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US lawmakers vote 50-0 to force sale of TikTok despite angry calls from users (arstechnica.com)

submitted 8 months ago by ZeroCool to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] affiliate@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (6 children)

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.)

[–] realharo@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] Misconduct@startrek.website 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] realharo@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

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