• lautan@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    From what I know, certain special interests want TikTok under their control so they can censor certain topics. People keep saying this is happening because of CCP, etc. But I believe they want this platform “censored” before the elections. The other major players already play ball with censorship but TikTok caught them by surprise.

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Why would it have unanimous bi-partisan support in the Senate if the bill had weight on the election results?

      • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        To be devil’s advocate: We already know China loves to be meddlin’ in Western elections, so both parties have a vested interest in getting them out of their pants.

        That being said, China can easily meddle all over the place, so I don’t consider that the primary motivator. Like I said before, this is 98% about protectionism.

        • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          TikTok is a massively powerful tool of influence and intelligence, in the hands of an adversary that is well understood to proactively meddle with democratic elections.

          Yes, obviously the CCP will unabashedly pursue other interference vectors. That should be viewed as more reason to curtail TikTok, not less.

        • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          They have until January 19th to divest, with a 90-day extension if they are pursuing sale. They aren’t mandating that it be done by November’s election regardless of the outcome.

          • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            6 months ago

            Seriously, going through these comments, it’s clear most people didn’t read the article or didn’t learn how calendars work in school (or are part of the Russian Internet Research Agency and trying to sow doubt in Biden).

            Based on the timeline, it’s clear the intention wasn’t to protect against the 2024 election, since the potential ban would go in place after the election happens.

    • sincle354@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      Tone down the conspiracy theory angle. It’s lemmy, you can get more interaction by mentioning capitalism rather than censorship.

    • Korkki@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s the only big non-US owned social media. They hate that because it’s much harder to control. It’s not even about the profits to be had, tiktok gets more eyeballs and especially it gets the young people’s attention and has more public thrusts than all of the MSM combined and because Bytedance doesn’t hate their HQ in the US the US government, intelligence or special interests, can’t just call them and strong arm them into censoring whatever talking point that they don’t like currently. It’s not much more complex than that. “Chinese spying on Americans” is just projection of what all the other platforms do.

      Those who push this will not be happy no matter what Tiktok does or whatever concessions it makes. They already hold american data in American and EU data in the EU for example. Did that stop the “muh CCP influence” propaganda? Well, no… Their main goal would be to get Bytedance to sell the platform to Americans, atleast the american business. I guess they would rather let it get banned and sacrifice American or even all the western markets than to let that happen. It would be a loss to them either way.

    • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      The platform is already pretty censored, mentions of Palestine get fucked by the algo, I barely even see it from people I follow if I don’t look up their past videos.

      But I could imagine that’s the impetus for congress, Trump tried the same thing after Tiktok was used to organize ~a million people RSVPing free tickets to a trump rally, resulting in him doing his shtick infront of like 100 people in a stadium. He only stopped after a major donor asked him not to, and it was very unpopular. Now dems are in Trumps position after hearing the kids are using Tiktok to organize against them, of course they’d make the same calculation and try to ban it.