TikTok ban?

[Beet]

I am never clicking another link from GP270Watch lmao

As for the ban, that's only the enforcement for divestment.  I would also be OK with fining ByteDance into oblivion for storing data in China.  But a ban is more practical.  Realistically, the point is to get them to divest.

Look, I would be 100% on board with a divestment, but the problem is the CCP has to approve a divestment, and they have stated they won't. This bill gives them way too much power to determine that outcome.

So what is the position here?  That we should somehow force the CCP to approve a divestment?  That we should invade China and seize the codebase and data centers that constitute TikTok if they don't divest?

The most we have the power to do is to ban the app from operating in the United States.  That is now what we are threatening to do, to try and force ByteDance to divest.  If the CCP is unwilling to approve a divestment, there's not much more we can threaten it with other than a ban.  And I don't see any way to force ByteDance to give TikTok to an American company other than by threats.

The position should be to force them to keep the data here, open up the source codes and algorithim to Oracle, and make the management independent here. That's the policy which is both feasible and addresses national security concerns without a ban.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Trump's flip-flop on Tik Tok is due to money money.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-tiktok-ban-reversal-after-meeting-megadonor-stake/story?id=108013785

Of course. I read about this. Again, he has no actual convictions. People who say "oh he won't sign an abortion ban / he's a sensible moderate" are lying to themselves thinking Trump has political positions.

[Kamala's side hoe]

They want to ban TikTok because the western media can not control it. TikTok is one of the few places the youth can get a pro climate, anti-corporate, anti-military industrial complex, reform or anti-capitalist messages. While you might not agree with these things they are all covered by free speech but western media has left virtual no spaces for these topics.

Does the entire World Wide Web, with the exception of this forum, just not exist to you?

 This just isn't true and also misses the points, a mass distribution platform can not be compared to some niche forum that almost nobody in America knows about. I was previously in favor of banning TikTok but seeing how they have left a space for all the above I mentioned, it can't do much more harm than our own media which has become horribly concentrated and corporate owned and hardly gives a platform to anything that doesn't fit the corporate agenda.

 Yes the Chinese are probably spying on you if you use TikTok but so is Meta, Google, and Twitter. You should know that before using any of these platforms.

There is no need to rely on major social media platforms to access anything, other than content that users choose to post there exclusively.

For anyone concerned with social change, the overriding concern should be getting out while your thoughts are still your own. Last year, one of the most engaged with posts on Facebook was a bunch of people praying to a photo of a potato. That's your future if you keep scrolling.

Anyway, I like your point about distribution, and your original post makes a lot more sense to me with that clarification. A lesson that American-owned tech companies have taken from the past decade is that political discussion isn't worth the trouble, and most of their applications give content that any large group of users might find politically objectionable low priority.

I don't want to ban TikTok either. The layer that a lot of people are missing in this discussion is that Americans are choosing to use it because they built a better and more entertaining product at a time when our own social media platforms had become stagnant and dull.

Bolded portion is hilarious- anyone have a source for this?

I want to be clear this is not trolling, I do believe internal misogyny is a part of why so many otherwise “pro-freedom” progressive posters on here are against TikTok. Especially when other Chinese companies operating in the US don’t get this level of scrutiny from them. (This doesn’t not apply to posters who are at least consistently anti-China everything like OSR, even though that’s also a dull stance)

And I do believe it would hurt Biden if Tiktok was banned in the US right before the election.

I hope this comment is more to the standards of moderation, I want to reiterate this is my genuine belief.

If it's misogyny, shouldn't those posters also be anti Instagram? I think both skew towards a slightly more female user base while Twitter is more male. Would make sense.

I would argue many of these posters I have in mind are anti-Instagram personally and do see it as a huge evil, but don’t have a good enough excuse to ban it. However if they were given one, I think they would convince themselves Instagram should be banned as well.

Cat has long since been let out of the bag- Meta and Google pivoted to promoting TikTok-type content on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube a while back. There's no reason to believe whatever alternative to TikTok and Instagram that would emerge wouldn't also promote short video clips and have the exact same deleterious effect on our collective attention span.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I am never clicking another link from GP270Watch lmao

As for the ban, that's only the enforcement for divestment.  I would also be OK with fining ByteDance into oblivion for storing data in China.  But a ban is more practical.  Realistically, the point is to get them to divest.

Look, I would be 100% on board with a divestment, but the problem is the CCP has to approve a divestment, and they have stated they won't. This bill gives them way too much power to determine that outcome.

So what is the position here?  That we should somehow force the CCP to approve a divestment?  That we should invade China and seize the codebase and data centers that constitute TikTok if they don't divest?

The most we have the power to do is to ban the app from operating in the United States.  That is now what we are threatening to do, to try and force ByteDance to divest.  If the CCP is unwilling to approve a divestment, there's not much more we can threaten it with other than a ban.  And I don't see any way to force ByteDance to give TikTok to an American company other than by threats.

The position should be to force them to keep the data here, open up the source codes and algorithim to Oracle, and make the management independent here. That's the policy which is both feasible and addresses national security concerns without a ban.

Their CEO testified before Congress that all data was shored within the United States and that turned out to be a lie.  What should the consequence be?

How would we even know if they're storing data here or in servers at CCP HQ?  You could literally just run a scheduled job every night to copy all the data from the American servers to the Chinese servers, run it on a Chinese machine, and there's no way anyone would know.  Given how trivial it would be to build this I would be shocked if this is not already happening.  Which of course explains why China is so adamant that they (why is it "they" isn't ByteDance independent of the CCP?) will refuse to sell TikTok no matter what the price may be.

[It’s so Joever]

I am never clicking another link from GP270Watch lmao

As for the ban, that's only the enforcement for divestment.  I would also be OK with fining ByteDance into oblivion for storing data in China.  But a ban is more practical.  Realistically, the point is to get them to divest.

Look, I would be 100% on board with a divestment, but the problem is the CCP has to approve a divestment, and they have stated they won't. This bill gives them way too much power to determine that outcome.

So what is the position here?  That we should somehow force the CCP to approve a divestment?  That we should invade China and seize the codebase and data centers that constitute TikTok if they don't divest?

The most we have the power to do is to ban the app from operating in the United States.  That is now what we are threatening to do, to try and force ByteDance to divest.  If the CCP is unwilling to approve a divestment, there's not much more we can threaten it with other than a ban.  And I don't see any way to force ByteDance to give TikTok to an American company other than by threats.

The position should be to force them to keep the data here, open up the source codes and algorithim to Oracle, and make the management independent here. That's the policy which is both feasible and addresses national security concerns without a ban.

Their CEO testified before Congress that all data was shored within the United States and that turned out to be a lie.  What should the consequence be?

How would we even know if they're storing data here or in servers at CCP HQ?  You could literally just run a scheduled job every night to copy all the data from the American servers to the Chinese servers, run it on a Chinese machine, and there's no way anyone would know.  Given how trivial it would be to build this I would be shocked if this is not already happening.  Which of course explains why China is so adamant that they (why is it "they" isn't ByteDance independent of the CCP?) will refuse to sell TikTok no matter what the price may be.

In the past, I’m pretty sure I remember you having been against many of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products for security concerns. I wonder why you are such a hack for this version of blatant protectionism.

[It’s so Joever]

Anyways I am fine with the requirement to sell to an American company. I completly understand for business reasons why tiktok would be against this at first (and no it’s not proof of some big conspiracy) but at the end of the day they don’t have control here and this is very likely a bluff by them which will fail and end up in some sale in a few months.

That being said, I know even after it is sold, GMac, BRTD, OSR, and all the others will still not be happy. GMac himself has essentially admitted that he isn’t happy unless any last remote possibility of data transfer to China (which would be possible even under an American company lmao) is gone and I’m sure the rest of the supposedly “anti-China” liberals who seem to only care about Chins when it’s defending Biden or going against tiktok will all fall in line as well with this thinking.

I also will note he didn’t at all respond to ElectricCircus’s post calling him out for his “auditing” idea, suggesting he is not influenced by logic here and does not want a legitimate discussion but rather everyone to fall in line with his “thinking”.

[Beet]

I am never clicking another link from GP270Watch lmao

As for the ban, that's only the enforcement for divestment.  I would also be OK with fining ByteDance into oblivion for storing data in China.  But a ban is more practical.  Realistically, the point is to get them to divest.

Look, I would be 100% on board with a divestment, but the problem is the CCP has to approve a divestment, and they have stated they won't. This bill gives them way too much power to determine that outcome.

So what is the position here?  That we should somehow force the CCP to approve a divestment?  That we should invade China and seize the codebase and data centers that constitute TikTok if they don't divest?

The most we have the power to do is to ban the app from operating in the United States.  That is now what we are threatening to do, to try and force ByteDance to divest.  If the CCP is unwilling to approve a divestment, there's not much more we can threaten it with other than a ban.  And I don't see any way to force ByteDance to give TikTok to an American company other than by threats.

The position should be to force them to keep the data here, open up the source codes and algorithim to Oracle, and make the management independent here. That's the policy which is both feasible and addresses national security concerns without a ban.

Their CEO testified before Congress that all data was shored within the United States and that turned out to be a lie.  What should the consequence be?

He was referring to TikTok user data. It was later reported that data creators send to TikTok to sign up as creators is stored in China. That shouldn't be happening either, but it's a different group of people.

How would we even know if they're storing data here or in servers at CCP HQ?  You could literally just run a scheduled job every night to copy all the data from the American servers to the Chinese servers, run it on a Chinese machine, and there's no way anyone would know.  Given how trivial it would be to build this I would be shocked if this is not already happening.  Which of course explains why China is so adamant that they (why is it "they" isn't ByteDance independent of the CCP?) will refuse to sell TikTok no matter what the price may be.

Because you would need credentials and authorization for the job to access the database. Besides, any reads of the database can be audited. Any network traffic can be audited too. The fact that you don't know any of this suggests you don't really know the first thing about IT.

ByteDance is independent of the CCP, and ByteDance I am sure is willing to sell and any suggestion to the otherwise is a bluff. But the Chinese government is a different story. I don't know why they refuse to allow the sale but frankly the reason is more likely similar to compucomp's response on this thread. They see it as a gangster move to forcibly appropriate a Chinese company. Similarly, if China told Tesla that it had to be forced to sell its Chinese operations to a Chinese company and transfer its IP to the Chinese company, the U.S. government wouldn't be too happy and would probably block the deal.

The idea that China would need to go through ByteDance corporate to engage in expropriation U.S. data is farfetched given that data of Americans from all social media companies is for sale on the Dark Web. It's available to China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, terrorist organizations, etc. Congress never cared about that problem before and even now it's an afterthought to them, so that suggests this really isn't about protecting our data.

[Beet]

https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1767525209064558954?s=20

So apparently this bill gives the gov't power not only to ban TikTok, but to ban foreign hosted websites. I think we need to have a serious discussion about why we are copying China to build up our own Great Firewall. The reason they censor the Internet so heavily is because their government is insecure and weak, and can't stand up to scrutiny or free debate. We should not be copying them here.

[All Along The Watchtower]

their government is insecure and weak, and can't stand up to scrutiny or free debate.

Yes, members of Congress have no defense for their incompetence or their insider trading.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1767525209064558954?s=20

So apparently this bill gives the gov't power not only to ban TikTok, but to ban foreign hosted websites. I think we need to have a serious discussion about why we are copying China to build up our own Great Firewall. The reason they censor the Internet so heavily is because their government is insecure and weak, and can't stand up to scrutiny or free debate. We should not be copying them here.

This. We shouldn't stand up to China by becoming more like them.

[Electric Circus]

Bolded portion is hilarious- anyone have a source for this?

From last summer:

Facebook [between 2015 and 2021] became a place for old people to share Ring camera footage and haggle over used furniture. I discovered while putting together this month’s Garbage Intelligence trend report that the fourth-most interacted with Facebook post in June was a picture of a potato shared by an Amazon dropshipping page that users were writing “Amen” underneath.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

LOL!

https://twitter.com/SizweLo/status/1753033896822800411

[GeneralMacArthur]

Honestly this feels like a big watershed moment test case for our ability to withstand foreign propaganda efforts in the nefarious new age of the internet, where information ecosystems (falsely labeled "social media") have become obscenely powerful.

2-3 years ago, heck even 2-3 weeks ago, most Americans would have agreed that it's bad for enormous amounts of data to be harvested by TikTok and stored by the Chinese Communist Party for their future uses in whatever hostile campaigns they can dream against the United States of America.

Now that American politicians are ready to make the move, we are quickly seeing just how powerful these massive corporations are at manipulating people.  Between the full-court-press of propaganda coming from ByteDance, and the bribery of Donald Trump, paired with the lack of any comparable pushback from our politicians, we are seeing American public opinion shift very rapidly.

We are now in a race against the clock.  Will our politicians be able to get this done before both public and private pressure to bow down to China becomes too great?  Or will Donald Trump, ByteDance's bribed billionaires, and a massive slew of propaganda be enough to convince our politicians to flip on their previously-held convictions and surrender?

We are already seeing many Republican politicians abandon their earlier position of being "tough on China" and instead bow down and lick the dirt off China's boot.  And Republican voters seem to be A-OK with it.

If this effort is successful in keeping China in charge of the most powerful information ecosystem operating on American soil, then it will be a massive green light for every other adversary of the United States to try a similar operation.  Because America will have shown that with enough bribery and cajoling, we're willing to go along with being manipulated and having our data harvested by malicious actors.  Who wouldn't want to take advantage of us?

[Electric Circus]

I also will note he didn’t at all respond to ElectricCircus’s post calling him out for his “auditing” idea, suggesting he is not influenced by logic here and does not want a legitimate discussion but rather everyone to fall in line with his “thinking”.

I made a number of points in that post that didn't get a response. His bit about "auditing" algorithms was not just BS, but implausible BS.

Maybe he was too busy musing over his next chest-thumping speech?  "Chinese Communist Party, Trump, China, Trump, Republicans, China, China, China!"

It's astounding. The bill that the Republican House is considering would be the one of the most significant government restrictions on freedom of speech in our lifetimes. It's not just an anti-ByteDance bill (although it's not as if a bill targeting a single company would be much better). It would be the end of the open internet in the United States, putting vast powers of internet censorship in the hands of the president.

Yet the bill's proponents turn this around. "If you're against it, you're a pawn of communist China! You are licking the Asiatic boot." Imagine that, when you threaten to take something away from people, you get angry calls from them when they find out about it!

This attitude - I am right, and those who disagree are not just wrong, but could only have arrived at their views through external manipulation - is a very dangerous one. It reduces other people to objects. Those who adopt this way of thinking can justify anything.

[emailking]

This will probably pass the House easily today. Its future in the Senate is unclear. If it does eventually pass it probably will be a different bill that fixes some of the problems with this one. Even if a ban eventually gets signed I think it would be years before a ban is actually in effect, as Apple and Google will probably fight it hard.

[emailking]

It needs a 2/3 vote to pass today because they fast tracked it which is why it's not a sure thing but it will probably get that.

[emailking]

Passes 352-65, 1 present

[wbrocks67]

I agree with this bill and think it should pass; the foreign interest in the app is definitely worrisome.

however, the ultimate issue with this is once again, this bill is a lot more nuanced and contextual (i.e. the specific bill doesn't immediately ban it, it forces ByteDance to sell its share or face a potential ban), yet even very straight news outlets have been touting it simply as the TIK TOK BAN BILL, misleading many people into believing it does something that it does not quite do. The optics are bad, and I do wonder how it could lead young people who use it to revolt in the election. Definitely up in the air, but I wish this bill could just come after the election, because you also have craven people like Trump now using it for nefarious reasons - only coming out against it b/c a billionaire donor got to him.

[emailking]

House passes bill that could ban TikTok despite resistance from Trump

The House voted with bipartisan, overwhelming fashion on Wednesday to pass a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban against TikTok, a major challenge to one of the world’s most popular social media apps.

The bill would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is spun off from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. It’s not yet clear what the future of the bill will be in the Senate. The House vote was 352 to 65, with 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans voting in opposition.

Lawmakers supportive of the bill have argued TikTok poses a national security threat because the Chinese government could use its intelligence laws against ByteDance, forcing it to hand over the data of US app users.

The push to pass the bill came up against headwinds from several different political directions: former President Donald Trump, who was once a proponent of banning the platform, has since equivocated on his position, while Democrats are facing pressure from young progressives among whom TikTok remains a preferred social media platform.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/13/politics/house-vote-tiktok-ban-bill/index.html

[wbrocks67]

Honestly I think Biden should veto if it passes the senate. Normally I wouldn't go this route, but voters are very dumb and simple about things like this, and I can easily see this turning into a BIDEN WANTS TO BAN TIKTOK, TRUMP WANTS TO SAVE IT type nonsense thing even though the truth is much more complex than that

[heatcharger]

BIDEN WANTS TO BAN TIKTOK, TRUMP WANTS TO SAVE IT

Wow it’s shocking anyone would believe that!

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

From somewhere in cyber-heaven, Vine is getting the last laugh. 

[Horus]

Honestly I think Biden should veto if it passes the senate. Normally I wouldn't go this route, but voters are very dumb and simple about things like this, and I can easily see this turning into a BIDEN WANTS TO BAN TIKTOK, TRUMP WANTS TO SAVE IT type nonsense thing even though the truth is much more complex than that

Yeah, as I've said I don't care at all about the app, it takes the parts of Instagram and Snapchat I dislike, combining them into mindlessness. Still, really not worth banning if it's gonna hurt him that much with low info voters.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

From somewhere in cyber-heaven, Vine is getting the last laugh. 

Musk has made noise of reviving it, but honestly a Musk run tik tok sounds like hell

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

Honestly I think Biden should veto if it passes the senate. Normally I wouldn't go this route, but voters are very dumb and simple about things like this, and I can easily see this turning into a BIDEN WANTS TO BAN TIKTOK, TRUMP WANTS TO SAVE IT type nonsense thing even though the truth is much more complex than that

Yeah, as I've said I don't care at all about the app, it takes the parts of Instagram and Snapchat I dislike, combining them into mindlessness. Still, really not worth banning if it's gonna hurt him that much with low info voters.

I'm against the ban - how else am I gonna post outfit reels and show off my avocado toast???

But I would support getting rid of that "Oh No" song, that stock female narrator, and the tag #fyp.  If I never have to see or hear those things again, I'd be a happy PQG.  

From somewhere in cyber-heaven, Vine is getting the last laugh. 

Musk has made noise of reviving it, but honestly a Musk run tik tok sounds like hell

He should call it MuskRAT.