the education mode if you are
| actually located in China or if you sign in as a child or
| something. But it didn't seem to be the default
| experience from what I saw first hand. It shows you want
| you want to see.
| brandensilva wrote:
| Id like to see the Uighar camps but sure as heck known
| that isn't happening. /s
|
| It's hard for me to imagine a lot isn't filtered out.
| There is a reason they have a separate app. It's likely
| one is heavily filtered and the other is their propaganda
| tool but I'd like to see more evidence to indicate that
| but it's a hard thing to track given they could be just
| feeding kids the worst things for them or favorable views
| to their party and we wouldn't even know.
| falcolas wrote:
| > American version is basically all ages softcore porn
| and ragebait.
|
| My own experience, as well as my partner's, disputes
| this. My content is generally creators in the
| neurodivergant, LGTBQIA+, power generation for Alaska
| towns, wildlife rescues, D&D, cosplay, and news.
|
| Only the last can occasionally contain ragebait, but it's
| generally not. Most of the things that make me angry are
| those like Nex Benedict's death, the death toll in Gaza
| strip, women being treated poorly by doctors, etc. Actual
| issues brought up in real time, not manufactured outrage.
|
| My partner's content is generally "customer states",
| cats, dogs, ferrets, and couples sharing the amusing
| parts of their lives.
|
| A data sample of only two, to be sure, but the absence of
| softcore porn and ragebait entirely makes 60 minutes'
| claims suspect.
| tempsy wrote:
| yes every person's feed is entirely different based on
| watch history.
|
| that's not what i'm talking about.
|
| start a completely new profile and see what is
| recommended.
| falcolas wrote:
| > start a completely new profile and see what is
| recommended.
|
| That just speaks to what people in general find
| interesting. Instagram and YouTube shorts do the same
| thing.
|
| Use the app for more than two minutes, and you're out of
| the "popular" bubble.
| tempsy wrote:
| It's not just that because social platforms have the
| ability to easily uprank content they want people to see
| which is entirely the point here.
| junon wrote:
| Your comment contradicts even itself, and is refuted by
| several comments in this thread.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Yes, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39633652
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Here is a study which compares the prevalence of topics on
| Instagram with the prevalence of topics on TikTok, and shows
| that topics which are sensitive to the CCP (Tibet, Hong Kong)
| occur 5-10x less frequently than comparable topics which are
| not sensitive to the CCP
|
| https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-
| ing...
| retrochameleon wrote:
| I remember seeing a study that compared the content TikTok
| served to children in China vs other countries. I would have
| to look and find it again.
|
| But basically, Chinese children got lots of science,
| engineering, and other educational content, while other
| countries got your run of the mill generic time-wasting
| nothingburger nonsense kind of content.
|
| Food for thought.
| rchaud wrote:
| Check out the difference between CNN International and CNN
| US. One is a proper news channel covering US and Intl
| affairs and competing for influence with BBC, NHK, France
| 24 and DW.
|
| The other is a editorial banter from talking heads
| discussing 2 political parties like they're competing with
| ESPN.
| retrochameleon wrote:
| Well yeah I don't rely on any major media outlets to stay
| informed. At least various perspectives are allowed to
| exist in America as opposed to bringing "black-vanned" in
| China
| ericmcer wrote:
| This is 100% anecdotal and lacks any kind of research, but...
| I heard it was a more subtle propaganda. The American feeds
| could have messages about how bad the economy is, how futile
| working is in a corrupt system, how depressed and traumatized
| your peers are.
|
| On the opposite side you would fill it with messages about
| the virtues of hard work, stories of success and happiness,
| etc.
| rsaz wrote:
| That seems possible, but that might just have to do with
| the state of the culture before TikTok anyways. Maybe the
| doom and gloom among young people in North America is
| because of other factors and content relating to it just
| happens to get more popular. China might have a more
| positive population right now, that makes and supports more
| positive content.
| fullshark wrote:
| I think it's both. You don't think it's possible TikTok usage
| data is being accumulated for prominent Americans and/or their
| children for the purpose of intelligence gathering? I'd
| actually be surprised if it wasn't happening.
| basisword wrote:
| ...what 'intelligence' would they be gathering though? What
| actionable intelligence could be cleaned from someones TikTok
| viewing habits?
| fullshark wrote:
| Off the top of my head you could potentially find closeted
| homosexuals, who could be leveraged.
|
| Edit: Not to mention location data alone is valuable. The
| entire intelligence community runs on information, all of
| it has some value.
| rchaud wrote:
| Tiktol doesn't use location unless you explicitly turn it
| on. It also asks for storage access only if you click the
| download button.
| lancesells wrote:
| Name, age, location, politics, device, amount of time
| spent, interests, etc.
|
| The easiest actionable thing would be propoganda of some
| sort, but there's a chance of a lot of smart people working
| on something that I can't imagine. I'm not saying this
| happening, but looking at Youtube and Meta, it's not hard
| to imagine.
| itishappy wrote:
| It's an election year. Intelligence can include things like
| your political affiliation and level of engagement, and can
| be (ab)used by targeting specific areas/demographics with
| supportive/decisive content. Think Theil's Palantir, but
| controlled by a foreign government.
| catskul2 wrote:
| Can you really not imagine how a nation state could get
| valuable intelligence by having an intimate knowledge of
| how a large portion of another nation states population is
| thinking?
| rightbyte wrote:
| You can like ask people in the street? Oracle runs TikTok
| anyway in the US, right?
|
| The danger with TikTok is inherent to all these
| algorithmic feeds. It is like, bad for you. People get
| mentally ill from them.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Quite a lot! There are articles ad infinitum about how
| specifically tailored the TikTok algorithm is for many
| users.
|
| I certainly think that knowing very specifically what a
| substantial portion of a county/market's population is
| interested in qualifies as intelligence.
|
| How effectively you make that information actionable is up
| to the creativity of your intelligence/advertising
| apparatus.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm sure how terrible American teenagers are at dancing is
| vital intelligence information.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Another way to look at it is the fact that China does not let
| American social media in its market. Why should America give
| China access to it's markets when that's not reciprocated?
| nova22033 wrote:
| TikTok is banned in China.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| But ByteDance, TikTok's owner, operates it's own analogous
| app in China, Douyin
| est wrote:
| Which means Tiktok was banned.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| TikTok is Douyin with a different coat of paint. They're
| near identical apps run by the same company, ByteDance.
| It's not banned in China, it just has a different name.
| dotancohen wrote:
| And different content, which is what matters.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Sure, by virtue of China's stricter regulation of social
| media. But for all intents and purposes, Douyin _is_
| TikTok in China. Or rather TikTok is Douyin in the rest
| of the world outside of China.
| tsol wrote:
| Americans spend a lot of time complaining about
| artificial Chinese filtering. It makes sense they'd serve
| them different content.
| nova22033 wrote:
| Why isn't TikTok available in China? Do you think it
| makes business sense to operate two different apps if
| they're "analogous"?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Douyin _is_ TikTok in China. Or perhaps it 's more
| appropriate to say that TikTok is the export version of
| Douyin.
|
| Reasons for having two apps are rife with speculation.
| One is that censorship in Douyin is more prevalent than
| on the export version (that one is pretty obvious).
| There's also speculation that the export version of
| Douyin has an algorithm tuned to be more addictive.
|
| But let's be clear, by ByteDance's own statements the two
| apps have shared management and technology.
| itishappy wrote:
| Americans claim to value open access to information. We could
| go even further and implement a copy of the great firewall of
| China, but should we?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| No, we shouldn't. Be we also shouldn't be schmucks that
| give market access that isn't reciprocated. Most free trade
| agreements work on reciprocity. We agree not to put tariffs
| on country X's cars because they agree not to put tariffs
| on ours. A ban is essentially an infinite tariff. If that's
| how a foreign country is going to treat American companies,
| why not respond in kind?
| itishappy wrote:
| Because it goes against one of our purported values. I'd
| hope that this action had some inherent merit (I'm not
| claiming it doesn't), and it's not just retaliation.
|
| Are we protecting America's trade interests with this
| bill? I don't think so...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What purported value is it going against? Allowing market
| access to countries that don't reciprocate is not one of
| our values. Nor is it one of China's. Or most countries,
| for that matter. When other countries erect tariffs, we
| usually respond on kind. And when we raise tariffs other
| countries - including close friends like Canada - they
| respond with their own tariffs against American imports
| too.
|
| You've got it backwards: reciprocal trade agreements are
| the norm not just in US politics but across the world.
| itishappy wrote:
| Freedom of expression. Our government is banning a major
| platform that Americans use to access information.
|
| Are we doing this because they banned Facebook? Again, I
| don't think so.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| We're banning the _company_ not the ability to express.
| They can upload the exact same videos to YouTube shorts,
| Instagram Reels, and who knows how many alternatives.
| z_ wrote:
| What about ByteDance's freedom of expression?
| LunaSea wrote:
| They are owned by a Chinese company and thus have no
| rights
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What about Meta's freedom of expression in China?
|
| This is the foundation of reciprocal trade agreements: We
| don't put tariffs on your cars if you don't put tariffs
| on ours. We don't ban your social media companies if you
| don't ban ours.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| ByteDance is a Chinese corporation. The US federal
| government does not govern it and has no responsibility
| to allow a Chinese corporation to express itself in the
| US by publishing propaganda.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| US freedom of expression applies only to US residents not
| to foreign govt controlled companies lol. And that is
| good.
| z_ wrote:
| Does the Citizens United ruling have a say?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| No. Citizens United covered PAC donations. Nowhere did it
| rule that the government cannot restrict foreign social
| media companies.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Nope, go read it. Once again, the first amendment applies
| only to US entities.
|
| Unless China is part of the US, I don't see how
| CCP/Bytedance can get First Amendment protection.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _open access to information_
|
| Nobody proposed blocking TikTok.com. It's just limiting its
| distribution.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| So, all 160 million US TikTok users install a PWA of
| TikTok and everything is fine then? I highly doubt it
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _all 160 million US TikTok users install a PWA of
| TikTok and everything is fine_
|
| I'm not saying the bill is performative. The app-store
| and hosting ban _will_ be effective. The point is nothing
| will be censored. Distribution will have been curtailed.
| simonsarris wrote:
| Americans have more than one value at a time. Americans
| also claim to value fairness, and they conduct trade with
| all kinds of people. If some of those people fail to
| conduct trade fairly, Americans do not need to oblige those
| failures.
| itishappy wrote:
| Totally agree! We have conflicting motivations here, so I
| think it's important to know what's driving this! (I'm
| not confident in my understanding.)
| RobotToaster wrote:
| That's false, American social media simply refused to follow
| Chinese law. (I believe facebook specifically refused to
| remove accounts belonging to ETIM/TIP, an organisation
| recognised by the UN, EU and at the time the USA as a
| terrorist group)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Incorrect, Facebook is flat out banned in China no matter
| whether they comply with CCP censorship. I'm very
| interested in sources to substantiate the claim that
| Facebook is refusing to ban groups that even the US
| designates as terrorists.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Here's at least one source http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/k
| indle/2014-10/02/content_18692... Although I appear to be
| wrong that it was specifically what caused the block.
|
| I'd be interested to know the source of your claim that
| facebook wouldn't be allowed if it complied fully with
| Chinese law?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| One, this article was published years after Facebook was
| blocked in China so it can't be the cause of the block.
| Also, China daily is a propaganda outlet.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Daily
|
| It's literally run by the "Central Propaganda
| Department".
| tw1984 wrote:
| Zuckerberg tried damn hard to get his crap into China, he
| even asked the Chinese president Xi in person to name his
| unborn baby. He became quite "unfriendly" to China/CCP
| after all those efforts got him nothing in return.
| codedokode wrote:
| So if TikTok was fully sponsored by the govt and didn't show
| ads and didn't earn any profit in US, then it can continue
| operating in US?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You can profit off of recording viewership patterns and
| activities, too. It's be very hard to prove ByteDance isn't
| doing that.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Bunch of useful idiots here, run while you still can.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Every useful idiot is one kind interaction away from being a
| useless critical thinker :)
| angryasian wrote:
| xenophobic nonsense.
| partiallypro wrote:
| US national security adversaries are platform neutral. If
| TikTok is banned, they'll just put more resources into the
| things that aren't banned. Twitter is owned by Elon Musk, who
| by all accounts spouts Russian propaganda daily, and changed
| the algorithm to where it makes up a solid 50% of my "For
| You"...and I have yet to see many, if any, Republicans or
| Democrats saying we should ban it, or even yank Elon's security
| clearance, or sever his government contracts. I don't see how
| you can have it both ways.
|
| TikTok shouldn't be banned, and if it is, it could eventually
| open the door for US owned companies without "direct" ties to
| also be forced "divest." Some of Facebook and Twitter's biggest
| investors are not exactly US allies. To me, it's a slippery
| slope. The "tit for tat" argument also falls flat to me, the US
| shouldn't try to mimic being China. China's attempts to wall
| itself off from the world have hurt it more than helped it.
|
| If we really wanted to address this, we'd just have legislation
| on personal data in general, not this company targeting
| nonsense; but we'll never do that because
| Facebook/Twitter/Google/Microsoft/etc all have their hands
| lining the pockets of plenty of lobbyists in DC. They just
| maybe don't realize, or care, at the moment that eventually
| their own allegiances will be called into question.
| codedokode wrote:
| But if Western people are generally not dumb, are patriotic and
| think rationally, they won't believe foreign propaganda, and so
| there is no need to ban TikTok, right?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > think rationally
|
| Not teenagers, TikTok's main target
| hellojesus wrote:
| Thankfully parents were invented to regulate them.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Do you think the govt. has zero responsibility in the
| welfare of our nation's children?
|
| If a foreign adversary attacks, can parents alone protect
| their children?
|
| Let me get this clear:
|
| 1. you don't want govt to act for children because
| "parents", 2. you don't want govt to act for adults
| because they are "rational".
| hellojesus wrote:
| > 1. you don't want govt to act for children because
| "parents"
|
| > 2. you don't want govt to act for adults because they
| are "rational".
|
| Yes. This is absolutely correct from my perspective.
| Parents have agency over their children. They are there
| to guide or, if necessary, inact tyrannical laws.
|
| Adults have agency. Nobody is a victim of TikTok
| involuntarily. Adults are making a choice to use it or
| allow their children to use it.
|
| From what exactly is the government saving US citizens by
| banning TikTok from the app store, or more generally? And
| how can we be sure that this banning power won't expand
| over time?
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| It's not even just about propaganda. Watch Tik Tok videos in
| China and it's all young people helping the elderly, learning
| job skills, and doing other socially virtuous things. Watch Tik
| Tok videos outside of China and it's all videos of kids
| stealing cars, eating Tide pods, and pranking people in Home
| Depot.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| TikTok shows you what you want to see. I see a lot of musical
| covers, dumb jokes about the Dune films, standup comedy
| clips. I don't know what first ~20 videos a brand new account
| with no history sees but this caricature of TikTok (Tide
| Pods? really?) is pretty outdated.
| andrewla wrote:
| Just to be clear, is this based on your own experience, or
| did you just see a video or news article (or other piece of
| propaganda) making this claim?
| rany_ wrote:
| I mostly get some science videos and old comedy sketches. It
| will just recommend content you're into, same as any other
| social media network.
| Brybry wrote:
| I think forcing a sale of TikTok is fine -- after all China
| effectively does the same thing for all US companies in China.
|
| But H.R. 7521 gives power to handle more than TikTok. (g)(3)(B)
| [1] certainly looks to me like it can be used by any President
| to pressure or outright censor many foreign sites and apps.
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-
| bill/7521...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Pass a privacy law, stop arbitrarily banning. What exactly would
| be the justification for forcing the sale rather than passing a
| law solving the _actual_ problem?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| To do the second thing, you'd need some kind of statement of
| what the problem was.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| ... which can be understood and articulated by the median
| congressperson. A tall order indeed.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| The actual problem is threat of algo manipulation in times of
| crisis. But they apparently don't want to make that their
| argument. It's the only valid justification imo. Data privacy
| should apply to all companies.
| nrb wrote:
| It's probably an issue of messaging: telling a population
| that someone is misusing the information, potentially
| militarily, is an easier pill to swallow than telling them
| they are susceptible to algorithmic manipulation by a foreign
| adversary. And do they even want to open the can of worms
| about their susceptibility to domestic manipulation?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| What would the privacy law entail? Would a privacy law even
| prevent the CCP from pushing content onto every American who
| uses TikTok?
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| TikTok has no reason to follow US law. It is doubtful they will
| allow auditors to ensure compliance.
| tsylba wrote:
| Grifter content creator in fear for their revenue stream.
| mynameishere wrote:
| So much trash and they ban this trash because China controls it.
| I honestly can't think of one thing China has done to harm me.
| The people who control the US media, however...
| lagichikool wrote:
| Maybe not you personally millions of Americans are being
| directly harmed by China every year.
|
| They're threatening to invade Taiwan, a friendly and sovereign
| country. They're supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
| They're spying and stealing IP. They're harassing and
| threatening dissidents in the US. And the list goes on.
|
| Probably the most aggressively awful thing China is doing is
| deliberately flooding the US with Fentanyl and other drugs,
| killing far more Americans than all gun deaths (including
| suicides!) per year.
|
| The Chinese government is incredibly hostile toward the US
| government and population.
|
| It'd be really great if China and Russia were friendly
| countries. The way the UK, EU, Japan, and most other major
| countries relate to the US. No one would like it more than most
| Americans.
|
| But China and Russia are run by dictators and dictators have a
| tendency toward doing evil. It makes sense to shield ourselves
| against as much of their evil shit as we reasonably can.
| elfbargpt wrote:
| Does anyone have an idea of the likelihood of the owners
| divesting vs a ban being enforced? I kind of want to see the
| owners refuse to divest
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _kind of want to see the owners refuse to divest_
|
| It will 100% be enforced if passed. There is marginal political
| will to pass this. There is no political will to bail out
| TikTok if ByteDance or Beijing throw a hissy fit.
| filoleg wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the question.
|
| The grandparent comment wasn't asking about the likelihood of
| the US enforcing the ban (assuming the bill passes and TikTok
| refuses to divest). Obviously, the answer to that is
| somewhere near 100%.
|
| The question was, assuming the bill passes, what's the
| likelihood of TikTok deciding to divest (and thus remaining
| non-banned) vs. TikTok refusing to divest (and getting
| banned).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Got it. I think they get banned for a while and then fold.
| Unless Beijing decides to take a hard line, which they
| might, though hundreds of billions funds a lot of R&D [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktok-owner-
| boosts-...
| maxglute wrote:
| 0%, PRC won't allow US normalize ability to nationalize her
| companies, regardless if TikTok is legally based in Singapore,
| the geopolitics won't allow it. They'll likely retaliate by
| trying to heavily degrade a major US company with large PRC
| exposure like Apple or Tesla.
| rusty_venture wrote:
| Good. Domestic spyware masquerading as social media is bad, but
| foreign spyware and propaganda masquerading as social media is
| unquestionably worse. It has the potential to undermine not just
| personal privacy but national security (e.g. the TikTok trend
| encouraging US soldiers to post footage from inside their
| barracks, revealing the locations and identities of US forces to
| Chinese intelligence agencies). I applaud this bill and the
| efforts of US lawmakers to push back on foreign espionage and
| influence operations in the US.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > Domestic spyware masquerading as social media is bad, but
| foreign spyware and propaganda masquerading as social media is
| unquestionably worse.
|
| The former is unquestionably worse and a far greater threat to
| citizens of this country than anything TikTok does.
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| Should the Iranians and the Chinese think in the same manner?
| Isn't this largely a question of how much you trust the
| official narrative of the local elites?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Should the Iranians and the Chinese think in the same
| manner?_
|
| Yes, and they do.
| LordKeren wrote:
| China has banned YouTube, twitch, wordpress, medium, etc.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _China has banned YouTube, twitch, wordpress, medium,
| etc._
|
| Also TikTok! ByteDance operates a separate app in China
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok#Douyin
| xeromal wrote:
| Isn't it an education app in China?
| feedforward wrote:
| I've been reading endless headlines about how hard it is to do
| business in China because the Chinese courts subpoenaed business
| records from Bain's China offices etc., wonder if I'm going to
| see endless articles about how hard it is to do business in the
| US.
|
| And as others have said - no privacy protection laws for
| Americans passed - only if the company is Chinese.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I'm going to ask an intentionally stupid question. TikTok is
| largely just kids dancing and other innocuous videos, even if
| Bytedance is sucking up all that data and sending it back to the
| CCP, how does that constitute a national security threat?
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| Young people getting bombed by the US and its allies, are
| posting videos of themselves getting bombed and American teens
| have enough empathy to find such content moving.
| endtime wrote:
| Kids dancing, kids talking about how Osama bin Laden was right,
| propaganda about ongoing wars, ...
| balozi wrote:
| All protected viewpoints whether we agree with them or not.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| That's a very narrow view...
|
| I use it myself and never get dancing videos. I get videos
| about gaming, sketch-comedy, abstract comedy, fails and
| mishaps, podcast snippets, global conflicts, politics etc.
|
| There's something for anyone on TikTok. It's a bit scary how
| well the algo knows my interests, but at least it's interesting
| content.
| px43 wrote:
| One positive in all this is when Twitter got blocked in China,
| over night basically everyone under the age of 24 learned how to
| use VPNs, and learned how to subvert various official software
| update mechanisms.
|
| I'm thinking that this, or something like it, could be what is
| finally going to break the stranglehold that Apple and Google
| have on the US app store market, even if it's just an
| unintentional side effect.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| If Hauwei weren't banned they could promote some sort of a
| "TikTok" phone and maybe a lot of people would buy it.
|
| Maybe they should still do it given China 's ability to crank
| out nth variation of existing devices overnight and make it
| some sort of underground "drop" kinda like how Gen-Z is going
| insane over sneaker drops.
| kalverra wrote:
| Nate Silver did a nice write up on the probability and
| implications of all this here:
| https://open.substack.com/pub/natesilver/p/why-the-political...
|
| When Biden passes this bill (which he said he would), I can only
| assume Dems will lose a large part of the younger voting
| demographic. If jot now, then 4 years from now. Because no chance
| in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking
| about how much he loves TikTok now.
| simpletone wrote:
| > Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and
| Trump is already talking about how much he loves TikTok now.
|
| Which is insane because in 2020, Trump was the one trying to
| ban tiktok and Biden was defending it. Now the script flipped?
| In the meantime, all they've done in the past 5 years is give
| tiktok free advertisement.
| kalverra wrote:
| Agreed it's crazy, but it's a good political move. Everyone
| agrees we should ban it, but no one wants the blame because
| you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who
| will blindly hate you for it. So if you're the one who isn't in
| charge of the hard-but-good decision (or in Trump's case, if
| you don't particularly give much of a shit about it anyway)
| it's easy to just pick the most politically advantageous side.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > it's crazy
|
| Yes.
|
| > but it's a good political move
|
| Domestically, maybe, and only in the short term.
| Internationally, not at all. It makes America look very weak
| and hypocritical, at a time when America can ill afford to
| look even worse.
|
| > Everyone agrees we should ban it.
|
| No, they don't. The media and political classes agree. That's
| not the same thing.
|
| In reality less than half agree, last I checked [0].
|
| > you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who
| will blindly hate you for it.
|
| Blindly? Young people already hate Biden, and it's not
| because of TikTok. It's the two-faced support of mass murder,
| the economy, the inequality, the lies, the inflation, the oil
| drilling, the union attacks, the failure to deliver on
| campaign promises, etc. [1]
|
| Blaming TikTok for that is just an easy wedge. There's
| nothing smart about it; it's cynical, divisive, and
| _extremely_ stupid in the long term.
|
| 0 - https://www.reuters.com/technology/close-half-americans-
| favo...
|
| 1 - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/young-
| voters-...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| You forgot to switch accounts when you decided to agree with
| yourself.
| asd88 wrote:
| > Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing
|
| Didn't they agree to sell it to Oracle back when Trump
| threatened to ban it?
| Jochim wrote:
| Don't know if they ever agreed to sell. IIRC they did partner
| with Oracle to host their infrastructure, as a way of showing
| that they were trying to allay US concerns.
| tmaly wrote:
| My understanding is that this is a much broader bill than just
| TikTok.
|
| It would give the president the authority to ban any app or
| website both foreign and domestic based on the wording of the
| text of the bill.
|
| Can anyone verify if this is true in the text of what was passed?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would give the president the authority to ban any app or
| website both foreign and domestic based_
|
| No, it has to be controlled by a foreign adversary country [1].
|
| The broadest power is in 3(a)(ii) on page 10, which lets the
| President designate an app as a foreign adversary controlled
| application if it is a significant national security threat
| following public notice and reporting requirements. But even
| then, it's a divestiture order subject to judicial review, not
| the power to ban.
|
| [1] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-
| subsites...
| tmaly wrote:
| I guess the "and" on 3(b)(i)-(ii) clears up my concerns of
| "any" website/app.
|
| (B) a covered company that-- (i) is controlled by a foreign
| adversary; and (ii) that is determined by the President to
| present a significant threat to the national security of the
| United States following the issuance of ...
|
| Thanks for the link to the text.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| What is a foreign adversary? Is there a set list of countries
| or is it open for interpretation?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is there a set list of countries_
|
| Yes [1].
|
| [1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-A/part-7
| /subp...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why can't ByteDance just dodge this with a US IPO of a local
| operating company with dual-class structure?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why can 't ByteDance just dodge this with a US IPO of a
| local operating company with dual-class structure?_
|
| If they sell 80% of the shares (and voting power), sure. That
| would require either the largest IPO in history and/or massive
| valuation cuts.
| pelorat wrote:
| If this goes all the way to the White House and is signed by
| Biden, I think it could completely derail his chances of getting
| re-elected. Trump has come out against this bill (for insane and
| corrupt reasons) but would definately seize the moment and
| capitalize on it. They are giving the Trump campaign a huge
| amount of ammunition here.
| farleykr wrote:
| What are the chances that TikTok really gets comprehensively
| banned in the US? This seems like the kind of thing that would
| get stuck in a Bermuda triangle of litigation while nothing ever
| happens.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Given that this passed by a wide margin and largely bipartisan
| support, it is very unlikely that litigation challenges would
| be able to stop the ban.
| bhaney wrote:
| Low. ByteDance will do whatever they can to delay enforcement
| by challenging the law for as long as they can, and in the
| background they'll setup a new corporate structure that
| maintains their status quo while technically complying with the
| law, at which point they'll back off from the legal battle and
| graciously accept the new law that they've already loopholed
| their way around.
| htrp wrote:
| Oracle flexing their lobbying muscle to pick up a good asset on
| the cheap.
| jaylittle wrote:
| Just when I think I have a handle on how stupid our politicians
| are... they find some way to make me realize they are even dumber
| than I previously thought.
|
| According to HuffPost it was a 352-65 vote, so this stupidity was
| bipartisan. So much for one party being smarter than the other.
| Banning an extremely popular app, in an election year no less,
| while providing absolutely zero evidence to prove what you accuse
| it of doing is really some kind of next level idiocy.
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tiktok-ban-congress_n_65f1b24...
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I'm from Europe.
|
| Since China was supporting Russia to start a war on European
| soil. I sure hope that China's influence is reduced to a
| minimum as quickly as possible.
|
| Ofc, that includes propaganda through TikTok.
| jaylittle wrote:
| This bill does nothing to address the problem of nation state
| propaganda spreading via social media. It just allows
| American politicians to claim a fake national security
| victory over a Chinese owned company while ignoring the fact
| that American owned social media companies are a steaming
| cesspool full of such content.
|
| Dont get me wrong, I think TikTok is terrible. I won't use
| it. Ever. But that still doesn't mean it should be banned.
| Unless you want to ban all social media apps all at once.
| Probably still not something I would support, but I could
| definitely see proponents being able to form much more
| compelling arguments in favor of such an action.
|
| As it stands right now, this makes zero logical sense.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Ofc it does. Byte dance literally has a internal Chinese
| Communist Party committee since 2017.
| datameta wrote:
| Regardless of what I think of this bill - the chinese accusation
| is some usual whataboutism: "resorting to hegemonic moves when
| one could not succeed in fair competition."
| bowsamic wrote:
| This is bombing the front page of HN and completely absent from
| international news, which is surprising to me
| bno1 wrote:
| Why doesn't USA pass a law that enforces data on US citizens to
| be stored in the US, like GDPR does in EU?
| poisonborz wrote:
| I will laugh when they will sell to a newly founded Hungarian
| company - EU state, but anti-west, and China's biggest ally in
| the region.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _laugh when they will sell to a newly founded Hungarian
| company_
|
| Honestly, I'd be fine with that. (And I think it would stand.)
|
| Punts the problem to Brussels, whom I trust far more than
| Beijing.
| billtsedong wrote:
| The most honest USA competition be like:
| exabrial wrote:
| This is a war over cultural influence. I'm 100% for free markets
| and anti-regulation (as it nearly all is based on bribes targeted
| to harm competition), but I've never figured out a good
| theoretical policy for how a free market should interact with a
| unbridled dictatorship like China.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| China is not only a dictatorship, but a market that is closed
| or highly restricted to most US businesses. Free trade isn't an
| option if the US wanted it.
| scop wrote:
| To be clear, TikTok's main threat is persuasion and opinion
| manipulation. Data privacy is a nice thing to talk about, but
| pales in comparison to being able to influence what a huge
| portion of a foreign adversary population is watching.
|
| Edit to counter likely responses: this also applies directly to
| US social media and mainstream media and I have extremely dim
| views of both I can assure you :-)
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| But the US protects people's ability to influence others by
| protecting the freedom of expression
| bediger4000 wrote:
| How about forcing Bytespider to observe robots.txt while you're
| at it?
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Lol, the US finally showing its true colors. It's a freemarket
| until our companies start to lose - then suddenly you gotta think
| of the children, national security, the brainwashed masses and
| the evil communists.
|
| At this point they're basically using the same arguments the
| Chinese use to ban Western apps.
|
| Bunch of sore losers. We're losing all moral authority over being
| a beacon of capitalism. The Chinese made a better app for funny
| videos and showing people dancing - this has made a lot of people
| very upset
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Lol, the US finally showing its true colors. It's a freemarket
| until our companies start to lose
|
| If TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean,
| Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have
| intervened in the first place.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| The call your house rep backfired? It actually proved how a
| chinese firm controlled media can manipulate USA citizen.
| Coloured revolution in red?
| basisword wrote:
| I'm interested to see how this plays out. TikTok is popular
| enough that I can imagine it's making enough money outside the US
| to just let them ban it and not sell. The whole thing is
| interesting to watch from a non-China/US perspective. It feels
| like a move to make the US government look strong to its
| citizens. A move that, unusually, can have bipartisan support. It
| feels like propaganda really. And judging by the comments here
| and elsewhere it seems to be working. Of all the 'threats' faced
| by the US, a Chinese social media app is really at the bottom of
| the totem pole. US elections are far more influenced by nefarious
| actors on US owned social media platforms - but nobody wants to
| do anything about that.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Idk, every person I talk to thinks it's crazy that the US is
| this close to banning an app because it doesn't like the
| content. The idea that Americans aren't allowed to view
| "propaganda" is insane and very against the ideas of free
| speech.
|
| But I come online and there's so much support for banning an
| app who hires lots of devs in Silicon Valley itself...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| It's a different world than the one where our ideas of
| freedom were born in.
|
| Used to be we were talking about somebody on a soapbox in a
| park.
|
| Now, it's a firehose of misinformation spread instantly to
| hundreds of millions. A tidal wave. A hurricane.
|
| What should we do? How do we put the genie back in the
| bottle?
| frumper wrote:
| It's also a firehose of misinformation you choose to jump
| into. One can reasonably watch TikTok with the
| understanding that it might be good for entertainment or
| learning about things that don't really matter. It's a
| terrible news source, just like any other user content
| driven platform.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Three-quarters of Gen-Z spend an hour a day. It's easy to
| say 'it's all voluntary' but at some point it isn't. It's
| addiction.
| basisword wrote:
| >> The idea that Americans aren't allowed to view
| "propaganda" is insane and very against the ideas of free
| speech.
|
| It's odd that the people who are so adamant that we can't ban
| 'hate speech' because 'it's a slippery slope' don't seem to
| care that the government banning us from viewing content is
| also quite a serious slipper slope.
|
| >> But I come online and there's so much support for banning
| an app who hires lots of devs in Silicon Valley itself.
|
| It's a net-positive for all the people working at Facebook +
| Twitter which is where the eyeballs will be diverted to.
| matwood wrote:
| It's not about being allowed, but more about being steered.
|
| And yes, other social media platforms have similar issues
| with algorithmic feeds, but they are currently a less clear
| national security threat. Though, one could argue they are
| radicalizing internal threats.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| >less clear national security threat. Though, one could
| argue they are radicalizing internal threats.
|
| I don't and will never buy this argument that showing
| people certain media causes violence or is a security
| threat. People doing violent things is a security threat.
| What they read or believed that led them to do that is not.
| Freedom of expression is vital and defending it comes with
| serious negative consequences. It means defending heinous
| views, some which have only ever been linked with radicals
| and violence. But they are allowed to say those views and
| to say them to other people. And people are allowed to
| read, watch, and see those views.
|
| I'll die on that hill any day
| matwood wrote:
| I agree with you! But where I differ is when people get
| trapped in these algorithmic bubbles because they happen
| to search for or like something once or twice. Then they
| are fire hosed that type of content over and over, which
| IMO is very different than being allowed to say or see
| something.
| ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote:
| I think you're underestimating how powerful social media and
| TikTok in particular is
| TMWNN wrote:
| >TikTok is popular enough that I can imagine it's making enough
| money outside the US to just let them ban it and not sell.
|
| Back in 2020, 10% of TikTok users were American but they
| accounted for 50% of revenue, or something like that. Any US
| shutdown would be catastrophic for TikTok's valuation.
| wnevets wrote:
| This is embarrassing. Silicon valley couldn't compete with
| garbage like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels so they lobbied
| congress.
| nova22033 wrote:
| FYI: TikTok is banned in China
| kohbo wrote:
| It really is a shame, in my opinion, that this is how the US has
| decided to deal with this issue. I understand how TikTok is a
| propaganda threat, but also see how Facebook, Twitter/X, or most
| any other social media is susceptible to that same manipulation.
| Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to legislate the threat
| away effectively.
| inputError wrote:
| "Heyyyy, only we're allowed to spy on our people and feed them
| propaganda. NO FAIR!"
| Ekaros wrote:
| I deeply believe EU should do same with Meta and Twitter.
| carabiner wrote:
| Trump opposes this bill so rest assured nothing will come from
| this.
| JoshuaJB wrote:
| Broadcast news and radio are limited to at most 20% foreign
| ownership by default [1]. Applying a similar requirement to large
| internet news distributors seems reasonable if they want to do
| business in the US (even if "banned" they could still distribute
| content, they'd just be restricted in making money).
|
| [1] https://www.foster.com/newsroom-publications-The-Road-Map-
| Fo...
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| But, every American has access to even government propaganda of
| foreign adversaries. It's part of the 1st Amendment. Denying
| access to this information feels really weird. If TikTok
| doesn't divest, it will be banned and app stores will not be
| allowed to distribute it and the government telling app stores
| which content is and isn't approved feels like the PATRIOT Act
| all over again, all of us handing over our rights for some
| boogeyman
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _every American has access to even government propaganda of
| foreign adversaries. It 's part of the 1st Amendment. Denying
| access to this information feels really weird_
|
| As it should. Fortunately, this bill doesn't do that. If
| ByteDance won't sell, TikTok gets removed from app stores.
| TikTok.com will remain free to access.
|
| The bill curtails distribution and amplification, _not_
| speech.
| sillyalbatross wrote:
| The bill explicitly allows the President to designate a
| "website" as a threat. How that would be applied exactly is
| a different question, which is why many argue that this is
| a Pandora's box not worth opening.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _bill explicitly allows the President to designate a
| "website" as a threat_
|
| No, it has to be controlled by a foreign adversary
| country [1].
|
| The broadest power is in 3(a)(ii) on page 10, which lets
| the President designate an app or website as a foreign
| adversary controlled application if it is a significant
| national security threat following public notice and
| reporting requirements. But even then, it's a divestiture
| order subject to judicial review, not the power to ban.
|
| [1] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-
| subsites...
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Yes, and Americans will continue to have access to propaganda
| of foreign adversaries after this bill passes. The ownership
| restrictions on broadcast media that OP mentions don't stop
| Americans from going to the Chinese state news agencies
| website (https://english.news.cn/). These measures limit the
| ability of foreign corporations to control American news
| distribution platforms, not the ability of Americans who want
| to read Chinese propaganda to do so.
| segasaturn wrote:
| Broadcast news and radio are able to be restricted because the
| the US government owns the airwaves - there is (still) no
| meaningful regulation of the internet in the United States and
| therefore communications over the internet are protected by the
| First Amendment.
| codekaze wrote:
| I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be based
| on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security concerns. We can
| make similar arguments about the negative effects of Facebook,
| Instagram, and etc. even from the POVs of other countries, but
| the key issue here is that China heavily restricts foreign apps
| and services from operating in their market. If China is
| unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly in their
| digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to grant
| Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| >If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly
| in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to
| grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market?
|
| Because we are (used to be?) a country that believes in
| democracy and the will of our citizens. If people want to
| download a Chinese app and watch straight up Chinese news and
| propaganda (not even close to what TikTok actually is), they
| should be allowed to do so. That's the entire idea of the First
| Amendment...
|
| Does that put us at a disadvantage to countries who don't have
| the same rules? Maybe. But that ideal and that principle is
| valuable and means something and IS the entire bedrock of
| American influence over the greater world.
| ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote:
| Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| This level of censorship isn't good, it's very bad. It's
| also concerning the speed at which the government mobilized
| to do this. It's a rapid crackdown on free speech and
| individual freedom.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _censorship_
|
| Nothing is being censored. If ByteDance refuses to sell,
| TikTok will be removed from App Stores and have to find
| new web hosting. TikTok.com will still resolve fine.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Nothing is being censored. If ByteDance refuses to
| sell, TikTok will be removed from App Stores
|
| What if Google says no?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What if Google says no?_
|
| Same as if Google says no to paying taxes. Law
| enforcement mediated by the courts.
| falcolas wrote:
| The fines end up being in the billions of dollars -
| $5,000 per user per day. Even Google can't absorb that
| for long.
| nomel wrote:
| Could you help me understand how that isn't censorship,
| with more steps?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Could you help me understand how that isn 't
| censorship_
|
| Censorship bans the speech. If we were censoring
| Bytedance, we'd block TikTok.com.
|
| This is more in the vein of "you can't advertise your
| brothel at the elementary school." You can still
| advertise your brothel. The distribution and
| amplification is just being regulated.
| codedokode wrote:
| If we stretch your argument to absurd then we can say
| that putting a political prisoner in jail also doesn't
| limit his free speech: he is still able to write letters.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _putting a political prisoner in jail also doesn 't
| limit his free speech: he is still able to write letters_
|
| Free speech is a big topic. I would argue that yes, that
| person's speech has been curtailed, but depending on what
| they were jailed for (saying something offensive versus
| stabbery) it could be reasonable.
|
| Unless they were jailed for their speech, what you
| describe would _not_ amount to censorship.
| EGG_CREAM wrote:
| Trump tried to do this 4 years ago, how is that a
| "concerning" level of speed? The Committee on Foreign
| Investment in the United States has been reviewing Tik
| Tok's Project Texas initiative to handle US data
| separately for 2 years. This was not an out of the blue
| move. The citation for those claims are in the linked
| article.
| lagichikool wrote:
| I'd wager that most Americans want fairness in relationships
| with other countries. And also want the government to protect
| them against hostile foreign governments that wish to do them
| harm.
|
| Americans subject themselves to all kinds of restrictions in
| terms of what can be imported into the US. There's no
| contradiction of the freedoms protected by US Constitution in
| this.
|
| There's certainly no information that Americans need deny
| themselves by insisting that apps like TikTok are not
| controlled by hostile foreign governments.
| digging wrote:
| > If people want to download a Chinese app and watch straight
| up Chinese news and propaganda ... That's the entire idea of
| the First Amendment...
|
| > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
| the Government for a redress of grievances.
|
| Arguably it's not even one part of the 1st.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| Freedom of speech includes not being prohibited from
| listening to other people's speech.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| The first amendment in the bill of rights in the US
| constitution prevents the US government from restricting
| the speech of US citizens. It doesn't say anything about
| foreign nationals with no status in the US. The
| government also has the authority to deport whomever it
| likes, impose tariffs and restrict imports.
|
| Regardless of moral stance, that is the reality as I see
| it.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > The first amendment in the bill of rights in the US
| constitution prevents the US government from restricting
| the speech of US citizens.
|
| It also applies to foreigners who are in the US legally.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I mentioned status of foreign nationals in the very next
| sentence, and it sounds like TikTok's status is about to
| become "unwelcome."
| StarCyan wrote:
| The first amendment prevents the US govt from restricting
| the speech of _anyone_ in the US, not just citizens.
|
| For example, the government cannot deport an immigrant
| simply because they criticized the government (they can
| deport for a variety of other reasons though).
| mckn1ght wrote:
| The government can however bar entry into the US in the
| first place:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleindienst_v._Mandel
|
| > courts will not look behind [the] decision [not to
| waive the statutory exclusion of an alien] or weigh it
| against the First Amendment interests of those who would
| personally communicate with the alien
| StarCyan wrote:
| Interesting. Yeah, I'm broadly not sure how the first
| amendment applies to this TikTok bill, if at all.
|
| I think TikTok is a security risk, but it seems to me
| that if the govt can ban TikTok, it can legally ban any
| foreign media. Which doesn't seem ideal from a free
| speech perspective.
| tw1984 wrote:
| 160 million US citizens post/watch those videos on
| tiktok, tiktok is their platform for expressing
| themselves, by banning tiktok, they can argue that the
| government is taking away their platform for expressing
| themselves.
|
| it is all about the rights of US users.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| If they ban the importation of a fruit or vegetable,
| there are others we can turn to for sustenance.
|
| Nobody is stopping any US citizen from building our own
| TikTok.
| digging wrote:
| Do you have case citations to prove that claim?
|
| Even if you do, that's not what is happening here. At
| all.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Any suggestions for dealing with the paradox or tolerance
| [1]? Or an argument why it does not apply?
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| ericmcer wrote:
| I agree with this in principal, but in practice it seems
| troubling to have every person (even beyond kids) hooked on a
| stream of info that is controlled by a foreign government who
| doesn't like us very much.
|
| If your plan is that people should be strong enough to
| uninstall or smart enough to recognize subtle propaganda,
| that seems very likely to fail.
| shuckles wrote:
| The premise of strong freedom of speech rights is that the
| government being smart enough to decide what is illegal
| propaganda may fail as well, sometimes more
| catastrophically.
| 6DM wrote:
| Regarding GP's argument, I would argue it's less about
| freedom of speech and more about trade protection. Although
| software is not a physical good, letting another country
| restrict us and simultaneously flood our market is not good
| either.
| tcptomato wrote:
| This isn't a First Amendment issue, it's regulating commerce
| with a foreign nation.
| woodruffw wrote:
| What is the _nature_ of that commerce? I don 't think you
| can ablate the 1A concerns this easily.
|
| (Note that I am sympathetic to the idea that TikTok is a
| source of foreign influence. But it's not clear to me what
| precedent allows the US congress to control their ownership
| without doing the same to every "US" corporation that's
| incorporated in Ireland.)
| codedokode wrote:
| So if TikTok was not earning any profit from US (for
| example, if it was sponsored by the govt), there would be
| no commerce and it would not be banned? I do not believe
| that.
| darcagn wrote:
| Profit is not the standard for the regulation of commerce
| in the United States though.
|
| When the federal government set limits on crop production
| with the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause as its
| justification, Roscoe Filburn was simply growing wheat
| over the limit to feed his farm animals. That wheat was
| never sold, and it never crossed the property line to
| leave his farm, much less crossed state lines. The
| government still fined him and he lost his case in SCOTUS
| establishing precedent in Wickard v. Filburn, because it
| affected the market prices of wheat, despite the
| miniscule impact.
|
| The same could be said of TikTok even if it doesn't earn
| a penny in profit.
| codedokode wrote:
| That's interesting. Never thought that in a "free"
| country the govt can ban people from growing wheat.
| tempsy wrote:
| I find it really interesting how being against a ban is the
| "freedom" argument when the person who is most responsible
| for championing this ban is the whole Palantir gang led by
| Keith Rabois's partner.
| BeetleB wrote:
| As other commenters have said, the GP's argument is not about
| free speech but about trade.
|
| Banning TikTok is not impinging on free speech. People are
| still free to say whatever they want on so many
| (unrestricted) platforms. If someone makes a video of a
| TikTok video and shares it on Youtube/Whatsapp, that's legal.
| The actual _content_ is legal, so it 's not a free
| speech/censorship issue.
|
| This is the equivalent of "We've put sanctions on China. You
| can write whatever you want, as long as you don't do it using
| Chinese pens and Chinese paper"
|
| It's not at all unusual for countries (including the US) to
| restrict commerce with a country if they believe the other
| country isn't engaging in fair commerce.
| codedokode wrote:
| Except this is not about commerce. US wants to ban TikTok
| for the same reason Russia has blocked BBC. Russia believes
| that information from BBC can harmfully influence people's
| mind.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think it's more about Chinese harvesting data.
| sparks1970 wrote:
| Funny, Telegraph readers also seem to believe that the
| BBC can harmfully influence people's minds.
| dartharva wrote:
| I hope you are aware that Tiktok doesn't generate content
| by itself? A comparison with BBC is stupid.
| Miner49er wrote:
| > Banning TikTok is not impinging on free speech. People
| are still free to say whatever they want on so many
| (unrestricted) platforms.
|
| Yes, it does impinge free speech. It's not about being able
| to say things, it's about freedom to hear speech. The first
| amendment and freedom of speech also covers that, and there
| is speech on Tik Tok that is not available elsewhere.
| BeetleB wrote:
| As I said, they are not banning listening to the speech
| on Tik Tok videos. If someone makes a mirror of all
| TikTok videos and posts it on Peertube, it is totally
| fine to listen to it.
|
| They are banning one delivery mechanism. Not the content.
| Miner49er wrote:
| I don't think courts will see it that way, but if the ban
| happens I guess we'll see.
| pksebben wrote:
| What I find troubling about this is the delta between the
| vox populi and the decision made.
|
| Whether it's right or prudent or whatever, if you figure
| that people using the service don't want it shut down
| (~170M or roughly half of the population) then what's
| happening here is that our "representatives" are doing what
| they always do and totally ignoring their constituency.
|
| Mind you, this isn't surprising in the least, but perhaps
| it's a good moment to step back and reflect a little on
| this snag in our governance.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Representatives are elected to do "what's right". If
| their constituents don't like it, they can elect them
| out.
| pksebben wrote:
| Can they, though? I've been trying for about as long as I
| can remember without much luck...
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Can they, though? I've been trying for about as long as
| I can remember without much luck...
|
| A sign that the constituents don't care about a given
| issue the way you do.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| I think a lot of this is the language used in reporting
| around it. It is presented as a Ban on Tiktok in
| headlines and people who regurgitate them when the
| purpose of the legislation is not to ban Tiktok but
| require them to sell their American operations to a
| domestic company. The penalty for non-compliance is to
| not allow them to operate in the US but the goal isn't to
| ban Tiktok.
| bingusbungo wrote:
| >we are (used to be?) a country that believes in democracy
| and the will of our citizens
|
| We either need to mass-educate everyone on the whole Edward
| Bernays subconscious manipulation thing (which we won't do
| because it would catastrophically break PR, advertising,
| political campaigns and more) or do it ourselves, do it
| thoroughly, and prevent others from accessing our citizens
| eyes/ears, which is what we're trying to do except for that
| last part.
|
| We're far, far beyond "we'll just let our well-educated
| citizens decide for themselves", and it's weird to see
| someone act like that's how anything works. That idea's been
| broken for closing in on a century.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >We're far, far beyond "we'll just let our well-educated
| citizens decide for themselves", and it's weird to see
| someone act like that's how anything works. That idea's
| been broken for closing in on a century.
|
| So instead we should let our better-educated governing
| betters and cultural/business elites decide opinion not
| just for themselves but for the rest of us? Because of
| course none of them are subject to any sort of self
| interest, terrible bias, corruption, mendacity or simply
| being ignorant due to their own cognitive failures?
|
| The very core notion of democracy and free speech is that
| no one group can be fully trusted to hold the reins of
| control or opinion by their own decision and imposition on
| the rest.
|
| Thus you introduce the largest plurality possible of rights
| for expression and governance to mitigate against the
| disasters that much more often occur with oligarchy. Far
| from perfect but your idea of giving any key group control
| of discourse for the sake of "fighting misinformation" (as
| if they themselves don't create shit barges of it of their
| own) is laughable.
|
| Recall please (for example) that the NY Times, which spent
| the Trump years and beyond practically raving about the
| dangers of misinformation and foreign influence of opinions
| also happily played along with the vastly costly lies of
| the Iraq WMD scandal that was used to justify an invasion
| costing trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of
| lives. And it did all this lying at the behest of
| completely domestic U.S. policy makers and leaders.
|
| That's the sort of cozy opinion/policy leadership practices
| to which we should be pushing further? Fuck no.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| > We can make similar arguments
|
| Hey remember when Apple, Google & Amazon all colluded to ban
| Parler off the face of the planet within days, a purely
| political move, based on some shaky allegations of moderation?
|
| Meanwhile TikTok is labelled as a "must have" app in the
| AppStore....
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| >Hey remember when Apple, Google & Amazon all colluded to ban
| Parler off the face of the planet within days, a purely
| political move,
|
| I actually don't remember that. I do remember lots of
| terroristic and genocidal posts on Parler though.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| It's easy to botspam a competitor with terroristic and
| genocidal posts if you only need a fig leaf to remove the
| platform - not a great precedent to align with.
|
| Also, didn't a spokesperson for Harvard recently say some
| calls for genocide were acceptable on their platform
| (campus) depending on context? Why aren't the anti-1st
| amendment types trying to ban Harvard?
|
| Edit: Not a rhetorical question for the downvoters.
| Spivak wrote:
| > Parler off the face of the planet, a purely political move
|
| Having a policy against hosting apps that host illegal
| content and taking no measures to remove it is a political
| move? There are plenty of active conservative communities on
| the internet, Parler just went the "free as in anarchy"
| speech route. Tumblr faced a ban on iOS for pornographic
| content and Reddit also has to sanitize their default
| experience to be on app stores, so it's not just Parler.
|
| It's why BlueSky is interesting because they have moderation
| which will get them on app stores, but you can turn it off.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Many mass shootings in recent memory were live streamed on
| Facebook and Instagram. Removing those posts after the fact
| is a useless gesture. The evil already happened. Meta was
| never punished.
|
| Selective enforcement of TOS is political and utter
| nonsense.
|
| If TikTok were guilty of what they are accused of (being a
| foreign intelligence and propaganda tool), why is
| Congressional action necessary? Why wouldn't have private
| industry already quashed it as they did other apps? Those
| accusations seem a bit more serious than "mean posts with
| naughty words".
| Spivak wrote:
| > Removing those posts after the fact is a useless
| gesture. The evil already happened. Meta was never
| punished.
|
| I mean this sincerely and in good faith, what else can
| you do? We don't have the PreCrime division. The
| accusation isn't that Twitter/Facebook don't ever host
| illegal or objectionable content but that they have a
| procedure for addressing and removing it. Parler just
| said no, we don't have and will never have such a policy.
| If Tumblr say, despite having a moderation policy just
| stopped enforcing it they would find themselves staring
| down the banhammer again.
|
| As to your second point the answer is in your own
| question, I don't think they actually buy that TikTok is
| either of those things. Hell, the NFL partnered with
| TikTok and they're basically cheerleaders for the US
| military.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| For that matter, the most perplexing one for me is
| President Biden is creating and posting campaign videos
| on TikTok (not in an official capacity as POTUS but as a
| candidate). If one truly felt the content of this bill
| was true, as he has endorsed signing it, why would he
| even use the app in the first place? Are Zoomer voters
| that inaccessible otherwise?
| tw1984 wrote:
| his team is going to give a very politically correct
| answer, something like -
|
| "we are not against tiktok, our presence on tiktok is the
| best proof. we just against the idea that 160 million
| American users including my team are being spied on by
| the Chinese government, we want you all to have a better
| & safer tiktok not owned by China".
| sebazzz wrote:
| > Parler just went the "free as in anarchy" speech route.
|
| This is no different than X nowadays. But the political
| landscape has shifted even further to the right, why now no
| action is taken nor desired [by the politics] to do
| anything about it.
|
| For instance: There is only one Dutch moderator for the
| entire Netherlands/Flemish community.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Twitter is pretty heavily moderated if you don't align
| with the hive mind. The hive mind just shifted from the
| left to the right.
| maxglute wrote:
| That's a bad argument because western platforms are free to
| compete fairly in PRC market, provided they follow PRC laws
| like EVERY OTHER PRC PLATFORM. Facebook/Twitter only got banned
| after 2009 minority riots for abetting terrorism and not
| cracking down on posts calling for mutual retaliatory violence.
| It's more accurate to say most major western platforms at the
| time was simply incapable of of moderating PRC content. This
| was pre western human moderation push, unlike domestic PRC
| players who already had 10,000s of human moderators because
| that's what was needed. Western platforms didn't want to spend
| the money at the time and it wasn't after they scaled their own
| moderation efforts that FB/Google spung up (now defunct)
| projects to re-enter PRC market. The fundmental fact is western
| platforms didn't want to put in the work to comply with PRC
| laws at the time because it was expensive and looked bad
| optically (and still does, because are they going to handover
| dissident info to CCP?), and it would be unfair to allow them
| to operate in PRC without the same onerous moderation infra as
| domestic PRC platforms. There's a reason Bing still operates in
| PRC, see recent Bloomberg piece on Microsoft keeps Bing running
| in PRC by basically complying to mass censorship like domestic
| players. Like it's not PRC's problem if internal Google decent
| killed project dragonfly and whatever Zuckerberg tried to do in
| the mid 10s.
| tw1984 wrote:
| > That's a bad argument because western platforms are free to
| compete fairly in PRC market, provided they follow PRC laws
| like EVERY OTHER PRC PLATFORM.
|
| Dude, Chinese national living in China here. I have 3
| different vpns from 3 different vendors, that is how I manage
| to get here and talk to you. Care to shed some light on why
| they restrict my free & open access to the Internet that I
| dedicated my entire life to build?
|
| > after 2009 minority riots
|
| I strongly support CCP's policies in Xinjiang, it is anti-
| terrorism for sure. That being said, I wouldn't call those
| angry & brainwashed Tibetans "terrorists".
|
| > It's more accurate to say most major western platforms at
| the time was simply incapable of of moderating PRC content.
|
| I used to visit a local forum hosted here in China quite
| often. They carefully moderate the content, all users have to
| register with their legal names, the forum even had the
| curfew every night as their moderators need to sleep and they
| couldn't afford the risk of such human moderator free hours.
| Guess what, they still got shutdown last year for "regulation
| reasons".
|
| > There's a reason Bing still operates in PRC, see recent
| Bloomberg piece on Microsoft keeps Bing running in PRC by
| basically complying to mass censorship like domestic players.
|
| Because Bill Gates has very good personal relationship with
| the very top leadership. That is the really scary part.
| RHSman2 wrote:
| Most insightful post on HN for a long time.
| maxglute wrote:
| >shed some light
|
| Digital sovereignty, it's not complicated. Every country
| who can be in charge of their domestic information
| ecosystem, should. If US wants embrace PRC model of a
| controlled media ecosystem where tiktok / US media
| platforms to ban non-US aligned content from adversary
| sources, Tiktok would be happy to oblige and scale
| moderation/compliance costs accordingly. If anything they'd
| be at competitive advantage being able to draw from douyin
| experiences in PRC.
|
| You're good example, you're still posting here, via VPN.
| The friction between PRC info and western eco is VPN costs
| - it's cheap/trivially accessible for those who need it.
| People reverse VPN to access geofenced PRC content in the
| west. People jump region blocking to access geofenced media
| on western streaming platforms? VPN are everywhere for
| those who care.
|
| As for why, there was stanford study a few years ago trying
| to measure PRC propaganda on western platforms only to find
| they were crowded out by western antiPRC propaganda,
| including likes of FLG. PRC doesn't want free mixture of
| foreign propaganda. Constitutionally, the US shouldn't care
| about reverse. But here we are with TikTok ban. IMO Some
| ideological / info ecosystems shouldn't naturally mix. See
| west crack down on RU media post war. Which is fine (for
| me), as long as there's methods for motivated people to
| cross the gap.
|
| Regardless, this isn't about free access to information,
| it's about operating a business in different regions by
| following relevant regulations. The original argument is
| whining about why US platforms shouldn't follow PRC law and
| pay similar compliance costs as domestic competitors, and
| somehow think that's unfair.
|
| >wouldn't call those angry & brainwashed Tibetans
| "terrorists"
|
| Neither did I. I said abetting terrorists, and
| terroism/radicalism foreign influences, that exploded from
| abroad when these restive regions got connected to global
| info networks after 90s, including radical seperatist
| movements. Hence entire regions got caught up in crack
| down. Including innocents, but cracking down on minorities
| representing 1% of population responsible for hundreds of
| terror events that spread out to other provinces is just
| sensible political policy. Heavy handed, but politically
| sensible, considering terrorism stopped.
|
| The real issue beyond terrorisms is symptom of
| aforementioned increase in seperatisms due to PRC's
| "generous" ethnic oblast policy that "allowed" these
| frontier regions to keep their cultures and not sinicize /
| smoothly integrate into broader PRC society. They were
| never "properly colonized", because frankly PRC was too
| poor to heavily assert influence on frontiers without
| expensive infra, now they can, and are against
| Tibetan/Uyghur will. Of course the oppressed are mad,
| rebelling, justifiably. But frankly it's politically absurd
| that their primary language isn't Mandarin, like every
| repressed minority speaks dominant local language in the
| west, who virtue signals how bad cultural genocide is while
| benefitting from it because basic language integration is
| essential domestic serenity/stability/security. There's no
| melting pot if some groups of people don't don't melt into
| the pot.
|
| >they still got shutdown
|
| Most of my PRC interest forums / BBS (milwatching) got shut
| down last few years because crackdown on discussion of PLA
| related subjects due to national security. Community goes
| abroad, on twitter, on telegram, get a VPN. Again, that's
| the compromise, it's annoying, but it works. I know people
| who got invited to drink tea, had wechat accounts banned
| and reinstated after promising to behave. Which is a hell
| lot more than I can say about people I know who got banned
| on western platforms and had not avenue to appeal.
| Communities everywhere get dismantled all the time. You
| find where it reconsolidates and move on. Just like people
| moved on from Vine, and likely, TikTok.
|
| >very good personal relationship
|
| Yes Gates know how to play the game and follow the rules.
| It's not scary, it's business.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > I strongly support CCP's policies in Xinjiang, it is
| anti-terrorism for sure. That being said, I wouldn't call
| those angry & brainwashed Tibetans "terrorists".
|
| The weird thing is that the CCP is much more worried about
| Tibet than Xinjiang. As a foreigner, I can buy a plane
| ticket to Urumqi today, no restrictions on needing a guide
| to tour in most places. But Tibet...ugh...so much paper
| work just to visit Lhasa, and I need a minder if I ever
| leave Lhasa.
|
| The biggest problem with the party is that they always put
| hardliners in charge of Tibet and Xinjiang (let's be clear,
| the party chair controls the autonomous regions, not the
| ceremonial local governer). They unnecessarily stir the pot
| to create tension, that then explodes every 10 or so years.
|
| > Because Bill Gates has very good personal relationship
| with the very top leadership. That is the really scary
| part.
|
| Microsoft has been in China for a long time, and it has a
| China-based leadership that is very in tune it is permitted
| to do or not. "These are the rules, written and unwritten,
| for keeping Bing in China" and they just roll with that. I
| don't think it is even Bill, he has been hands off for a
| decade or two, but there are people in Microsoft's chinese
| leadership who are well connected.
| harkinian wrote:
| This is the only part that makes me sorta in favor of the ban.
| tw1984 wrote:
| > I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be
| based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security
| concerns.
|
| Your argument is lame at best. Using your logics above, Chinese
| should ban all US EVs, mobile phones and network equipment on
| reciprocity. Tesla has a huge factory here in Shanghai, local
| government even offered it free land, it is fully own by Tesla,
| Tesla cars are everywhere. When is the last time you see
| Chinese EVs on US roads? I can freely go to any CCP official
| and tell him/her that my US designed iPhone is good, he/she
| might tell me that he/she is a iPhone user as well (and then
| ask me to piss off). What is the likelyhood that any US
| officials are using Huawei phones now?
| HKH2 wrote:
| No US equivalent of TikTok is allowed in China.
| bilekas wrote:
| > If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly
| in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to
| grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market?
|
| I understand what you're saying and I actually support the ban
| as tiktok can be used as a giant botnet at-will by Chinas
| government, but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US
| is supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I
| wouldn't agree with.
| hypeit wrote:
| How is it a botnet? Apple isn't going to allow botnet like
| behavior in any app it approves in the app store.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The humans it feeds content into are the botnet.
|
| For example, it's alleged that Russia promoted competing
| rallies on both sides of the political divide in the US in
| hopes of sowing discord in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Internet_Research_Agency#Ralli...
| hypeit wrote:
| A human is not a bot. In addition to being dehumanizing,
| it removes agency to say that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Pretending large groups of humans can't possibly be
| influenced to do things is lunacy.
|
| We do weird things in crowds even _without_ intentional
| propaganda at play.
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8091
| bluefishinit wrote:
| That's not a "botnet" though, advertising does the same
| thing. We don't call the people buying things they've
| been marketed a "botnet".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It needn't be a perfect comparison to be a useful one.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| It's not useful though. I actually think it's very cool
| that TikTok got a bunch of young people to contact their
| representatives. If this ban goes through, the political
| blowback is going to be extreme. It will be like the
| Streisand effect x100,000,000.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I actually think it's very cool that TikTok got a bunch
| of young people to contact their representatives.
|
| I don't think that's the concern.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > If this ban goes through, the political blowback is
| going to be extreme.
|
| Its not a ban. Whats going to happen is that tiktok will
| divest.
|
| Kids will continue to have their social media.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| > _What's more, divestiture would require Beijing's
| approval. Last year, the Chinese government said it
| opposed a forced sale._
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/house-passes-
| tiktok-...
| stale2002 wrote:
| If tiktok wants to leave the US, that would be their
| decision.
|
| Blame them for not following the law.
|
| That's no different from anyone else deciding to just
| leave the app store, or the USA, because they don't want
| to pay taxes or something.
|
| Companies stop doing business in certain countries for
| all sorts of reasons.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| TikTok's users will know who to blame: the US government.
| There would have been no problem at all before this bill
| got pushed through (if passed).
| stale2002 wrote:
| Once again, laws effect companies all the time.
|
| This isn't new or an out there thing.
|
| Some companies leave because they don't want to pay high
| taxes, or for numerous other reasons.
|
| All tiktok has to do is follow the law and they won't be
| banned.
|
| But if they don't, well that's their decision as well.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| People aren't fools. They know that TikTok is being put
| into this position by the US government. You can go on
| any social media platform right now and see how outraged
| TikTok users are. This is going to have incredible
| political blowback from the younger generations and there
| won't be any "lawyering" around that. Even if the ban
| doesn't go through, a lot of damage has already been
| done.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Yes I am sure some kids will cry on the internet.
|
| The bill is overwhelmingly bipartisan though. There isn't
| anyone for some kids to go after, if it's almost a
| unanimous bi partisan effort.
|
| Those kids lost. It's over.
|
| And if people are this upset, then that is all the more
| reason to pull the trigger now, instead of giving our
| foreign adversaries more time to retaliate.
|
| Anyway, tiktok almost divested the last time this
| happened. Unless they are OK will losing 10s of billions
| of dollars for nothing, well chances are they'll just
| divest, despite the current posturing they are doing.
| ambicapter wrote:
| There's definitely areas of advertising that are
| banned/controlled so that comparison seems more damning
| than beneficial (e.g. alcohol to minors, medication in
| any country other than the US
| rjmunro wrote:
| Didn't they already, in effect, DDOS the congress telephone
| system?
| hypeit wrote:
| No, they did however increase engagement in democracy in
| a very dramatic fashion. More people making demands from
| their government is a good thing.
| j_maffe wrote:
| When they're deliberately coordinated by foreign states
| with malicious intent? When the demands become more and
| more extreme towards the opposing side?
| bluefishinit wrote:
| Opposing this ban isn't "malicious intent" lots of people
| think it's an infringement upon their rights for the US
| government to decide what they can and cannot see.
| User23 wrote:
| What's being described isn't an eye for an eye, but tit for
| tat. And tit for tat is the norm for international relations
| and has been since time immemorial.
|
| Usually it's relatively dull stuff, like if country A
| requires citizens of country B to have a visa to visit,
| country B will as a matter of course require citizens of
| country A to have visas to visit too.
| j_maffe wrote:
| So if China bans all American literature and news sources,
| the US should do the same? If China deports all Chinese
| Americans from their country, should the US do the same?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > So if China bans all American literature and news
| sources, the US should do the same?
|
| At least their propaganda outlets, yes.
|
| > If China deports all Chinese Americans from their
| country, should the US do the same?
|
| No one is calling for a return to the ugly times of WW2
| [1], but banning new immigration outside of asylum claims
| and especially banning investment into real estate
| certainly should be on the table.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_
| America...
| j_maffe wrote:
| I disagree but I understand where you're coming from.
| There's an aspect of being an idealist vs being a realist
| in the final result. Perhaps some sort of balanced
| strategy is the way to go. Just definitely don't give
| leeway for governments to do shitty things (to their
| people and others) just because others are doing it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I used to be on the idealist side myself - after all,
| Germany has been _the_ driving force behind the idea
| "change (towards democracy) by trade" - but as we've seen
| with Russia and China, all that did was make us
| completely dependent on them, and in the case of China
| the resulting loss of domestic production jobs led to
| massive issues with "left behind" areas and a loss of
| trust in democracy itself.
|
| In Africa, it's a similar situation - we poured in
| boatloads of money and aid, in exchange for the demand of
| a bare minimum of human rights, and now a lot of the
| countries there are falling to the lure of Russia and
| China. My personal position is, drop them. Let Russia and
| China deal with the mess, fail at it, and keep an open
| invitation once they realize that Chinese imperialism is
| just as bad as historic Western imperialism.
| chaostheory wrote:
| This isn't a good analogy. This is about trade and not
| freedom or rights. The CCP, the owner of TikTok, is
| neither an individual nor a US citizen.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Interesting... "eye for an eye" has an almost identical
| meaning to "tit for tat" in my mind. Both of them
| effectively mean "retaliation in kind". One slight
| difference I guess is that "eye for an eye" often relates
| specifically to justice or just punishment.
| rightbyte wrote:
| "Tooth for a tooth" is maybe more about exactly the same
| thing than "tit for tat"?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What's being described isn't an eye for an eye, but tit
| for tat.
|
| Those are exact synonyms.
|
| > And tit for tat is the norm for international relations
|
| It's commonly been _a_ norm (not _the_ norm), and its a
| norm that usually produces escalatory spirals, because
| actors tend to be more sensitive to harms to themselves
| from others policies and less sensitive those from other's
| policy.
| User23 wrote:
| Eye for an eye connotes, if not denotes, proportionate
| justice. International relations, childish propaganda
| notwithstanding, is not at all about justice.
|
| Tit for tat on the other hand is specifically a game
| theory term as used here, and it applies exactly to this
| sort of diplomatic strategic calculation.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Eye for an eye connotes, if not denotes, proportionate
| justice.
|
| No, the law of retribution is not about proportionate
| justice. It is about retribution.
|
| It's a association with justice is that it is seen as
| less unjust and a step _toward_ justice and less socially
| disruptive than accepting _deliberately-escalatory_
| retribution for perceived wrongs as a norm.
| yorwba wrote:
| Tit for tat makes sense in a situation where you expect to
| work out a deal, both sides agree to stop, and everyone is
| better off. E.g. allowing visa-free travel in both
| directions between A and B.
|
| But for the Chinese government, social control is an
| existential issue, not something that can be negotiated
| away in a trade deal. They're always going to "tit",
| because allowing people to freely express themselves on the
| internet could end their rule overnight.
|
| So the "tat" cannot be used as a bargaining chip, but needs
| to be weighed on its own merits. Does the US benefit from
| the ability to arbitrarily declare companies to be "foreign
| adversaries" and shut them down or force their owners to
| divest? Mightn't TikTok decide to relocate their US
| headquarters to Europe instead? And shouldn't Chinese
| founders in the US see the writing on the wall and
| contemplate a similar move? Is that good or bad for the US?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > But for the Chinese government, social control is an
| existential issue, not something that can be negotiated
| away in a trade deal. They're always going to "tit",
| because allowing people to freely express themselves on
| the internet could end their rule overnight.
|
| Sounds like it's bad idea to freely open the door to
| China.
|
| > Mightn't TikTok decide to relocate their US
| headquarters to Europe instead?
|
| The law says they can't exist in China, Russia, NK, Iran
| so this is fine.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Businesses/commerce/trade have never been "free". I'm not
| sure why this keeps being used as a rebuttal. These topics
| are covered in basic macroeconomics classes in the United
| States.
| voldacar wrote:
| >an eye for an eye doesn't end well
|
| Actually in most games that are played repeatedly, the
| optimal strategy is to cooperate with cooperators and defect
| against defectors.
| c4wrd wrote:
| This simplification misses key nuances. Strategies like
| Tit-for-Tat (TFT) are context-sensitive and not universally
| "optimal." Effectiveness varies with game structure,
| communication clarity, and the presence of noise. Moreover,
| the "optimal" strategy adjusts in finite games (which you
| didn't clarify which type of game) due to the endgame
| effect.
|
| Simple hole in your simplification: one simple
| misunderstanding could lead to an endless cycle of
| defection where everyone will defect on each other: game
| over.
| harkinian wrote:
| Right, so usually the modification of TFT is that you
| forgive one or two missteps. We're well past that point
| with China trade.
| voldacar wrote:
| >Strategies like Tit-for-Tat (TFT) are context-sensitive
| and not universally "optimal."
|
| Of course. Hence why I didn't claim it to be universally
| optimal. All I'm saying is that your willingness to
| defect against defectors should always be non-zero, just
| to keep the players in line who start out with a higher
| predisposition towards defecting.
|
| The noisiness of the real world should probably bias us
| more in the direction of cooperation, to avoid a cascade
| of defection as you mention, but a player who only
| cooperates will get taken advantage of regardless of the
| precise details of the game. Some amount of this dynamic
| can be seen currently in the relationship between western
| companies and the Chinese state, a relationship that is
| currently very different from the relationship between
| Chinese companies and the rest of the world.
|
| It is also generally true that the longer the game, the
| more defectors suffer.
| yorwba wrote:
| Not if there's a player for whom defecting is always better
| than cooperating, no matter what the other players do. And
| not if there's another player for whom cooperating is
| always better than defecting, no matter what the first
| player does. Then the first player should always defect and
| the second always cooperate.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| US freedom applies only to citizens and residents and not
| foreign govts.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Totally. This is the main thing agaisnt the free speech
| argument. We have also passed this same law in radio and
| TV. It's about influence at a mass scale more than
| anything. I don't know why we would want a foreign
| ADVERSARY to have free reign.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| This framing is all backwards. Americans go to TikTok for
| content of their own free will. This law effectively
| prevents Americans from using an information service they
| prefer.
|
| Unless, of course, you want to admit that social media
| applications, through some combination of peer pressure,
| advertising, propaganda, manipulation, and deception
| subvert the free will of some portion of their users. In
| which case naturally they ought to be regulated in order
| to protect your citizens. Except... then the regulation
| drafted reads as "only American companies are allowed to
| subvert the free will of Americans", which comes off as
| pretty sinister.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Except... then the regulation drafted reads as "only
| American companies are allowed to subvert the free will
| of Americans", which comes off as pretty sinister.
|
| Sinister or not this framing makes a lot more sense than
| the alternative if you write it like this:
|
| "Only companies [beholden to American interests] are
| allowed to [influence] Americans".
|
| The core premise is really rather dull. If the company
| poses a risk to Americans, then it should exist fully
| within reach of the US Gov regulations and completely out
| of the control of adversaries.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Yes, and Americans should have the freedoms to receive
| whatever information they want, including whatever is on
| Tik Tok. This is covered by the first amendment.
| xdennis wrote:
| It's not the information that's banned, it's TikTok.
| People don't seek to ban TikTok because they fear the
| content, they fear the power that an enemy nation has
| over their citizens. It's not a free speech issue.
|
| Imagine if a company developed a new form of paper and
| published many books on it. If the paper turns out to be
| toxic and is banned, the company can't then say "oh, no,
| we're being censured". It has nothing to do with the
| message.
| Miner49er wrote:
| The courts can look at the effect of the ban, not just
| the intention. If the effect is that it ends up limiting
| Americans' access to information (which it would, unless
| ByteDance gave in and sold) then a court could find it
| unconstitutional.
|
| IANAL, but this is my understanding.
|
| Same holds true of your 2nd example, if it required
| Americans to turn in all the books they owned printed on
| that paper, for example.
| eppp wrote:
| Where on earth does it say that the government cannot
| limit access to information? If that were true then how
| on earth is book censorship legal?
|
| For that matter, how was it legal to change to digital tv
| broadcasts? CCP tiktok can absolutely still operate a
| website that wont be blocked. The medium of delivery isnt
| protected speech.
| harkinian wrote:
| "People don't seek to ban TikTok because they fear the
| content"
|
| I'm not convinced about that. Open letter to congress
| from JFNA: https://cdn.fedweb.org/fed-1/1/Jewish%2520Fede
| ration%2520Let...
| orangecat wrote:
| _Yes, and Americans should have the freedoms to receive
| whatever information they want_
|
| And they do. This isn't a content-based ban. If a non-
| Chinese company acquires TikTok, they can continue to
| host exactly the same material without restrictions.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's part of what is being criticized. Human rights are
| supposed to be universal, and some countries actually
| handle them like that, applying them to citizens and
| foreigners alike.
| sophacles wrote:
| What human right is being violated? This is about what
| types of business are allowed to domestic and foreign
| entities. I've never heard anyone declare "its a basic
| human right for institutions designed to do business
| behind a liability shield to do as they please anywhere
| and any time".
| harkinian wrote:
| Which country gives the rest of the world the same rights
| as its citizens?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Human rights are just made up. It means nothing to talk
| about them. You can scream in a desert that water is a
| human right as much as you want, doesn't mean it is going
| to rain.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US is
| supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I wouldn't
| agree with.
|
| "stay on the moral high ground" only works when the other
| side is roughly playing by the same rules as you are.
|
| With authoritarian nations, with authoritarian leaders? They
| see any kind of even the slightest allowance as a weakness to
| exploit, an explicit allowance to move the Overton window. We
| should have kneecapped China years ago, when the first
| complaints about industrial espionage came in, and same for
| Russia after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. We didn't, and now
| we're a bunch of lame ducks swimming in a pond of manure.
| trts wrote:
| an eye for an eye doesn't end well because nobody gets their
| eyes back
|
| China can change their policy easily with respect to
| reciprocity
| creato wrote:
| > but an eye for an eye doesn't end well
|
| This is the _only_ thing that governs international
| relations. Look at visa reciprocity, trade agreements, etc.
| for examples.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| "eye for an eye" is actually a retaliation limiter, not a
| call to arms. It means if someone pokes out your eye, then
| you are limited to a maximum retaliation of poking out their
| eye. You are not allowed to kill them.
|
| For this China having TikTok spread propaganda or addiction
| in the USA does not then give the USA permission to nuke
| China as a consequence.
| paxys wrote:
| It's called reciprocity, and has been used since time
| immemorial for trade agreements, border control, ceasefire
| agreements, retaliatory strikes and a lot of other very high
| level geopolitics. "An eye for an eye" works perfectly well
| in such contexts.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You know what doesn't end well? Letting foreign adversaries
| walk all over your nation and citizens.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly
| in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to
| grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market?
|
| Because we are the United States, and we are better than that.
| We are a society that promotes free trade, freedom of
| expression, and economic globalization to the ends of the
| earth.
|
| It's kind of our whole thing.
| vkou wrote:
| > We promote free trade, freedom of expression, and economic
| globalization...
|
| ...as long as it benefits our mega-corps.
|
| As soon as they can't compete in these spaces, we immediately
| turn to protectionism, ag-gag laws, etc.
|
| The one sacred cow we have is profit, everything else is
| weighed on the axis of advancing it.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| How many democratic governments have been overthrown with US
| assistance because it benefited oil or fruit companies?
| jf22 wrote:
| Good point but it doesn't mean that US doesn't support
| those things the majority of the time.
|
| The primary motivation of a firefighter doesn't change
| because they rescue a cat every once in a while.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Not the point, but firefighters actually respond to few
| fires (presumably better electrical codes or smokers
| falling asleep with a cigarette). Most of their work is
| now supplemental EMT, locked houses, cats in trees, etc.
|
| This 2018 report
| (https://www.statista.com/statistics/376683/number-of-
| fire-de...) shows some 23 million medical emergencies to
| 1.5 million fire call responses.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >How many democratic governments have been overthrown with
| US assistance because it benefited oil or fruit companies?
|
| This century? None. The civilized world has progressed.
| Hopefully our Chinese and Russian friends can catch up some
| day.
| bluish29 wrote:
| How many democratic or non-democratic governments have
| been overthrown with Chinese assistance this century?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > How many democratic or non-democratic governments have
| been overthrown with Chinese assistance this century?
|
| None, because we've stopped them (for now) at great
| personal cost. Unless you count that little tiff in Hong
| Kong. No biggy.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| So do you think the US should also be fine with foreign
| nations running bot farms spreading fake news / propaganda?
| dartharva wrote:
| Plenty of American companies operate in Chinese consumer
| markets, Apple for example. One fifth of Apple's annual revenue
| comes from China, yet the country never retaliated with banning
| it while the US turned the whole world against Huawei.
| samspenc wrote:
| Errr, are you sure China hasn't done anything against Apple /
| iPhone?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-ban-apples-
| iphone-...
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/china-nationalism-response-
| to-i...
|
| https://fortune.com/2024/03/05/apples-iphone-sales-
| plummet-c...
| hmm37 wrote:
| That's not even remotely the same. That's more equivalent
| of banning the installation of tiktok on government phones,
| which should be considered normal for security reasons.
| Apple is still able to freely operate in China otherwise.
|
| And your other articles don't have anything to do with
| Apple being banned, but rather that Huawei's new phone is
| now able to compete with Apple sales, despite US trying to
| destroy Huawei.
| erohead wrote:
| "Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for
| Apple in China"
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-
| ce...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Apple is not a social media company.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think we should "lowest common denominator" to
| oppressive regimes. Our Constitution says "Congress shall make
| no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
| the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
| or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
| assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
| grievances." TikTok, at the end of the day, is just a kind of
| printing press. So it should be allowed under the First
| Amendment. The First Amendment protects pledging your
| allegiance to the Flag, just as it protects China saying "China
| is great, you should love us instead". The First Amendment
| makes no attempt to moderate content; you can say pretty much
| whatever you want. If China's use of TikTok for propaganda
| upsets you, then it's on you to make a compelling argument that
| is better than theirs. (I actually don't think that TikTok is
| much of a Chinese propaganda avenue. People are just mad that
| it's telling kids to eat tide pods and then they get sick. Who
| knew that underfunding public education for years would have
| consequences.)
|
| At the end of the day, what this law is asking for is a Great
| Firewall around the US, that prohibits which websites its
| citizens can visit. I do not want that, even if China's market
| practices are unfair. The cure is worse than the disease.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| How many times do we see the government trample on our rights
| behind "safety"?
|
| I'm fully with you on this. If TikTok is harmful, spread the
| word and let people make that decision for themselves. If
| kids are too small to make that decision, that falls on the
| parents. Don't take away my rights because others can't vet
| companies and use their brains if they should use the apps
| these companies put out.
| theferalrobot wrote:
| What rights is it taking away? TikTok will still exist, you
| will still be able to get to it on the internet. All this
| bill does is force a sale OR prevent American companies
| from platforming technology from adversarial nations
| (something every government does all the time... see the US
| and Huawei or limiting Nvidia exports to china etc).
|
| You'll still be able to download the app from the internet
| (just not an App Store) or browse it on your phone on the
| internet. We aren't putting up a 'great firewall' or
| anything
| theturtletalks wrote:
| My mistake then, but what's the point then? Won't they
| come for the website next if TikTok doesn't sell? I don't
| even use TikTok but I know this law will be precedence
| for other laws blocking outside websites.
| theferalrobot wrote:
| Well for one, it could force the sale to a non
| adversarial nation. Two, if it doesn't it undercuts the
| companies ability to deliver it on American app
| platforms, both of which are a positive from the
| viewpoint of the US government.
| csa wrote:
| I hope you realize that your libertarian stances are a wet
| dream for a pysops team.
|
| The idea of "rights" expands far beyond that which works
| well for you and people like you.
| BatFastard wrote:
| I don't think the founders could account for international
| influence in the age of the Internet and smart phones.
|
| No one is asking for a great wall around the US. People are
| just asking that major influencers are not under the control
| of hostile governments.
| jrockway wrote:
| Is international influence something that should be
| stopped? Like, I should check the citizenship of someone
| before I listen to their ideas? It just doesn't make sense
| to me. If someone tells me nonsense I can ignore the
| nonsense. It doesn't mean the government should smash their
| printing press.
|
| It's annoying when people in other countries rile up people
| to change how they vote, but ultimately, that's a problem
| with democracy. It's the worst system out there, except for
| all the others. People not understanding their government
| is the deeper problem. Does banning TikTok fix this
| problem? It sounds like we're saying "only opinion
| columnists who work for The New York Times and Fox News
| should be able to tell you how to vote and what issues you
| care about". That's really not great either, is it?
|
| It's really depressing watching the government strip away
| the rights of women and transgender people. We can't blame
| social media influence bots for that. It's elected
| officials that are doing it. TikTok is just a distraction
| from the true hardcore hatred that we've elected.
| wdh505 wrote:
| I'll try to weigh in. Democratic republics like the USA
| are heavily swayed by people, protests, etc. In the
| digital age, just-in-time censorship of social media like
| Facebook or Twitter have been extremely effective at
| preventing "good/bad" protests, and each government sets
| the rules for the social media in the country (read easy
| censorship). Additionally, there have been a number of
| international propaganda campaigns that were successful
| to disrupt regular elections in the USA recently. See
| evidence of certain protests getting huge right before
| and during the russo-ukrainian conflict and covid
| shutdowns. Tik tok the platform's users generally
| contribute and consume as a "community that generates
| content in good faith" (I use that definition loosely),
| but it is a arm of soft CCP power that could just-in-time
| promote something terrible (brainstorming here: cultivate
| civil-war-esque mindsets then trigger, convince the
| population to avoid polio vaccines, etc.) Elections are
| tumultuous enough without having each "town square"
| potentially weaponized by potentially hostile nations, so
| requiring that free press be free from foreign control
| (influence is okay under free speech) is what is being
| decided here.
| vizzier wrote:
| > Is international influence something that should be
| stopped?
|
| This should be a simple yes. External authoritarian
| governments (Russia's IRA, CCP via bytedance) should not
| have their thumb on the scale (trollfarms & the
| algorithm) for what is viewed in western democracies. I'm
| actually amazed that this view is controversial.
|
| I agree with the rest of your premises, but the above
| should be a separate issue from them.
| paganel wrote:
| If American democracy goes down because of "foreign
| influencers" from platforms like TikTok then it means that
| it wasn't all that strong to begin with.
| zachmu wrote:
| Tiktok isn't "some website", it is partially owned and
| controlled by the CCP, which influences what content gets
| shown to Americans. A majority of zoomers get most of their
| news and information primarily from this platform, which
| again is under the influence of a hostile foreign government.
| (TikTok also spies on US citizens for the CCP, but let's keep
| this restricted to the free speech argument about the ban).
|
| We actually don't have to shrug and say "oh well, first
| amendment" with respect to propaganda outlets of foreign
| countries.
| felixgallo wrote:
| would the same argument apply to Fox News? If not, why not?
| squigz wrote:
| Of course not. He said "foreign countries". The
| propaganda outlets at home are harmless.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > The propaganda outlets at home are harmless.
|
| I'm calling bullshit on that one. Fox News is incredibly
| harmful.
| squigz wrote:
| I was being sarcastic :)
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I wish I was...
| zachmu wrote:
| Whatever you think of our home-grown propaganda outlets,
| the US govt taking different approaches to foreign
| outlets should be uncontroversial. Unlike the CCP, US
| citizens have first amendment rights.
| rKarpinski wrote:
| No, it's owned & controlled by an American family (from
| Australia), has its headquarters in New York City and is
| not beholden to any foreign governments.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| Fox News and MSNBC are propaganda for American political
| parties not foreign governments. They have a much
| stronger constitutional argument for 1st Amendment
| protection than Russia Today or China Central TV would.
| wslh wrote:
| It seems you are not looking to American history: CIA and
| dictatorships in Latin America?
| true_religion wrote:
| What's the argument here? Because the US does harm to
| others, they should permit others to harm them?
| wslh wrote:
| No, it is to talk apples vs. apples about the upper
| argument on USA having propaganda only internally.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| The US government absolutely has its own government run
| media outlets such as Voice of America and foreign
| governments do ban them. For example, the Taliban has
| attempted to ban VOA in Afghanistan:
|
| https://www.insidevoa.com/a/despite-taliban-s-censorship-
| voa...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| FoxNews and MSNCB are directed internally. An example of
| American propaganda directed externally would be Voice of
| America.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I feel like the twitter files weren't sufficiently long
| enough ago to make this one sided argument.
|
| All governments have their hand in the cook jar.
| zachmu wrote:
| The US government working with social media companies to
| censor Americans (and other people) on those platforms is
| also pretty bad, yes. My impression is that their
| influence is much weaker and more marginal than is the
| case with the CCP and tiktok, though. But I would be
| sympathetic to other countries banning US social media on
| the ground of US govt influence.
| lumb63 wrote:
| If someone wants to subject themselves to CCP propaganda,
| why stop them? If they're that lacking in critical
| thinking, then maybe they're getting what they deserve.
| It's not like anyone is forcing people to use TikTok.
| groggo wrote:
| The funny thing is there's not really that much
| propaganda on TikTok, much less pro-CCP. Sure there's the
| potential, but it's really not even much of a thing IRL.
| ProcNetDev wrote:
| Go make some videos about Taiwan, Tiananmen, or Tibet and
| see what the algo does to you.
| eppp wrote:
| It doesnt have to be pro CCP. All they have to do is
| slightly boost anti US or anti Israel or anti Ukraine and
| it is the same thing. Slowly boiling the frog by boosting
| fringe voices and promoting them as common views.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Yes and for this reason I support a similar ban in my
| country of large scale American owned social media. Given
| they are all guilty of the above claims.
|
| What the American owned social networks have done to my
| countries populace, including its youth, is nothing short
| of a disaster. It's induced complete brain rot.
| krapp wrote:
| Promoting fringe voices is perfectly legitimate, both in
| terms of politics and free speech. That is literally how
| all social progress comes about. It's also how we elected
| our previous President. Like it or not, those are the
| rules of the game.
| phs318u wrote:
| I take issue only with your use of the word 'progress'.
| 'Change' certainly.
| csa wrote:
| > The funny thing is there's not really that much
| propaganda on TikTok
|
| I recommend that you sit down in front of your computer
| with your beverage of choice and do a deep dive into
| psyops.
|
| To address your comment, there are psyops actors in every
| significant (and some less significant) social media
| platform, even our own Hacker News. Whether you want to
| call their work "propaganda" or something else is mostly
| semantics -- they are operating with an agenda,
| sometimes/often one that conflicts with the will and/or
| best interest of our nation (in my case, the US).
| zachmu wrote:
| Indeed, we are so awash in propaganda it's often
| difficult to recognize it as such.
|
| "What's water?"
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Because I'm not fancying getting what they deserve
| together with them. Some brainless zoomers might be
| casually destroying the West and causing our doom, but I
| don't want to suffer from their stupidity. I would rather
| limit their fun than my life.
| throwaway199956 wrote:
| Doesn't first ammendment protect even that. Propaganda of
| other countries are legal under first ammendment.
|
| Why should we be a nanny state that should dictate which
| apps one can or cannot use on one's device.
|
| Also even at the hight of cold war, Soviet Life magazine
| was published and disseminated widely in the US.
| zachmu wrote:
| A US citizen distributing foreign media themselves is
| quite different than what is effectively a directly
| controlled broadcast owned by a foreign government.
| throwaway199956 wrote:
| Listening to foreign radio stations on shortwave and
| listening their propaganda is also not illegal in the US.
| brookst wrote:
| I'm not usually a slippery slope person, but if we're
| outlawing content based on who owns the creator or
| transmitter, things get ugly quick.
| true_religion wrote:
| A rule that hostile nations can't own communication
| platforms in your country isn't a slippery slope.
|
| The US is widely against even having its own government
| own communication platforms.
| philwelch wrote:
| "On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized
| citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US
| citizens were permitted to own US television stations." (
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch#Activities
| _in...)
| zachmu wrote:
| It's not even content per se, it's much more insidious
| than that.
|
| The comment I originally replied to likened tiktok to a
| printing press, but that's not quite right.
|
| Imagine a printing press owned by an enemy that would
| subtly manipulate the text of whatever you tried to
| print. Or maybe it would omit entire articles from
| certain recipients of the newspaper, or reorganize the
| page layout to emphasize different things than the editor
| intended.
|
| We wouldn't allow this hypothetical printing press
| controlled by a hostile foreign government to be sold in
| the US, we would be crazy to.
| brookst wrote:
| Actually, yes, we would allow such a thing. Plenty of our
| news organizations are foreign - owned, and many of them
| are very elegant to your hypothetical printing press. The
| US simply doesn't have the constitutional or legal
| framework to regulate content reproduction for
| ideological reasons.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Is it? When you're saying that, I think you're imagining
| your neighbor, not your oligarch.
|
| When one country tries to cause chaos in another, they
| use a two pronged approach. (1) they offer a country's
| aristocracy the ability to enrich themselves at the cost
| of their people. This could be things like cheap labor,
| gas pipelines, or being the guarantor of loans. (2) They
| tell a countries peasantry that the worlds problems are
| simple and that their government is their enemy and
| failing them. This is only empowered by having
| compromised their aristocracy, so their government _is_
| failing them.
|
| Then they put their fingers on the scale by providing
| resources (weapons, funding, press, intelligence, etc.)
| to an aligned entity capable of promoting their
| interests.
|
| It's worth considering that the great firewall of china
| exists explicitly because the Chinese government
| (rationally) thinks it's risky to subject people who were
| subsistence farming a generation ago to foreign
| influence.
|
| The cost of freedom is responsibility, and if you have an
| irresponsible (read: poorly educated/non critical
| thinking) populace, then people will unwittingly
| surrender their freedom. Freedom means the freedom to do
| the wrong thing, but that can result in bending _or_
| breaking.
| cangeroo wrote:
| Do foreign nationals have the same rights as Americans?
|
| Foreign companies shouldn't have the same protections.
|
| And in many countries, locally-operating subsidiaries are
| required to have majority ownership by citizens, partly
| to prevent foreign influence.
| takinola wrote:
| Foreign nationals in the US have the same rights (but not
| privileges) as American citizens.
| flakeoil wrote:
| Why should we be a nanny state that should dictate which
| bomber planes can or cannot enter our country?
| agency wrote:
| Great point - flying a bomber plane over a country is
| protected speech.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Doesn't first ammendment protect even that.
|
| Nope. The first amendment protects the speech of US
| citizens and only to a certain extent. This is why the US
| has a torture center in Guantanamo. To avoid issues of
| constitutional rights.
|
| This is also, btw, what allows the CIA and NSA to spy on
| data you send overseas in violation of the 4th amendment.
|
| US laws are geographically bound.
| brookst wrote:
| First Amendment also protects visitors, resident aliens,
| undocumented workers, and everyone else within the
| jurisdiction (with some nuance for prisoners, soldiers,
| etc).
| amou234 wrote:
| What most of the posters in this thread don't realize is
| that US is effectively at war with China. China is
| working in front of the scenes to be the major funder of
| Russia's war [1] against Europe, which is US's ally
| amongst the coalition of democratic countries. China is
| working behind the scenes to stop the supply of artillery
| shells to Ukraine. [2]. and it is increasingly and more
| visibly supplying Russia with military supplies. [3]
|
| People need to stop being so naive and realize that it's
| the aligned democratic countries (Ukraine, Europe, US,
| Australia, Canada, UK, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea)
| fighting against the last survival of dictatorships
| (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea). If you wish the
| dictatorships to win, please by all means, move there.
|
| [1] However, since 2022, China has amplified its purchase
| of cheaper Russian oil after the West hit Moscow with
| unprecedented sanctions
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/business/china-top-oil-
| suppli...
|
| [2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/02/world/po
| litics/...
|
| [3] https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/china-russia-
| alignment-co...
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Even if that's true, if we suspend our constitutional
| rights to conduct a war, then what's the point in having
| them? I thought they were inalienable.
|
| Imagine trying to suspend the 2nd amendment because of
| school shootings. The reason kinda doesn't matter when
| rights are on the line.
| amou234 wrote:
| Many times constitution was suspended in US during
| wartime [1]. Also, school shooting has a very low
| likelihood of causing US to collapse. Losing an
| adversarial war against a rival of similar size with
| nuclear weapons and a brainwashing mechanism via TikTok
| will. I for one do not want to live in a world controlled
| by China, where the state can weld me inside my apartment
| [2], find random reasons to jail me then extract organs
| from me [3] or many of the atrocious things China does.
|
| [1]https://www.military.com/history/6-times-martial-law-
| was-dec...
|
| [2]https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1703503427818
|
| [3] https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/analysis-
| killing-...
|
| [3]
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Sorry, but this just has an air of "My concerns are the
| only valid ones," that makes it hard to take seriously. I
| don't want to live in a world where my kids can get shot
| at school. I guess we just have different priorities, but
| I think it goes too far when we start saying, "Mine are
| right."
| amou234 wrote:
| That's quite alright, I didn't expect to convince someone
| who believes that in a war for survival, an opposing
| dictatorship can freely operate the most powerful
| propaganda weapon humankind has known against the
| democracy. Just because you know, it's idealistic.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Can you walk me through the scenario you're envisioning?
| I'm having a hard time following the series of events
| that starts with the status quo of TikTok ownership and
| results in the Chinese state being able to harvest your
| organs. Can you paint me a picture of a timeline or a
| series of key turns that would lead to that outcome?
| amou234 wrote:
| Anything's possible I guess, I mean, did anyone expect
| that China would allow the release of the man made covid
| virus from its Wuhan biolab (intentionally, or
| unintentionally) out to the world, killing millions in
| the process and giving long covid to millions more? And
| US and UK would be the ones that developed the vaccine
| successfully, and allowed the rest of the world to fully
| function after 2 years? And China would be the one that
| couldn't come up with its own vaccine, and just decided
| to release it into the wild in 2022 and bury any sort of
| mention of mass covid deaths [1]? I mean, if it were the
| other way around, and US and the rest of world was still
| shut down after 2 years while China was fully functional,
| TikTok could have been used by China to incite civil
| unrest in democratic countries, leading some to its
| downfall.
|
| I mean, there's no way China would release a covid 2,
| right?
|
| [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023
| /02/ch...
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Ok, but can you be specific about the scenario you're
| envisioning that begins with China's current ownership of
| TikTok and ends with organ harvesting? It sounds like a
| specific concern you have and you've given it careful
| consideration.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| You are absolutely right. Turning the other cheek when
| facing an opponent which is pointing at you as an source
| of ultimate evil and acting like it is plainly stupid.
| rajamaka wrote:
| China also continues to trade with the US despite Russian
| sanctions on the US.
|
| Does this mean China is effectively at war with Russia
| too?
| amou234 wrote:
| Current trading activities doesn't mean much by
| themselves. Europe also still trades with Russia. This is
| sort of missing the forest for the trees. You have to
| look at whether there are concerted efforts from
| Europe/US to REDUCE trade with Russia/China, which is
| yes. And whether US/Europe is restricting China's
| military capability, which is yes.
| msabalau wrote:
| If the first amendment actually protects TikTok here, as
| may be the case, then the courts can strike this down.
|
| On the other hand, perhaps the first amendment doesn't
| block this. In that case, that relevant consideration
| would seems to be rare broad bipartisan support (as
| evidenced by a very lopsided 352-65 vote, but we'll see
| what happens in the Senate) to limit the potential harm
| that can be done by the information warfare capabilities
| of a genocidal authoritarian regime with whom it is
| certainly plausible that the US will be at war with in
| the next decade.
|
| It is really unclear, absent a successful constitutional
| challenge, why the free speech maximalism preferences of
| a throwaway account on HN should hold more weight than
| lopsided bipartisan vote by democratically elected
| legislators.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The law will have little impact except to reacquaint
| children with web browsers, VPNs and side loading.
| zachmu wrote:
| You are drastically overestimating the capabilities and
| determination of tiktok users
| jdkee wrote:
| "The U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact."
|
| -Justice Roberth H. Jackson
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Buddy if some meaningful proportion of your population is
| finding foreign propaganda convincing, your problem isn't
| foreign propaganda.
|
| USA in terminal decline and, in typical fashion, it flatly
| refuses to look at itself and wonder why. American power
| elite has no one to blame but itself.
| zingababba wrote:
| That and political reasoning is impotent in the age of
| internet connectivity.
| badrequest wrote:
| Yeah, we should only tolerate domestic propaganda outlets.
| Sabinus wrote:
| You jest, but personally I prefer democratic self-origin
| propaganda to foreign authoritarian state propaganda.
| graybeardhacker wrote:
| A majority of right-wing Boomers get their news from
| sources controlled by corporation and politicians
| interested in overthrowing a legit government and could
| therefore be considered a threat to national security.
|
| I could be convinced that banning both would be good.
| Sammi wrote:
| The US constitution is for the people in the US. Chinese
| companies don't apply. If you want to grant freedom of speech
| protection under the US constitution for TikTok, then TikTok
| must be owned by US people.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Your point is that freedom of speech is not freedom to
| read. I sincerely disagree.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| You still have freedom to read. You will still be able to
| access TikTok if they choose not to sell. This is not a
| firewall block on TikTok, it is a business restriction on
| operating within the US. It simply bars US companies from
| hosting TikTok services or distributing the TikTok app.
| strangattractor wrote:
| The US Constitution guaranties US citizens rights not the
| general population of the Earth. Our government has no way to
| enforce or protect rights from entities outside of the US
| (other than force). If as you say it is just a "giant
| printing press" then ownership is irrelevant - change it and
| print away. If on the other hand the Chinese government has a
| vested interest in influencing what 136 million Americas
| consume as information - it will probably stay under a
| Chinese Government sphere of influence by order of the Party.
| kirse wrote:
| _TikTok, at the end of the day, is just a kind of printing
| press._
|
| No, TikTok is essentially digital opium. And China itself has
| confirmed that reality by 1) restricting their citizens'
| daily access and 2) significantly filtering the content they
| can see on it:
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069527/china-
| ti...
|
| It would only be fair of the US to follow China's example of
| protecting its citizens from numbing out on TikTok digital
| garbage. We should most certainly should follow suit with an
| equivalently restrictive measure.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| If you honestly believed this to be true, you would be
| arguing for a ban on all social media, as like half of
| Instagram is just reposts of TikTok content and is
| otherwise mind-numbingly equivalent to the service.
| aydyn wrote:
| False equivalence. You're essentially equating caffeine
| with cocaine.
|
| Not being the target audience, you're likely naive to the
| extent of harm enabled by tiktok.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| And you've lost all perspective by hopping on the
| bandwagon of a xenophobic moral panic. There is zero
| difference between Instagram Reels and TikTok garbage.
| aydyn wrote:
| > And you've lost all perspective by hopping on the
| bandwagon of a xenophobic moral panic
|
| In my experience the people who lead with this non-
| argument tend to be the most privileged. It's always nice
| talking down to other people of color, isn't it.
|
| > There is zero difference between Instagram Reels and
| TikTok garbage.
|
| Demonstrably false.
| pests wrote:
| >> There is zero difference between Instagram Reels and
| TikTok garbage.
|
| > Demonstrably false.
|
| Ageeed.
|
| I put Reels on the bottom of the short content platforms
| - TokTok, Shorts, then Reels.
|
| If you haven't used these platforms a lot, you wouldn't
| be able to tell a difference. Reels is boring. Everything
| it shows me, no matter how much I use it, always sucks. I
| lose interest in minutes. Shorts is decent but mostly
| just marketing for a channels main brand, but still gets
| boring after a little use or I'm back in the main tab.
| TikTok - where did the time go?
|
| TikTok Live is also quite unique, never before I have I
| experienced other peoples lives so up close and
| (politely) invasively. Such a strange feeling seeing some
| family in India making clay cups, or the (Eastern
| European?) tile guy grinding for hours, or the loading
| dock somewhere where people are sliding massive blocks of
| ice around, or the Australian DJ on his balcony - while
| I'm across the world laying in bed at 3am.
| sanktanglia wrote:
| these days instagram is much more used by older people
| than tiktok which has a large younger audience. Also
| scale wise, tiktok is crazy huge, so yes there is a
| difference between the two offerings
| kirse wrote:
| Nah, I'm just arguing that it's both reasonable and fair
| to do unto others. Here's some more evidence:
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/china-wants-
| to-ri...
|
| I'm sure it's not "xenophobic moral panic" when China
| does it though, right?
| code_biologist wrote:
| I believe it to be true and I'd like broad, heavy
| restriction of algorithmically targeted content but that
| would go against the interests of massive companies. Not
| gonna happen. I'll take the win in this instance though,
| where national security concerns and congress' desire to
| look like it's doing _something_ align to make a small
| positive change.
| kenjackson wrote:
| How is this a win at all though? Especially now. Every
| kid I know says Reels is a perfectly good alternative now
| (it wasn't two years ago). It's making a statement about
| something, but it's not helping any of the problems you
| noted.
| Kerrick wrote:
| Our Constitution also says, "The Congress shall have Power
| [...] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations."
|
| Forcing a sale of TikTok so it's not foreign (with a
| punishment of banning if they don't), especially while making
| no such law for U.S. controlled competitors, is no more an
| infringement upon free speech than introducing a tariff or
| trade restriction on German-manufactured printing presses
| while leaving domestic models untouched.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| What if EU forced american companies to sell off their
| stuff to european companies? It isnt that easy.
| maxwell wrote:
| That would be great! Do Apple first.
| larrik wrote:
| This actually isn't too far fetched with the data privacy
| laws in the EU. It's not an explicit directive, though.
| eppp wrote:
| What is the difference in making the terms of operation
| impossible or forcing a sale really at the end of the
| day?
|
| Why doesnt google or meta operate in China?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Then American companies would need to consider whether
| they wanted to pull out of the market, or spin off a
| European version of the company.
| throwuwu wrote:
| If they passed a law requiring US companies operating in
| Europe to divest their ownership in those subsidiaries or
| be banned from operating there then that would be their
| right as a government. Isn't the EU rather famous at the
| moment for forcing foreign businesses to comply with
| their laws and regulations? e.g. GDPR
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Or China! China has definitely prohibited American
| companies from reasonably operating in the US.
| Reciprocity there makes sense but it does seem that this
| sort of reciprocity is going further than China had, no?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| EU is doing similar with anti-trust rules and rulings. It
| is their right to regulate commerce in their
| jurisdiction, even if that means fining Apple based on
| world revenue/profits rather than EU revenue/profits.
| orangecat wrote:
| _What if EU forced american companies to sell off their
| stuff to european companies?_
|
| That would likely be unwise, but it would be a legitimate
| use of authority.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > People are just mad that it's telling kids to eat tide pods
| and then they get sick.
|
| I think it's more accurate to say instead that "the oligarchs
| who run this place are just mad that it's telling kids to
| support Palestine".
|
| But in general I agree with your point!
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Algorithmic content is not free speech. The government can't
| make Facebook censor this message or that message, but they
| can certainly restrict the usage of algorithmic content feeds
| - that is not protected by the first amendment. I'm not just
| talking about Tiktok either, this is the issue they should be
| legislating on, and it should target all social media
| companies.
|
| There is also legislation giving them to right to regulate
| foreign ownership of companies. It's scary how much of our
| stuff is owned by foreign governments. Seems like a national
| security risk.
| aethros wrote:
| How is "developing an algorithm" which selects content any
| different than editorial free speech? It selects content to
| show, and transmits that content to its users. Newspapers
| do this all the time, they pick the stories which get run.
|
| Honestly curious of your take. The only difference that I
| see is that it can be done at scale, which doesn't
| necessarily mean it isn't free speech. They just have a
| bigger megaphone.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| The Western world is in dire, dire need of education on
| geopolitics.
| rightbyte wrote:
| "Geopolitics" and "national security" is more or less a dog
| whistle for nationalist types larping Civ.
|
| But ye, surely there is some need of education of the
| shenanigans these types are up to.
| deciplex wrote:
| > I don't think we should "lowest common denominator" to
| oppressive regimes.
|
| Chinese approval of their government is much higher than most
| Western regimes including the US. I think you are right about
| how we ought to apply the 1st amendment here, but I don't
| find that Chinese propaganda is any more insidious or
| pervasive than American. We just manage it differently: in
| China the state directly controls the media, while in the US
| business interests directly control the state and the media.
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is a common misunderstanding of what the first amendment
| means.
|
| Speech and individual expression are individual rights and
| not institution rights. Perhaps you have some argument with
| "freedom of press" but that's a pretty hefty uphill battle
| for TikTok to prove that they are press and not just a random
| social media business.
|
| Some of our oldest and most well supported laws revolve
| around limiting what a business can and can't say. For
| example, a supplement company can't advertise "This fish oil
| will cure your cancer!"
|
| The interstate commerce law gives congress the power to make
| laws that regulate businesses (that operate over state
| boundaries). That power includes things like outright banning
| a business for pretty much any reason.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Some of our oldest and most well supported laws revolve
| around limiting what a business can and can't say. For
| example, a supplement company can't advertise "This fish
| oil will cure your cancer!"
|
| That's misunderstanding what law is. An individual can be
| tried for fraud just as a business. It doesn't have
| anything to do with freedom of speech.
| cogman10 wrote:
| You can restrict businesses from saying things beyond
| what individuals can say.
|
| For example, the FCC prevents public broadcasters from
| saying "fuck" on the air. Yet you can yell "Fuck the
| police" over and over again and be protected by the first
| amendment. There are words and speeches that can't be
| aired on public TV.
|
| There are other instances of this. A publicly traded
| business cannot, for example, has to be careful with
| public statements. There are things they can't say while
| the stock market is open (such as announcing a merger).
| Yet an individual has no such restrictions on their free
| speech. The closest analogy would be preventing
| individuals from inciting a riot or issuing calls for
| violence.
|
| And that underlines that free speech in the US has limits
| (and always has). About the only speech that is pretty
| much fully protected is political speech, but as I said,
| even that falls a bit short as you can get in hot water
| if someone uses your political speech as inspiration for
| violence.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Our Constitution says
|
| That's a great start, but it's only as valid as an activist
| judicial branch says it is. If congress passes a law that
| goes against the reading of that old parchment, someone
| brings a case that works its way to SCOTUS, then they vote
| based on the vacation they are provided, then the law is
| declared valid. If they decide it is not, then it is not. It
| doesn't matter what some armchair critic of the law thinks.
| They can tweet and tweet, they can blog and blog, they can
| vent on forums, but unless they become POTUS in a term where
| you get to sit 1/3 of the bench, you've got no real shot at
| changing it. Doesn't matter if you lean left or right, a
| single POTUS sitting 3 judges is rare enough to not consider
| it a real possibility. So an activist bench can cause
| disruption for decades/generations.
| ajross wrote:
| > TikTok, at the end of the day, is just a kind of printing
| press.
|
| Printing presses can't spy on the readers of the paper that
| goes through them[1]. I think there's a first amendment
| argument to be made here, but this is _way_ too far out on
| the absolutist end of the spectrum, not least because this
| bill doesn 't actually regulate TikTok's speech, only who's
| allowed to own it.
|
| Commercial speech is regulated in thousands of ways already
| in ways much more effective than this bill. If you really
| believe in free speech absolutism[2] the fights to be had are
| elsewhere.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/us/politics/tik-tok-
| spyin...
|
| [2] And no one does. Everyone starts censoring the second
| they get their hands on a lever.
| everdrive wrote:
| >I actually don't think that TikTok is much of a Chinese
| propaganda avenue.
|
| I don't disagree currently, but it certainly could be used
| for that. Due to the invisible hand of the algorithm, it
| would also be hard to know if a topic was trending naturally,
| or if TikTok was pushing a viewpoint. Setting aside the issue
| of whether or not TikTok should be banned, do you agree with
| the potential propaganda concerns?
| ribosometronome wrote:
| I don't think the US Constitution gives the Chinese Communist
| Party Freedom of Speech. They're generally freedoms that
| apply to US citizens in the US, no?
| BigParm wrote:
| "You have to be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply".
|
| Those protections will apply when the platform is owned by
| American citizens.
| xdennis wrote:
| > I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be
| based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security
| concerns.
|
| The argument that CCP people make is that Facebook et al aren't
| banned, they just need to follow the law to be allowed. The
| law, of course, includes unacceptable things like complying
| with every communist request).
|
| A better way to ban TikTok is to require social media companies
| to be based in countries which follow basic human rights and
| democracy.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > Facebook et al aren't banned, they just need to follow the
| law to be allowed
|
| Yes, and by that logic, TikTok isn't banned, but rather
| foreign ownership of said app is.
|
| Just "follow the law" and sell the rights.
| bjourne wrote:
| The word "reciprocity" cannot hide the fact that two wrongs
| doesn't make a right. We think it is wrong of China to censor
| Facebook and Twitter because that is what authoritarian regimes
| that don't give a shit about free speech do. For exactly the
| same reason it is wrong of the US to ban TikTok. And this bill
| has nothing to do with balancing international trade. It's
| stated purpose is to restrict China's ability to influence
| American youth.
| daveguy wrote:
| China is not a US citizen.
| layer8 wrote:
| Some animals are more equal than others?
| p_j_w wrote:
| The constitution is explicit when it carves out exemptions
| for citizens and non citizens. The first amendment is not
| one of them.
| kurthr wrote:
| The constitution, or the bill of rights we appear to be
| talking about, or all the amendments? This seems wrong on
| the face of it.
|
| The only mentions of citizenship I know of are for
| voting, juries, and elected positions.
|
| By your argument Citizen's United wasn't just an
| abomination, but barred the congress from limiting
| foreign political donations, because money is speech?
| Interesting that's never been brought up.
|
| I mean, I'm willing to listen to the ACLU, but the
| argument that forcing the sale of a corporation limits
| free speech is fairly weak, when commercial speech is
| routinely limited... as it should be. Do you think there
| is a corporate free speech right to sell personal
| information? What limits to profit on commercial speech
| can there be? If an unprofitable social media app were
| forced to close down, wouldn't laws allowing collection
| of debts be violations of the 1st amendment?
| eppp wrote:
| It also doesnt carve out children at school or yelling
| fire. Yet state employees are absolutely allowed to
| censor children in and on public property.
| hmm37 wrote:
| But Tiktok "is". At least Tiktok USA is registered in the
| US as a US corporation and therefore gets the same
| protections under US laws. Therefore constitutional
| protections apply.
|
| You could say the owners of Tiktok don't necessarily get
| the same protections, but that's a different case. And in
| this case it is more similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act,
| but for business purposes rather than immigrational
| purposes, basically stating that Chinese people aren't
| allowed to own businesses that operate in the US, and must
| divest.
| caekislove wrote:
| "Congress shall make no law" doesn't mean "Unless
| foreigners are involved"
| daveguy wrote:
| China is not a "foreigner" it's a hostile foreign
| _government_.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Demanding fairness and reciprocity is not wrong. It's a basic
| moral position. Furthermore, imposing restriction on
| totalitarian regimes is perfectly legitimate as well. Letting
| them do as they please as you argue is, in fact, the morally
| reprehensible position.
| kurthr wrote:
| What's wrong? The glorious right to investment profits? It's
| not even censorship.
|
| The 1st amendment right to free speech is about US citizens.
| This isn't even a US corporation. No 1st amendment there so
| it looks legal. They probably wouldn't have done anything, if
| the manipulation and spying had been a bit less blatant. Even
| Telegram and Kaspersky still operate. This isn't even a WTO
| trade issue since almost every single tech or manufacturing
| company (except Tesla?) that wants to sell in China has to be
| a joint owned venture. It's classic mercantilism and there's
| no international obligation to buy stuff or allow it's import
| (see fentanyl). Even TikTok isn't allowed there, VPNs are not
| just banned, but considered tools of terrorism. Tit for tat
| is a thing, this has been coming for a decade (only slowed by
| corporate profits and cheap labor), and the slope isn't very
| slippery.
|
| Still might not happen, if Kellyanne has anything to say to
| Trump about it.
| bjourne wrote:
| I find the argument "Your criticism is invalid because the
| law doesn't violate the First amendment!" reductive and
| pointless. Decisions taken by the US government can be
| unethical, counterproductive, immoral, hypocritical,
| unfair, and stupid, while still being constitutional. It's
| not illegal for me to treat you worse because your username
| starts with the letter "k". Yet, many people would find it
| stupid and inconsistent. Here, the US government is doing
| the same thing, except the letter is "C".
| elefanten wrote:
| You're muddling issues. China restricts free speech in all
| contexts, and also separately puts onerous requirements on or
| outright bans various kinds of foreign businesses.
|
| If TikTok is banned for geopolitical reasons, reciprocity
| reasons or whatever you want to call it, that doesn't change
| anything about free speech in America. It's not the
| unrestricted speech that was deemed a problem with TikTok,
| but rather the specific geopolitical risk (or whatever).
| bjourne wrote:
| No, you are muddling the issues. This is about speech and
| not about anything trade-related. Banning TikTok is not
| equivalent to putting import tariffs on cheap Chinese
| electronic bikes or solar panels. It's not about whatever
| profits ByteDance makes from TikTok.
|
| It's 100% about controlling the narrative. "Young Americans
| are turning against Israel -- and you can thank TikTok"
| https://forward.com/opinion/574346/freepalestine-tiktok-
| isra... Can't have that happening in the US. The right to
| brainwash kids is a right reserved to the American
| billionaire class, their purchased politicians and
| lobbyists. You can talk about "geopolitical risks",
| "security issues", and "reciprocity" all you want but it
| doesn't hide this fact.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Its funny that the debate here is whether it is:
|
| (1) trade protectionism that is about protecting the
| right to profit off of manipulation of American youth to
| favored actors, rather than disfavored foreign actors
| (whether disfavored because their country doesn't allow
| American firms the same power in their countries, or for
| other reasons) or
|
| (2) _totally not trade related_ , but speech related, and
| about reserving the right to manipulate American youth to
| the exact same favored actors discussed in #1.
| sophacles wrote:
| What's being censored here? The bill doesn't ban any speech
| at all - you can put any video tik tok allows on dozens of
| other video sharing platforms. This is a ban on certain
| foreign countries (er.. i mean "companies") doing some types
| of business in the US.
| protomolecule wrote:
| No, no, no. China and Russia are banning Facebook, Instagram
| and whatnot because they are evil dictatorships. The US is
| banning TikTok because China is evil dictatorship.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Nice try bro, but US symmetrically responds to the hostile
| actions of authoritarian governments. If those
| authoritarian governments wouldn't be desperately trying to
| destroy the free world, no one would care of their silly
| apps.
| protomolecule wrote:
| Facebook played its role in spreading of so called Arab
| spring in 2011 [0]. Now look how Middle East is doing
| now, more than 10 years later. That's some destruction
| for you.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_i
| n_the_A...
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| This is the wrong argument. This legislation doesn't censor
| TikTok like China censors social media/the internet at large.
| It simply requires the ownership of Tiktok to be American in
| the US. This is the same thing China does (You can't operate
| in China without a Chinese partner to run your operation in
| China.)
|
| You can debate whether or not it is reasonable or important
| to for the US to impose similar ownership requirements for
| businesses operating in the US, but couching it in argument
| of censorship the way China does it is a real false
| equivalence. Congress doesn't want to censor your speech on
| Tiktok (Which isn't how the 1st amendment works anyways) they
| want China to divest itself of US operations.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It's a huge mistake to not put reciprocity in the title of the
| bill and to make the language not china specific.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be
| based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security
| concerns.
|
| Reciprocity of _policies_ isn 't really conceptually coherent.
|
| There was some semi-recent news (really, not that recent) to
| the effect that Saudi Arabia would allow women to drive.
|
| Now imagine our policy toward them before they made that
| change. We could ignore them because they have their own
| country. Or we could give up on that and try to impose some
| kind of penalty on them.
|
| But one thing you're unlikely to see an argument for is
| reciprocity. "So, they don't let their women drive? How
| barbaric! We'll show them -- we won't let _our_ women drive
| either! "
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The argument is that they are an enemy. No other argument is
| necessary. Not free speech, not reciprocity, not that they're
| an oppressive government.
|
| If in 1939 Hitler had tried to buy the CBS radio network, FDR
| would have stopped him, or the Congress. If it had required a
| Constitutional amendment, that would have passed easily.
|
| Yet we were not at war with Germany (yet).
| hmm37 wrote:
| The issue is that China has banned facebook and google, etc.
| because they don't censor which is the law in China. If they
| decided to censor and follow the laws of China they would be
| allowed to operate there. Google tried to reenter the Chinese
| market but decided not to after an uproar from its own
| employees who didn't want to censor. Microsoft is allowed to
| provide hotmail and bing, etc. services there, because they
| decided to censor.
|
| The problem is exactly what law has tiktok broken in the US? Is
| it simply that it's seen as a Chinese company, and therefore
| discrimination against a Chinese company or something else.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| >If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly
| in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to
| grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market?
|
| Because there is value in holding the moral high ground.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| Reciprocity in this case is supposed to mean "We allow your
| companies in as long as they follow the local laws, and you
| will allow our companies in as long as they follow the local
| laws." TikTok is following American law, which is significantly
| more permissible in terms of speech than China.
|
| American social media giants thought it was too damaging to
| follow Chinese law and voluntarily retreated (Google), played
| the game until they got burned (Facebook) or silently comply
| (Bing/Microsoft).
|
| In the case of Facebook, they didn't want to share data on
| Uighur separatists, who organized protests on Facebook, which
| in turn left hundreds of people dead. Barring any kind of moral
| judgment, this obviously wouldn't fly in the US either.
|
| No, at the core of this issue is the realisation that a social
| media giant has enormous influence on the minds of the next
| generation, and having this be in the hands of foreign powers
| is very dangerous. Of course, the US doesn't want to be super
| open about this, since 4/5 global players in social media are
| American, and they'd rather not have other regions get similar
| thoughts.
|
| In the end, the reasoning is sound while the justification is
| hypocritical.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Google tried to follow the law, but how can they comply when
| CCP laws mercurial & vague which is the opposite of EU & US
| law? As for meta, why would our people and companies want to
| knowingly participate in the genocide (not cultural genocide
| but full on genocide) of the Uighurs in Xinjiang?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Well, fine. But now the American law TikTok needs to follow
| (assuming it is passed by the senate and signed by POTUS) is
| that the US TikTok needs to be sold, or become unavailable in
| app stores.
| mempko wrote:
| Because economists would have to acknowledge that protected and
| restricted markets are better for developing local industry
| than open markets. Which of course is true. But then they would
| have to acknowledge the whole neo-liberal experiment of open
| global markets is bad for us. It would also pave the way for
| foreign markets to follow in our footsteps and restrict google,
| facebook, and others, further segregating our digital spaces.
| firecall wrote:
| Because that is an unproductive foreign policy approach.
|
| It's an unproductive approach to any relationship in general.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > On Tuesday, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
| the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the
| Justice Department spoke with lawmakers in a classified briefing
| about national security concerns tied to TikTok.
|
| I would have loved to be in that briefing.
| Leary wrote:
| Next up, China forces Tesla to divest its Chinese operations or
| face ban
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| They did it to all previous OEMs via forcing them into Joint
| Ventures. So it would be actually equal treatment for Tesla as
| the rest of OEMs.
| PreachSoup wrote:
| Yep. Tesla is actually the outlier here where China gave them
| the special treatment.
|
| Now China has their own formidable EVs now. Would China say
| gave us shares or f** off to Tesla?
| luyu_wu wrote:
| TBF only majority ownership, which Bytedance already does not
| have (Bytedance which is also owned 60% by foreign
| investors). The current situation is already quite a bit like
| these 'previous OEMs'.
| jrsj wrote:
| When this issue was raised before it went nowhere. Now that AIPAC
| backs the ban because of pro Palestinian content on TikTok, it's
| on the verge of passing. Politicians will frame this as being
| about China but it just looks like censorship to me.
| aaomidi wrote:
| TikTok has been the only popular social media network in the US
| not censoring Israeli crimes on Palestinians.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-face...
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/2/28/twitter-under-f...
|
| https://www.vox.com/culture/23997305/tiktok-palestine-israel...
|
| There is a reason this is one of the things that's passing with
| bipartisan support. Both parties are excusing, and are on the
| side of Israel and they know that public opinion turning against
| Israel will cause them future problems.
|
| Reality is, the sudden push for a TikTok ban after it was stalled
| for more than a year is Palestine:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-...
| kingraoul wrote:
| Agreed this is about the CIA & NSA & FBI wanting to crush a
| medium where they may not have total control of the message.
| jrsj wrote:
| You'll notice no one is even bothering to comment why this
| isn't true, they're just downvoting and flagging anyone
| pointing this out.
| aaomidi wrote:
| https://www.fridaythings.com/recent-posts/israel-
| palestine-g...
|
| This is an active mis-information tactic unfortunately. And
| moderation systems do not know how to handle this
| situation.
| kingraoul wrote:
| Yeah, wave to three letter agencies everyone! & since you
| guys are hear reading this, I'd like to remind you that you
| took an oath to serve US.
| tzs wrote:
| Does Tik Tok actually need to be an app? On the consumption side
| I'd expect it could be done entirely web based.
|
| I understand it has some content creation support, like recording
| short videos from the app, but I think there are stand-alone apps
| for making and editing short videos, and a Tik Tok web based app
| could probably be made to import from some of those.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| How does this pass muster with the Constitution's forbidding of
| bills of attainder?
| joelfried wrote:
| It passes muster unless and until five vote against it at the
| Supreme Court.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I believe because it's a civil, not criminal, penalty? Good
| point, though. Perhaps the section naming ByteDance will be
| struck.
| harkinian wrote:
| Does the US Constitution care about the rights of a foreign
| entity?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, when within its jurisdiction. It'll use "citizens" where
| it does not, like voting. Tourists can't be summarily
| executed, for example.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There are US citizens who have already invested in the
| platform.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| The closest precedent for this ban are laws banning foreign
| ownership of TV stations.
|
| But TV has always been national. How is global social media
| supposed to work when every government demands to have its own
| version, controlled by a local company?
|
| Do these representatives imagine a truly separate version of
| TikTok, like China's Douyin, without access to foreign content,
| and without anyone else seeing american content, without any
| connections between american and foreign users? Does the US want
| to separate itself from the world like that? China has a long
| tradition of this kind of separation, the US doesn't.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| The sale of Grindr is a much closer precedent
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/grindr-sold-china-national...
|
| The bill doesn't block any content on Tiktok, it is to require
| American ownership of the company. The penalty for non-
| compliance would remove Tiktok from appstores, but it wouldn't
| prevent Americans from accessing it either via the web
| (Probably easy to sideload on Android at least).
| seydor wrote:
| I wonder if this will lead to a successful US clone to be
| created. The precedent of Coinbase is lukewarm
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| instagram reels exists and is 90 percent as good
| mindslight wrote:
| General laws to address the tech industry's anticompetitive
| bundling of client software with hosted services, and to give
| individuals meaningful control over surveillance databases being
| kept on us? Nah, just some simplistic political grandstanding for
| the narrative of the week.
| tharmas wrote:
| AIPAC wants it shut down because TikTok isn't censoring
| information from Gaza.
| angryasian wrote:
| This has nothing to do with all the other nonsense.
|
| Pass Data Privacy laws and enforce them.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| If you look at Chinese cyberwarfare activities over the past ~20
| years, it becomes apparent why TikTok can't stick around.
| avgDev wrote:
| Almost half of Americans are using TikTok. If the Chinese govt.
| can spy on Americans than this is definitely a national security
| concern. I understand that American companies like FB and Google
| are doing it too but hopefully they are not selling the data to
| Chinese companies.
|
| After I typed that I feel FB and Google would sell data to
| highest bidder.
|
| Maybe it is time to focus on privacy and clearly understanding
| what apps are gathering from users and how that data is being
| used/sold.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| In the absence of legislation to the contrary, I'd be surprised
| if any corporation with any useful data wouldn't sell it to
| anyone willing to pay their price for it.
| acbullen wrote:
| I'd hazard that even with legislation about selling outside
| the US, a foreign government would still just find a cut-out
| that looks legit enough and then have them send the data
| overseas regardless.
| MBCook wrote:
| Ignoring everything else TikTok screwed up. They're m being
| accused of having the ability to manipulate public opinion and
| elections.
|
| So what did they do? Push alerts to millions of users telling
| them of a possible ban and helping them call their
| representatives to change a political issue's fortunes.
|
| Oops.
|
| All of a sudden a ton of representatives who were on the fence
| jumped off and joined the bandwagon.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > They're m being accused of having the ability to manipulate
| public opinion and elections.
|
| I thought it was about stealing data?
|
| > Push alerts to millions of users telling them of a possible
| ban and helping them call their representatives to change a
| political issue's fortunes.
|
| Not pushing the alert, would have changed nothing. And to be
| fair, isn't this how any organization in a democratic country
| works? Talking to their customers to communicate their
| problems? Raising awareness, animating people to talk to their
| local politicians, that's pretty common, isn't it?
| MBCook wrote:
| There are two arguments. Data and politics.
|
| Data seems like a sideshow to me. It's legal and they could
| just buy it from data brokers anyway. It's not like the US
| has any real laws against that.
|
| Political action is a fair response to the bill but they went
| about it in an incredibly tone deaf way.
| avgDev wrote:
| Apparently some kids were calling crying saying that they will
| kill themselves if they ban the app. Absolutely crazy.
|
| TikTok trying to sway users made a huge mistake.
| neilv wrote:
| Or maybe trying to sway users _overtly_ seems like a mistake?
|
| Could trying to sway users _subtly_ have still been a win in
| this instance?
|
| I'd think a platform doing manipulation _subtly_ is actually
| more dangerous, and the bigger potential threat from a
| platform. Because people being influenced would be less aware
| of it, and it 's much harder for other parties to call out.
|
| (Although, when I look at current TV news and some other
| outlets, there's such blatant manipulation and dumbing-down,
| from both political "sides", I wonder how more than a small
| minority of people can tolerate watching that, much less
| mimicking it. And calling it out just gets tossed into
| ineffectual echo-chamber sports-fandom-like noise. So maybe
| subtle isn't as additionally threatening as I'd been
| assuming.)
| tempsy wrote:
| There's a story every few weeks of a kid who saw some
| challenge on tiktok and copied it and ended up dead.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's unfortunate. They went about it honestly by doing it
| in the open, and that provided proof that they were
| dangerous.
|
| If they had done it subtly, that would have proved that
| they had the power to do it too but if they weren't caught
| it wouldn't have blown up in their face.
|
| Of course if they were caught it would be an even bigger
| deal.
|
| Catch 22 for them.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Apparently some kids were calling crying saying that they
| will kill themselves if they ban the app. Absolutely crazy.
|
| Darwinism.
| segasaturn wrote:
| How is it a mistake for TikTok to ask Americans to participate
| in their representative democracy? Do we not remember when
| Google and Facebook blacked out their sites to stop SOPA from
| passing, how is TikTok's notification any different?
| hparadiz wrote:
| The whole reason this is even happening is because they've
| been caught pushing political content that is blatantly
| either pro-China or meant to stir shit up in the American
| population. The irony with your comment is that TikTok's
| masters in China already have the same power that SOPA was
| supposed to grant the US government. In other words the USA
| is trying to strip the CCP of that power.
|
| They could've played ball and not pushed politics and we'd
| have left them alone to make their money but instead they
| tried to bite the hand that feeds.
| segasaturn wrote:
| > The irony with your comment is that TikTok's masters in
| China already have the same power that SOPA was supposed to
| grant the US government
|
| Yes, the power of democracy. People spoke up and prevented
| a harmful law from being passed - why is TikTok exercising
| that right, in the same way as Google and Facebook, a
| problem? It sounds like you want the US to become like the
| CCP instead of vice versa.
| MBCook wrote:
| Because TikTok is owned by one of our adversaries.
| They've been accused of pushing propaganda and they just
| accidentally proved how effective they can be at causing
| political change in the US.
|
| Exactly what their opponents were afraid they had the
| power to do.
|
| It looks REALLY bad. In this case it wasn't anything
| sinister and they were open about it but tactically it
| was probably a massive mistake.
|
| Also why didn't they just tell everyone in the US? Why
| did only certain users get the message? Because of where
| they lived? Because they were voting age? They also
| proved they have an ability to target specific people for
| political action based on some (unknown) criteria.
|
| That also looks horrible and plays right into their
| opponents hands.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| No, the whole reason this is happening is it distracts us
| from more serious issues such as Chinese labor practices.
| If politicians can "take China seriously" by banning TikTok
| they don't need to talk about barring import of products
| made using forced labor, say.
| maxwell wrote:
| Didn't they already do that with the Uyghur Forced Labor
| Prevention Act in 2021? Or are you referring to other
| regions of CCP-occupied China?
| dpkirchner wrote:
| It looks like that has blocked about $100M in goods
| shipped from Xinjiang since inception -- about 1/3 of
| shipments from that region and less than 1% total imports
| from China in that period. I'm not sure that token amount
| counts as taking it seriously.
| calibas wrote:
| The US government is accusing the CCP of using TikTok to
| manipulate democracy.
|
| TikTok responded by attempting to manipulate democracy.
|
| They did they very thing the government trying to ban them is
| scared of. Doesn't seem like a smart move to me, I guess
| we'll see how it plays outs
| Buttons840 wrote:
| It might not result in maximum ByteDance profits, but
| TikTok's notification will help a generation of "youths"
| realize the political process affects them and help them
| care about technology censorship issues. This is a good
| thing.
| segasaturn wrote:
| Raising awareness about a bill in Congress and giving US
| citizens the tools to speak to their representatives about
| it isn't "manipulating democracy", it _promotes_ democracy.
| That is a foundational part of how American democracy is
| supposed to work, the reps vote on bills but the citizens
| have the last word - if that 's so unacceptable that
| lawmakers would change sides to ban TikTok in response then
| Americans should start making funeral preparations for
| their democracy, because it sounds like these lawmakers
| want their constituents to be docile, silent and ignorant.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's a look thing. Just horrible optics.
|
| I get why they'd want people to contact their
| representatives.
|
| But they went about it in a very tactless way.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Maybe a bit naive to think that a CCP-backed company is
| doing something for democracy. Maybe, just maybe... I
| dunno...
| calibas wrote:
| In a strict technical sense, you are correct. Anything
| that encourages individuals to participate in their
| government is promoting democracy. However, I think it's
| heavy whitewashing to look at this whole situation and
| says it's TikTok promoting democracy.
|
| I find it very hard to believe TikTok is doing this being
| they genuinely want to promote democracy in the US. This
| threatens to end TikTok's influence over millions of
| Americans, they have a business/political stake in this.
| They're encouraging people to contact their
| representatives, not because it's in the individual's
| best interest, but because it's in TikTok's best
| interest. That's why it's manipulative.
|
| Also, I'm of the opinion the foreign-funded propaganda is
| generally unhealthy for a democracy.
|
| Edit: Just to be clear, I don't really want to ban
| TikTok. I don't trust TikTok, but I also don't want to
| increase the federal government's ability to censor what
| Americans can view. In the process of battling Chinese
| influence, I don't want the US to become more like China.
| MBCook wrote:
| In attempting to defend themselves (which is fair) they
| did the exact thing that their opponents have accused
| them of being able to do.
|
| I don't know what the right move for them was. Maybe it
| was just to say this was happening or link to a new story
| or something.
|
| But saying it's a "ban"* and helping people find the
| number to call their representative went over the line
| and made them look very bad.
|
| *It's not strictly a ban, only a ban on Chinese
| ownership. If an American company took total control they
| could continue to operate. So calling it a "ban" is a
| little disingenuous in someways although it's also a lot
| easier to say
| segasaturn wrote:
| Obviously the issue that they're promoting is in their
| interests, but its the same for everyone else. Nobody
| would promote an issue that _didn 't_ benefit them! When
| Google and Facebook blacked out their sites to stop SOPA,
| that was because it was in their interests too, SOPA
| would have kneecapped the Web just as it was beginning to
| take off.
|
| What frustrates me about this discussion is the way that
| people take anything TikTok does here and assumes that
| it's out of evil and malicious intent, with very little
| proof other than its murky links to China, which feels
| very Cold War 2.0.
| ajross wrote:
| TikTok's links to China aren't "murky". ByteDance is
| literally a Chinese company. Chinese companies are
| regularly coerced by the state in the PRC, in obvious
| ways (Jack Ma says Hi) and subtle ones (the coordinated
| dance to bail out Evergrande).
|
| I'm sensitive to your demand for proof, but how much more
| "proof" do you want? If the PRC wants to manipulate
| western democracy by mobilizing a force of Gen-Z nuts via
| messages in their favorite app, _they can do it_ , just
| like they do domestically.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| They didn't try to manipulate democracy, people didn't vote
| for their representatives based on their ideas about
| tiktok, there was no referendum about how to handle tiktok,
| but of course they actually showed that they could have the
| influence to affect future democratic process
| calibas wrote:
| Contacting your representative to try to influence them
| is a fundamental part of democracy.
|
| Democracy is not just voting for someone, a democratic
| government is intended to be directly influenced by the
| people continually. It's kind of the whole point of a
| representative democracy.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| It is either part of democracy or trying to manipulate
| democracy, it can't factually be both for obvious
| reasons, I agree, contacting a representative is part of
| the democratic process and has been a practice happening
| forever.
|
| Trying to manipulate democracy would be involving actions
| that aren't part of an accepted democratic process, like
| telling your supporters to go to assault Capitol Building
| and them showing up with assault rifles and pressure
| elected officials
| nexuist wrote:
| Do you not see the difference in American companies asking
| Americans to pressure their American representatives on
| American legislature, vs. a Chinese company doing this? If
| Google tried to do the same thing in China when the CCP were
| debating banning YouTube their mainland employees would have
| been arrested and "disappeared."
| bdw5204 wrote:
| It is concerning that this bill seemingly includes a very
| specific carve out for Yelp[0] which is not owned by China,
| Russia, Iran or North Korea as far as I'm aware. Sure seems like
| the bill probably does more than just crackdown on TikTok.
|
| [0]:
| https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/17675409413787445...
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Agreed, would be interested to hear why that was added in the
| first place.
| Cub3 wrote:
| Do you have a non-twitter link?
| emgeee wrote:
| It bears repeating that this bill only bans tiktok if it isn't
| spun out of Bytedance. Given how American owned social media
| companies are treated in China, this doesn't seem entirely
| unfair.
| slibhb wrote:
| This whole thing is embarrassing. Banning an app is something the
| CCP does. It's not supposed to be something the US government
| does.
|
| That's leaving aside the feasibility. I suppose tiktok could be
| banned on Iphones easily enough but it's less clear how the web
| app or android apps could be banned.
| bgentry wrote:
| TikTok is not being "banned" by this bill. It's being
| prohibited from being owned by a "foreign adversary" (a defined
| term in US Code), with the threat of being banned from app
| stores and hosting providers if not divested.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Bans don't have to be perfect to be effective.
|
| Free speech isn't absolute, not even in the US. It's normal and
| healthy for a society to adapt it's view on speech over time
| and as the world evolves. Hopefully toward being more open, yet
| openness must be balanced against the negatives.
| slibhb wrote:
| Every generation is scared of "what the kids spend their time
| doing". In the 80s it was the PMRC. Later on there were at
| least a few video game scares ("What if my son plays Mortal
| Kombat and tries to rip my head off?").
|
| Today it's "evil Chinese apps". Embarrassing.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I'm not advocating taking all social media from kids. Just
| limits and at least corporate oversight. I grew up in the
| 80s, with limits on my BBS and AOL time, and I survived.
|
| Now that the Internet is cheap free and everywhere it's
| reasonable to ask if unfettered access and megacorps need
| some guardrails.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| This is going to be a shit show. I don't even really know where I
| stand. On one hand, we have to acknowledge that an adversarial
| government has massively succeeded in installing a botnet in our
| population-- even if that wasn't the initial intent of ByteDance,
| it's effectively true now. On the other hand, you can't stop
| people from installing spyware, donating money to fraudster
| politicians, surrendering themselves to cult leaders, etc.
| without invoking freedom of speech concerns (rightfully so).
| Pretty interesting situation, in a morbid way, to live through. I
| have no idea what's going to happen.
| hypeit wrote:
| It's no worse that what Facebook or Twitter does (or has done).
| I would prefer to have a plurality of options and not be
| limited to apps that are owned by countries the US deems
| "allies".
| franciscop wrote:
| But Tiktok is much worse for US citizens:
|
| - Facebook+Twitter are US-based entities and have to follow
| US laws and regulations in a much more strict way than Tiktok
|
| - They are not controlled by a politically-motivated
| adversarial government
|
| You are also conflating apps "from a country" vs apps "under
| a country's gvmt control". I think most here would agree
| "apps from a plurality of countries" is a good goal to strive
| for, while "apps under a dictatorship's gvmt control" is not.
| hypeit wrote:
| TikTok has to adhere to the exact same laws as Facebook and
| Twitter, foreign ownership doesn't change that.
|
| Adversarial to whom? Not me, I'm far more concerned about
| the US government who in this case is directly limiting my
| choices as a US citizen.
| segasaturn wrote:
| TikTok is run out of the United States and adheres to the
| same laws as Twitter and Facebook. Its CEO, Shou Chew, was
| just at a hearing in front of Congress last month.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| TikTok also claimed the data couldn't be viewed in China
| and then it got exposed that the data was being viewed in
| China by bytedance.
|
| Sooooooo no it doesn't follow the same laws an its
| singaporean ceos claim of no links to China are his word
| only.
| franciscop wrote:
| As an example, do you think a US citizen personal data is
| as secure from requests from the CCP in e.g. Facebook as
| it is in Tiktok? That TikTok executives are as liable to
| US laws and prosecution as Facebook execs?
| segasaturn wrote:
| >That TikTok executives are as liable to US laws and
| prosecution as Facebook execs?
|
| They absolutely are - again, TikTok is an American
| company with American employees who can be held liable if
| TikTok breaks the law - e.g. Shou Chew. The problem for
| the government is that TikTok hasn't broken any laws.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| This is a completely irrational argument, rooted solely in
| xenophobic appeals, that can be trivially dismissed by
| inverting the premise: Do Chinese citizens have more to
| fear from state control and monitoring of domestic social
| media services or those owned by companies outside China?
| franciscop wrote:
| Those are not equivalent as I hint in my last paragraph,
| different countries and gvmt influence do have different
| risk factors. You can e.g. criticize the US gvmt in a US-
| based app with no consequences. Good luck doing that in
| China (that = criticizing the CCP on a Chinese-based app
| while living in China).
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > You can e.g. criticize the US gvmt in a US-based app
| with no consequences
|
| Oh really? Try that with your police department and see
| how it works out for you.
|
| https://hellgatenyc.com/nypd-warrantless-subpoena-
| copwatcher...
| codedokode wrote:
| Actually it might be the other way round. Chinese will
| not care if you critisize US govt in private messages,
| but US platform might actually report you to FBI.
| ralphist wrote:
| They have more to fear from apps under the Chinese
| government's control. How does that dismiss the parent's
| claim?
| codedokode wrote:
| On the other hand, a citizen should be more scared of his
| own govt rather than foreign govt because foreign govt
| won't arrest him. So for an American TikTok is probably
| less threat than Facebook or Twitter.
| zaphar wrote:
| I don't even know how you reach that kind of conclusion
| from that fact. It's not even strictly true. If I travel
| to China or Russia for a trip there is absolutely nothing
| stopping them from arresting me. It's only true if you
| never travel to that foreign country.
|
| In the case of Russia they can do worse than imprison
| you. Just ask any number of Russia defectors who were
| killed on on Western soil. This is a very poorly thought
| out take.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I don't think they were talking about traveling to Russia
| or China, they're talking about living in the US. The
| vast majority of people will not travel to China or
| Russsia.
|
| For instance if you discuss doing something illegal like
| getting an abortion in the US, only the US government
| really cares about that. Whether China knows is
| irrelevant.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1117092169/nebraska-cops-
| used...
| Leary wrote:
| It's going to pass Congress, signed into law. Then a federal
| judge will issue a preliminary injunction blocking it on first
| amendment grounds just like what happened both times with the
| Montana ban in 2023 and trumps executive order in 2020
| nadermx wrote:
| This feels mostly right. Although, it may not make it past
| the senate, and it might not get signed if it goes by the
| president. Especially since he's campaigning on TikTok.
|
| What amazes me is how people's view in these threads are for
| a ban. For a counter point, the EFF thinks congress should
| not ban apps[0]
|
| [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/congress-should-
| give-u...
| Miner49er wrote:
| Biden said he would sign it.
| Spivak wrote:
| And then presumably smacked down in the courts for an
| obvious 1A violation.
|
| Is there any legal reason they think surely this one is
| constitutional?
| Miner49er wrote:
| That's what confuses me. Surely they know it likely won't
| survive the courts. So maybe they are banning it to win
| points with voters, but it doesn't seem like something
| that would be popular with the voters. So I'm left
| wondering why there's so much motivation in Congress to
| do this.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Who are the people that want it? Lets put aside the
| people that don't want it.
|
| I can think of the following:
|
| 1. American tech companies
|
| 2. AIPAC
|
| 3. "The Deep State"
|
| 4. Maybe "bleeding heart American boomers"?
|
| Is this a large enough group to push bills through? Seems
| like it.
|
| The reason we put aside people who don't want it is
| because to push back against a bill requires at least an
| equal amount of effort that it took to get it going,
| usually more (see right to repair legislation, fight over
| DMCA provisions etc.). So unless you believe the people
| that don't want it are really more powerful than all of
| the above it makes sense why its going through.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| This seems like we're just going to be playing whack-a-mole
| with the next thing that pops up (perhaps an even more
| nefarious or nebulously owned app).
|
| Why would we not create better data privacy laws and/or ban
| the sale/transfer of PII to enemy countries if that's the
| problem we're trying to solve?
| zaphar wrote:
| Because that is not the really the whole problem we are
| trying to solve. At root of the TikTok problem is the
| fact that a nation like China is not playing on a level
| playing field in our Free Market. A free market works
| when all the participants are playing on a level playing
| field. TikTok is not because China as a country does not
| believe or follow free market principles. As such to
| further their national goals they will happily bend and
| break all of our rules with no real way for us to prevent
| or even detect it.
|
| You can't treat Chinese companies the same way as US
| companies or even most European countries. They won't
| play by the rules. You have to treat them differently.
|
| The experiment we started in the 90's to try to export
| Free Market to the world was interesting but the data
| shows that it doesn't actually work in Autocratic
| countries. It's time to stop pretending like it produces
| good outcomes overall.
| frumper wrote:
| This bill doesn't even address that. If you want to ban
| Chinese owned companies because they ban ours, then
| present that. This is 1 company being targeted, with the
| potential for maybe some more later. That leaves all the
| rest operating as normal.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| To be honest, I still don't see the issue here. TikTok is
| tying into existing APIs that _any_ app can also use.
| There is nothing special there other than the user 's
| data may end up in the Chinese government's hands (but...
| again, TikTok isn't special there).
|
| I think we really need to think about the problem we're
| trying to solve here carefully, because saying "you can't
| watch these types of videos because reasons" is the
| slippery slope of all slippery slopes.
|
| ETA: I do agree that TikTok is probably a bad thing
| overall, realistically it could be used to subtly social
| engineer the entire US population by controlling the
| content people see. But I don't think just outright
| banning TikTok is the answer. But didn't Facebook also do
| the same thing in the election? What are the
| ramifications for something like Youtube which tailors
| your recommended videos based on your history (you watch
| one Joe Rogan clip and now it starts to show right
| wing/conspiracy videos).
| tgv wrote:
| Not an expert at all, but does freedom of speech hold for
| foreigners/foreign entities?
|
| Apart from the fact that to me an app is not speech, but
| that's an entirely different matter.
| Miner49er wrote:
| No, but the First amendment covers Americans' right to
| receive information, even foreign propaganda.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| Isn't this different in that it's not blocking TikTok but
| instead forcing the parent to sell the American division?
| There's plenty of precedent for that succeeding (including
| relatively recently where a Chinese company was forced to end
| plans for an IPO and sell Grindr). This is unlikely to be
| blocked on First Amendment grounds simply because they're not
| blocking speech, just forcing an ownership change (I am
| definitely not a lawyer though so I could be wrong).
| groby_b wrote:
| We're all clear on that the ultimate outcome depends on which
| lobbyists pay better, right?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why are pre-existing rules around foreign ownership of media
| not tossed by a judge then?
| segasaturn wrote:
| Why is it worse for me to have Tiktok installed on my phone
| than Google Chrome or Facebook?
| Pigalowda wrote:
| It's not worse for you personally. The US government can
| request and use warrants for information collected by all of
| those entities.
|
| The US cannot request information on Chinese citizens in
| China because US companies are restricted from operating in
| China. They don't have any significant data.
|
| On the other hand China now has a very valuable and large
| presence in tiktok here in the US and can access any
| collected information it wants on Chinese citizens in the US
| and any other user. I imagine it doesn't take a warrant
| either but I'm unfamiliar with their protocols.
|
| So it's likely not worse for you personally, especially if
| you're a typical American who is unsupportive of their
| government and its foreign policy.
| Draiken wrote:
| Because only spying from American companies is allowed. /s
|
| In all seriousness though, it isn't. People are generally
| simply trying to fit in, so hating on anything China is
| viewed as good and everyone sticks to it.
|
| We know because of Snowden how the US government has access
| to all (most likely way more) of the same data they are now
| worried China has access to.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Because TikTok can be used as a weapon by China. Democracies
| have a weakness - enemies can influence the population and
| therefore the government. Russia does this quite effectively
| in my opinion (one example is Slovakia).
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Social media can and is already being used as a weapon by
| internal actors against democracy.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Social media of US owned companies was already used as a
| weapon and still is. Perhaps instead of this legislation we
| should clearly lay out the regulations that all social
| media companies need to adhere too.
| cboswel1 wrote:
| For the average citizen, probably not, but imagine you are a
| celebrity, politician, government contractor, tech
| CEO/employee with access to IP. It's not that difficult to
| hash out someone's algorithm to get enough of a psychological
| profile on the person to initiate a detailed social
| engineering campaign.
| andrewla wrote:
| Can you expand on what you mean by "installing a botnet"?
|
| As a term of art, a botnet refers to a collection of computing
| devices that can be controlled remotely. I am not aware of any
| such capability in TikTok itself. Presumably they could attempt
| to offer a new version of TikTok that allowed arbitrary remote
| execution or one-time behavior, but this would need to get past
| Apple's app review process and would be subject to pretty
| immediate rollback.
|
| Like if they wanted to use the install base of TikTok to
| perform a DDoS against an adversary, that would pretty much be
| a one-shot deal, after which it would be shut down.
|
| Unless you're using botnet in a different sense, in which case
| this is irrelevant but I would recommend using a different word
| in this case ("propaganda engine" maybe) to avoid carrying
| along the connotations.
| graeme wrote:
| They're using the word botnet as an analogy. You have to read
| the whole sentence "installing a botnet _in our population_
| ".
| andrewla wrote:
| In that case I downgrade my assessment of this threat from
| "minor IT threat" to "nonsensical word salad". The idea
| that the CCP has a network of Manchurian Candidates waiting
| to do their bidding is ridiculous.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The reason why TikTok is able to spy and botnet on Americans is
| because we have no effective data privacy law. This is
| deliberate because the CIA and NSA buy shittons of user data
| from adtech data brokers to do an end run around the 4th
| Amendment.
|
| Stopping TikTok without gutting 1A would be very easy: just
| copypaste GDPR into local law and make sure we have someone
| enforcing it. The problem is that the US government likes it's
| spying and Congress isn't interested in reigning them in.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Who are the Thought Police? A comment by qpingo is [dead] within
| seconds of his posting it (and no, he and I have no connection).
|
| btw, in your profile, set showdead to "yes."
|
| dang: you need to do something about flagging. It is out of
| control.
| kyrra wrote:
| The actual bill is here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-
| congress/house-bill/7521
|
| And I think the interesting bit is what is considered a covered
| company: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-
| bill/7521...
|
| The wording could be applied to many companies, including chat
| apps like Telegram. The only saving grace is that the company has
| to be controlled by a "foreign adversary", and it seems to
| explicitly list and target byte dance only.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Seems fairly written to me.
| kyrra wrote:
| My issue is that this could be applied very broadly:
|
| > (B) a covered company that--
|
| > (i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
|
| > (ii) that is determined by the President to present a
| significant threat to the national security of the United
| States following the issuance of--
|
| > (I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
|
| > (II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than
| 30 days before such determination, describing the specific
| national security concern involved and containing a
| classified annex and a description of what assets would need
| to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
|
| ---
|
| The above gives the president the ability to shut down many
| websites out there from operating in the US if they are
| "controlled by a foreign adversary". Btw, the definition is
| here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872, which
| says: "Covered nation.--The term "covered nation" means--
| (A)the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea; (B)the
| People's Republic of China; (C)the Russian Federation; and
| (D)the Islamic Republic of Iran."
| cryptonector wrote:
| It's less bad than I'd expected. I half expected that the
| "owned or controlled by a foreign adversary" text wouldn't
| be there.
| cryptonector wrote:
| This should be the first comment.
| noqc wrote:
| You say only saving grace like its some sort of loophole. Most
| of the people who support banning tiktok have _always_
| maintained that the legal justification for banning it rests on
| the fact that it is controlled by a foreign adversary.
|
| That's not a "saving grace", that's the _content_ of the
| legislation.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| A perfect legal way to rip off and take profit. Now I wonder who
| (which company) is going to get the chance to take the golden
| goose with a steep cut, considering they have to sell it in 6
| months.
| codedokode wrote:
| If US bans TikTok then other countries should ban US apps because
| they can be used for spying and manipulation of public opinion
| the same way. Either a country makes its own apps or it becomes a
| subject to foreign influence.
| its_ethan wrote:
| I think you'll find that essentially all US social media is
| already banned in China...
| criddell wrote:
| Other countries do ban US apps. For example, Twitter/X is
| banned in China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and a few other
| countries.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Good to see the crowd we're joining then.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't see it as being significantly different from our
| laws prohibiting foreign ownership of tv and radio
| stations.
| HKH2 wrote:
| China even blocks HN.
| sivm wrote:
| Let's ban AIPAC first.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The arguments I can think of for why you wouldn't support
| restricting social media owned by foreign adversaries:
|
| * You don't believe social media companies can become literal or
| de facto extensions of the countries they are located in.
|
| * You don't believe social media can influence people's beliefs
| and behaviors.
|
| * You believe the above, but think a government cannot (or should
| not) regulate companies operating in its jurisdiction for those
| aforementioned purposes.
|
| * You believe the above, but don't think that it amounts to a
| serious risk, even theoretically.
|
| * You don't care about any of that, you just like the product.
|
| * You don't care about any of that, you oppose the bill on
| ideological grounds other than the legislative scope, or civil
| liberties issues. For example (but not limited to) purely
| partisan reasons.
|
| * You have issues with the specific provisions or wording of this
| bill, which override your general agreement that something like
| it may be legitimate and desirable.
|
| Am I missing any? None are convincing me, personally, except
| maybe the last one, and I am guessing _most_ people who oppose it
| have not done a line-by-line parsing of the text of the bill
| either.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > You don't believe social media can influence people's beliefs
| and behaviors.
|
| > You believe the above, but think a government cannot (or
| should not) regulate companies operating in its jurisdiction
| for those aforementioned purposes.
|
| Isn't freedom of speech (as understood in the US) exactly that,
| a prohibition on any regulation that prevents you from
| influencing people's belief and behavior?
|
| Sure, there are limits on free speech. You aren't allowed to
| freely slander people, to engage in false advertising, to
| commit fraud, treason, etc. But a new law that specifically
| prevents a company from showing you a selection of videos on
| fears that this selection might be biased in a way that
| influences people is another level. It not only prevents them
| from speaking directly, it specifically bans them because of
| how they might choose which legal speech they might show you.
|
| I completely understand why people want to do it. Allowing
| foreign adversaries this much influence is dangerous. But it is
| also unprecedented, and because of the indirection feels like a
| heavier restriction than say banning a Chinese newspaper from
| publishing in the US.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't know whether the first amendment is meant to stop
| this kind of regulation, but I suppose that's one the courts
| have either settled already, or will get a chance to settle.
| I would guess that a foreign company's right to either
| operate a business in the U.S., or service U.S. citizens from
| a foreign country, is treated differently when it comes to
| first amendment protections compared to say a domestic
| business or a private citizen shouting on a street corner.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Lamont v Postmaster General will likely come up if this
| bill passes. It concerned Americans receiving foreign
| propaganda in the mail and the Postal Service attempting to
| stop this distribution.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That case found that you couldn't make a U.S. Person opt-
| in to receiving foreign propaganda, and for fairly
| obvious reasons I think.
|
| This case wouldn't have that problem.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The rights acknowledged and protected by the U.S.
| Constitution are rights of U.S. Persons (citizens, nationals,
| and permanent residents). They are not _all_ rights of
| non-U.S. Persons, though some, like the Fifth Amendment,
| clearly are rights of all Persons. For example, if you 're a
| tourist accused of committing a crime in the U.S. you do have
| a right to counsel and a right to not self-incriminate, but
| also you don't have the right to not be deported, and you
| don't have the right to keep and bear arms.
|
| Which rights are for U.S. Persons only, and which are for all
| Persons, is not entirely clear to me. But I strongly suspect
| that freedom of speech and of the press is mainly for U.S.
| Persons only.
|
| It will certainly be interesting to see what the courts have
| to say about this.
| esoterica wrote:
| If you believe that the constitution protects inalienable
| rights that cannot be taken away by the government then how
| can those rights be denied to non citizens? The government
| gets to decide who is and isn't a citizen, which would mean
| they can decide who is or isn't eligible for so-called
| "inalienable" rights.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Yes, a government is generally in charge of granting
| citizenship for the population which it represents. This
| is a mechanism that seems to work for every functioning
| country in the world.
|
| What's the alternative you're suggesting, exactly?
| esoterica wrote:
| I don't know why you are arguing against a phantom
| position. I never said the government doesn't grant
| citizenship.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| As an external observer, I believe you are arguing in bad
| faith on this subject. Just my 2c.
| karaterobot wrote:
| If you really believed in that interpretation--that the
| bill of rights guarantees equal and identical liberties
| to everyone regardless of citizenship status--then what's
| the argument that those same rights extend only within
| the borders of U.S. geography? Why would we not, for
| example, enforce the second amendment right to bear arms
| on the benighted people of Australia, who don't have it?
| If we wanted our actions to be 100% consistent with that
| interpretation of the language of the constitution,
| wouldn't that be the outcome?
|
| So, I think the answer to your question is that it's not
| feasible, practical, or desirable to be 100% consistent,
| and that the law is mostly cobbled together, full of edge
| cases, hammered into something that sort of works most of
| the time, and makes sense if it's dark enough and you
| squint.
| qixxiq wrote:
| I think there's one extension, although you _kind of_ covered
| it with "you just like the product"
|
| Some people are _addicted_ to the product. It 's not even that
| they like it any more, and they can see the harm it causes, but
| they also can't imagine their lives without it.
|
| I think it's a vital move by the government, but I also think
| it's too late.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yeah, taking away someone's drug right before they're
| supposed to vote on whether they like you is not a good way
| to get people to like you.
|
| I think the timing of this is really dangerous for democracy
| in the US. It may spur a fury and sense of betrayal in a lot
| of people, meaning they either don't vote, or they vote for
| the guy who makes a living on telling them the world is out
| to get them and no one cares about them.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Yeah, you're missing that it's most likely unconstitutional,
| because it violates the First amendment.
|
| Also related, but somewhat separate, is just that people should
| have freedom to information.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That's not clear. Does the First Amendment protect non-U.S.
| persons' right to speak and publish?
| Miner49er wrote:
| No, but it protects Americans' right to receive speech.
| Americans have a right to hear the speech that is on Tik
| Tok.
| Leary wrote:
| The First Amendment does not directly protect the speech of
| non-US persons outside of US territory. However, US courts
| have held that the First Amendment can limit the US
| government's ability to restrict the speech of non-US
| persons abroad if that speech is directed at or received by
| people in the US.
| iza wrote:
| * You don't believe China should be an "adversary"
| karaterobot wrote:
| I tried to keep my description vague and not specific to
| China. I agree that it's relevant whether China is or is not
| an adversary, and that China is the obvious proximate target
| of this legislation.
|
| Is your point to say that _you specifically_ don 't believe
| China is an adversary, thus the bill is off the mark? I could
| read your item as saying either that, or this: in order to
| promote better relations between adversarial nations, bills
| restricting the ability of one nation to operate in another
| are indefensible. In other words, to make sure China is _not_
| an adversary, TikTok should not be banned.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I don't think the government should be like China and ban me
| from seeing content in social media spheres it doesn't like.
| corimaith wrote:
| I would imagine there is a fair portion of those opposing it
| here who don't have the US' best interests in mind.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Ridiculous bill. Maniacs are running everything these days only
| based on wild populism. Freedoms are over in America. Time to
| move to Saudi or some shit.
| avgDev wrote:
| Oh yes, Saudi is definitely the freest country. /s
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Thats what its not, and the US is turning into that. At that
| point just go there, get the free money tax free.
| mempko wrote:
| People in the US just want Healthcare. When can we have a
| unanimous vote on that?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It feels like they are after the modern equivalent of the 18th
| amendment.
| youniverse wrote:
| I like Scott Galloway's take on this which is that ByteDance will
| simply be forced to divest/sell the US business to western
| interests because they won't take a $250B loss or whatever the
| valuation is. So we will keep our cocaine app and still secure
| the security interests. Sounds like a win win to me if this
| happens.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| This type of protectionism could really backfire on the United
| States. We are a heavy net importer, and I don't think our
| Congressmen understand what kind of can of worms this opens. The
| cynic in me wonders if Microsoft is behind all of this, as they
| stand to gain the most from a forced sale.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Not just a net importer, but also the main exporter of
| algorithmic feeds. If the US bans TikTok for fear of China
| manipulating public opinion via their algorithmic feed, lots of
| other countries might think twice whether they want to allow
| the same influence from the US via Twitter, Facebook, Threads,
| Youtube, Instagram, etc.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| What's even worse is that our elected officials had an
| opportunity to protect consumers and their data. Instead it's
| a front for regulatory capture. I used to think it was malice
| but it really must be incompetence. Astronomical levels of
| incompetence enabled by an uneducated and complacent public.
| t0lo wrote:
| I wouldn't say no to more localised social media platforms
| that revolve around a country or region- who really needs to
| hear about what americans in beverly hills are doing all the
| time. Like line in japan or something
| archagon wrote:
| The idea that a piece of software can be "banned" on a national
| level shows how far we've fallen in terms of general purpose
| computing. In a reasonable world, banning an app would be a non-
| sequitur, because you would always be able to find a mirror if
| you wanted to use it. Once governments discover that they have
| this power, they will make every effort to close the PC loophole
| and subsequently ban anything unfavorable to the ruling class and
| their patrons: torrent clients, software cracks, VPNs, end-to-end
| encryption, etc.
| ambichook wrote:
| there's absolutely nothing illegal about installing the app, if
| you can find a mirror that's operated outside of US borders by
| a non US company then you can just download it still
| archagon wrote:
| The problem is that this is not an option on many devices due
| to walled corporate gardens.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Did American TikTok users want this?
|
| No?
|
| Then it needs to die.
|
| It's fascinating watching the government interventions sans voter
| support that HN celebrates vs eviscerates.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| What a weak argument. Presumably burglars would rather burglary
| was legal too.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Got to love ByteDance's insistence that they wouldn't hand over
| US data if asked to by the CCP. They're not even trying to hide
| how fucked they are anymore.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of "censorship is bad" propaganda coming from
| the shills. This resonates with liberal minded people who are
| against censorship.
|
| Now, that's not to say that most people here are shills or wrong
| for being against censorship. However they are unwittingly being
| coopted just as anti-racists were when China deflected any
| responsibility for a lab leak.
| rchaud wrote:
| The way the US had dealt with issues like this is in the courts
| of law through an evidentiary process, not by political decree,
| which will get slammed down in the courts anyway.
|
| Show that TikTok causes active harm compared to FB/Twitter, put
| that on the public record, and clear the obstacles for a bill
| to ban.
| hollerith wrote:
| >The way the US had dealt with issues like this is in the
| courts of law
|
| How would that work in the case of TikTok. If for example the
| US Department of Justice were to sue TikTok, what law or
| regulation would it allege TikTok to have violated?
|
| >the US had dealt with issues like this
|
| This suggests that there were law suits in the past. Who were
| the plaintiffs and the defendants? What law were the
| defendants alleged to be in violation of?
| rchaud wrote:
| > If for example the US Department of Justice were to sue
| TikTok, what law or regulation would it allege TikTok to
| have violated?
|
| That's exactly what DOJ would be tasked to do, build the
| case against them. Surely if the risks are so dire, they
| can find something to persuade a judge.
| hollerith wrote:
| That's not responsive.
| takoid wrote:
| In a previous discussion thread
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39692670), there was a
| significant amount of discussion regarding the belief that the
| push for this legislation may be influenced by the pro-Israel
| lobby, specifically in reaction to the uncensored flow of
| information via TikTok following the events of October 7th in
| Gaza. These discussions were quickly downvoted and flagged.
| However, I believe it is crucial to engage in this conversation
| respectfully and with a genuine intent for understanding. The
| potential influence of such lobbying efforts, if substantiated,
| carries profound implications that merit thoughtful discussion,
| irrespective of one's personal stance on Israel, Gaza, or the
| broader political dynamics. If you share these concerns, I
| encourage you to reply with any evidence supporting your
| viewpoint, so we can engage in a constructive and good-faith
| discussion about this issue.
| jrsj wrote:
| If this is true, AIPAC is a greater foreign threat than TikTok.
| Maybe we should ban AIPAC instead.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| How do you ban AIPAC when they are basically malware that is
| running at all layers of the stack from OS to Firmware to CPU
| Microcode?
| horrysith wrote:
| Trump was right.
| l3mure wrote:
| Anything with the potential to disrupt internal and external
| American/Western propaganda is a threat.
|
| ---
|
| [1]
|
| > With a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake despite
| all administration attempts to sway public opinion, the Pentagon
| has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating in
| particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in
| conservative news outlets, records and interviews show.
|
| > Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 24,
| 2005 the first of six such Guantanamo trips which was designed to
| mobilize analysts against the growing perception of Guantanamo as
| an international symbol of inhumane treatment. On the flight to
| Cuba, for much of the day at Guantanamo and on the flight home
| that night, Pentagon officials briefed the 10 or so analysts on
| their key messages how much had been spent improving the
| facility, the abuse endured by guards, the extensive rights
| afforded detainees.
|
| > The results came quickly. The analysts went on TV and radio,
| decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the
| facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.
|
| > The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network
| reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities
| of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to
| interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the
| news media, they were not of the news media. They were military
| men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration's
| neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a
| military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for
| an Iraq war.
|
| ---
|
| [2]
|
| > Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for
| potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official
| and two U.S. officials said.
|
| > The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is
| considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration
| put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said.
|
| It's only a little white lie here and there, just trust us bro!
|
| ---
|
| [3]
|
| > Cable television channel _Al Jazeera claimed 600 civilians had
| been killed_ and filled its broadcasts with images of dead
| children at the Fallujah hospital and other locations within the
| city. Al Jazeera's broadcasts so stung U.S. national leaders that
| they considered withdrawing all U.S. forces--including CENTCOM's
| forward headquarters--from Qatar if its government did not do
| more to "bring Al Jazeera under control."
|
| > With little time to prepare for the mission, MNF-W had not
| embedded Western journalists with I MEF forces, so that the
| critical ground of information operations was effectively ceded
| to an insurgency that could distribute a one-sided message.
| _Worse, the haste with which the operation was executed precluded
| the opportunity to evacuate the city of civilians properly,
| essentially ensuring that the insurgency had the opportunity to
| exploit footage of civilian casualties._
|
| Al Jazeera "claimed," but whoops it was also true, and we can't
| stand the exposure.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html
|
| [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-
| using-...
|
| [3] The US Army in the Iraq War, 2003-2006
| codedokode wrote:
| If you believe that people generally are not dumb, and think
| rationally, and therefore cannot be influenced by falseful
| information, foreign propaganda then you wouldn't propose such
| law.
| bluecalm wrote:
| I wonder why Meta stock is not jumping on this news. Either the
| market believes the ban won't stand or is going to be
| circumvented somehow or the market believes Meta is not in good
| enough position to take that audience anyway.
| tamimio wrote:
| It's all an attempt to censor the events in Gaza. The ADL has
| influence over all major social media platforms, with the
| exception of TikTok. Therefore, it is the time to activate its
| sister, AIPAC, which has significant sway over the majority of
| Congress..
| EasyMark wrote:
| I'm really hoping that the Senate acts responsibly and pushes
| this no-nonsense bill through. I think it's a step in the right
| direction for cutting off access to information about USA
| citizens by foreign advesaries. This is an important step in
| bringing it to the forefront of Americans minds how important
| privacy is. Hopefully such a shift will next lead to concern
| against Facebook, Instagram, X, etc. who are also running a vast
| information network to monetize the personal lives of Americans
| for anyone with enough $$. NA-GPDR here we come. I would love
| nothing more than to see the bankruptcy of companies like
| LexisNexis and Verisk.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Does Congress have any idea how software works? Anyone could just
| sideload the app directly from the web. Or you could create
| wrapper apps around it. Once installed, can Apple or Google steal
| it off your phone? If so, don't buy their products (or by a Pixel
| and install grapheneos).
|
| This entire charade is ludicrous.
| yawboakye wrote:
| americans have beamed their culture to the rest of the world
| through all sorts of means. the moral debauchery and propensity
| to crime (hi hiphop) introduced by american entertainment in
| several regions of the world aren't spoken about enough. someone
| allows the rest of the world to beam new/foreign type of poison
| into your own territory and now what? we can't have this here?
| imbecilic cowards.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| For context, this is a list of banned websites in China:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
| ultrasaurus wrote:
| Raw vote information here: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202486 &
| Bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-
| bill/7521
|
| This bill prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing
| internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled
| application (e.g., TikTok). However, the prohibition does not
| apply to a covered application that executes a qualified
| divestiture as determined by the President.
|
| Under the bill, a foreign adversary controlled application is
| directly or indirectly operated by (1) ByteDance, Ltd. or TikTok
| (including their subsidiaries or successors); or (2) a social
| media company that is controlled by a foreign adversary and has
| been determined by the President to present a significant threat
| to national security. The prohibition does not apply to an
| application that is primarily used to post product reviews,
| business reviews, or travel information and reviews.
|
| The bill authorizes the Department of Justice to investigate
| violations of the bill and enforce the bill's provisions.
| Entities that violate the bill are subject to civil penalties
| based on the number of users.
|
| The bill requires a covered application to provide a user with
| all available account data (including posts, photos, and videos)
| at the user's request before the prohibition takes effect.
| aydyn wrote:
| I think a lot of the HN crowd are beyond the target age for a lot
| of tiktok trends, and don't realize the extent of sociopathic
| behavior being enabled on tiktok. Even ignoring overtly political
| trends, the social contract is being shredded for money and
| clout.
|
| Tiktok is not just another social media platform. It is a mass
| digital propaganda machine controlled by a foreign government.
| tstrimple wrote:
| People who make statements like this sound just like "concerned
| parents" talking about D&D and rock and roll music. 30-40 years
| ago. Wildly out of touch. Seriously, go take a look at what
| others are actually sharing from TikTok. It's none of this
| Chinese propaganda nonsense people are ranting about. Here's a
| few examples of videos ruining the youth of today!
| * https://v.redd.it/8yktpgwzl4oc1 - Iron Maidens *
| https://v.redd.it/n0p299qt1znc1 - If Korn wrote "1000 Miles"
| * https://v.redd.it/dqpj11wk03oc1 - Ok, this is pretty genius,
| if you can't use chopsticks *
| https://v.redd.it/ye820pezj5oc1 - On Confidence *
| https://v.redd.it/lj1mwh0080oc1 - Trans man handles hateful
| comment in a respectable way *
| https://v.redd.it/2vkx2sh624oc1 - Listen to your grandma.
|
| All extremely typical of what I've seen on TikTok and the kinds
| of things my kids will send to me on occasion.
| rudolph9 wrote:
| The weird thing to me is how little concern there is for sale of
| data by any social media company. Very intimate details about
| many Americans lives can easily be purchased by US adversaries.
| That's reportedly the motivation for the bill but effectively it
| really only change who is profiting from the data by forcing a
| bargain price for a foreign company and directing the ongoing
| revenue to us company vs a Chinese company.
|
| I suppose it would be easier to regulate a us based company
| should the rules around user data sale change but this bill alone
| effectively does nothing to advance the security principles the
| bill is sold on beside make it slightly more expensive for the
| Chinese government to use the data.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _The move escalates a showdown between Beijing and Washington
| over the control of technologies that could affect national
| security, free speech and the social media industry._
|
| I will get beat up for this question but here goes. They are
| using the word _" could"_. Does this mean there is no evidence of
| TikTok exfiltrating sensitive intelligence data to the CCP? The
| reason I ask is that if this were actually taking place there
| would be no need to vote on breaking up TikTok or even mention
| the US constitution. Such actions would immediately be an act of
| war or at very least trigger sanctions. So is the real purpose of
| this to mitigate war or to confine US communications to platforms
| that the US already has intercept and social manipulation
| capabilities on or something else beyond the reasons given in the
| article?
| jrsj wrote:
| There's no evidence of that happening & it really isn't even
| about that. It's about the popularity of pro-Palestinian
| content on TikTok. The other social media giants have
| censorship policies on this that tilt things towards a pro-
| Israel perspective, but TikTok does not and is being targeted
| for it.
| lettergram wrote:
| It's worse than that, it gives the president authority to remove
| any application and force a sale or take it over in the US.
| Provided it's owned by an "adversary to the US government".
| pbiggar wrote:
| This is because the kids are pro-Palestine [1], and because of
| that, so is content on Tiktok. The massive killing and
| destruction of Gaza is visible and the kids don't like it.
|
| And so, AIPAC is pissed that everyone can see the apartheid and
| the bombs dropping on families in Gaza. The US would rather
| control the media (like they did in the invasion of Iraq, and
| like they have now which led to the scandal in the nytimes).
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/culture/23997305/tiktok-palestine-
| israel...
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I thought America had freedom...?
| corimaith wrote:
| It's interesting how the bill can have such a heavily bipartisan
| approval yet there are so many opposing the decision in HN. That
| goes also with the general US anti-China consensus that has
| virtually no political lashback from domestic voters. So I would
| naturally assume from that then the plurality of the american
| voterbase would support this. So is this opposition really coming
| from the voterbase or elsewhere?
| saq7 wrote:
| To be completely honest, it's a bit naive to assume that
| congress people represent their constituents first. It is
| commonly known, and backed up by evidence, that they will back
| their financial backers first and foremost.
|
| It is unclear who the backers in this case are. But when in
| doubt, follow the money
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| People largely don't seem to read past a headline that says US
| to ban Tiktok (or whatever other permutation of Tiktok and
| ban). It is an incomplete and dishonest picture of what the
| actual legislation does and the purpose of it.
|
| I'm not surprised people at large get up in arms if you say
| congress is going to ban Tiktok. If you tell them the full
| story, that the legislation requires them to divest from
| Chinese ownership or no longer be widely available, I think the
| response would be somewhat different. I'd certainly like to
| think so, anyways.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Do you think that everyone commenting here is from the US?
|
| Also naturally negative comments are more likely to be posted
| ssernikk wrote:
| Wouldn't introducing actual privacy laws be better than censoring
| part of the internet? I doubt that American social media
| corporations hoard less data about it's users than Chinese. I am
| not defending TikTok here, because I believe it's a danger, but
| this new bill is equivalent to treating the symptoms instead of
| the cause.
| Jochim wrote:
| This bill isn't intended to benefit the population at large.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Why do you think that a Chinese company would follow American
| privacy laws? What will we do to them if they violate these
| laws?
|
| Also I think a lot of the concern isn't around privacy but
| rather control of broadcasting.
| tomohawk wrote:
| How is this not a bill of attainder?
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-1/...
| polemic wrote:
| This is - fairly obviously - the US working to maintain it's
| primacy in the control over technology (broadly) and social media
| (specifically).
|
| It's certainly convenient that various security and privacy
| concerns align, but as many comments here point out, they don't
| stand up to much scrutiny, and they certainly don't warrant this
| level of policy response.
| bluish29 wrote:
| This bill if passed and enforced could be the beginning of a very
| deep change of the structure of the internet. Since the internet
| developed mainly and the infrastructure relied on US companies,
| it was excepted that US will play nice and will not use this to
| cause problems. Of course, Snowden showed us that even American
| are not safe. Now you are basically telling each government that
| we will use our tech advantage against anyone we seem an
| adversary. And I think WMD stories may still be fresh in the eye
| of any decision maker and would take this as a security issue.
| This might propose the actual Balkanization of the internet, as
| each country or group of countries might think that seeking
| independence from US infrastructure dominance is a national
| security interest. I think this might have much deeper impact
| that the obvious and short term effects proponents see.
| yalok wrote:
| If you try to publish your app in any of the Chinese app stores,
| you will be required to add an SDK to your app that basically
| allows them (Chinese government) to track user activity in your
| app.
|
| This basically means that not only TikTok, but any app
| originating from China is mandated to have this tracking SDK
| integrated, and it's a much bigger problem than just a single
| app...
| shuckles wrote:
| What are the Chinese app stores? Do you mean the China
| storefront of the Apple App Store or something else? Do you
| have any documentation about this?
| rajamaka wrote:
| Huawei AppGallery, Tencent My App Store , XiaoMi MIUI App
| Store. Apple only have about a 17% market share in China.
| yalok wrote:
| There's no explicit documentation. It's just that if a non-
| Chinese company/individual will want to publish something
| there, they need to obtain a license. This license can't be
| obtained so easily, so you would have to go through some
| publishing company like AppTutti. These companies require you
| to rebuild your app with their specific SDK, without which
| you just can't publish the app. One can only guess what's in
| that SDK... but from my other experiences, I'm pretty sure
| there's some back channel.
|
| Here's a quote from appinchina dot com:
|
| Currently, foreign companies are not allowed to directly
| publish their apps on Chinese Android app stores. This
| restriction does not apply to iOS or the Apple App Store in
| China. All foreign app companies must either have a Chinese
| entity or use an authorized local distributor to publish
| their mobile apps and games.
| nittanymount wrote:
| need to pass the votes in senate
|
| or this is final ?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Needs senate approval.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Well it is a new age of bipolar world in which it is not wise to
| use your enemy spyware. Dont forget we have our own.
| jackblemming wrote:
| US spyware = OK Chinese spyware = BAD
|
| And of course the argument to strip citizens freedom to choose
| what they want to use is in the name of safety! Politicians need
| a new red herring or I'm going to start thinking they're either
| lazy or stupid.
|
| This might be great: Americans will see firsthand how corrupt and
| oppressive their government can be if it wants to.
| keybored wrote:
| Domestic elites put on a whole show about foreign companies
| spying on citizens is bad while (implicitly) asserting that
| domestic companies doing the same thing is okay. Classic us
| versus them.
| t0lo wrote:
| I wonder what impact this will have on biden in the election-
| tiktok users are young and progressive and trump positioning
| himself as pro tiktok recently is interesting
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Where archive.is is blocked:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240313202003if_/https://www.ny...
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