return2ozmaSenate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to Biden, who has already committed to signing it
lautanThis isn’t good, now we’re only left with the tech giants dictating what people can see.
How is it any different for before the law? TikTok is a tech giant.
From what I know, certain special interests want TikTok under their control so they can censor certain topics. People keep saying this is happening because of CCP, etc. But I believe they want this platform “censored” before the elections. The other major players already play ball with censorship but TikTok caught them by surprise.
Tone down the conspiracy theory angle. It's lemmy, you can get more interaction by mentioning capitalism rather than censorship.
The platform is already pretty censored, mentions of Palestine get fucked by the algo, I barely even see it from people I follow if I don’t look up their past videos.
But I could imagine that’s the impetus for congress, we Trump try the same thing after Tiktok was used to organize ~a milliojn people RSVPing free tickets to a trump rally, resulting in him doing his shtick infront of like 100 people in a stadium. He only stopped after a major donor asked him not to, and it was very unpopular. Now dems are in Trumps position after hearing the kids are using Tiktok to organize against them, of course they’d make the same calculation and try to ban it.
Why would it have unanimous bi-partisan support in the Senate if the bill had weight on the election results?
To be devil’s advocate: We already know China loves to be meddlin’ in Western elections, so both parties have a vested interest in getting them out of their pants.
That being said, China can easily meddle all over the place, so I don’t consider that the primary motivator. Like I said before, this is 98% about protectionism.
TikTok is a massively powerful tool of influence and intelligence, in the hands of an adversary that is well understood to proactively meddle with democratic elections.
Yes, obviously the CCP will unabashedly pursue other interference vectors. That should be viewed as more reason to curtail TikTok, not less.
You’re missing the point, though. China has sizable stakes in multiple social media platforms and popular videogames (like Fortnite). But the fact those are all primarily owned by US companies makes it okay.
TikTok is a threat to Meta and Co’s dominance and American companies can’t simply buy it out to make it go away or at least make it directly benefit them. Don’t mistake me in saying it isn’t a national security threat. What I’m saying is, if TikTok is a threat, then all of these corporate platforms are a threat. The government should targeting all of them! But they’re not, and the reason seems pretty obvious to me.
I mean do you think Fortnite has anywhere near the same level of ability to disseminate information or surveil people as TikTok does?
And actually it makes a material difference that ByteDance is based in Beijing, as opposed to just having Chinese investors. Those social platforms, movie studios, etc., being headquartered in the US is exactly what makes it different. Can Chinese firms apply financial pressure to compel them to act against the interests of US citizens? Yes, of course, and they do.
But that’s categorically different than being legally obligated to comply with the CCP, which ByteDance is.
You’re also missing my original point. The argument that Congress is making is that TikTok is a dire threat to national security because: a) it’s entirelt owned by a Chinese company, b) it is egregiously invasive, spying on its users and logging the data, c) it’s very addictive, and d) it’s algorithms are so effective that it’s capable of mass targeted propaganda distribution that can impact elections, radicalize, etc.
Please, tell me how that is different than YouTube, Facebook, etc. other than the core ownership? We have literal fucking proof that Facebook collaborated with foreign agents in 2016 to influence our elections, for fuck’s sake! And Congress did nothing to them besides a half-assed Q&A session with Zuckerberg and Co! But nope, TikTok is entirely about ethics and a sense of patriotic duty to keep our country safe, not about money and protectionism at all.
And yes, I realize Fortnite and TikTok are different. But it doesn’t take a genius to see a pattern in Tencent buying as much stake as possible in every major trending Western company. It’s pretty obvious that they’re buying influence and power vs caring about just profits, similar to China’s whole silk road or whatever the fuck they call that program that lets poor countries borrow money. TikTok is a drop in the bucket when you consider how beholden we are to China in so many other far more immediately dire areas, e.g. critical medicine and medical supplies, critical technology components, etc etc.
They have until January 19th to divest, with a 90-day extension if they are pursuing sale. They aren’t mandating that it be done by November’s election regardless of the outcome.
Seriously, going through these comments, it’s clear most people didn’t read the article or didn’t learn how calendars work in school (or are part of the Russian Internet Research Agency and trying to sow doubt in Biden).
Based on the timeline, it’s clear the intention wasn’t to protect against the 2024 election, since the potential ban would go in place after the election happens.
Exactly. It has no bearing on the election, and Biden doesn’t have a choice. If he didn’t sign a bill with near-unanimous bipartisan support, it would immediately be called out as a personal agenda “secretly helping China” or something similar.
It’s the only big non-US owned social media. They hate that because it’s much harder to control. It’s not even about the profits to be had, tiktok gets more eyeballs and especially it gets the young people’s attention and has more public thrusts than all of the MSM combined. It’s not much more complex than that. “Chinese spying on Americans” is just projection of what all the other platforms do.
Those who push this will not be happy no matter what Tiktok does or whatever concessions it makes. They already hold american data in American and EU data in the EU for example. Did that stop the “muh CCP influence” propaganda? Well, no… Their main goal would be to get Bytedance to sell the platform to Americans, atleast the american business. I guess they would rather let it get banned and sacrifice American or even all the western markets than to let that happen. It would be a loss to them either way.
Not sure what you know, but here’s the head of the FBIs statement about why.
FBI director warns of TikTok's danger
Not this guy again. In my opinion they tell us small truths like CCP bad, etc. Which isn’t wrong but they’re concealing the true motivation. Why ban it now? Not two years ago? It’s because TikTok needs to be under better control for the upcoming election and in the future. We already know big tech all work in concert to conceal topics for the US.
Well we already were. Now we’re just down to American tech giants.
He writes while using Lemmy to see this
TikTok has 140 million Americans on board.
If I was Biden and I wanted to make sure absolutely everybody under 35 didn’t vote for me, first thing I’d do is genocide.
If that didn’t work, then I’d restart student loans.
If that didn’t work, I’d ban Tiktok.
It really doesn’t seem like they want to win
skillissuernoooo not the cringe app! everything but the cringe app
yes, ban on tiktok is a net positive
Do you think banning tiktok increases or decreases Biden’s popularity?
i will support whoever nukes bytedance datacentres
I think the people who will be negatively influenced by a TikTok ban - Don’t vote.
The old people who vote. Already hate the TokTik and the ForkKnife.
The democrats cannot win an election without young people.
Uh huh. And do you think the young people who vote, not just talk about voting - are strongly attached to TikTok?
I know plenty of people who will be pissed off about TikTok ban and all of them don’t vote. They don’t do fuckin shit with their lives to improve it.
I just want you to reread this and think about how you sound to other people for a minute.
AmbiguousPropsIt’s not even a ban, though. TikTok will just be owned by a US company instead of a Singaporean owned company. Literally nothing else will change, I hate to break it to you - cringe app will still be used by millions.
ByteDance has said they won’t sell, and the US audience is <15% of their monthly userbase.
We’ll see, I suppose. I’m highly doubtful at the moment.
First they came for TikTok…
tiktokers aren’t a persecuted ethnic minority
Wild Billthis is so funny out of context
I’m sure you understood my point.
Were socialists a persecuted ethnic minority?
Already they are planning to hinder open hardware (RISK-V) as it could help China and will certainly attack foss software as well.
Definitely not voting for biden or anyone else continuing the clinton lineage.
See, that’s the kind of thing where you gotta probe; do you hate the butchers of Libya and Yugoslavia for 100:1 laws, slavery, and sex crimes, or due to sexism, emails, and whatever else?
Lol, what?
Right wingers hate the Clintons, but for the wrong reasons.
And what about everyone else?
Well liberals don’t hate the Clintons, and the left hates them for passing racist laws and supporting the prison industrial complex, bombing Yugoslavia and Libya, 90s sanctions on Iraq, estimated to have resulted in a million excess deaths, mostly of children, bombing a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, there’s a lot more, I mean he was president during the 90s and she was secretary of state under Obama, there’s so much ghoulish shit they’re proud of.
They are the second bit. They’ve been going hard on saying anyone who won’t vote for Biden is actually a bigot who loves Trump and wants a domestic genocide.
This is the wrong way to go about solving this problem IMO, but then again the problem they’re trying to solve is more about security than privacy as a right.
Seems like a good plan to me. Forcing the companies with the most influence on American social issues to actually be operated by Americans seems like a no-brainer.
Watching from Europe I have no idea what the problem is. The US spies on our data, the CCP spies on our data. I can see why the US government might worry that they can’t access the data (except TikTok runs its servers on Oracle databases in the US just to satisfy them). But I don’t understand why the citizens of the US would support tightening the monopoly to just Facebook and Google.
TikTok moves U.S. user data to Oracle servers
TikTok said it has completed migrating information on its U.S. users to servers at Oracle Corp <a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/ORCL.N" target="_blank">(ORCL.N)</a>, in a move that could address U.S. regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular short video app.
thehatfoxIt’s not just about data and paying, it’s also about media and influence. The argument being made that’s it’s not a good idea to have a “hostile” nation effectively controlling one of the major/dominant social media platforms.
There is also the trade issue of reciprocity, China bans many if not most of the western platforms, while they have free rein to operate theirs in the west.
Exactly. They really sealed the deal when they sent a push message to get people to call Congress and stop the ban. theverge.com/…/tiktok-congress-ban-push-notificat…
“TikTok can be used to influence our citizens politically” * TikTok proves it true immediately on a personal level for legislators * “See!”
Couldn’t have found a better way to put gas on that fire. You’re supposed to ~bribe~ lobby when they start talking shit.
Its actually also a media problem. For example, the largest Tiktok account of a german politician belongs to Maximilian Krah, of the far right party AFD. Just yesterday it was revealed that his personal assistant is actually a Chinese spy. Krah himself voiced a lot of pro-Chinese opinions before, like being pro annexation of Taiwan and denying the genocide on the uigyurs.
This begs the question if his Tiktok popularity is based on a non-biased algorithm or if the CCP made a deal with him, boosting his Tiktok popularity in exchange for being pro-China.
Yeah well, it’s not like it’s beneath the US government to do the same thing. Remember Cambridge analytica, or the Snowden leaks? My point being, as far as I’m concerned as a citizen, banning TikTok just transfers power to a more concentrated group of actors. That makes the problem worse.
Wan’t CA a Russian op though?
That said, this new hybrid war era has nation states conduct disinformation campaigns against each other. Tiktok was a tool to conduct such a campaign, the US wants to defend itself. It’s not like China or Russia doesn’t do the same even harder to try and defend itself. It’s not a crime yet to accept Russian money as an NGO or politician in the US (as least not in itself), it is definitely a crime in Russia to do the same.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a move that will definitely consolidate control over opinions, and that’s not a good thing. It’s like a fever. We can’t have nice things because China would break them, so we need to put them away until China stops doing that.
The US would break them (and has always broken them) even if China wasn’t around.
How do you know? The US would be a different country if it wasn’t targeted by Russia during the last election. Russia made Trump. Russia made Brexit. How do we know how the world would look like if that hasn’t happened?
Human rights violations by the CIA
The CLOUD Act
This started long before the 2016 election and is deeply ingrained into the way the United States government operates.
That’s my point, all that shit was justified by pointing to Cold War enemies. Of course, no country exists in a vacuum, but if the US and the USSR hadn’t been both engaged in a dick-measuring contest for a century, we would live in a different world. Both of them justified their horrendous human rights records by saying, “they are doing it too!”
The issue is that China controls the algorithm for what users see. This gives them the ability to manipulate users by showing specific content to sway their opinion on things. This is specifically about China’s ability to manipulate US citizens.
It’s weird seeing comments that outline the actual problem getting downvoted here more than the superfluous comments that do not address the real problem at all. Bizarroworld.
Agreed. People only hear/read what they want to read, and often tines its flamboyant claims that are not factual. :shrug: