I'll link my comment from the previous discussion on this. I understand why the EFF is opposed to giving the president stroke-of-the-pen powers over foreign-owned social media, but I think Tiktok...
I'll link my comment from the previous discussion on this. I understand why the EFF is opposed to giving the president stroke-of-the-pen powers over foreign-owned social media, but I think Tiktok legitimately is uniquely terrible. The platform moderators intentionally censor topics like Uyghur genocide and Tibet. There are easy, built-in methods to heat divisive videos to cause controversy whenever China wants. It's nothing like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Bluesky, or even Twitter.
The US should ban Tiktok, just like India did. The national security risk is genuine. Imagine the clusterfuck if China invaded Taiwan and the topic was censored or users only saw videos sympathetic to imperialism.
You need to consider how this law would be abused. Think about how this law would be applied by an authoritarian president, like Trump is currently running for office as right now. Remember, Trump...
Exemplary
You need to consider how this law would be abused. Think about how this law would be applied by an authoritarian president, like Trump is currently running for office as right now. Remember, Trump was no stranger to cleaving authority from vague terms in the law. He figured out how to use emergency provisions to direct funds for a border wall; something that should require Congressional approval. He found ways to twist immigration law to be an outright Muslim ban. He applied old immigration laws that were meant to prevent the spread of disease to vast restrictions on immigration more broadly. He's currently running for office on a platform of using the Comstock Act to effectively ban abortion nationwide. You need to judge a law by asking, "how would a politician I despise use this?"
This act gives the president the authority to create a Great Firewall of America, where foreign-owned websites can be blocked on a whim. The law describes things in terms of "applications," but the difference between a website and an application are nominal; you can access tiktok from the browser if you wish.
Consider the definition of control by a foreign adversary:
(1) CONTROLLED BY A FOREIGN ADVERSARY.—The term “controlled by a foreign adversary” means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is—
(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;
(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or
(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).
For an example of how this can be misused, consider the current Israel/Gaza conflict. What does "a person subject to the direction of" mean? In the Isreal/Gaza conflict, we officially don't recognize both sides of the conflict as legitimate military forces. Hamas, which if it was a Christian group in the US, would be called a militia, is officially classified as a terrorist group. Israel is recognized and is heavily allied with the US. Hamas certainly counts officially as a government or entity hostile to the US.
What's stopping an authoritarian president from decreeing, "we hold all content in favor of Hamas or pro-Gazan to be antithetical to US national security. Any social media network that hosts this content is clearly sympathetic to a terrorist group and is therefore subject "to the direction or control" by a hostile foreign entity. Any social media network that does not restrict pro-Gazan content will be declared under the control of a hostile foreign entity and will be subject to seizure or forced sale."
Would that pass legal muster? Perhaps, perhaps not. But how many tens of millions would Google or Meta have to spend to fight it out in court? Wouldn't it be easier just to self-censor, even if they thought the law was being misapplied? YouTube has already been brought into court before relating to hosting terrorist content. There have been some cases that interpret hosting videos that ISIS uploaded as providing financial support to terrorist groups. And so YouTube has done what it can to filter that material out. And doubtlessly, they have to do so with a wide net. If you want to ban all the actual ISIS content, then your algorithm will inevitably also ban things that aren't ISIS content.
To me, this law seems like a very easy method for a president to censor all social media and web sites in the US. Manage to pass a federal abortion ban? Foreign websites that provide information on contraception and abortion must be banned. Climate change? That sounds like an un-American conspiracy. Content that's pro-Gaza or pro-other group we don't officially like? Why do you support foreign terrorists and hate America?
Consider the House Un-American Activities Committee and imagine them picking apart websites and social media apps, trying to decide if they're sufficiently "pro-American" to keep from getting banned.
That's the problem with this law. It doesn't ban invasive data collection. It doesn't ban apps being designed using psychological principles to subtly control their users. It instead bans vaguely foreign apps using language loose enough to effectively allow the censorship of any website or app that doesn't toe the line of US foreign policy. And it could easily be adopted be a much greater censorship tool by declaring certain concepts foreign or hostile to American interests.
The fact that they could have written the law in a less destructive manner, but chose not to, is telling. They could have written the law to directly address the concerns they cite. The fact that they didn't is clear evidence that the reasons they're giving for this law are not the reasons they actually want it and intend to use it for.
What's stopping an authoritarian president from decreeing, "we hold all content in favor of Hamas or pro-Gazan to be antithetical to US national security. Any social media network that hosts this content is clearly sympathetic to a terrorist group and is therefore subject "to the direction or control" by a hostile foreign entity. Any social media network that does not restrict pro-Gazan content will be declared under the control of a hostile foreign entity and will be subject to seizure or forced sale."
(1) CONTROLLED BY A FOREIGN ADVERSARY.—The term “controlled by a foreign adversary” means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is—
(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;
(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or
(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).
(2) 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.
Because foreign adversary isn't just something the President can decide on in a speech, it's specific to four countries, and expanding this list would require an act of Congress.
I can't see Congress classifying, say for example, our EU Allies, as foreign adversaries to ban a website that talks about contraceptives / climate change going over well from a foreign relations standpoint.
EDIT: For anyone who thinks this bill is some long User Agreement-esque convulted nonsense, it's not. You don't need people to extract certain parts and take their word for it. It's like 2.5 pages and very simple. Just follow the links above. The bottom half is just defining the terms used in the first half.
You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are only four countries listed, but those can be added to just as easily as this bill sailed through the house. Hamas? They're sponsored by...
You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are only four countries listed, but those can be added to just as easily as this bill sailed through the house.
Hamas? They're sponsored by Iran, thus any pro-Gaza content can be twisted to be as under the direction of Iran. Remember, these politicians are openly taking about people being "brainwashed" by social media apps. Isn't someone who is brainwashed, by definition, under the influence, control, and direction of the one doing the brainwashing?
Or what if you host content that discourages the US from getting involved in Taiwan? Or maybe they ban abortion content by decrying it as a Chinese communist conspiracy, the one child policy all over again.
This nation has a long dark history of declaring entire ideas and philosophies as unamerican and foreign. Even just socialism in general has been vilified this way. Are you in favor of a universal basic income? That sounds awful communist. Better ban all content mentioning it.
You need to approach this with a certain level of malevolent creativity, because that's how these laws always end up being used. Frankly, I find it insane that we're even contemplating giving the presidency more power when we have one candidate running for office explicitly stating he's running to be a dictator. If we had any sense at all, we would be stripping powers from the presidency left and right. Instead, these fools want to give even more power to a future dictator.
This is such an epic goalpost shift: C’mon now - your whole original thesis was that the bill was too broadly defined. Once it’s pointed out that there are strict limitations in place, you’re...
This is such an epic goalpost shift:
Yes, there are only four countries listed, but those can be added to just as easily as this bill sailed through the house.
C’mon now - your whole original thesis was that the bill was too broadly defined. Once it’s pointed out that there are strict limitations in place, you’re moving on to… “All it takes is an act of congress and the president can do whatever they want!”
Argue in good faith, please. Any president can do whatever the fuck they want with an act of congress.
You're ignoring the heart of my comment for a tiny bit of minutia. The point is, with this law, they can easily simply paint almost anything they want as content that is under the direction of one...
You're ignoring the heart of my comment for a tiny bit of minutia. The point is, with this law, they can easily simply paint almost anything they want as content that is under the direction of one of whoever our official list of "enemies" is. In the past, whenever political winds have shifted, countries have been added to or removed from our lists of enemies very easily.
Again, you're missing the forest for the trees. The point is that nearly any type of content can be portrayed as representing the interests or whims of at least one of the countries on our national Nixon-esque "enemies" list. If you don't like some content, especially if that content relates to foreign policy, some justification can be created that will tie it to one of our official enemies.
Something being “portrayed as representing the interests or whims of at least one of the countries” is not relevant to the purview of this law. This is a patently false claim that you’re...
The point is that nearly any type of content can be portrayed as representing the interests or whims of at least one of the countries on our national Nixon-esque "enemies" list.
Something being “portrayed as representing the interests or whims of at least one of the countries” is not relevant to the purview of this law.
This is a patently false claim that you’re repeating. I’m not picking at minutia: your main point is wrong.
If it requires an act of Congress and you call it simple, wouldn't it be just as simple without this bill?
The point is, with this law, they can easily simply paint almost anything they want as content that is under the direction of one of whoever our official list of "enemies" is.
If it requires an act of Congress and you call it simple, wouldn't it be just as simple without this bill?
Look, as far as I see it if the MAGA people have their way then the US will become a dictatorship. They aren't playing by the rules. Any argument about what they could do with this law - or any...
Look, as far as I see it if the MAGA people have their way then the US will become a dictatorship. They aren't playing by the rules. Any argument about what they could do with this law - or any other law - is moot. We're not in the 90s anymore. TikTok ban or not they'll do whatever they want if given any power.
No worries, he lost as an incumbent, threw too many tantrums and went too far after losing. Democrats can not only claim he might try to take over, they can point out that he already did. As the...
No worries, he lost as an incumbent, threw too many tantrums and went too far after losing. Democrats can not only claim he might try to take over, they can point out that he already did. As the incumbent, Biden would need to royally fubar things to get people voting for Trump and so far he hasn't been that bad. If Trump wins, he rigged it, just calling it now because there's no chance in hell.
I really don't understand why the Republicans are going along with it. They're just digging their grave and they don't seem satisfied with only 6 feet under. I feel like I'm seeing the death throws of their party as they go hyper religious to keep voters, spitting in the face of the modern society as if that'll net them a win.
I understand that, to those of us who pay attention to politics and try to think critically about how government can do the right thing, it's obvious that Trump is a brain-rotted fascist with...
I understand that, to those of us who pay attention to politics and try to think critically about how government can do the right thing, it's obvious that Trump is a brain-rotted fascist with xenophobic tendencies and a chronic lack of guilt.
But let's not pretend that everyone feels this way about him, either because they don't pay as much attention or because they subscribe to his cult of personality.
You're making the same mistake the DNC made in 2016 right now. It's entirely possible that Trump has enough supporters out there to legitimately win this November. Why?
price inflation of food, housing, and other essentials has been significant since 2020. Trump has successfully convinced a large faction that this is Biden's fault... and many who don't pay attention to Trump simply assume it is Biden's fault because they don't dedicate much thought to the subject.
like it or not, the migrant crisis is worsening, many American cities are struggling with the influx of refugees, and the federal government has not done enough to help with this (of course, they've been hamstrung by Republicans, but for those who don't pay attention or who listen seriously to Trump, that's inconsequential)
the state of many American cities has gone downhill enough, in terms of things to do, cleanliness, visible homelessness, and more, since 2020 that many Americans vaguely blame Biden
Biden has done a good job with lots of subtle stuff -- I'm particularly happy with his track record with anti-trust -- but for the Average American driving around in their Average F150 living in an Average Doublewide working at an Average Factoryish Employer it's hard to associate Biden with any recent positive developments
I'm very concerned that the DNC's ground game is going to wind up failing just like in 2016 because the political establishment is fundamentally out of touch with anyone who doesn't make six figures and live in a rich suburb of a thriving American city (or have parents who live this way). Rust belt cities? The South? Hell, even rural New England, a pretty progressive place by rural standards, has an awful lot of Trump signs up. They've only multiplied since 2020.
I do not want Trump to win. But he absolutely could., make no mistake.
How in the world can you say that? The entire reason this bill is under consideration is because Congress people are afraid of the content Tiktok is hosting. It has nothing to do with foreign...
How in the world can you say that? The entire reason this bill is under consideration is because Congress people are afraid of the content Tiktok is hosting. It has nothing to do with foreign ownership. There's not a moral panic right now about banning Alibaba, Temu, or a thousand other Chinese-owned sites. They want to ban Tiktok precisely because of its content. They don't fear Chinese-owned businesses, they fear Chinese-moderated content.
This moral panic is no different from a hundred other moral panics in history. Moral panics about "foreign ideas corrupting the youth" is a tale as old as time. You can passages in the Bible reflecting moral panic about young people getting too onboard with greco-roman ideas.
They want Tiktok to be US-owned, because then its owners will fall under the influence and control of the US political system. If they didn't care about the content, what exactly would be the purpose of banning Tiktok or forcing its sale? From the point of view of Congress, what exactly is the point of forcing a sale of Tiktok if they believe it will result in zero change to its content?
This entire thing is about content. You don't write a law that has nothing to do with content if content regulation is your entire reason for passing that law.
TikTok leaks a tremendous amount of data from US operated platforms to Chinese platforms through sloppy internal controls and lack of separation between corporate platforms. Couple that with the...
TikTok leaks a tremendous amount of data from US operated platforms to Chinese platforms through sloppy internal controls and lack of separation between corporate platforms.
Couple that with the fact that China is an adversarial country, and TikTok is a data harvesting nightmare, and I think you can easily explain the impetus for the bill, which I went and read, without arguments about content suppression.
In August 2021, TikTok received a complaint from a British user, who flagged that a man had been “exposing himself and playing with himself” on a livestream she hosted on the video app. She also described past abuse she had experienced.
To address the complaint, TikTok employees shared the incident on an internal messaging and collaboration tool called Lark, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. The British woman’s personal data — including her photo, country of residence, internet protocol address, device and user IDs — were also posted on the platform, which is similar to Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Her information was just one piece of TikTok user data shared on Lark, which is used every day by thousands of employees of the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, including by those in China. According to the documents obtained by The Times, the driver’s licenses of American users were also accessible on the platform, as were some users’ potentially illegal content, such as child sexual abuse materials. In many cases, the information was available in Lark “groups” — essentially chat rooms of employees — with thousands of members.
The more serious parts of the government have been concerned about the telemetry picked up by the tiktok app and web service for a while These regulations are usually much less performative than congressional acts, and have nothing to do with suppressing generational or domestic content.
Fortunately, the US passed a law barring the president from unilaterally pulling out of NATO. Unfortunately, the president could probably still fail to respond to Article 5, so I really really...
Fortunately, the US passed a law barring the president from unilaterally pulling out of NATO. Unfortunately, the president could probably still fail to respond to Article 5, so I really really hope that's never relevant...
On one hand, I agree with you. On the other, I think an authoritarian president won't need this law in particular to create an American Firewall. If they want it to happen, they simply will. I...
On one hand, I agree with you. On the other, I think an authoritarian president won't need this law in particular to create an American Firewall. If they want it to happen, they simply will. I don't think that possibility should preclude a well meaning president from preventing an avenue of social influence on our nation.
We have always been at war with Eurasia. The reality is that Trump has shown a willingness to blatantly lie to the public, and the public eats it up as truth, even with reality staring them in the...
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
The reality is that Trump has shown a willingness to blatantly lie to the public, and the public eats it up as truth, even with reality staring them in the face.
The Republican party is a far greater threat to the American public than China is.
My counter point is always the same, this ban is not about Tik Tok issues its about power. Tik Tok is one the biggest non-American social platform and thats all. Why Tik Tok and not Twitter?
My counter point is always the same, this ban is not about Tik Tok issues its about power. Tik Tok is one the biggest non-American social platform and thats all. Why Tik Tok and not Twitter?
TikTok is fully banned in Nepal and India. TikTok is banned from government employee devices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Taiwan, and the EU due to security concerns. Concerns over...
TikTok is fully banned in Nepal and India.
TikTok is banned from government employee devices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Taiwan, and the EU due to security concerns.
I'm not sure the US should be taking cues on prudent governance from India. Also, something being banned on government devices is a totally different thing. The CIA banned Furbies, and that's a...
I'm not sure the US should be taking cues on prudent governance from India.
Also, something being banned on government devices is a totally different thing. The CIA banned Furbies, and that's a totally reasonable thing for them to have done. That's entirely different than banning Furbies for public sale.
We used to decry Communist China for banning foreign media. Remember the Great Firewall of China? For years, we've criticized China for locking its people in their own walled garden version of the...
We used to decry Communist China for banning foreign media. Remember the Great Firewall of China? For years, we've criticized China for locking its people in their own walled garden version of the internet.
Why has China banned and blocked so many foreign sites? They've done so precisely because they are afraid of foreign ideas infecting their body politic. We, as a free democracy, used to pride ourselves on not stooping to that level. We would say, "we have enough faith in our system that we don't need to ban ideas. Banning sites, even foreign sites, is unamerican."
We shouldn't be taking our policy cues from authoritarian governments like China, India, or Nepal.
I don't personally use TikTok, and have no plans to, but I understand how important it is in the US for younger generations, and anyone really, trying to boost their marketing. I think having it...
I don't personally use TikTok, and have no plans to, but I understand how important it is in the US for younger generations, and anyone really, trying to boost their marketing. I think having it banned from Government devices is good enough a law/rule in this instance.
I was all for the TikTok ban originally, but I do see its value, and have learned a lot from Tildes on the topic, I still don't like the app and will never use it, but banning it entirely is not the right move here. Regulation is what we need rather than bans, and we need it for all social media, not just the Chinese-owned social media.
Because Twitter and Instagram/Facebook are owned by fascist stooges, while TikTok is where Gen Z congregates...and each younger generation increasingly wants nothing to do with Republicans and...
Because Twitter and Instagram/Facebook are owned by fascist stooges, while TikTok is where Gen Z congregates...and each younger generation increasingly wants nothing to do with Republicans and finds the Democratic Party far too right-wing.
It's all just the 60s again: the overly conservative bipartisan faction is violently opposed to the youth counterculture movements and will go to any lengths to suppress it.
This time it's also lining up with the rise of fascism in the Republican Party, and they want to cut off as much left-wing speech as possible.
If they cared about legitimate data privacy concerns, they'd import the GDPR...but no, spying on the public is something they like doing through US-based companies. If they want to control information people have access to, well, that's just censorship.
Well said. I think the EFF is right to raise awareness on this issue but at the end of the day TikTok being owned by a rival country with potentially hostile intentions might make this worth the...
Well said. I think the EFF is right to raise awareness on this issue but at the end of the day TikTok being owned by a rival country with potentially hostile intentions might make this worth the risk, even considering the very real downsides and precedents this will set.
We ALSO should make it illegal for all these apps to freely collect the kinds of data that makes it banned in military or government installations.
I just want to thank you for getting some great sources for your other comment. I agree with everyone that it's a net negative for society, but I don't think that's a banable offense in a free...
I just want to thank you for getting some great sources for your other comment. I agree with everyone that it's a net negative for society, but I don't think that's a banable offense in a free society, so it's good to have sources that meticulously document the issues that specifically Chinese control of social media presents given the extreme power their government exerts over corporate interests.
Sure, the Chinese government doesn't have any ownership in ByteDance, but when China is getting private companies to form militias as an auxiliary to support the PLA and is censoring topics that a purportedly LA/Singapore-based company wouldn't care about, it's clear that there's more going on than meets the eye.
Do domestic social medias not heat posts with opposite propaganda goals in mind? If it’s all fake news and propaganda anyway, I’d appreciate a diversity in false perspectives.
Do domestic social medias not heat posts with opposite propaganda goals in mind? If it’s all fake news and propaganda anyway, I’d appreciate a diversity in false perspectives.
If platforms like YouTube had a "go viral" button, wouldn't we have heard about it by now? That's a huge thing to try and keep secret. We have plenty of explicit internal documentation about...
If platforms like YouTube had a "go viral" button, wouldn't we have heard about it by now? That's a huge thing to try and keep secret. We have plenty of explicit internal documentation about heating from Tiktok but nothing similar from YouTube or Instagram.
Twitter may be the exception what with Elon Musk being pinned everywhere, but that's all I'm aware of. In that case, at least the manipulation is transparently being done at the behest of one specific manchild (who's also pro-China for business reasons, to be fair).
Why would we hear about it? It's a trade secret. We don't know anything about how the algorithms of YouTube or Instagram work. All we know is speculation based on what goes viral and what doesn't....
Why would we hear about it? It's a trade secret. We don't know anything about how the algorithms of YouTube or Instagram work. All we know is speculation based on what goes viral and what doesn't.
But if the question is "does youtube/Instagram/et al have at their disposal a mechanism which they could use to artificially boost the number of people that see certain content" the answer is... Well yes, obviously.
They designed the algorithms that do content ranking. They have full root access to the servers. They own the databases. They obviously have the capability to override or influence the algorithms they've built in order to show the content they want. It's their website. They could make it show rickrolls to all users every time they logged in if they wanted to.
We'd hear about it because there are hostile foreign governments that would love to prove the US is secretly manipulating YouTube and Facebook to promote their foreign policy goals. Remember all...
We'd hear about it because there are hostile foreign governments that would love to prove the US is secretly manipulating YouTube and Facebook to promote their foreign policy goals. Remember all the international coverage about foreign election interference campaigns on Facebook and Twitter? If there was hard evidence the platforms themselves were complicit, that would be a bombshell.
With Tiktok, we have that bombshell. There's explicit evidence that the platform itself colludes with the Chinese government to promote and stifle content based on government mandates. And it's not like we're discussing CSAM or hate speech, we're talking about the government intentionally killing content that's negative to China like discussion of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Uyghur genocide, etc.
Imagine if the US secretly ordered YouTube to purge discussion of BLM and ANTIFA, this would turn into international news with massive lawsuits. We know this is what would happen because the US government's voluntary public request to platforms to restrict anti-vax content is currently front page news.
The algorithm isn't the problem. The problem is the national security risk caused Chinese control over a platform which they've been actively using to manipulate Americans.
It isn't, because foreign organizations do not have first amendment rights. If you were Chinese, then yes. Then you would appeal it, and the Supreme Court would uphold based on prior rulings that...
even if that were true...so what? Congress banning an app because they dislike the content it removes or promotes is clearly viewpoint discrimination which is sort of the textbook example of a 1st Amendment violation.
It isn't, because foreign organizations do not have first amendment rights.
would Congress be justified in passing a law requiring me to sell it, and banning it if I didn't?
That was your original argument? From your post: It absolutely does now, if you're Chinese - or Russian, Iranian, or North Korean. You're American; your ChiComTok is an American platform and owned...
the question of whether "foreign organizations" have rights under the 1st Amendment has nothing to do with anything.
That was your original argument? From your post:
Congress banning my ChiComTok app would very clearly be viewpoint discrimination and not allowed under the 1st Amendment. ... Say there was an existing US-based social media platform that I bought, maybe for $44 billion, and I turned it into an outlet for Chinese communist propaganda. would Congress be justified in passing a law requiring me to sell it, and banning it if I didn't?
It absolutely does now, if you're Chinese - or Russian, Iranian, or North Korean. You're American; your ChiComTok is an American platform and owned by an American company, regardless of the sale there, because it's passing between American hands. Bytedance is Chinese, and Tiktok is owned by Bytedance, so it's not.
For the difference between hosting the app and distributing the app, my right to distribute your content which is not protected by the first amendment - could be CSAM, hate speech / threats, or now this law related to a blocked foreign app - does not supercede the lack of protection for the content to exist in the first place, nor for the US to enforce that.
Not trying to be snippy or anything, I'm not 100% happy with this either, but I just don't get what would be protecting Tiktok as it exists as a platform here.
We're not talking about government interference. We're taking about putting the finger on the scales of the algorithms, which all platforms obviously have the ability to do. If they actually do it...
We're not talking about government interference. We're taking about putting the finger on the scales of the algorithms, which all platforms obviously have the ability to do. If they actually do it or not, and what specifically motivated them to do it or not would be much harder to prove, because again, it's a trade secret. For all we know, all content on YouTube's front page or Instagram's feeds are there because a human specifically pushed it to be. They're black boxes that no one besides the people who work on them, who are bound by NDAs, know the inner workings of.
Censoring topics isn't illegal, nor should it be. We either believe in freedom or speech and live in a free society where people are allowed to do what they want as long as they're not hurting...
Censoring topics isn't illegal, nor should it be. We either believe in freedom or speech and live in a free society where people are allowed to do what they want as long as they're not hurting others, or we don't.
I agree with you, tiktok is a bad platform that does a lot of bad things, but I could name dozens of harmful things that people are perfectly legal to do. Part of living in a free society is giving people the freedom to do harmful things to themselves, or engage with bad people or organizations.
If tiktok is truly an awful thing that the US government feels people should stay off of, they should spend their effort publicizing the evidence of that instead of trying to stop free citizens from using a legal platform that they clearly want to use.
I never use nor would miss TikTok, but tbh the entire intent and political slant behind the bill is a potentially good result with wrong intention for wrong reasons. Even the name of the bill...
I never use nor would miss TikTok, but tbh the entire intent and political slant behind the bill is a potentially good result with wrong intention for wrong reasons. Even the name of the bill isn't hiding that:
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
It's almost parody at this point. GDPR is almost 6 years old and the first federal step tangentially towards that is more concerned with stopping the Chinese from collecting data for gain, not the general protection of citizen data from corporate businesses. it almost feels tone deaf since foreign powers were just fine using American websites and apps 8 years ago to do what congress is afraid of now.
In addition, depending on the wording this sounds like a huge overreach.
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.
I know they sort of separated themselves as is, but it's funny thinking that the US could one day ban something like Genshin Impact. I wonder if Riot Games would potentially be subject to this?
Mostly joking, Genshin Impact does censor Taiwan and Hong Kong so maybe it does pose a security threat! If the EFF's argument was "we should ban Tiktok and regulate data privacy better and this...
Mostly joking, Genshin Impact does censor Taiwan and Hong Kong so maybe it does pose a security threat!
If the EFF's argument was "we should ban Tiktok and regulate data privacy better and this bill is too broad for the stated goals", I'd definitely be more supportive.
I think it's given visibility to a lot of self-published authors (notably Olivie Blake, author of The Atlas Six, who got a publishing deal out of her popularity there). Regardless of quality...
I cannot list a single positive one.
I think it's given visibility to a lot of self-published authors (notably Olivie Blake, author of The Atlas Six, who got a publishing deal out of her popularity there). Regardless of quality opinions on what gets popular on "BookTok" I think that's done some good, it gets more people to read more.
I've been able to find queer, indigenous and Black fantasy authors in particular this way. It is also one of the best sources of peer support for neurodivergency, many other sources of information...
I've been able to find queer, indigenous and Black fantasy authors in particular this way.
It is also one of the best sources of peer support for neurodivergency, many other sources of information are focused on parents raising ND kids not ND adults.
I don't see how it's more dangerous than any social media or a massive negative impact.
I'm coming from a somewhat hypocritical standpoint, because I think the normalization of genderfluid as a label through social media vectors very much helped me be comfortable with my gender...
It is also one of the best sources of peer support for neurodivergency, many other sources of information are focused on parents raising ND kids not ND adults.
I'm coming from a somewhat hypocritical standpoint, because I think the normalization of genderfluid as a label through social media vectors very much helped me be comfortable with my gender identity. At the same time, as someone with ADHD I repeatedly watch content feeds that incentivize click revenue churn out rapidly-consumable memes that try to make ADHD or any other disorder as broad and relatable a pathology as possible for their own continued monetary gain, without care for whether the audience is appropriate or any kind of backing resources. I think it's somewhere between callous and predatory to vulnerable youth. You're right, all social media can fall into this. But much less so than other social media, I cannot petition my government to legislate or figure out a solution to the issue on Tiktok, nor do I trust an extranational entity - especially a Chinese company, already censoring certain topics - to moderate this appropriately or care for the mental health of people it collects money and data from.
Tbf I'm talking about adults with ADHD or Autism providing support and suggestions to others with the same diagnosis. Maybe it works better because it is in such a digestible format, maybe it's...
Tbf I'm talking about adults with ADHD or Autism providing support and suggestions to others with the same diagnosis. Maybe it works better because it is in such a digestible format, maybe it's the algorithm. But I've truly never found the level of validation anywhere else.
I truly don't trust Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or Reddit to moderate either so unless there is concrete evidence of this being different, I feel like targeting Tiktok is disingenuous. I admit as a user (past for Twitter) of all of these social media sites I'm biased. I do like Tiktok. I've been exposed to more diverse views and I've learned a lot.
Which can exist in plenty healthy manner, I agree. But even on reddit alone I'd differentiate between self posts (still plenty of vectors for inflammatory content) and image posts (disposable...
Tbf I'm talking about adults with ADHD or Autism providing support
Which can exist in plenty healthy manner, I agree. But even on reddit alone I'd differentiate between self posts (still plenty of vectors for inflammatory content) and image posts (disposable garbage).
I truly don't trust Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or Reddit to moderate either so unless there is concrete evidence of this being different, I feel like targeting Tiktok is disingenuous.
Again, extranational data collection and hosting under different laws than the US - which are shitty enough, of course. But no, I don't think any of those should be ignored either; they're about as bad IMO and deserve some kind of attention when it comes to public mental health, whether that can be handled in a legislative manner or not.
EDIT: I should note that, legislatively, that should be with psychiatric input. But based on public health in the pandemic of course I don't trust a conservative mindset to properly police that.
Nothing about the platform supports this, however. That is to say, the same exposure could have developed the same way or even better on ~any other social network. The short-video format in...
I've been able to find queer, indigenous and Black fantasy authors in particular this way.
Nothing about the platform supports this, however. That is to say, the same exposure could have developed the same way or even better on ~any other social network. The short-video format in particular has no material advantage to presenting books.
And yet, I've not found these same authors through other social media, book recommendation sites, etc. Instagram and reels truly send me junk, and I despite them having a presence on other media,...
And yet, I've not found these same authors through other social media, book recommendation sites, etc. Instagram and reels truly send me junk, and I despite them having a presence on other media, they're findable via Tiktok for people like me.
Yes hypothetically you can get any of this elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to work that way.
Lots of things are net negatives to society. That shouldn't be a basis to whether or not it should be banned. You could make the same argument about fast food, television, alcohol, pornography,...
Lots of things are net negatives to society. That shouldn't be a basis to whether or not it should be banned. You could make the same argument about fast food, television, alcohol, pornography, most entertainment in general, desserts, cosmetic surgery; basically anything that doesn't promote health and well-being.
We live In a supposedly free society. It shouldn't be up to governments to allow us to access to what is good for us and restrict access to what isn't.
Well, yeah, that's my point. Utilitarianism is generally a pretty poor justification for policy decisions, especially in a society that highly values personal freedom. I could make compelling...
Well, yeah, that's my point. Utilitarianism is generally a pretty poor justification for policy decisions, especially in a society that highly values personal freedom.
I could make compelling arguments for all of the things I listed as being net negatives for society based on a handful of metrics, just as I'm sure you could make a compelling argument for tiktok being a net negative for society based on some other metrics.
What about all of the people who actually enjoy using tiktok and feel it has a positive impact on their lives though?
Let's not pretend that it's some universally hated app that no one derives any positive experience from. If that were the case, it wouldn't be so popular.
Even though I don't personally like it, I know people that do. I've heard of people becoming interested in new ideas, new careers, being helped out of negative or dangerous situations, finding new music, learning about interesting people and so much more based on content they watched on tiktok. What algorithm can you use to determine that those positive experiences don't justify whatever negative ones you've heard of?
You say there are barely any positives for tiktok because you're not personally a fan. But there are many people for whom tiktok is their primary form of media. I'm sure their opinions would be quite different. There's no objective reason why you, or a bunch of congressmen should be right and they should be wrong.
My point isn't that a handful of things are also net negatives for society and thus they should also be banned, or we shouldnt ban tiktok because what about these other things. My point is that as a blanket policy, banning something because it is a "net negative to society" is a clunky, heavy handed, oppressive, authoritarian justification.
Tiktok isn't doing anything illegal. They comply with US illegal content rules, they comply with copyright takedown notices, they moderate harmful content at least as well as US companies do. A free citizen shouldn't be prohibited visiting it just because of some sort of nebulous moral decay argument. (That's not the argument that the house is making; they're making a national security argument which is a whole other flawed can of worms, but I think that's the argument you're making)
Undermining national security is a very nebulous term, and isn't illegal. I also haven't seen any evidence shown that that's even happening. Everything I've seen attemptimg to justify the ban...
Undermining national security is a very nebulous term, and isn't illegal. I also haven't seen any evidence shown that that's even happening. Everything I've seen attemptimg to justify the ban largely highlights things tiktok could do, not things they have done.
I think when you boil it down, largely, the American government is uncomfortable with their citizens being on an extremely popular app owned by a foreign nation.
To that, I'd say welcome to the paradigm that literally every other country in the world has lived in for the past 30 years.
The American social media industry has been the only game in town since it's inception. It's not a great coincidence that when that suddenly isn't the case, there's huge, virtually unprecedented bipartisan support for curtailing their citizens' rights to engage with it.
Let me preface this by saying that I take the national security concerns seriously and agree with the ban. That said, I think you're misrepresenting @papasquat's argument quite a bit. Their point...
Let me preface this by saying that I take the national security concerns seriously and agree with the ban. That said, I think you're misrepresenting @papasquat's argument quite a bit. Their point is only that there are many things that could be labeled net negatives to society by an overzealous government. I don't really mind if people disagree on this matter, but I do take issue with this statement:
Your reply is no more than a strawman argument. It distracts from the facts. It's lazy. It's unresearched. It exaggerates. You haven't listed a single argument on why those categories are a net negative, and for many, once again, I have to commit to some serious mental gymnastics to think of something. For TikTok, it's the other way around.
As a general guideline: whataboutism usually results in very poor arguments. That's what seems to have happened here.
I think you're unfairly holding papasquat to higher standards than you've held yourself. I would say both your initial post and papasquat's reply contained approximately the same amount of content and similarly casual, unrigorous argumentation. You've accused them of exaggerating, but you also implied that there are no redeeming qualities of TikTok. Surely that is an exaggeration, too?
Sure. And I don't think there's necessarily an issue with taxing things to pay for the costs of the negative externalities that those things cause. Scandinavian countries have socialized...
Sure. And I don't think there's necessarily an issue with taxing things to pay for the costs of the negative externalities that those things cause. Scandinavian countries have socialized healthcare, so taxing people that make unhealthy choices isn't restricting their ability to make them, it's just making them pay the true costs of those choices.
Banning people from doing things under the justification you've deemed it bad for them, as if you as the government are a better abiter of how they should live their lives than they are is pretty universally authoritarianism though.
Let me mention that TikTok scored a major own-goal by using a new notification feature to organize a call-in campaign against the bill. Congresspeople were shocked and overwhelmed by the number of...
Let me mention that TikTok scored a major own-goal by using a new notification feature to organize a call-in campaign against the bill. Congresspeople were shocked and overwhelmed by the number of children calling in to protest, despite the app's promise of restriction to age 18+. This just about guaranteed the bill would pass overwhelmingly.
I'm not really a fan of Matt Taibbi these days, but he has some cogent criticisms here, particularly of the delegation of authority to the executive.
This is my error - TikTok just announced new restrictions applicable to users under age 18. But the service is accessible to users age 13+, with some features restricted until ages 16 and 18.
This is my error - TikTok just announced new restrictions applicable to users under age 18. But the service is accessible to users age 13+, with some features restricted until ages 16 and 18.
Turns out there's no age restriction on TikTok. It's technically 13+, but they've got a separate section for those under 13 called "TicTok for Younger Users". At least in the US, may be different...
I guess when you sign up, if you put your age as 12, it'll put you in the kiddie pool. Though the ones that called in likely lied about their age or were using someone else's account. Who wants to be stuck in the kiddie pool?
Not a US citizen but from an outside perspective my biggest issue with bills like these is that they're clearly not interested in protecting their citizens at large, just safeguarding their data...
Not a US citizen but from an outside perspective my biggest issue with bills like these is that they're clearly not interested in protecting their citizens at large, just safeguarding their data from foreign governments the US doesn't like.
They could have made a proper data protection bill like GDPR but instead they're just making a bill that kicks off apps from governments the US isn't on friendly terms with, any other government and/or company is free to spy on US citizens regardless.
I disagree with the notion that government shouldn't have the power to ban apps like tiktok because I do legitimately think tiktok is a detriment to society and government should step in to safeguard its citizens, but the same logic applies to players like Facebook and Twitter, which should absolutely be the targets of bills like these.
The US needs state/app neutral bills that protect its citizens data, not half-assed measures like these that ignore the root cause of the problem.
This is what is so frustrating as a citizen. Protect my data, but don't pretend to protect me from China when Facebook is right here. Also there are a number of more pressing matters facing the...
This is what is so frustrating as a citizen. Protect my data, but don't pretend to protect me from China when Facebook is right here. Also there are a number of more pressing matters facing the country right now and it'd be great if Congress bothered to handle them.
That's essentially the real problem: If TikTok was owned by an American country, this wouldn't even be a topic under discussion. The government would probably have official TikTok accounts and be...
That's essentially the real problem: If TikTok was owned by an American country, this wouldn't even be a topic under discussion. The government would probably have official TikTok accounts and be thrilled to have yet another source of easily-tapped telemetry data.
They have no problems with any of the app functionality except that its owned by a Chinese company.
When has the government ever done anything about any harmful trends on other platforms? Those platforms self-police because of advertiser pressure, not government pressure. The only argument I...
When has the government ever done anything about any harmful trends on other platforms?
Those platforms self-police because of advertiser pressure, not government pressure.
The only argument I could see is that if tiktok were domestically owned, it could have stronger data protection regulations, but considering the US has virtually nothing on the books regarding normal user data protection, that point is currently moot as well.
Nah. Content is more or less immune. It's not illegal to take a 2 year old to an R rated movie. Explicit sexual content like porn being one of the only exceptions. Otherwise we'd never have...
Nah. Content is more or less immune. It's not illegal to take a 2 year old to an R rated movie. Explicit sexual content like porn being one of the only exceptions.
Everything you're describing about the amplification of content is true for Reddit or Instagram. The federal government is currently banned from even talking to social media companies due to a...
Everything you're describing about the amplification of content is true for Reddit or Instagram. The federal government is currently banned from even talking to social media companies due to a court ruling much less correcting information. "Pressuring" companies is a free speech violation. Regulating them would be great, but doesn't seem likely based on past congressional decisions.
Tell Congress: Instead of giving the President the power to ban entire social media platforms based on their country of origin, our representatives should focus on what matters—protecting our data no matter who is collecting it.
It feels like whataboutism. One is a national security matter and other is a consumer protections & privacy matter. Even if a GDPR-alike was passed tomorrow that wouldn't remove the national...
It feels like whataboutism. One is a national security matter and other is a consumer protections & privacy matter. Even if a GDPR-alike was passed tomorrow that wouldn't remove the national security aspect, and I doubt China would comply regardless.
I'm unconvinced that my using this app is a direct line to a national security issue. The claim is about the protection of American data but what I want as a citizen is my American data protected...
I'm unconvinced that my using this app is a direct line to a national security issue. The claim is about the protection of American data but what I want as a citizen is my American data protected from American companies (and government) who are far more likely to abuse it. If I lost Tiktok in the process of actually getting those protections I could handle it.
But since politicians, including those that voted for the ban, still have Tiktok accounts, I don't actually believe it's a pressing security issue.
And the anti-China and anti-Communist propaganda and misinformation from the USA gets old and tiring as hell. In Brazil is not nearly as bad. I like to follow @felipe.durante (instagram and...
And the anti-China and anti-Communist propaganda and misinformation from the USA gets old and tiring as hell.
In Brazil is not nearly as bad.
I like to follow @felipe.durante (instagram and youtube) which is a Brazilian living and working in China.
i did not even think about politics or stuff like that when writing my comment. I was thinking more along culture and social lines. I don't have an opinion about china because I don't know enough...
i did not even think about politics or stuff like that when writing my comment. I was thinking more along culture and social lines.
I don't have an opinion about china because I don't know enough about it. Quite unlike the US. And thats kind of my point.
I'll link my comment from the previous discussion on this. I understand why the EFF is opposed to giving the president stroke-of-the-pen powers over foreign-owned social media, but I think Tiktok legitimately is uniquely terrible. The platform moderators intentionally censor topics like Uyghur genocide and Tibet. There are easy, built-in methods to heat divisive videos to cause controversy whenever China wants. It's nothing like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Bluesky, or even Twitter.
The US should ban Tiktok, just like India did. The national security risk is genuine. Imagine the clusterfuck if China invaded Taiwan and the topic was censored or users only saw videos sympathetic to imperialism.
Edit: spelling
You need to consider how this law would be abused. Think about how this law would be applied by an authoritarian president, like Trump is currently running for office as right now. Remember, Trump was no stranger to cleaving authority from vague terms in the law. He figured out how to use emergency provisions to direct funds for a border wall; something that should require Congressional approval. He found ways to twist immigration law to be an outright Muslim ban. He applied old immigration laws that were meant to prevent the spread of disease to vast restrictions on immigration more broadly. He's currently running for office on a platform of using the Comstock Act to effectively ban abortion nationwide. You need to judge a law by asking, "how would a politician I despise use this?"
This act gives the president the authority to create a Great Firewall of America, where foreign-owned websites can be blocked on a whim. The law describes things in terms of "applications," but the difference between a website and an application are nominal; you can access tiktok from the browser if you wish.
Consider the definition of control by a foreign adversary:
For an example of how this can be misused, consider the current Israel/Gaza conflict. What does "a person subject to the direction of" mean? In the Isreal/Gaza conflict, we officially don't recognize both sides of the conflict as legitimate military forces. Hamas, which if it was a Christian group in the US, would be called a militia, is officially classified as a terrorist group. Israel is recognized and is heavily allied with the US. Hamas certainly counts officially as a government or entity hostile to the US.
What's stopping an authoritarian president from decreeing, "we hold all content in favor of Hamas or pro-Gazan to be antithetical to US national security. Any social media network that hosts this content is clearly sympathetic to a terrorist group and is therefore subject "to the direction or control" by a hostile foreign entity. Any social media network that does not restrict pro-Gazan content will be declared under the control of a hostile foreign entity and will be subject to seizure or forced sale."
Would that pass legal muster? Perhaps, perhaps not. But how many tens of millions would Google or Meta have to spend to fight it out in court? Wouldn't it be easier just to self-censor, even if they thought the law was being misapplied? YouTube has already been brought into court before relating to hosting terrorist content. There have been some cases that interpret hosting videos that ISIS uploaded as providing financial support to terrorist groups. And so YouTube has done what it can to filter that material out. And doubtlessly, they have to do so with a wide net. If you want to ban all the actual ISIS content, then your algorithm will inevitably also ban things that aren't ISIS content.
To me, this law seems like a very easy method for a president to censor all social media and web sites in the US. Manage to pass a federal abortion ban? Foreign websites that provide information on contraception and abortion must be banned. Climate change? That sounds like an un-American conspiracy. Content that's pro-Gaza or pro-other group we don't officially like? Why do you support foreign terrorists and hate America?
Consider the House Un-American Activities Committee and imagine them picking apart websites and social media apps, trying to decide if they're sufficiently "pro-American" to keep from getting banned.
That's the problem with this law. It doesn't ban invasive data collection. It doesn't ban apps being designed using psychological principles to subtly control their users. It instead bans vaguely foreign apps using language loose enough to effectively allow the censorship of any website or app that doesn't toe the line of US foreign policy. And it could easily be adopted be a much greater censorship tool by declaring certain concepts foreign or hostile to American interests.
The fact that they could have written the law in a less destructive manner, but chose not to, is telling. They could have written the law to directly address the concerns they cite. The fact that they didn't is clear evidence that the reasons they're giving for this law are not the reasons they actually want it and intend to use it for.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text#H3F369FBEA6AB4A7590FC960706C24FF8
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text#H8806C235A37D40A5833DCF97CF091C35
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872
Because foreign adversary isn't just something the President can decide on in a speech, it's specific to four countries, and expanding this list would require an act of Congress.
I can't see Congress classifying, say for example, our EU Allies, as foreign adversaries to ban a website that talks about contraceptives / climate change going over well from a foreign relations standpoint.
EDIT: For anyone who thinks this bill is some long User Agreement-esque convulted nonsense, it's not. You don't need people to extract certain parts and take their word for it. It's like 2.5 pages and very simple. Just follow the links above. The bottom half is just defining the terms used in the first half.
You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are only four countries listed, but those can be added to just as easily as this bill sailed through the house.
Hamas? They're sponsored by Iran, thus any pro-Gaza content can be twisted to be as under the direction of Iran. Remember, these politicians are openly taking about people being "brainwashed" by social media apps. Isn't someone who is brainwashed, by definition, under the influence, control, and direction of the one doing the brainwashing?
Or what if you host content that discourages the US from getting involved in Taiwan? Or maybe they ban abortion content by decrying it as a Chinese communist conspiracy, the one child policy all over again.
This nation has a long dark history of declaring entire ideas and philosophies as unamerican and foreign. Even just socialism in general has been vilified this way. Are you in favor of a universal basic income? That sounds awful communist. Better ban all content mentioning it.
You need to approach this with a certain level of malevolent creativity, because that's how these laws always end up being used. Frankly, I find it insane that we're even contemplating giving the presidency more power when we have one candidate running for office explicitly stating he's running to be a dictator. If we had any sense at all, we would be stripping powers from the presidency left and right. Instead, these fools want to give even more power to a future dictator.
This is such an epic goalpost shift:
C’mon now - your whole original thesis was that the bill was too broadly defined. Once it’s pointed out that there are strict limitations in place, you’re moving on to… “All it takes is an act of congress and the president can do whatever they want!”
Argue in good faith, please. Any president can do whatever the fuck they want with an act of congress.
You're ignoring the heart of my comment for a tiny bit of minutia. The point is, with this law, they can easily simply paint almost anything they want as content that is under the direction of one of whoever our official list of "enemies" is. In the past, whenever political winds have shifted, countries have been added to or removed from our lists of enemies very easily.
Again, you're missing the forest for the trees. The point is that nearly any type of content can be portrayed as representing the interests or whims of at least one of the countries on our national Nixon-esque "enemies" list. If you don't like some content, especially if that content relates to foreign policy, some justification can be created that will tie it to one of our official enemies.
Something being “portrayed as representing the interests or whims of at least one of the countries” is not relevant to the purview of this law.
This is a patently false claim that you’re repeating. I’m not picking at minutia: your main point is wrong.
If it requires an act of Congress and you call it simple, wouldn't it be just as simple without this bill?
Look, as far as I see it if the MAGA people have their way then the US will become a dictatorship. They aren't playing by the rules. Any argument about what they could do with this law - or any other law - is moot. We're not in the 90s anymore. TikTok ban or not they'll do whatever they want if given any power.
No worries, he lost as an incumbent, threw too many tantrums and went too far after losing. Democrats can not only claim he might try to take over, they can point out that he already did. As the incumbent, Biden would need to royally fubar things to get people voting for Trump and so far he hasn't been that bad. If Trump wins, he rigged it, just calling it now because there's no chance in hell.
I really don't understand why the Republicans are going along with it. They're just digging their grave and they don't seem satisfied with only 6 feet under. I feel like I'm seeing the death throws of their party as they go hyper religious to keep voters, spitting in the face of the modern society as if that'll net them a win.
I understand that, to those of us who pay attention to politics and try to think critically about how government can do the right thing, it's obvious that Trump is a brain-rotted fascist with xenophobic tendencies and a chronic lack of guilt.
But let's not pretend that everyone feels this way about him, either because they don't pay as much attention or because they subscribe to his cult of personality.
You're making the same mistake the DNC made in 2016 right now. It's entirely possible that Trump has enough supporters out there to legitimately win this November. Why?
price inflation of food, housing, and other essentials has been significant since 2020. Trump has successfully convinced a large faction that this is Biden's fault... and many who don't pay attention to Trump simply assume it is Biden's fault because they don't dedicate much thought to the subject.
like it or not, the migrant crisis is worsening, many American cities are struggling with the influx of refugees, and the federal government has not done enough to help with this (of course, they've been hamstrung by Republicans, but for those who don't pay attention or who listen seriously to Trump, that's inconsequential)
the state of many American cities has gone downhill enough, in terms of things to do, cleanliness, visible homelessness, and more, since 2020 that many Americans vaguely blame Biden
Biden has done a good job with lots of subtle stuff -- I'm particularly happy with his track record with anti-trust -- but for the Average American driving around in their Average F150 living in an Average Doublewide working at an Average Factoryish Employer it's hard to associate Biden with any recent positive developments
I'm very concerned that the DNC's ground game is going to wind up failing just like in 2016 because the political establishment is fundamentally out of touch with anyone who doesn't make six figures and live in a rich suburb of a thriving American city (or have parents who live this way). Rust belt cities? The South? Hell, even rural New England, a pretty progressive place by rural standards, has an awful lot of Trump signs up. They've only multiplied since 2020.
I do not want Trump to win. But he absolutely could., make no mistake.
There's literally nothing in the bill about what kind of content is hosted.
It's about who owns and operates the website. That's it.
How in the world can you say that? The entire reason this bill is under consideration is because Congress people are afraid of the content Tiktok is hosting. It has nothing to do with foreign ownership. There's not a moral panic right now about banning Alibaba, Temu, or a thousand other Chinese-owned sites. They want to ban Tiktok precisely because of its content. They don't fear Chinese-owned businesses, they fear Chinese-moderated content.
This moral panic is no different from a hundred other moral panics in history. Moral panics about "foreign ideas corrupting the youth" is a tale as old as time. You can passages in the Bible reflecting moral panic about young people getting too onboard with greco-roman ideas.
They want Tiktok to be US-owned, because then its owners will fall under the influence and control of the US political system. If they didn't care about the content, what exactly would be the purpose of banning Tiktok or forcing its sale? From the point of view of Congress, what exactly is the point of forcing a sale of Tiktok if they believe it will result in zero change to its content?
This entire thing is about content. You don't write a law that has nothing to do with content if content regulation is your entire reason for passing that law.
Because I read the bill?
TikTok is a data harvesting app. Alibaba and Temu are marketplaces. That is a complete false equivalency.
TikTok leaks a tremendous amount of data from US operated platforms to Chinese platforms through sloppy internal controls and lack of separation between corporate platforms.
Couple that with the fact that China is an adversarial country, and TikTok is a data harvesting nightmare, and I think you can easily explain the impetus for the bill, which I went and read, without arguments about content suppression.
Driver’s Licenses, Addresses, Photos: Inside How TikTok Shares User Data
The more serious parts of the government have been concerned about the telemetry picked up by the tiktok app and web service for a while These regulations are usually much less performative than congressional acts, and have nothing to do with suppressing generational or domestic content.
Edit: and here is the text of the bill. It doesn't describe content.
Trump has been crowing about pulling the US out of NATO for about a decade. I don't really think he gives a shit about foreign relations.
Fortunately, the US passed a law barring the president from unilaterally pulling out of NATO. Unfortunately, the president could probably still fail to respond to Article 5, so I really really hope that's never relevant...
On one hand, I agree with you. On the other, I think an authoritarian president won't need this law in particular to create an American Firewall. If they want it to happen, they simply will. I don't think that possibility should preclude a well meaning president from preventing an avenue of social influence on our nation.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
The reality is that Trump has shown a willingness to blatantly lie to the public, and the public eats it up as truth, even with reality staring them in the face.
The Republican party is a far greater threat to the American public than China is.
My counter point is always the same, this ban is not about Tik Tok issues its about power. Tik Tok is one the biggest non-American social platform and thats all. Why Tik Tok and not Twitter?
TikTok is fully banned in Nepal and India.
TikTok is banned from government employee devices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Taiwan, and the EU due to security concerns.
Concerns over TikTok are not uniquely American.
I'm not sure the US should be taking cues on prudent governance from India.
Also, something being banned on government devices is a totally different thing. The CIA banned Furbies, and that's a totally reasonable thing for them to have done. That's entirely different than banning Furbies for public sale.
We used to decry Communist China for banning foreign media. Remember the Great Firewall of China? For years, we've criticized China for locking its people in their own walled garden version of the internet.
Why has China banned and blocked so many foreign sites? They've done so precisely because they are afraid of foreign ideas infecting their body politic. We, as a free democracy, used to pride ourselves on not stooping to that level. We would say, "we have enough faith in our system that we don't need to ban ideas. Banning sites, even foreign sites, is unamerican."
We shouldn't be taking our policy cues from authoritarian governments like China, India, or Nepal.
I don't personally use TikTok, and have no plans to, but I understand how important it is in the US for younger generations, and anyone really, trying to boost their marketing. I think having it banned from Government devices is good enough a law/rule in this instance.
I was all for the TikTok ban originally, but I do see its value, and have learned a lot from Tildes on the topic, I still don't like the app and will never use it, but banning it entirely is not the right move here. Regulation is what we need rather than bans, and we need it for all social media, not just the Chinese-owned social media.
Because Twitter and Instagram/Facebook are owned by fascist stooges, while TikTok is where Gen Z congregates...and each younger generation increasingly wants nothing to do with Republicans and finds the Democratic Party far too right-wing.
Mnuchin wants to use this bill to buy TikTok.
It's all just the 60s again: the overly conservative bipartisan faction is violently opposed to the youth counterculture movements and will go to any lengths to suppress it.
This time it's also lining up with the rise of fascism in the Republican Party, and they want to cut off as much left-wing speech as possible.
If they cared about legitimate data privacy concerns, they'd import the GDPR...but no, spying on the public is something they like doing through US-based companies. If they want to control information people have access to, well, that's just censorship.
Well said. I think the EFF is right to raise awareness on this issue but at the end of the day TikTok being owned by a rival country with potentially hostile intentions might make this worth the risk, even considering the very real downsides and precedents this will set.
We ALSO should make it illegal for all these apps to freely collect the kinds of data that makes it banned in military or government installations.
I just want to thank you for getting some great sources for your other comment. I agree with everyone that it's a net negative for society, but I don't think that's a banable offense in a free society, so it's good to have sources that meticulously document the issues that specifically Chinese control of social media presents given the extreme power their government exerts over corporate interests.
Sure, the Chinese government doesn't have any ownership in ByteDance, but when China is getting private companies to form militias as an auxiliary to support the PLA and is censoring topics that a purportedly LA/Singapore-based company wouldn't care about, it's clear that there's more going on than meets the eye.
Do domestic social medias not heat posts with opposite propaganda goals in mind? If it’s all fake news and propaganda anyway, I’d appreciate a diversity in false perspectives.
If platforms like YouTube had a "go viral" button, wouldn't we have heard about it by now? That's a huge thing to try and keep secret. We have plenty of explicit internal documentation about heating from Tiktok but nothing similar from YouTube or Instagram.
Twitter may be the exception what with Elon Musk being pinned everywhere, but that's all I'm aware of. In that case, at least the manipulation is transparently being done at the behest of one specific manchild (who's also pro-China for business reasons, to be fair).
Why would we hear about it? It's a trade secret. We don't know anything about how the algorithms of YouTube or Instagram work. All we know is speculation based on what goes viral and what doesn't.
But if the question is "does youtube/Instagram/et al have at their disposal a mechanism which they could use to artificially boost the number of people that see certain content" the answer is... Well yes, obviously.
They designed the algorithms that do content ranking. They have full root access to the servers. They own the databases. They obviously have the capability to override or influence the algorithms they've built in order to show the content they want. It's their website. They could make it show rickrolls to all users every time they logged in if they wanted to.
We'd hear about it because there are hostile foreign governments that would love to prove the US is secretly manipulating YouTube and Facebook to promote their foreign policy goals. Remember all the international coverage about foreign election interference campaigns on Facebook and Twitter? If there was hard evidence the platforms themselves were complicit, that would be a bombshell.
With Tiktok, we have that bombshell. There's explicit evidence that the platform itself colludes with the Chinese government to promote and stifle content based on government mandates. And it's not like we're discussing CSAM or hate speech, we're talking about the government intentionally killing content that's negative to China like discussion of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Uyghur genocide, etc.
Imagine if the US secretly ordered YouTube to purge discussion of BLM and ANTIFA, this would turn into international news with massive lawsuits. We know this is what would happen because the US government's voluntary public request to platforms to restrict anti-vax content is currently front page news.
The algorithm isn't the problem. The problem is the national security risk caused Chinese control over a platform which they've been actively using to manipulate Americans.
It isn't, because foreign organizations do not have first amendment rights.
If you were Chinese, then yes.
Then you would appeal it, and the Supreme Court would uphold based on prior rulings that you do not have first amendment rights.
That was your original argument? From your post:
It absolutely does now, if you're Chinese - or Russian, Iranian, or North Korean. You're American; your ChiComTok is an American platform and owned by an American company, regardless of the sale there, because it's passing between American hands. Bytedance is Chinese, and Tiktok is owned by Bytedance, so it's not.
For the difference between hosting the app and distributing the app, my right to distribute your content which is not protected by the first amendment - could be CSAM, hate speech / threats, or now this law related to a blocked foreign app - does not supercede the lack of protection for the content to exist in the first place, nor for the US to enforce that.
Not trying to be snippy or anything, I'm not 100% happy with this either, but I just don't get what would be protecting Tiktok as it exists as a platform here.
We're not talking about government interference. We're taking about putting the finger on the scales of the algorithms, which all platforms obviously have the ability to do. If they actually do it or not, and what specifically motivated them to do it or not would be much harder to prove, because again, it's a trade secret. For all we know, all content on YouTube's front page or Instagram's feeds are there because a human specifically pushed it to be. They're black boxes that no one besides the people who work on them, who are bound by NDAs, know the inner workings of.
Censoring topics isn't illegal, nor should it be. We either believe in freedom or speech and live in a free society where people are allowed to do what they want as long as they're not hurting others, or we don't.
I agree with you, tiktok is a bad platform that does a lot of bad things, but I could name dozens of harmful things that people are perfectly legal to do. Part of living in a free society is giving people the freedom to do harmful things to themselves, or engage with bad people or organizations.
If tiktok is truly an awful thing that the US government feels people should stay off of, they should spend their effort publicizing the evidence of that instead of trying to stop free citizens from using a legal platform that they clearly want to use.
I never use nor would miss TikTok, but tbh the entire intent and political slant behind the bill is a potentially good result with wrong intention for wrong reasons. Even the name of the bill isn't hiding that:
It's almost parody at this point. GDPR is almost 6 years old and the first federal step tangentially towards that is more concerned with stopping the Chinese from collecting data for gain, not the general protection of citizen data from corporate businesses. it almost feels tone deaf since foreign powers were just fine using American websites and apps 8 years ago to do what congress is afraid of now.
In addition, depending on the wording this sounds like a huge overreach.
I know they sort of separated themselves as is, but it's funny thinking that the US could one day ban something like Genshin Impact. I wonder if Riot Games would potentially be subject to this?
Mostly joking, Genshin Impact does censor Taiwan and Hong Kong so maybe it does pose a security threat!
If the EFF's argument was "we should ban Tiktok and regulate data privacy better and this bill is too broad for the stated goals", I'd definitely be more supportive.
I think it's given visibility to a lot of self-published authors (notably Olivie Blake, author of The Atlas Six, who got a publishing deal out of her popularity there). Regardless of quality opinions on what gets popular on "BookTok" I think that's done some good, it gets more people to read more.
I've been able to find queer, indigenous and Black fantasy authors in particular this way.
It is also one of the best sources of peer support for neurodivergency, many other sources of information are focused on parents raising ND kids not ND adults.
I don't see how it's more dangerous than any social media or a massive negative impact.
I'm coming from a somewhat hypocritical standpoint, because I think the normalization of genderfluid as a label through social media vectors very much helped me be comfortable with my gender identity. At the same time, as someone with ADHD I repeatedly watch content feeds that incentivize click revenue churn out rapidly-consumable memes that try to make ADHD or any other disorder as broad and relatable a pathology as possible for their own continued monetary gain, without care for whether the audience is appropriate or any kind of backing resources. I think it's somewhere between callous and predatory to vulnerable youth. You're right, all social media can fall into this. But much less so than other social media, I cannot petition my government to legislate or figure out a solution to the issue on Tiktok, nor do I trust an extranational entity - especially a Chinese company, already censoring certain topics - to moderate this appropriately or care for the mental health of people it collects money and data from.
Tbf I'm talking about adults with ADHD or Autism providing support and suggestions to others with the same diagnosis. Maybe it works better because it is in such a digestible format, maybe it's the algorithm. But I've truly never found the level of validation anywhere else.
I truly don't trust Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or Reddit to moderate either so unless there is concrete evidence of this being different, I feel like targeting Tiktok is disingenuous. I admit as a user (past for Twitter) of all of these social media sites I'm biased. I do like Tiktok. I've been exposed to more diverse views and I've learned a lot.
Which can exist in plenty healthy manner, I agree. But even on reddit alone I'd differentiate between self posts (still plenty of vectors for inflammatory content) and image posts (disposable garbage).
Again, extranational data collection and hosting under different laws than the US - which are shitty enough, of course. But no, I don't think any of those should be ignored either; they're about as bad IMO and deserve some kind of attention when it comes to public mental health, whether that can be handled in a legislative manner or not.
EDIT: I should note that, legislatively, that should be with psychiatric input. But based on public health in the pandemic of course I don't trust a conservative mindset to properly police that.
Nothing about the platform supports this, however. That is to say, the same exposure could have developed the same way or even better on ~any other social network. The short-video format in particular has no material advantage to presenting books.
And yet, I've not found these same authors through other social media, book recommendation sites, etc. Instagram and reels truly send me junk, and I despite them having a presence on other media, they're findable via Tiktok for people like me.
Yes hypothetically you can get any of this elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to work that way.
Lots of things are net negatives to society. That shouldn't be a basis to whether or not it should be banned. You could make the same argument about fast food, television, alcohol, pornography, most entertainment in general, desserts, cosmetic surgery; basically anything that doesn't promote health and well-being.
We live In a supposedly free society. It shouldn't be up to governments to allow us to access to what is good for us and restrict access to what isn't.
Well, yeah, that's my point. Utilitarianism is generally a pretty poor justification for policy decisions, especially in a society that highly values personal freedom.
I could make compelling arguments for all of the things I listed as being net negatives for society based on a handful of metrics, just as I'm sure you could make a compelling argument for tiktok being a net negative for society based on some other metrics.
What about all of the people who actually enjoy using tiktok and feel it has a positive impact on their lives though?
Let's not pretend that it's some universally hated app that no one derives any positive experience from. If that were the case, it wouldn't be so popular.
Even though I don't personally like it, I know people that do. I've heard of people becoming interested in new ideas, new careers, being helped out of negative or dangerous situations, finding new music, learning about interesting people and so much more based on content they watched on tiktok. What algorithm can you use to determine that those positive experiences don't justify whatever negative ones you've heard of?
You say there are barely any positives for tiktok because you're not personally a fan. But there are many people for whom tiktok is their primary form of media. I'm sure their opinions would be quite different. There's no objective reason why you, or a bunch of congressmen should be right and they should be wrong.
My point isn't that a handful of things are also net negatives for society and thus they should also be banned, or we shouldnt ban tiktok because what about these other things. My point is that as a blanket policy, banning something because it is a "net negative to society" is a clunky, heavy handed, oppressive, authoritarian justification.
Tiktok isn't doing anything illegal. They comply with US illegal content rules, they comply with copyright takedown notices, they moderate harmful content at least as well as US companies do. A free citizen shouldn't be prohibited visiting it just because of some sort of nebulous moral decay argument. (That's not the argument that the house is making; they're making a national security argument which is a whole other flawed can of worms, but I think that's the argument you're making)
But isn't half the argument that it is doing something illegal? That is, undermining the national security?
Undermining national security is a very nebulous term, and isn't illegal. I also haven't seen any evidence shown that that's even happening. Everything I've seen attemptimg to justify the ban largely highlights things tiktok could do, not things they have done.
I think when you boil it down, largely, the American government is uncomfortable with their citizens being on an extremely popular app owned by a foreign nation.
To that, I'd say welcome to the paradigm that literally every other country in the world has lived in for the past 30 years.
The American social media industry has been the only game in town since it's inception. It's not a great coincidence that when that suddenly isn't the case, there's huge, virtually unprecedented bipartisan support for curtailing their citizens' rights to engage with it.
Let me preface this by saying that I take the national security concerns seriously and agree with the ban. That said, I think you're misrepresenting @papasquat's argument quite a bit. Their point is only that there are many things that could be labeled net negatives to society by an overzealous government. I don't really mind if people disagree on this matter, but I do take issue with this statement:
I think you're unfairly holding papasquat to higher standards than you've held yourself. I would say both your initial post and papasquat's reply contained approximately the same amount of content and similarly casual, unrigorous argumentation. You've accused them of exaggerating, but you also implied that there are no redeeming qualities of TikTok. Surely that is an exaggeration, too?
Note: In plenty countries most of those are taxed, and sometimes pretty heavily. Scandinavian countries have a sugar/fat tax IIRC, as an example?
Sure. And I don't think there's necessarily an issue with taxing things to pay for the costs of the negative externalities that those things cause. Scandinavian countries have socialized healthcare, so taxing people that make unhealthy choices isn't restricting their ability to make them, it's just making them pay the true costs of those choices.
Banning people from doing things under the justification you've deemed it bad for them, as if you as the government are a better abiter of how they should live their lives than they are is pretty universally authoritarianism though.
Let me mention that TikTok scored a major own-goal by using a new notification feature to organize a call-in campaign against the bill. Congresspeople were shocked and overwhelmed by the number of children calling in to protest, despite the app's promise of restriction to age 18+. This just about guaranteed the bill would pass overwhelmingly.
I'm not really a fan of Matt Taibbi these days, but he has some cogent criticisms here, particularly of the delegation of authority to the executive.
Where does TikTok claim to be restricted to 18+?
This is my error - TikTok just announced new restrictions applicable to users under age 18. But the service is accessible to users age 13+, with some features restricted until ages 16 and 18.
Turns out there's no age restriction on TikTok. It's technically 13+, but they've got a separate section for those under 13 called "TicTok for Younger Users". At least in the US, may be different elsewhere?
https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/global/childrens-privacy-policy/en
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-for-younger-users
I guess when you sign up, if you put your age as 12, it'll put you in the kiddie pool. Though the ones that called in likely lied about their age or were using someone else's account. Who wants to be stuck in the kiddie pool?
Not a US citizen but from an outside perspective my biggest issue with bills like these is that they're clearly not interested in protecting their citizens at large, just safeguarding their data from foreign governments the US doesn't like.
They could have made a proper data protection bill like GDPR but instead they're just making a bill that kicks off apps from governments the US isn't on friendly terms with, any other government and/or company is free to spy on US citizens regardless.
I disagree with the notion that government shouldn't have the power to ban apps like tiktok because I do legitimately think tiktok is a detriment to society and government should step in to safeguard its citizens, but the same logic applies to players like Facebook and Twitter, which should absolutely be the targets of bills like these.
The US needs state/app neutral bills that protect its citizens data, not half-assed measures like these that ignore the root cause of the problem.
This is what is so frustrating as a citizen. Protect my data, but don't pretend to protect me from China when Facebook is right here. Also there are a number of more pressing matters facing the country right now and it'd be great if Congress bothered to handle them.
I'd believe it was a national security issue if Legislators didn't have TikTok accounts. Given that they do, I don't know that I think it actually is.
That's essentially the real problem: If TikTok was owned by an American country, this wouldn't even be a topic under discussion. The government would probably have official TikTok accounts and be thrilled to have yet another source of easily-tapped telemetry data.
They have no problems with any of the app functionality except that its owned by a Chinese company.
When has the government ever done anything about any harmful trends on other platforms?
Those platforms self-police because of advertiser pressure, not government pressure.
The only argument I could see is that if tiktok were domestically owned, it could have stronger data protection regulations, but considering the US has virtually nothing on the books regarding normal user data protection, that point is currently moot as well.
Nah. Content is more or less immune. It's not illegal to take a 2 year old to an R rated movie. Explicit sexual content like porn being one of the only exceptions.
Otherwise we'd never have bangers like Killing in the Name of due to censors.
Everything you're describing about the amplification of content is true for Reddit or Instagram. The federal government is currently banned from even talking to social media companies due to a court ruling much less correcting information. "Pressuring" companies is a free speech violation. Regulating them would be great, but doesn't seem likely based on past congressional decisions.
Why not both? This seems like a false dichotomy.
Because they're only doing one of them. And the other seems to matter more.
It feels like whataboutism. One is a national security matter and other is a consumer protections & privacy matter. Even if a GDPR-alike was passed tomorrow that wouldn't remove the national security aspect, and I doubt China would comply regardless.
I'm unconvinced that my using this app is a direct line to a national security issue. The claim is about the protection of American data but what I want as a citizen is my American data protected from American companies (and government) who are far more likely to abuse it. If I lost Tiktok in the process of actually getting those protections I could handle it.
But since politicians, including those that voted for the ban, still have Tiktok accounts, I don't actually believe it's a pressing security issue.
"If the US bans TikTok, I might actually join it. Imagine a social media without americans"
-somebody on the internets I forgot who and where
Reasons to learn a language besides English, I suppose.
I do speak several, but i like the international aspect of english. its just really tiering that most english speaking spaces have this US default.
And the anti-China and anti-Communist propaganda and misinformation from the USA gets old and tiring as hell.
In Brazil is not nearly as bad.
I like to follow @felipe.durante (instagram and youtube) which is a Brazilian living and working in China.
i did not even think about politics or stuff like that when writing my comment. I was thinking more along culture and social lines.
I don't have an opinion about china because I don't know enough about it. Quite unlike the US. And thats kind of my point.
No tiktok, more tidles