Crazy that the proposed solution to propaganda is banning media instead of investing in education that promotes critical thinking. Or maybe the idea here is “no propaganda except mine”.
Investing in education is counter to the clear goals of the USA. Smart people would revolt, protest,and you know, hold companies and billionaires accountable. Uneducated people are often poor, can’t afford to fight back and are scared they will lose what little they have.
At some point we need all to fight back, but it might be too late. And worse, too few will join in out of fear of death.
I have to tell you, I know many intelligent people that have succumbed to propaganda, and outrage porn addiction. I see it continue to happen on all sides of the political isle. (This isn’t a both sides kind of statement, simply acknowledgement that the same tactics work on our brain, indifferent of political ideology.)
Whether they are hooked on the dopamine rush of rage baiting up votes, likes or comments; or only seeing everything in the world through a myopic lens of negativity, it has captured many of my friends and family, including myself for a time.
For some their drug is Fox News, others it’s Reddit, Facebook or TikTok, the results are often the same.
I have yet to figure out a manner in which to communicate with individuals who spend considerable amounts of time in echo chambers, constantly having their personal beliefs reinforced. Evasion of cognitive dissonance and social conflict are very powerful psychological motivations. I wish I knew the solution.
Fuck that bro, get mad as hell.
We deserve better lives, and we should be pissed it’s being taken from us.
Not really sure what you’re getting at. Getting mad is good, getting locked into an echo chamber and eschewing critical thinking in lieu of groupthink is bad.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Looking at things pragmatically widespread education of the population takes time and simply won’t take for some people. There are folks today complaining that “they don’t teach taxes in school”. These people have a problem filling out a 1040EZ. Not exactly encouraging.
At the same time Tic Tok represents a single vector for current or potential foreign propaganda and intelligence gathering targeting the American public. Opportunities to nip a single bud (so to speak) are few and far between and probably won’t be possible in the near future.
TL;DR - The “sell or ban” is a short term measure that won’t take a lot of time, education is a long term measure that takes years.
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If people can pick apart China’s propaganda it means they can pick apart US propaganda, too.
Can’t have that.
Well, of course. They aren’t banning Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. That’s exactly how they want it.
they aren’t even banning tiktok, at least they’re trying not to. What they’re trying to do is force a sale specifically to US government insiders. They’re seizing it. They want that sweet, sweet propaganda and data mining for themselves.
Wow good find. The revolving door in action.
And yet China is banning basically the whole Western internet, foreign companies must enter joint ventures with Chinese companies under government control. Reciprocity is fair. Why should Byte Dance be allowed to take in billions to fund Chinese gulags?
China does thing: Bad
America does same thing: Good
At least the US government can’t harvest US citizens social media data without a warrant (excepting all the patriot act stuff). But there is zero protection for your data from the CCP if it’s on TikTok. That’s understandably a pretty huge security concern. I can also understand China not wanting data from their citizens in the hands of American social media companies. Idk if any if it is good or bad but it’s certainly common sense on a national level.
As someone who’s neither chinese nor american I want nothing more than these countries to keep their hands to themselves. I don’t like China doing it, and I don’t want the US doing it because China does it. Are y’all gonna hand a piece of your companies to every country they operate in? I’m guessing “no”.
What do you think billionaires are bribing congress for? Regulatory capture keeps all the competitors out. Whereas actually fixing the problem of social media brainwashing would cost them money.
Minimum wage has been $7.25/hr for 15 years and this is what they’re getting done on Capitol Hill 🤪
Because of lobbyists
How about a digital bill of rights that applies to every corporation you fucking cowards!
They don’t care about every corporation because they work with those corporations. It’s because it’s a foreign power that started doing the same shit they’ve been doing for decades now. None of these countries & corporations deserve any sort of sympathy or support from any sane individual.
I see no issue with banning tik tok.
It’s not even “banning tik-tok”. It’s “separate your interests, or we block your product”.
Which isn’t exactly something that we haven’t seen before in the U.S. and it for sure isn’t anything new in China where plenty of services, games…etc are blocked with “Chinese only” versions of those services.
We forced the sale of Grindr and nobody even brought it up.
Given how many politicians are deeply closeted, I like to imagine they hurried this one along quietly
Except they would be ignoring all the other shitty social networks but it’s a start.
It’s not a start tho, it’s killing competition of Facebook and Google. It’s consolidating power if anything. I believe this bill has nothing to do with security issues and everything to do with campaign contributions to make sure America never has to compete with another country in this space.
Oh I know their motivation is greed.
eh, It would look like more of a shakedown if it was just the US doing it, but tiktok is getting banned all over the place, particularly for government devices.
I don’t like TikTok, but I do take issue with the government deciding what is and isn’t available to me.
They are not banning the content type that tiktok provides, they are banning the foreign authoritarian government control of American user information. If Bytedance Sells tiktok to a business in a non authoritarian state then they no longer care.
what did tiktok do to deserve being banned, and why is it okay for other companies to do that?
Feeding data to the CCP, helping them identify people who can be easily swayed into espionage. Say someone gets into a position of power. “Hey, remember when you were 12 and said this on tik Tok? Now we need you to be out bitch or we’re leaking this.”
Look at the things that have gone viral on Tik Tok, it’s like their algorithm prioritizes things that are toxic to make American youth shittier. Kia boys comes to mind.
There is also the fact that China bans all American social media out of fear that we’d use it to manipulate their people. If they aren’t allowing our businesses to compete fairly, why should we allow theirs? Also, they probably are projecting that fear because they are doing exactly that with TikTok.
The app has more permissions than most apps and is highly invasive. They sent a push notification to all their users based on Geo location saying who their rep was and giving their phone number saying to call them to stop this bill. That alone seems like a major abuse of power. They are using the data they have to try to sway the American politicians already.
you’ve failed to answer my second question, which I believe was the important one: why should this behavior be perfectly legal for everyone other than tiktok?
Yeah it’s a good question, and I think the answer should be: it shouldn’t. Instead of cracking down on one platform or another, they should be cracking down on the bad behaviors built into those platforms.
But alas, that would require us to elect politicians that understand an ounce of nuance
I agree with you, but I’m assuming malice because I don’t think that stupidity adequately explains their behavior. I think that, to them, the problem isn’t propaganda and espionage, it’s Chinese propaganda and Chinese espionage where American propaganda and American espionage should be. That’s why they’re not making what tiktok does illegal, and that’s why they’re trying to force a sale rather than actually banning it.
Not a single thing you said has convinced me. And I am going to get on Tik Tok out of spite when this passes into law.
Sounds like a lose-lose scenario
Not really. It might have something I enjoy on it.
TikTok is very heavily influenced by the CCP and could be used to collect data from Americans (probably they already are). Not wanting your biggest geopolitical rival to harvest data from your citizens is pretty understandable.
Chinese government is a lot less a threat to me compared to the US. We are at most two elections cycles away from a Christian Nationalism state. China is over there, not my problem. I can avoid them if I want.
i hate TikTok but also Instagram and YouTube shorts should be in the same list
Weren’t you all just hating on Republicans for not voting for that bill.
How about an all bills must be fucking separate bill?
You need to fix voting in congress first. The reason riders get put in is because some small bills that are of no interest to some in congress would never make it because they’d never get enough votes to pass. Of course the system got abused to hell with poison pills and shitty bills that are crammed into popular legislation to make it hard to pass or make good legislation pass shitty laws.
So yeah, split the bills. But make these clowns vote on everything.
This was a separate bill. Til Tok, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel were all separate. They were brought to the floor at the same time, but they could’ve all been voted on differently
So the article is wrong?
At least the Genocrats cant hide behind the “it was bundled in with Ukraine” excuse now. The end up the exact same as the Republicunts.
Both sides are exactly the same.
What is a genocrat?
Linkerbaan is just a troll. Always trying to muddy the conversation with terms like “genocide joe” and “sleepy joe.” I assume “genocrats” are his clever portmanteau for genocide Democrats.
Edit: notice how he edits his comments to make them more “both sides” instead of the original “Democrats bad” message.
Oh, no! What will I do without my level 5 gyatt rizz livvy fanum tax dunne rizzing up baby gronk ice spice wat da dawg doin skibidi toilet in real life only in ohio we go jim zyzz creatine alpha sigma cuh dey board?
This bill would also outlaw using VPNs to view such restricted platforms, and has a general policy that would allow lawmakers to ban any platform they claim is a national security risk. No overreach here!
The poor kids will lose everything because of course you can only host that kind of fucking trash on tik tok!! It’s either on tik tok or not at all!!!
it’s ridiculous how attached these children are to a chinese company lol. They just host the goddamn footage and provide an algo to feed that shit to you. THAT’S IT! TT ain’t some special fuckin unicorn
but the kids are kids and they don’t want to think about and understand that. Most on tiktok probably don’t even know of or remember Vine or the other previous iterations of the same exact shit concept. But noooo, the CCP must be allowed to frame the narratives/algos and vacuum up all possible PII data!!!
now that aside, the VPN part you mention is indeed disturbing. Could you please provide the source / exact wording for this claim? I want to read more about it but can’t find anything close to what you are suggesting
VPN or virtual private network are not mentioned anywhere
TikTok is also a pretty effective protest tool, which is also a threat to conservatives. It’s just funny how they’re so against the CCP rotting the brains of children but do nothing about the black box of YouTube recommendations and every American social media platform (until they started banning campaign misinformation)
VPn or virtual private network are not mentioned anywhere
Shit, they revised it then. I remember there was originally language like that in the original 2023 version.
Currently 0-2 today for spreading correct information.
yes haha, I agree. It’s not a consistent position which is really dumb.
I’m glad they revised it!! It’s still good to call it out as I wasn’t aware of that being in an old version!! Sneaky little bastards
TikTok is also a pretty effective protest tool
(Citation needed)
grabs popcorn
mimes eating popcorn, while pointing to overlayed captions, with a Taylor Swift song playing in the background
This person TikToks!
Can we just put the american and chinese government in a room and let them fight it out untill they are done?
Just let me watch my funny cat videos and cooking videos in peace thankyou very much.
It’s not even about propaganda it’s not having it until their thumb, they can’t push a button and ensure the top video under trans on every search is Matt Walsh, and yeah on all other major platforms if you search trans people critical of trans people pop up. The reasoning isn’t popularity or engagement, the US government has ordered them to do it through backroom tax deals and Slapp orders. Next stop for the US gov is gonna be the fediverse and AT proto, they are gonna argue that not just anyone should be trusted and that running a social media server is a big task. security blah blah children, protecting your data. Than lass a bill require you to obtain an FCC license to host your own social media site. It only gets worse from here folks
I didn’t really like your attitude about it, but you’re probably right. Moving goalposts is what the US does to establish precedents.
Well the Senate killed the earlier bill. There’s a decent chance they pass the Ukraine/Israel aid bill without this amendment. It would then be stricken in reconciliation. Unfortunately there’s also a decent chance the Senate passes it because this version probably fixes things the Senators had problems with.
If it does get passed there’s a very good chance there’s a court order to prevent anything until the courts rule on the constitutionality of the law. If Bytedance loses that there’s zero chance they sell though. The US market is not big enough for them to jettison an international company.
Not big enough. I imagine it’s their biggest market.
It’s the biggest single country but in a world of 7.9 Billion people, 148 million is a fraction.
But it’s also not available in China correct? They have a separate version with a different name from what I understand. They could do the same for the other regions they serve and sell the US user base to a new company.
The Chinese app is a completely different app and company than TikTok. ByteDance owns two apps. While we might end up with an American version ByteDance is not going to sell TikTok. And at the closest, that version would be an American corporation running a licensed version of TikTok with TikTok’s American server and software infrastructure. But that’s not very likely, even with a year’s lead time. That’s the kind of deal you get when a company exits a market voluntarily. When you have a fire sale you far more often see a company’s assets sold as parts. The problem is it’s not an equal playing ground anymore and free market principles no longer apply.
So in this case TikTok would still want the most money possible for their buildings, servers, office equipment, etc. That means that all Meta and friends need to do in order to prevent a whole sale is give TikTok a good deal on one aspect. If Meta takes the servers, and Reddit takes the work computers, and Alphabet takes the source code, and Apple takes the buildings, there’s not very much left over for a new competitor to grab and turn into a running concern that could compete.
So in this case TikTok itself comes away fine. But the American social media market becomes less competitive and consumers have to deal with shittier apps as there’s less competition.
There are two very concerning points to this law in the future though. This is a law allowing the executive branch to make a declaration about a company and force a fire sale. If this was done to a domestic company with foreign backing then it would simply be the end of that company. Second, this does not in any way actually keep the CCP from getting our data or influencing us through social media. In 2016 Russia famously ran an information op through Facebook. There have been no reforms to keep that from happening again and in fact we saw that same campaign in 2020, it just wasn’t enough the second time. And American Data Vendors willingly sell our data to the highest bidder, including the CCP. They have been caught doing so multiple times, have received nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and there’s no evidence they’ve stopped.
So this law puts a dangerous precedent into place without solving any of the things it says it’s going to solve. The short story here is that unless we’re talking about school lunches you need to run away the second a politician says it’s for the children.
Oh and it’s an open question as to if it’s even Constitutional since it’s basically a standing authority to ban companies by name. Which is literally called out in the Constitution and why you’ve never seen a law to punish someone by name in the US. There’s supposed to be a court procedure and a law they’ve violated. If they wanted to make a law saying a company could be banned for giving data to declared enemies and enforce it in civil court that would be proper. But it would immediately fail because all of our Billionaires are ass deep in the data markets. So we have this smoke cloud instead.
Why would they sell? That would create a competitor that could easily expand into other markets and take away that user base as well.
Why are you cheerleading for TikTok to remain in the hands of a US adversary, during the same week when said adversary forced a US company to abjectly ban US-based messaging apps?
Retaliation. Tit for tit.
Tik for Tok
It was right there!
If the government can just point at a company and force a fire sale then there is no market, there is no order, there is no financial industry. This is an incredibly dangerous law.
The government absolutely has unconditional and unlimited authority to restrict enemy states from ownership of anything in the US they want to.
There is absolutely no possibility of any Constitutional issue. The government has explicit authority to handle anything they want about international commerce in the Constitution.
That’s why they’re having to pass this law I guess then? Because they already have the authority to do the thing they’re trying to make the law to get the authority to do?
And TikTok isn’t owned by China. It’s owned by ByteDance, a MultiNational Corp with Chinese ties. It’s not operated out of China, Tiktok is operated out of Singapore and Los Angeles.
And what exactly is the security concern of people making funny cat videos? Nobody is saying the government has to put Tiktok on government computers. So what exactly is the exposure here that trumps the first amendment and prohibition on bills of attainder in the US?
To your first point, yes, exactly. Congress mostly has to pass bills to exercise their power. For example: they have the authority to decide finances. They pass bills to (barely) get that done.
You’re not wrong but even if this was a standing authority being used in the same way as passing the budget, it would be illegal because it targets a single entity by design. The Constitution prohibits that which is why laws are written as behavior rules you have to violate and then the government proves you violated them in court. Just declaring a company or person persona non grata is something our founders specifically prohibited.
Passing laws is how they regulate international commerce. Or one way. Treaties are another. Executive orders are another. Actions of regulatory bodies within frameworks established by prior legislation is another.
Congress passing legislation to stop hostile foreign ownership of a US business that’s doing harm is well within their authority.
A. Doing what harm? People just throw this around and there’s been no evidence except, “lol it’s a social media company”.
B. It’s not within their authority unless there’s a specific national security problem. So what about TikTok is going to breach national security? Are they stealing military secrets? (They were already banned from government devices along with other social media apps so the answer is no. They’re not.)
The Constitution is supposed to protect us from the government just pointing at us and declaring us criminals. Today it’s TikTok tomorrow it’s you.
A. It’s malware that does an obscene amount of spying, even compared to other social media. Forcing the sale isn’t good enough. It should have been outright banned.
B. That’s incorrect. Their authority over foreign trade is unconditional and absolute. There are absolutely zero restrictions on what they can do to restrict foreign trade. Non-US companies have literally zero constitutional rights. They can ban all trade with any foreign person or business who has any commercial interaction with China if they wish. The Constitution places absolutely zero restrictions on their authority to restrict international trade.
No, the slippery slope does not exist, ignoring that that’s a stupid fallacy for a reason. I am not an enemy state. I am a US citizen. I have Constitutional rights. TikTok doesn’t, and for very good reason.
You’re thinking of laws in terms of obedience. Law is about agreed-upon structure (sometimes functional, often dysfunctional).
Enforcement is about obedience, and comes up when people don’t go along with the agreed-upon structure. When the structure is made poorly, enforcement has harmful consequences.
Examples:
- food stamps (law)
- no stealing (law)
- preventing theft or multiple-subscription to food stamps (enforcement)
- the wilderness act (law)
- suing the government for not following the wilderness act (enforcement)
Law and enforcement are closely linked, but definitely distinct.
They have the authority to create structure (pass laws) regarding foreign powers operating within the States. So they pass laws (create structure) that state the agreed-upon structure, and enable that structure to be enforced.
Except we don’t have that power. Not unless there’s a national security threat. And they might make our children more woke isn’t a national security threat.
American individuals and this company have a first amendment right. Furthermore this isn’t a ban on all foreign owned companies. This is a ban on companies with ownership that have nebulous ties to certain countries. A list we can add to at any time. That is capricious and open to being abused. It’s also unconstitutional under the no Bills of Attainder rule.
Except we do have that power. There’s reasonable national security risk, and your lack of understanding of the dynamics involved doesn’t make them nebulous to others.
In any case, if you don’t like it, vote with your life choices. If it’s not that important, well… …it’s not that important.
The alternative is to outright ban it. Tik Tok is a cancer directly controlled by a hostile nation state. The government absolutely has the right to block foreign interference like this.
Pray tell how is this any worse than Facebook? Is the CCP in the Los Angeles TikTok office moderating content?
Or is this just more bullshit invented on the spot to justify an unconstitutional power grab?
Facebook isn’t under an obligation to provide America’s data directly to the government of a hostile foreign power. Tiktok is
An obligation? Is there proof of that? That’s a pretty incendiary accusation.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/afcl/fact-check-tiktok-03242023144611.html
Technically according to this article tiktok won’t share data with the PRC - but their parent company bytedance is obligated to share data with the PRC when requested. Bytedance has authority to require tiktok to share data. Therefore through this channel tiktok is obligated to share data with the PRC when requested.
They’re owned by the CCP (and before you say they’re not, the ByteDance C-suite is basically all current Chinese citizens and the headquarters is in Beijing).
Businesses and people do not have rights in the way most westerners are used to. Assume anything out of China or generally owned by Chinese companies is a direct arm of the CCP … because even if it isn’t today, the CCP can unilaterally throw down an order from the top and take control of the company/have them do whatever they want or the leaders replaced.
The first amendment doesn’t have an exception for retaliation.
“they won’t let the algorithm be sold and without it, it’s an empty deal” I don’t see how that’s a problem. Obviously there’s a great deal of knowledge about what “the algorithm” does across the userbase; just get users to raise tickets about what they miss and others to upvote them, then knock them off one by one. There’s nothing magic about “users who liked post A also liked post B” or “company X paid us $1000000000000 so here’s post C whether you like it or not”. It might even end up being better than the original.
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I will never vote for my rep again because of this. Climate change, runaway COL, rising wealth inequality, legalize cannabis, Middle East on fire, flood in the district that killed people…utter silence.
Banning Tik Tok was the priority.
I won’t vote GOP but my rep is never getting my vote again.
Is your rep speaker of the house Mike Johnson? If not, they don’t choose which bill is voted on…
Could have voted nay, could have refused to vote on it, could have demanded a rider be attached passing universal healthcare. Choose to vote against our rights to use as shitty app. Therefore I choose to never vote for them again.
Unless you got a time machine my decision is final.
