TikTok ban?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

People who use these apps to the point of sensory addiction are forging their own chains. When you log on, you may as well be signing up for a lobotomy.

However, even if the worst fears about TikTok are borne out, what Bytedance is doing to Americans is no different from what we have done, are doing, and will continue to do to ourselves.

What's most distressing about the ongoing political conversation is just how ignorant politicians are of the real social problems that emerge from new forms of media connectivity. The kids will have to dig themselves out of this hole someday, because Millenials (and older generations) are still digging.

To the degree that this is true, it isn't something that can necessarily be fixed by laws/government.

It certainly won't be fixed by this one.

There's definitely SOME policy solution in the big fat grey area between "this one app is the only problem and if we ban it everything will be beautiful and nothing will hurt" and "thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind". Will we as a polity ever alight on it? Who knows? Certainly not Biden or Trump or Warner or Blumenthal or ContentLover69.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Summarized: we must control the narrative.

heatcharger, I do not think that is an accurate summary of my post.

It is. Once you veer into complaining about the type of content on the platform it’s clear you want changes to what Americans are seeing on social media. Most anti-TikTok arguments end up in this direction.

Who doesn't?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The correct answer is to regulate the algorithim and the content.

snip:

Essentially, all the supposed harms of this app could be addressed by regulation that gives auditing and oversight of the algorithm, data, to US officials and third parties, as well as adding data privacy requirements and encouraging use of features like parent mode that are within First Amendment allowances.

I’m sure this would be enthusiastically welcomed by American social media companies.

Further, on the same day the House Energy & Commerce Committee passes this bill 50-0, they tabled a bill that would have stopped data brokers from selling Americans' data. If they are s concerned about protecting our data, why would they do that? Not to speak of the fact that while they are adamant about the equivalent of the death penalty for TikTok, they have zero concern for enacting any regulation that would address the harms of social media in general.

oh

The bolded bit is flippant enough about the difference between a human life and a f**king phone app that it almost makes me think there's something to the crass "kids these days" framing here. Not great!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The correct answer is to regulate the algorithim and the content.

snip:

Essentially, all the supposed harms of this app could be addressed by regulation that gives auditing and oversight of the algorithm, data, to US officials and third parties, as well as adding data privacy requirements and encouraging use of features like parent mode that are within First Amendment allowances.

I’m sure this would be enthusiastically welcomed by American social media companies.

Further, on the same day the House Energy & Commerce Committee passes this bill 50-0, they tabled a bill that would have stopped data brokers from selling Americans' data. If they are s concerned about protecting our data, why would they do that? Not to speak of the fact that while they are adamant about the equivalent of the death penalty for TikTok, they have zero concern for enacting any regulation that would address the harms of social media in general.

oh

The bolded bit is flippant enough about the difference between a human life and a f**king phone app that it almost makes me think there's something to the crass "kids these days" framing here. Not great!

It was a bad turn of the phrase.

Speaking of human life, Congress has done almost nothing for 20 years as mass shooters actually take away the lives of children in our schools, it does nothing about a health care system that has higher per capita spending but worse outcomes in life expectancy that other OECD countries with lower per capita income than us, and higher rates of treatable illness, and chronic conditions, and it does not seem to be troubled that the president sent over 100 arms shipments to Israel in its war that has cost 30,000 Gazan lives in the past six months alone. It does not want to act to avert climate change that is estimated to cost over 250,000 lives per year.

So if the perceived flippancy based on bad wording one time of me, one guy posting on an Internet forum who has no power, who is 40 years old and not even a part of Gen Z, is "almost" enough to dismiss an entire generation who I am not even a part of, what makes you think our Congress, which actually has power and is substantively flippant year after year about human life, should be trusted to be able to tell us which apps we can express ourselves on? This is not just about a "f**king phone app", it is much deeper than that, when considering implications of the government taking this power for themselves.

I'm not one of the people in this thread whom I think you can fairly accuse of complacency on all these other (and, yes, enormously more important) issues, Beet.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I still really don't like the "foreign influence" angle on this--I want short-form social media in general cracked down on because it's a cognitohazard, not TikTok in particular cracked down on because it's Chinese--but Zephyr Teachout (law professor at Fordham, perennial candidate in New York, high-profile left-wing primary challenger to Cuomo in 2014) has an interesting essay in The Atlantic arguing, convincingly in my opinion, that this is really not much of a departure from traditional American policy on who can and can't own communications infrastructure.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don’t get why this didn’t happen years ago.

It had to wait for there to be a very specific level of anti-China sentiment because, as people on both sides of the substantive issue of "should TikTok be cracked down on?" have conceded throughout this thread, there was little to no political will to do it for the right reasons.