Cool, now let’s ban Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and every single social media platform that does the same exact thing as TikTok. I have never used TikTok, but this is fucking bullshit. Facebook literally ruined elections and lives around the world.
Only the US is allowed to ruin elections.
Technically true of any country: only China is allowed to influence CCP elections, only Russia is allowed to fix Russian elections, only the US is allowed to ruin US elections…
They still try to influence each other’s ones, but they aren’t openly “allowed” to…
Why would the American government ban companies based under their own jurisdiction? They can make use of all those other companies just like the Chinese government can make use of TikTok.
Sounds good.
Does the legislation also include penalties for Samsung for preinstalling TikTok on my fucking Smart TV and making the app non-removable ?
No. And they never will
The US encourages international business competition, but not if you do it better than they do.
We’ve not actually seen for sure that TikTok data is being passed to the Chinese government - supposedly the USA data is being kept separately. But we have certainly seen US data brokers gathering data from all over in the US and selling that on to any 3rd party (domestic government, as well as anyone else). Facebook has been caught more than once being in the business of leaking private data. I’m just surprised that the US gov did not leave this choice up to its citizens to choose on - the ideas of freedom of choice and speech seem to be rather dictated here now.
I’m just wondering if it is not more a case of the US gov has no control itself over TikTok (think US CLOUD Act) and this is what is irking them. I’m not in the US so one way or the other I don’t really mind. What I do mind about though is that TikTok does not sell out to a US company. We really don’t need one single country controlling all the mainstream social media platforms. US laws after all do not represent all of mankind, so some diversity is a good thing.
So I guess I’m rather for a “ban” than a “sell out”.
You have guessed right. The US government had a massive hand in the creation of modern social media, such as a significant amount of funding for Facebook during its startup phase. The intelligence agencies are mad that they can’t pull data from TikTok or influence its algorithms, on top of the American social media companies wanting to kill off their foreign competition as much as possible.
This bill has nothing to do with data privacy because if Congress cared about that they would’ve banned other platforms too. It’s about control and unfair competition.
I love that this and more funding for other countries’ wars are a higher priority than the housing crisis.
Conservatives have been purposely tanking uncontroversial legislation so that “Biden doesn’t get any wins”. Do you genuinely think it is possible for the current legislature to pass bills that would fix something as complex as the housing crisis?
I would accept that as an excuse if the Democrats did anything meaningful when they have a majority, but they don’t.
The last time they had a meaningful majority they spent their time (72 working days) on ACA (a major healthcare reform), pulling us out of a recession, appointing two supreme court justices, and so much more. They are known as the most productive Congress since Lyndon B Johnson was president. The last official majority they had they spent their very thin majority cleaning up after Donald Trump and dealing with COVID.
Democrats don’t get strong majorities for long periods of time like Republicans do, and they are expected to fix every issue plus clean up after the newest national disaster that Republicans created. Maybe if we gave them time and a strong enough majority they would get more done.
First, you should put this in air quotes: “a major healthcare reform”. It’s only a reform if you the consumer can absorb the price gouging required to access our health care system in the first place.
Secondly, Obama had a supermajority for a time. He could have done anything if he’d have been willing to do the work.
Americans can’t eat excuses, and for me at least, it’s no longer acceptable to simply be slightly less conservative than the other conservatives.
I 100% agree that they should have gone further with the many things they accomplished during their super majority. A universal healthcare system would have been better, they could have gone further with digging the average American out of the recession, etc.
However, it is disingenuous to pretend they did/do “nothing meaningful”. ACA expanded healthcare to millions of people who couldn’t get insurance at all, expanded Medicaid and Medicare, and it lowered healthcare costs. That’s pretty meaningful and a major success even if it wasn’t universal healthcare.
I think it’s also disingenuous to compare democrats who make small progress forward to Republicans who are actively trying to roll all of our laws back to the 1800s. Again democrats aren’t ideal, and really we need a more progressive major party in the US because they don’t go far enough, but it’s better to make any progress forward than it is to fully regress.
Democrats not being progressive enough is an issue we can fix in time, but it will take decades of hard work (and continuous work even after we succeed). We need to start helping more progressive candidates with their campaigns and even personally running campaigns during local, state, and national primaries. It would also help for us to push for major election reform while we work towards getting progressives elected. It is unacceptable we only really have only two major parties and really only one choice during general elections.
You just stood directly in the way of a perfect whataboutism….
Now you apologize right now!
If you think Taiwan and Ukraine are “other countries’ wars” I have bad news for you. It’s better to pay as much money as we can now before the payment is made with american lives.
Israel is something else obviously, as was US involvement Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bulk of the money is absolutely worth spending if you value your freedom. It has nothing to do with the housing crisis whatsoever. The US has enough money for both.
Respectfully, the “fight them there so we don’t fight them here” and “help them stand up so we can stand down” nonsense is straight out of the chickenhawks’ war branding guide. Our government wasted tens of trillions on these meaningless platitudes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those boondoggles led to the rise of ISIS.
Meanwhile I can look over the border and see Mexico spending a mere 8 billion a year on war and Canada a mere 26 billion. Meanwhile we’re up to a trillion and a half this year, but sure, it has nothing to do with the housing crisis or the standard of living in this country. We’re definitely not neglecting our own people to feed an insatiable war machine.
Frankly, I’m sick of watching our government impoverish our people to pay for more super yachts for warmongers.
In 2013, foreign buyers made up about 7% ($92.2 billion) of transactions in the $1.2 trillion U.S. real estate market. Canada was the main buyer with 19% of sales (decrease from 23% the year before), China was on the second place with 16% of sales, while on the first place considering total foreign sales by dollar value (24% or $22 billion). Mexico ranked third with 9% of sales and India and the UK both accounted for 5%.[2] Florida is the most popular destination with 31% of sales, followed by California (12%), Texas (9%) and Arizona (6%).
But yeah tiktok bad mmmmk
I don’t like big government but I have zero sympathy in this case. TikTok is the greatest cancer on modern society and I will not change my mind on that.
We literally have a global rise in violent fascism and multiple ongoing genocides, and TikTok is the worst thing you can think of?
Social media in general is likely contributing to the rise of violent facism. Anything that can reverse that trend is good IMO.
This is social media too. How is your comment “contributing to the rise of violent fascism”?
Also keep in mind that fascism comes from the top down, there is zero chance of a government to “reverse that trend” by taking over. This is nothing else than the US trying to beat China at it, which is worrying.
Only way to reverse the trend of social media fascism, is to split it up, not to just transfer ownership.
I dunt lik big gubmint butt…
Nah, this entire thing is about US control. They’re upset that it’s a different government that’s spying on us this time. No sympathy for TikTok but there’s no good way to spin this.
Btw, you know if TikTok sells to a US company, they’ll be just as rancid, right?
I agree but TikTok is worthless in general. The content it serves people is literal brain rot. Also, I don’t want it to sell, I just want it to die and never come back.
So much easier than passing an actual data privacy law–and maybe Bobby Kotick will buy TikTokUSA!
VPN subscriptions about to explode.
Naturally, they’ll try to ban VPNs next.
I feel like most people would rather use shady, free VPNs instead. There’ll probably be an increase in them too
Then why is the bill about DIVESTMENT of Tiktok from Chinese ownership? The operation headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore. I’m beginning to think you don’t know what you’re talking about.
why is the bill about DIVESTMENT of Tiktok from Chinese ownership?
“Chinese ownership” == “CCP control”
The US doesn’t want a highly addictive app to be controlled by a potentially adversarial regime… which is still way less than China blocking all “potentially uncontrolled” apps.
Lol nice bad faith argument. Fucking Lemmy sockpuppets.
Hey, even if the above is a bad faith argument, this is not a constructive or nice way to bring that up in conversation. Please try to do a better job of communicating going forward. Thanks!
Interesting that Temu and AliExpress are also China owned, yet there’s no mention of any issues with them.
Well, they’re totally different platforms . The rationale behind the TikTok ban (and I’m not saying I’m in favor of it or opposed to it) is that they can do spooky spooky things with your personal data and your attention – your opinions can be nudged once there’s enough data on you and your eyeballs are on the app half the day. And just to repeat, I’m not saying I agree with the ban (well, not with banning just TikTok anyhow…)
Temu and AliExpress have their own problems (like the absolutely mind boggling waste of finite resources) but nobody’s worried Temu is radicalizing boys or collecting tons of your personal data. And yes even Temu does collect data just like everyone else nowadays, but it’s a shopping site; compared to a social network there’s not all that much you can get out of your users or too many ways to really influence them outside of making them spend more money
The “data privacy” argument is bullshit and the people pushing for this law know it. That’s what is being sold to people but it is not why this TikTok ban got passed. It got passed because American social media companies are pissed that TikTok is outcompeting them for the attention of young people, and because the US government has a heavy hand in what algorithms are allowed to push on Facebook and Google and others. A good portion of Facebook’s initial funding came from government sources.
“Data privacy” is just an excuse. Lobbying from the intelligence agencies and social media companies is why it’s really being enacted.
Oh yeah it absolutely is bullshit, I’m not saying that. Or, well, it is true they’re likely collecting tons of data but it’s not like US companies don’t do it too and for reasons that are probably just as bad. This is why I tend to think that if you’re going to ban TikTok for collecting data, you can’t ignore Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple et al
Agreed that “data privacy” is mostly an excuse in this case. The main reason is “(control over) mindless app addiction”, which TikTok has perfected way better than other platforms.
Actual “data privacy” and “platform addiction”, would be much better targets to address (the EU seems to be going in that direction), but obviously none of the other data-selling addictive platforms want the US to also ding them for that.
I suggest you read the bill. It isn’t a tik tok ban. It’s actually quite a good piece of legislation.
It is a vague and sprawling piece of legislation that gives money to Israel and Ukraine, makes Fentanyl more illegal, makes money laundering for fentanyl more illegal, allows seizure and use if Russian assets, restricts “foreign adversaries” from distributing and maintaining apps, restricts “foreign adversaries” from transferring data away from the US, and makes Iranian terrorism more illegal.
It does like 3 things that are fine, but these should all be different bills (the data transfer bits, seizing Russian assets, and sending aide to Ukraine, though that is getting iffy)
It IS a TikTok band and explicitly names ByteDance and TikTok, and also vaguely defines foreign adversaries to the point where it could be any person operating in a country that the US doesn’t like.
“Quite a good piece of legislation” is only true if you mean quite as sprawling and good as ill defined
“sending aide to Ukraine, though that is getting iffy”
This tells me everything I need to know. That you would even say something like this means you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Additionally, you realize that those are all separate bills, right?
This tells me everything I need to know. That you would even say something like this means you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Really? Just writing someone off without even hearing why?
Looks like I was mis-remembering Zelenskyy talking about moving troops into Russia, so that is the part I was iffy on. I never said they should not get the aide
Additionally, you realize that those are all separate bills, right?
It is one bill with 13 divisions called H.R 8038. The TikTiok part was fast tracked as an addendum to the bill. I can’t find any other bill related to it, and that is one referenced in most news outlets that I can see, but if you have more info I would love to read it.
But even if that has evolved into it’s own separate bill, that doesn’t change the fact that “foreign adversary” is poorly defined to the point where it can be anyone residing in a country deemed as an adversary. That means even say a rando in Cuba puts out an app with no ties to the Cuban government it would be illegal to have that app in the US. The bill also still names TikTok explicitly, so it is still a TikTok ban (with the exception that they sell, which they are unlikely to do).
There is an “iffy” part in the aid to Ukraine, in the sense that Zelenskiy said it’s going to be destined to finance German firms building munition producing facilities in Ukraine… so it’s somewhat hard to tell who exactly is benefitting from it… but that’s more of an “iffy as business as usual” rather than “particularly iffy”.
“foreign adversary” is poorly defined to the point where it can be anyone residing in a country deemed as an adversary
That’s on purpose, and in part caused by the fact that countries have the last say on what their residents are allowed to do. Like, you can’t have a private corporation in China without the CCP controlling most of it, or forcing you to save all data on datacenters controlled by… corporations controlled by the CCP.
Most totalitarian countries work like that, doesn’t really matter whether a certain resident is against the regime and making an app to let people get slightly freer from it.
Oh for sure I know the vague nature was 100% on purpose, but it doesn’t mean the bill is good or that is what I want to see from my government. Data privacy protections for citizens regardless of which country controls an app would have been more effective. Instead, our own homegrown unethical social media companies still get to hoard and sell our data. But of course that is useful to the US government, so…
Yeah… the bill is probably as much of an agreement as they could reach.
For contrast, the EU has tackled “data privacy” directly through the GDPR, and has plans to tackle “addiction” in upcoming legislation. That has lead, just this week, to TikTok withdrawing monetization features from TikTok… Lite, I think?.. from all across the EU, pretty much because they’re risking fines of “up to 5% worldwide gross revenue”, which is turning out to be a nice stick that’s keeping even large corporations proactive about following these laws.
These threads/articles always get the facts wrong, TikTok is not “getting banned”, they are just forcing the company to divest from it’s Chinese parent company.
deleted by creator
And nothing of value was lost.
My only issue is with Congress telling us all “you have not seen what we have seen, you have not been in the classified briefings”. Yeah, I heard the same shit about WMD’s in Iraq where two of my battle buddies died, two more got wounded beyond any recovery, and a bunch more chose to end their lives after we got home.
“Trust us, bro”. Nah, fuck you. You want the world to support this, you need to share the information.
It will be interesting to see if tiktoks newest big selling point (relatively free from US influence) will be able to offset it’s loss in users.
It’s likely that they will form a new organization in the US, so they can operate in that country and still have Tik Tok alive. My expectation is that the US based Tik Tok would still interact with the world, but block China.
deleted by creator
