Sooo… How do Republican’s square being the party of “Small Govt” and then interfering in a private business?
Foreign policy
They don’t. It’s all bad faith to get what they want - control.
Government is bad except when it comes to brutal subjugation of out-groups I don’t like, while the in-group gets protected and treated with kid gloves by the same.
Unfortunately most of them are the dupes not the protected class they think they are - “they’re hurting the wrong people” summed it up when it was uttered…
Too lazy to look up who said it, but there’s a quote I like that goes something like “conservative seeks to have an in group who the law protects but does not bind, and an outgroup who the law binds but not protects”
Is it a private business if it’s owned by the Chinese government?
It’s really not though? The Chinese government has a 1% stake in ByteDance. Meanwhile ~60% is foreign investors – believed to be mostly American.
Then it should be easy to buy out that 1% stake.
I’m not saying it’s a good bill, but reducing interference by foreign governments in US sold products is not against any party’s philosophies.
You have a misunderstanding of how China’s government operates. It does not matter how much stake the government holds, companies just cannot say no to the government’s request. Otherwise you will be disappeared. See Alibaba for example.
Remember, China does not have a democracy.
Ooooof, somebody licking the boot of capitalism a little too hard.
That’s literally the same thing the us government is doing here…
Do you think that They could avoid doing something that the Chinese government tells them to do?
You mean like how US ISPs wiretapped the Internet for the NSA? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
But really, how dare anyone but us do that.
Yes, why not let everyone do it if someone else is already doing it.
So when do they plan to do something about those domestic businesses trying to manipulate citizens of America?
As soon as the foreign businesses get better at harvesting data than the domestic ones, of course.
Capitalism abusing citizens? Just fine.
“Communism” abusing citizens? Avengers, assemble!
More of a capitalistic dictatorship
They’re prospective communists. Supposedly they’re going to get there by 2050, but they just built a new massive luxury tower for their ultra wealthy so…
It’s just like Marx said: “If you do an oppressive oligarchy for 100 years, it magically transforms into communism”
If that were true then the United States would have been communist by now
I think they’re more worried that it’s a foreign corporation going after their citizens and not a domestic corporation.
I mean, the domestic businesses are the ones who own Congress and are using it to get rid of a competitor.
After the thousands of years of human history I’ve read about, getting rid of competitors seems to have been the primary concern of most of the ruling classes all over the world. Way back to Ur.
Rulers don’t play fair, because power corrupts.
While you’re not wrong about double standards, anything that discourages the use of vapid social media platforms is a win in my book. Use whatever backwards logic you like to make it happen so long as it’s effective.
Well this goes into the direction of social media monopoly so I’m not sure
He says, on a social media platform
Lemmy is a message board, not social media. Like fark or something awful. You have no idea who the duck i am. How is that social?
It is social media, just because your talking anonymously doesn’t mean you aren’t interacting socially. Jesus Christ your talking to people. Right now. Your being social media’d. Stop acting like your above it.
forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)
My tiktok account is also anonymous.
Your Lemmy account can likely be used to identify you, given a big enough data set.
Undoubtedly, especially since I haven’t taken particular steps to obfuscate my identity here.
But as I said in a comment below, I’m more worried about some unhinged nutbag online randomly targeting me than being a person of interest by any nefarious groups or organizations.
No it isn’t.
When you download the app you let them have the following information/data about you:
Purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers (!!), diagnostics, financial info, contact info, user content, browsing history, and usage data.
Please tell us how any of that is “anonymous”.
Cool dude, you’ve identified that big corporations data farm.
Random bloke user with a vendetta still doesn’t know who I am, and that’s who I’m more worried about on the personal scale.
Cool dude. Well you said your account is anonymous, and it isn’t. Words mean things.
Users create and/or share content, check. Users discuss content, check.
Unless you think something is missing from that definition, Lemmy is social media. It is pseudonymous, but it is still social because of the users.
Since when did that define social media? That’s the same thing as IRC. is IRC social media?
ICQ had message boards where people would chat about the news. Was that social media?
Again, fark is a place where people share content and discuss the news. Is that social media?
Yeah, I suppose those would. I wouldn’t have thought it, but definitionally, it would be! I mean, heck, some of those are listed by Meriam-Webster! Isn’t language neat? You learn something new every day.
So TikTok is sending out app notifications that they are at risk of being shut down and urging their users to call their representatives right now. They are not going down without a fight.
The 165 days time limit would land the deadline in August-ish, right before the most intense phase of election season in the States, and I do think TikTok would be a very influential part of the election strategy this year.
On this particular topic, I think “both sides” is true. Both sides want to proceed down this “ban websites by name” road.
Whatever Tiktok is doing, the correct response is to write enforcable laws to prevent ANY company from doing what Tiktok is doing.
This is bad governance.
That’s what they did. The “correct response” is described in the article as the law 50/50 signed here.
I’ve read this comment over 10 times now and I have no idea what the words “the law 50/50 signed here” means, so I can’t be sure I understand the argument you are trying to make. My best guess is that you are using circular logic to suggest that every democratically decided upon decision is always the right decision, which is nonsense because democracy is demonstrably fallible.
My point might be a little Covid brain fogged but I’m just pointing out that they did exactly what the guy asked for, if they bothered to click past the title which makes it sound like a targeted “ban Tiktok” law.
I am not a guy. I read the entire article before commenting. The law did not do what I asked for. You would know if you read my comment all the way through.
I think you’re making assumptions that I can read into what exactly you find wrong with Tiktok. That context is not there in the original comment.
Being chinese by definition can’t effect any company. There is enough context.
Did you read the article? The bill bans tiktok for being foreign. There is nothing in this article that describes a bill that outlaws any practices, conventions, or actions that tiktok has done.
Being afraid of foreigners for being foreign is not effective regulation.
The bill itself says, more or less, “any foreign adversary controlled app is banned. Also, TikTok is a foreign adversary controlled app”. So it doesn’t apply exclusively to TikTok, but it does explicitly include them.
Interesting wording there, “foreign adversary controlled”, goes a long way to protect all the companies that are based in tax havens, or controlled by foreign allies, like Saudi Arabia or Israel
In a democracy one of the very most important choices that must be made by citizens is what other nations are considered allies or an enemies.
The funny thing is that US citizens have absolutely zero control over who the government decides is our enemy or ally. That aspect of government is entirely partitioned off as separate from the “democracy”, as if the foreign policy element of our government was itself a foreign nation we have no control over.
While we are on the topic, fuck the government of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both governments are horrendously violent.
I think most of us here are concerned with foreign adversary interference as much as we are concerned with corporate interference and espionage. The law seems to only address the surface level issue (ownership) and none of the actual problems (action).
The point is that companies like Google and Facebook do the same data harvesting and manipulation but aren’t being held to the same standard. The law is clearly written to benefit the US government not the citizens, while the justification is stated to be ‘for the benefit of the citizens.’ It’s like buying your wife a lawn tractor for her birthday even though you know she has no interest in using one. You’re claiming it’s for her but it’s really for you.
The lawn tractor was for my wife’s boyfriend actually, but thanks for just assuming I was being selfish.
NSA can’t harvest user data from tiktok because it’s Chinese based, so they force them to split and sell to American subcompany that is obliged by law to give them access to their server. Everything else is political bullshit, like the Chinese gouvernement can “weaponize it’s app” ?? They can’t turn teenager into terrorist hating their country just like that, tiktok can only influence so much.
If the Chinese government believed that why do they ban so many US apps in their country?
Cmon that’s not that difficult to understand: The same reason usa bans Chinese app. China, just as usa, has mass surveillance system and want to get every single data, they can’t do that with apps owned by usa based companies.
Many users called lawmakers’ offices to complain, congressional staffers told Politico. “It’s so so bad. Our phones have not stopped ringing. They’re teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app and we can’t take it away,” one House GOP staffer was quoted as saying.
and they still voted 50-0. really tells you something about how much these politicians are willing to listen to their constituents.
Are they “taking it away” though? Do normal people care about who owns it? Are they just worried about an unlikely ban?
you’re taking it as a given that bytedance will sell the app if this law passes. there is a chance that they won’t want to sell and then the app will be banned. (but i think this unlikely.)
also, if i’m understanding things correctly, there’s the possibility that they do sell and the app still gets banned. the article says
An app would be allowed to stay in the US market after a divestiture if the president determines that the sale “would result in the relevant covered company no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”
depending on who the next president is, there’s no guarantee that they’ll say any sale will result in the company not being controlled by a foreign adversary. (although this past is just speculation.)
anyways. this bill will certainly raise the chances that the app will be banned in the US. (and it opens the door for other apps to get banned if the US doesn’t like the country they were developed in.)
I also just noticed in the article:
TikTok urged its users to protest the bill, sending a notification that said, “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok… Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
Also from a BBC article about the same thing:
Earlier, users of the app had received a notification urging them to act to “stop a TikTok shutdown.”
So they were literally sending out misleading notifications (because a forced sale is not a total ban), and then the users wrote to Congress based on that…
The probability that they will sell seems really high to me, as the same thing almost happened back in 2020.
They also claimed that it was only “old people and teenagers” who were calling in and objecting which wasn’t true. One rep stood up and straight up lied claiming that TikTok users were “forced” to call. How would that even work? TikTok possibly being banned isn’t a lie but all that other shit sure was. It was just a popup offering to help locate local reps to call and make their voices heard. The fact that any of you are pretending that people taking this democratic action is a bad thing is appalling and your bias is blatantly obvious. The absolute ego on all of you to act like you just know better than all of those other people because… Reasons? Ridiculous.
Do you have the full text of the notification that you could post here? Kinda hard discussing the specifics otherwise.
If it really contains the quote “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok”, I do consider that misleading.
People here are often making a lot of noise about disinformation campaigns on sites like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube (and that’s just from user-posted content that the sites fail to moderate, not posted by the sites themselves), so I don’t see why this would get a pass.
There’s no guarantee that making the sale will prevent the ban.
Yeah but if they sell then it’s someone else stuck holding the bags so why wouldn’t they?
because its not in the corporation’s interest to incur the expense and organizational disruption if they’re still going to get banned anyway - profit is maximized by continuing with business as usual instead of spending resources attempting to reach compliance
It also tells you something about all the supposed gridlock in Washington that can magically evaporate when there’s money and power to be gained from it.
It was a 50-0 to pass the commission and then go to the House floor for a vote and then the Senate for a vote and finally signed into law by the president unless he vetoes it, which is possible imo.
Honestly, teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves, I might just call in to my local representative to voice my support of forced sale, operating restrictions, or even outright ban.
EDIT: I sent him an email.
what are you even trying to say here? that it’s okay for politicians to ignore entire demographics? or that it’s only okay for them to ignore entire demographics if, ultimately, it’s left up to a different group of politicians to pass the law?
i don’t use tiktok or have any interest in the app itself, but it’s still very alarming to see a vote go through 50-0 despite a “nonstop” flood of calls opposing it.
Ignore them? Gosh no. Protect them. Literally what I said.
“protect them from themselves” is what you said. which carries the connotation that they don’t know what’s best for themselves and aren’t qualified to make judgments about those things. this is different from simply “protecting them”.
To be fair, a big part of a functioning society is a government with proper regulations in place so that people are not expected to be experts in literally every field before making a purchase or performing some kind of action. Obviously, calling it “protect[ing] them from themselves,” is dismissive and patronizing, but it’s pretty much why we need government in the first place.
For example, the EPA recently issued a recall for ground cinnamon from certain specific (dollar store) brands due to unacceptably high levels of lead. Without the career scientists (and yes, bureaucrats) working for that regulatory agency, millions of people would have continued consuming the product and feeding it to their kids (low-income folks too in this case, given the brands) literally indefinitely.
Without the EPA, every person who buys cinnamon is what, expected to use mass spectrometry to determine the exact molecular make-up of every spice (or in the case of the EPA, literally any food or prescription drugs you may ever consume) before using?
If they didn’t do their cinnamon research, then they deserved it, and the government should have no involvement? What happens in cases where companies hide dangerous issues in their products to avoid losing profits?
What if there’s literally no way for anyone but a scientist, with extensive lab access and at least 4+ years of university to know that there is an issue with a product (or a construction site, or a drug, or water treatment, etc)? They’re the only ones who should be able to properly avoid using a product that may kill them and their children? And even then, only when it’s a product they’re an expert in?
Not saying you’re a libertarian, just like pointing out the obvious things that make it so so stupid.
i agree with everything you’ve said here. and i liked the EPA example. sorry if what i said came across as libertarian, that was not my intention.
i was just trying to push back against the “young people don’t know what’s best for themselves” mentality in the other post.
although, to be clear, i think the current state of social media does have quite a few problems that need addressing, and more regulation on that would certainly be welcome.
Would love to see the science or other expert opinions that is being used to justify this ban then.
I haven’t heard anything except politicians making vague references to spying or other things we allow from domestic services.
It’s just politics.
TikTok Data Harvests: Report by AU Cybersecurity Firm or if you can’t be bothered to get past the paywall the news coverage of the event.
Misinformation on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpurol.2022.03.001
Adolescents more susceptible to product placement on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107723
Ok, sure. Show me what research you or they have done to justify “protecting them from themselves”. Already they’re telling lies by insinuating that only teenagers and old people are calling. And you all just believe it? Wild how biased people can be when presented with information they want to believe.
Those things are exactly the same and it is indeed what I just said. Problem?
You’re not doing it to protect people. It’s ridiculous that you’d even pretend to be.
What other reason could I possibly have? You think there is some massive anti-tiktok cabal out there trying to profit by… uh… fucking how?
By banning anything except the few 'murican tech giants doing the exact same shit as TikTok. Even a blind person can see how cancerous american companies are, yet this does nothing to address that.
Actually, they’re not doing that at all, they’re forcing a compromised unethical American to sell to a different unethical American to do exactly the same thing. At no point was a ban even discussed. So, literally everything you just said was wrong.
It’s not just teenagers and old people. That’s just some bullshit rhetoric that you ate right up without question. Because of course you did. Millennials/middle age folk are abundant on TikTok as well as young adults.
The audacity of some of you to jump into action just to spite “teenagers and old people” is shameful. So easily manipulated.
Right, sorry, it’s fine to let teenagers and old people be harmed as long as the company can continue to profit off consenting adults as well. /sarcasm
How are they being harmed? Why was it so easy for them to make you believe this? Also, who asked you to protect anyone with your one petty little email lmao
Now do Facebook.
Love to, I think the 5 Bn USD FTC fine was a little light considering no jailtime was given. I hope their recent lawsuits lead to breaking the company up again.
Yeah honestly if a bunch of addicted teens and old people were calling me screaming that I can’t take away their drug of choice when that’s not even what’s happening, and it’s not being taken away just moved to where there can be more control on quality… Then I would be really considering the damage this is doing to them.
I don’t know if supporting the junkies being taken advantage of is the altruistic take that these “absolute freedom” supporters think it is.
The fact that you guys just ate up that rhetoric without any hesitation… Like, you just happily believe it’s a bunch of “addicted old people and teenagers”? Is this reddit? Did I make a wrong turn at common sense and critical thinking?
Uh dude… I know people addicted that got the email to message their representative. They will stop talking in a conversation and pull out their phone and just scroll through a few videos.
I struggle to believe so many would be messaging just out of laziness but don’t question that being the age groups that would respond most to that kind of targeted messaging into action.
Nanny State.
“Mr. Legislator I am 84 and I need my Heroin but the federal government keeps cracking down on my supplier, please stop taking away all my Heroin Mr. Legislator. Also, force my bank to let me transfer 85,000 USD to India, it’s really important that I do that before the 27th.”
Yes. This is called Nanny State.
Rather than educate the populace, take away the tools. Of course, another tool will just rise to the surface but it will make a lot of people feel really good that they did something.
I do appreciate all of the reactionary statements. I don’t use TikTok but I do believe in freedom. Reducing freedoms, no matter how well intentioned does not solve societies problems.
You can’t educate dementia away. You can educate youth away, but that takes years, which would effectively be a ban for them. TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation and by extension their associated foreign dictatorship.
Absolute freedom should not extent to harming each other.
TikTok is one of hundreds of vectors to swindle the senile and I doubt it’s even in the top 10.
Grandpa needs to have someone else handling his finances. It’s not the governments job and let’s not pretend this bill is about keeping grandpas money safe.
TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation
That pretty much describes every corporation in existence.
Some of them provide utility and some don’t, which is why we don’t allow children to drink, smoke, or gamble. If a company providing those goods and services targets those demographics it gets political action.
Welcome to the nuance of society and the modern world.
teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves
Please, big daddy government, protect me from the freedom of choice. I cannot be trusted to consume without your permission.
Me when I find out that it’s illegal to sell your organs for profit
LMAO pay attention in school, kid, you seem like the type who is going to need it.
They should really educate people about foreign threats like the CCP and Kremlin.
From what I read, the calls actually evaporated opposition to the bill.
Which, I’m NGL, if you’re worried about an app being used by a foreign adversary to encourage anti-social behavior in your youth, a bunch of people calling in acting like drug addicts getting their drugs taken away is only going to erase doubts.
It doesn’t help that they’d even be more justified when it’s known that it was caused by users getting pushed notified by Tik Tok to do it.
Encouraging people to contact their representatives and demand action? Congress clearly can’t have this. How will they do their jobs if they are constantly forced to engage with their constituents?
Call to action from, say, activist groups is very different from call to action from a billion-dollar company. This does make me really worried about how much influencer TikTok has on people ngl
Ah yes let’s only allow political activism from the people who already has the power and influence rather than the common man
In my opinion, considering Tiktok’s algo they had the best circumstance to notify a mix of their users more aligned with the actual electorate. The fact they ended up with the worst representation of their user base when it came to confirming the suspicions of politicians says everything.
My prediction is coming true: https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/10ofony/anything_to_protect_the_youth/
I watched that commercial - I guess banning TikTok is gonna work, huh?
What’s more likely to work is something else will appear and distract the gnat-like attention span of our status-obsessed species, and we can go back to tik tok being the sound your you hear at night when you visit your boomer relatives and try to sleep in the guest bedroom.
Can the US Lawmakers do anything about the US companies harvesting my data and selling it off… please?
Can they? Completely wrong question.
“Will they” is what you wanted to ask but the answer is still firmly no
Honestly it might be “Can they” given how partisan issues like industry regulation are.
Yes, they can make more money from it.
I wonder if this could also be applied to games owned in whole or part by Tencent…
Or websites? Like Reddit? No, never mind, that’s silly talk.
i hope they sell conan exiles to someone else, because then the shitty monitization that is destroying the game will end.
Wishful thinking I’d wager.
yeah
An app would be allowed to stay in the US market after a divestiture if the president determines that the sale “would result in the relevant covered company no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”
So apps can still be banned after divestiture, based on an arbitrary decision by one corrupt and potentially insane and/or senile person?
After all the talk of a “rules based order”, I’m disappointed - this isn’t a rule, its a leap of faith into the arms of serial liars.
The world is on fire but the kids are upset that they have to use another platform for their stupid fucking dance videos.
BTW: someone in the US should just make a similar app and call it tiktok. It’s not like China gives a crap about IP protection so turn about is fair play.
The world is on fire but lawmakers are doing petty antagonistic policy and turning a blind eye to atrocities.
That’s right. What’s important is TikTok and Chinese interests of course. /S
Can they do that with a Chinese company?
Technically, they’re forcing the US Based shell company, which the Chinese were using, to sell out to some other American, or maybe just shut down.
The world police is scared about the competition lmao, “only us should violate worldwide privacy!”
U.S. lawmakers can’t force anything on foreign corporations.
If the bill passes in the House and Senate and is signed into law by President Biden, TikTok would eventually be dropped from app stores in the US if its owner doesn’t sell. It also would lose access to US-based web-hosting services.
ByteDance would be banned from the U.S. market and lose it’s webhosting on U.S. servers.
Also, what’s with the “foreign adversary” status of China?
Actually a court in any country can prevent a company from doing something. When you do business in a country you have to abide by their laws.
That’s right, I totally came off wrong. I meant that U.S. lawmakers can’t force ByteDance to sell TikTok, as the headline implies.
Though possibly US operations could be sold off, whatever that would mean.
Also, what’s with the “foreign adversary” status of China?
China is attacking us by having a bigger economy
Lol yea. They also maintain control over their big corpos and that must be threatening to the 9 corporations in a trench coat that the U.S. calls a government. Still, the world doesn’t need any more adversarial relationships, thank you very much U.S.A.
Unironically, so much of US/China hostility boils down to corporate market share
High school nerds pay attention. This is how you can make some money and have an excuse to talk to the hot girls…by installing a vpn on their phones so they can still have their tik tok.
Get one popular girls phone set up and every girl in the school will be hitting you up within a week.
And why do you assume everyone including hot girls & popular girls aren’t already capable of installing their own VPNs? Unless of course you mean the high school nerd is going to pay for our VPN service, then come on over!
I’m sure some do. I haven’t talked to many high school girls lately.
If this goes through and this happened when I was in school…that’d be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’d probably never even think of it then. I’d probably luck into it by telling the rest of the nerd table at lunch, jock overheard, sell him my services, and then word of mouth from there.
That happening now…probably be the inspiration for the gen Z’s “American Pie”. Or “Superbad”.
Are you kidding? There isn’t a phone owning high schooler that doesn’t know how to vpn past their high school’s nanny software. You’re out of touch.
aren’t already capable
Anyone who can read and follow directions is capable
Most people can’t install a VPN, including hot or cold girls
This shit is like saying most people can’t connect to wifi. It’s not exactly rocket science.
Most people can’t install a VPN,
My guy, do YOU know how to set up a VPN?
It’s more like most people are unwilling to find or read directions. Most people can do most things nowadays. They’re just unwilling to try.
Highschooler here, everyone already uses vpn’s to bypass the school firewall to view blocked sites and stuff while on school wifi.
The kids are gonna be alright
They won’t want TikTok once the chumps who follow them stop using it. They’ll have to do something other than dancing for strangers to bolster their self-esteem.
And the cycle of infantalizing women continues…
Everything will keep going as planned /s
Lemmy does draw a certain crowd unfortunately.
That’s mainly the internet, not just Lemmy
