People acting more terrified at the loss of tik tok from their lives than they did during covid, while losing people from their lives.
Tik tok might as well just change their name to empathy box, because they have convinced their users that the act of watching content on empathy box makes them more moral and politically aware than the rest of us.
At the end of the day, we have to be nervous when a foreign nation has content reach to 80℅ of Americans. This foreign nation is banning Americans from accusing it of genocide while allowing an economic incentive for Americans to accuse themselves and everybody else of doing it.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
Don’t use TikTok, don’t really care too much either way, but watching this whole thing unfold is starting to open my eyes to the ways these companies can shape public opinion.
They’re apparently sending notifications to people to contact their reps and it seems very likely that they’re promoting content that advocates against the ban.
I’m not a fan of censorship or blocking internet services but TikTok really seems to trying to make a good case for it.
My understanding is that while rights are inalienable, meaning we recognize that Chinese citizens have the inherent right of free speech as well, not just in our direction, I’m not sure we grant free speech to mean a foreign state gets to use its technology to determine our national conversation.
I’m sure there would be teenage trans kids who through confusion ended up pro hamas, but I think tik tok could almost be accused of creating and fostering a movement that is certainly close to that very thing.
I never conflated a pro-hamas movement with an anti-israel one.
If there are leftists or vulnerable minorities who have become indoctrinated into pro-hamas rhetoric, yes, I clearly think tik tok is responsible because these kids certainly aren’t reading it on on storm front.
I am not interested in having a conversation where you pretend I am talking about the pro Palestine/anti Israeli government movements.
Sure and my racist uncle’s joke about drowning a random person totally isn’t just his black guy joke barely concealed.
The narrative has for months been that anyone who is critical of Israel is Pro Hamas. And now you want us to believe that’s changed when someone is defending the most breathtakingly xenophobic bill in modern times?
My dude. No leftist is pro Hamas. Hamas wants to create a religious ethnostate just like Israel wants to create a religious ethnostate. We ARE pro Palestinian freedom. But Israel is the one who keeps making Hamas the dominant Palestinian political party, in order to use them as an excuse to continue their genocide.
Stop pretending to know what the left thinks when you’ve clearly never actually spoken to their members.
This isn’t the first time a company has done that. Uber famously used pop up ads to get people to vote for a ballot proposition. Enron went so hard on PR that everyone blamed the government for people losing the pension that had already been embezzled by the executives.
If you’re gonna ban this speech, then you should ban all speech from foreign governments, including the propaganda Israel is filling our country with for their genocide.
But this same congress who is so ready to silence China is unwilling to silence Israel. And Israel is not our ally. Our allies don’t try to drag us into genocides.
That’s not what they’re taking about doing. They want to sell TikTok to a US interest. Not 900 of them. This is literally a chance for Musk, Zuckerberg, Apple, and Alphabet to grab up the best short form video app for cheap.
That’s all it is. It is incredibly corrupt and the state department calls that out in other countries all the time.
How does us banning TikTok make us any better than China then? How does it make us any more free?
The whole point of freedom of speech is that everyone has it, even that speech you hate. The answer is more speech.
Lets see Biden grow a pair and go on new media and answer actual questions, not softballs. Then maybe people will start listening to him. And maybe he’ll learn what we’re actually concerned about.
As an Australian who gets bombarded by the US point of view and agenda from their tech companies - I think America could do with an outside influence undermining the government’s point of view.
As the post points out - the US government is doing an incredibly shitty job looking out for its citizens, and if they were afraid of a propaganda machine holding them accountable and creating civil unrest it might be for the best.
It’s just a shame the power that owns the means to do that happens to be china. I wonder if things will return to normal once the citizens pack away the guillotine
Undermining the US government’s point of view is one thing, but the argument could be made they are undermining your viewpoint more than the US government’s.
Oh for sure. I guess I despair because I don’t see a way out of the bullshit without civil unrest, but I think we have all grown weak and soft in the middle and are just willing to take it. I’m not sure it’s possible anymore and feel like the human race as a whole are just becoming slaves.
I used to think the USA at least had a semblance of justice and fairness especially compared to China, but I think it really is just every man for themselves now and greed is all that matters.
It’s not much better here in Australia either. There is no sense of community, or trying to build a better society. It’s almost applauded to be corrupt and selfish.
The government does a shitty job, but it is representative. American culture is dominated by billionaire worship, consumerism, and greed. We shouldn’t be so surprised when our elected officials share our values.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
I disagreed with you up until this point. You’re exactly right about this.
The problem is that nobody should have this kind of power. But our government thinks this kind of power is just fine as long as it’s a US company they can control.
If nobody should have this power than nobody should have this power. Not China. Not Musk. Not Zuckerberg. NOBODY.
But we have a feckless, ineffective government written by racists 250 years ago and this is literally all they can do.
American social media companies are also controlled by foreign powers. I have no interests in common with the ultra wealthy and massive corporations that control this country. They are just as foreign to me as anyone in another country. I trust them less than I trust TikToc.
Actually, yes. The only exception would be YouTube, but I don’t let the algorithm tell me what to watch. I have a handful of channels I follow, and sometimes look up a howto video.
I am much less concerned about foreign news reaching the American people than the outright lies being spread in the American news without people batting an eye. And the fact that a foreign government (Israel) literally owns our government.
Oh so a chinese news source pointed this out to the youth? Good. It shows that we are so sick of not being able to trust OUR news that we’re looking elsewhere. Banning TikTok won’t fix that. I won’t go back to CNN or Fox if you take away that option. I’ll continue to look elsewhere
Who’s next? Al Jazerra? The hindustan times? The BBC?
Are you actually fucking insane? How does the Israeli government literally own the US government? That’s not even true figuratively. What the fuck are you saying
They don’t actually want to get rid of tiktok. They just want it to be owned by a consortium of American billionaires so they can influence public policy more easily.
Part of me would rather have it with capitalistic sociopaths that want to extract my money rather than an authoritarian government that is provably responsible for (multiple?) genocide(s). Like, in a perfect world, there’s a better system, but at least our government still, in theory, can control the businesses within our country. They won’t though.
an authoritarian government that is provably responsible for (multiple?) genocide(s)
Yes, US has a history of it. As a matter of fact, it was built on a genocide of the native population and is currently contributing to one in the middle ea
Whataboutism. One, in theory, I have a say for/against(in theory) another I don’t. It isn’t hard. But, yes, US bAd. Good job. Anything to actually add?
You don’t have to tell me about the murders of my ancestors.
Also, to follow up, the US government doesn’t control social media here, unlike wherever your bot farm is out of. Which is why your whataboutism really falls flat, cause one media company is controlled by an authoritarian government currently eradicating Uighurs and the other is owned by Zuck, who’s trying to idk honestly, drown in money?
The US government is controlled by the same interests and lobbbyists that control the government, so it’s similar although not the same thing. Just because their interests align at this moment because the billionaires don’t want competition and the government has a hard-on for Israel doesn’t mean their right.
And for the record, I don’t even use Tik Tok, and I personally think social media and shortform content is bad for young brains and probably causing a lot of ADHD and impairing my ability to read. But I find this whole bill very fake and performative and probably done for the wrong reasons. It’s weird that we finally got an international perspective unfiltered by US media companies that bow to AIPAC and of course it’s getting banned.
Because the bill lets them ban anything that they want, not just TikTok. All the have to do is assert “foreign influence” and they can block, censor, or force sale to “American interests”.
Basically these motherfuckers are doing their best to make it so you only see, hear, and read what they want. And if that’s not actually their intent, they’re leaving the door wide open for the next guy to do it.
Not true. They have to show that the company is headquartered in or owned by the “sensitive country”.
Giant loophole for American Data vendors and marketers to sell data and targeted advertising to China. (Which is just an algorithm by a different name.)
Because the bill lets them ban anything that they want, not just TikTok. All the have to do is assert “foreign influence” and they can block, censor, or force sale to “American interests”.
How long until this is used against a Fediverse instance?
Usa invented the Online psyops/spy game with facebook/google. Now they pissed china beat them at there own game.
Wanting to ban a app/service that basically gives your biggest economic and political enemy direct conact to the local networks/brain of your population is understandable.
I mean those are the reasons why china banned Facebook/Google years ago.
Reality is more complicated tho, cause unless the usa is willing to build a chinese firewall for themself, it will be impossible to keep people from using TikTok via VPN.
If the usa would actually care for its citizen privacy they could just outlaw closed source software.
willing to build a chinese firewall for themself, it will be impossible to keep people from using TikTok via VPN.
A majority of people probably won’t bother and just move on. A decent chunk, 30/40% maybe but that still leaves a 70/60% reduction and it’s influence permanently neutered so the gov will still see it as a win
unless the usa is willing to build a chinese firewall for themself
Honestly, I feel like in the next decade we’re going to see a whole lot of great firewalls. Every other country wants to control everyone and get in people’s heads. We’re either going to invent some way to regulate this desire (unlikely, if you ask me) or end up with a lot of spying and/or fractured network 😞
It’s my understanding this is designed for TikTok to be sold off, not to ban it.
Anyway, yeah I agree with everything else. Anyone “defending China” here is ignoring the Chinese firewall, but also everyone “defending the US” must also agree the Chinese firewall has a useful purpose. The fact is this is just about control and/or greed. It’s not any more or less evil than all the other shit the governments do to control people. It’s not going to hurt anyone here, but it’s also probably not going to help them either.
I won’t touch TikTok anyway, so I really don’t care. It just seems like everyone is misunderstanding what’s going on and hypocritical with their stance, whichever position they hold.
Which is still an unprecedented power we’ve consistently called out other countries for doing. Also, targeting a single entity is unconstitutional, it’s a Bill of Attainder.
No. It isn’t charging them with a crime, which is what a bill of attainder is for. It’s only saying they won’t be allowed to do business in the US. I’m fairly confident it is absolutely legal and constitutional, and also it isn’t unprecedented either. For example, see Huawei.
You can argue ethics all you want. It won’t stop anything, nor does it really matter in this situation. Ethics aren’t in play, because this is about power. Regardless, it’s equally ethical for the US to do this as what China does to prevent western companies operating in China.
You’re missing a very key part of it, I assume on purpose. It imposes a punishment for a crime. No one is accusing them of a crime. I don’t know where you got this idea from, but they’re wrong. They may have said it very confidently, but it’s incorrect. Doing this to “protect national security” is perfectly fine. The intent is not to punish them.
We’re going to pass a law that punishes a someone or a group, but it’s okay if we just don’t say, “they’re guilty of X.”
Somehow I don’t think the courts are going to share your interpretation. And in your own article they do not. Nowhere in the test does it state the bill must name a crime.
Sensitive country is defined by the following list, (xxx,xxx,xxx)
Any company that sells, or gives American data to a sensitive country; or cause their data to come into possession of a sensitive country shall cease operations in the US.
Any company allowing a sensitive country to manipulate their algorithm, examples of (but not exclusively) with targeted advertising, bots, or by manipulating the ranking of posts, shall cease operations in the US.
That achieves the mission and holds the entire industry accountable without unconstitutionally targeting a single company.
Moreso gives google and meta a fat profit, and they bought congress. I personally also think that suppression of info about Palestine is a driver of the bill as well, and that rewards congress through the legal bribery that is lobbying.
It’s the corporate class protecting one another’s shared interests in the US. Kick TikTok out and suddenly it paves the way for a competitor like Meta.
They’re trying to force a sale or ban it, and I don’t think it’s certain what the details are, so who knows what criteria the owner needs to have
(it might be so specific only a handful of people/groups qualify, so they can suppress the price and ensure it goes somewhere specific… It’s shockingly common, especially when legalizing something or when other nations are concerned)
They’re trying to force a sale or ban it, and I don’t think it’s certain what the details are, so who knows what criteria the owner needs to have
(it might be so specific only a handful of people/groups qualify, so they can suppress the price and ensure it goes somewhere specific… It’s shockingly common, especially when legalizing something or when other nations are concerned)
How is TikTok helping the working class? It’s an app that wastes your time and sells you products. There is no intent to help the working class. Stop glorifying governments. China doesn’t want to help liberate the working class or anything like that, if that’s what you’re implying.
TikTok isn’t going away. It’s just being forced to be sold off. Yeah, it’s for profit, but it already is for profit. You’ll still be able to get whatever kind of enjoyment can be had from there. It’s just going to be controlled by a US company.
It’s not going to sell. It literally can’t because of their laws around proprietary tech. They have stated very clearly they will not sell and the people who voted yes knew this before they voted. They voted for a ban.
TikTok doesn’t help anyone but that wasn’t the point of what I said. I was saying that the US government doesn’t actually help its citizens because it’s not profitable for them. The reason the government even cares about “banning” TikTok is because it means their tech buddies (specifically people like Zuck) can benefit from it. It’s corporate greed. TikTok doesn’t care about anything other than profit and data hoarding.
Ah, OK. I misunderstood. Yeah, the US isn’t helping people the way it should, but that’s not really related to TikTok. They aren’t going to do that regardless. Yeah, it’s all about money and power for all of this.
All American social media is banned in China. Effectively, if we don’t do something like this, the Chinese social media becomes the biggest (because they restrict ours but we wouldn’t restrict theirs).
Mafia shit or international power politics shit.
The danger here is they could do this to Facebook or Instagram in other countries (eg India)and use this as a precedent. I’m not sure India wants to pick that fight with the US, but this is all a weird game that’s being played.
But yes, on the surface, and the immediate impact, this seems like such a fucking dumb tone deaf thing that our legislature pushed through without most Americans wanting this.
If they had happened to write a good privacy law that happened to prevent most of Tik Tok’s abuses, I’d have way less of a problem with it because then US companies who do the same shit would have to follow the same rules. But instead we let Zuckerberg and Musk do the exact same shit without repercussions.
But we have a government that’s basically carriage with a steam engine bolted on plus a V8 and also rockets and the thing is broken beyond repair and we just have to wait until most people realize that to get out because they didn’t install emergency exits.
They aren’t protecting us from TikTok, they are protecting themselves from us. They put a lot of resources into controlling mass media then got blindsided by social media. Now they have social media mostly under control, but only in this country. They can’t risk the next Bernie Sanders giving people hope for a better world.
Is Russia doing a race thing? I thought it was an imperialism thing, needed access to Crimea for the black sea and needs to get that pesky foreign government out of the way to ensure that access
Russia has killed over 30000 civilians, they have abducted 20000 ukrainian children and assigned them to Russian families, they have destroyed Ukrainian museums, churches, and art. It’s just as much of a genocide.
The Ukrainian thing is more of a cultural genocide with Putin having a plan on “integrating” all current Ukrainians into Russian society, but it checks out, because “integration” means “throwing away their own culture for the holy Mother Russia”.
Yeah the information age is turning into the profit maximized end game.
We all had access to information, then gave up our own in response. And now having specific data to find truly only the most useful and profitable people and marketing is the new gold. But honestly I think the data isn’t actually as useful as oil. It’s more like gold. And these companies are trying to sell shovels. Tools for scraping and using the data but eventually people must realize that it isn’t enough.
🤓 “Uhrm axetually, inflation is dropping and wages are slightly rising, so people shouldn’t complain because the economy is actually great. They’re really just imagining things and suffering because they weren’t responsible with their covid checks.”
Seriously, liberals think that’s all people are upset about. They don’t recognize that already existing trends and enshitification of capitalist products are making things suck for people. They don’t appreciate that housing inflation has been way too high for decades, and that cheaper nonessential junk doesn’t make up for it. Inelastic demand that the government will not address because politicians don’t understand the struggles of new homeowners and renters.
When most people can’t win at the game, they don’t care to uphold it.
Someone is going to see this and downvote you because they saw you use the word “liberal” negatively and immediately think you’re a right-winger or something.
But yeah, if the media outlets would understand that “the economy” (rich peoples yacht money) is based on garbage metrics, maybe they wouldn’t act so offended when people call them out on it
This place has become more liberal recently. I don’t love smug leftists who think being a socialist automatically makes you virtuous, but it is annoying to deal with people that aren’t fully awake to reality. Capitalism is the problem, and while being scant on solutions and strategies is awful, not even seeing the problems is worse.
I just don’t understand how some people think rejecting capitalism is going too far. Like it’s bad, everyone knows it’s destroying us, it takes nothing to admit it. Feels great to be anti-capitalist.
Yeah, but as of July 2022 the credit bureaus don’t report medical debt. After I got a surprise $5,000 bill in the mail after my copay for an ER visit where the doctor spent 5 minutes misdiagnksing me and sending me to to wrong specialist, I was able to tell them to go to hell.
I really don’t think people even understand inflation enough to realize “inflation is dropping” just means prices are still going up but only a little at a time instead of the near doubling it was a year or 2 ago and how little people have been wage matched to the stipl increasing costs.
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