this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Man people really set up the strawmen here. Congress has literally said it’s about foreign influence, not about protecting children. It has absolutely nothing to do with kids. It has to do with China influencing the citizens of the United States to do things that are beneficial to China, against the interests of the US government.
It’s not a ban, if China gives up control of the app to a United States entity then there’s no problem. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children.
Which is also a lie. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and Google are just as beholden to foreign governments such as the fascist regimes of India, Israel, Myanmar and others. They pay the people in Congress a lot more in legal bribes, though, so they can basically get away with anything.
Imagine the uproar if China demanded that Google stopped being a US military contractor..
What the whole thing is about is empty symbolic rhetoric and xenophobia in an election year and oppressive measures to go with it.
Google was blocked in China in 2014 for refusing to censor search results. Now search results are censored and must go through their Hong Kong subsiduary. The last part is what the US Government is asking for TikTok to do right?
China already bans and censors loads of apps and websites already so I don't think looking at what they do in this instance is a good idea.
So it's okay for me to rob you because someone else was robbed by a thief?
Okay. Which part of what I written makes you think that? I thought my second paragraph was enough to say China doing things is not a reason to do things.
China did that. We criticized them for it. Now we're turning around and doing it. "We should get to do it because insert dictator here does it" isn't a great argument.
China is actively demanding that all Chinese companies excise American hardware and software from their technology stacks. They know that they can’t divorce a US tech company headquartered in the US from the US intelligence agencies, so it is the next best option. This is colloquially known in China as “Delete A” or “Delete America”. Who is being xenophobic again?
Ok, China is a bad example, except as what not to do.
As you pointed out yourself, this bill is Congress acting like the oppressive Chinese government rather than the liberal democracy the US likes to pretend to be.
Preventing an oppressive government from exerting undue influence on another sovereign nation’s citizenry is an oppressive act itself?
Dude. Tiktok is a social media platform that happens to be owned by a company with Chinese government connections.
It's not a nefarious conspiracy to control Americans. That would be Facebook and the Republican party platform
Agreed on the Republican party bit.
If Facebook could be considered a nefarious conspiracy (or at least subservient to the powers engaging in said conspiracy), why is it unbelievable that TikTok could also be?
Because Facebook has been PROVEN to knowingly allow widespread coordinated election tampering (Cambridge Analytica, for example) and steering users towards far right pages and groups,
Tiktok is only SUSPECTED based on association with China and furthermore has a much smaller user base and therefore less impact if they DO run election influence campaigns like Facebook does.
The US could, if there was the political will, hold Facebook accountable for this because Meta is an American company. The US would not be able to hold a non-American company accountable in the same way. I do not see a conflict between wanting Meta held accountable for allowing things like Cambridge Analytica to occur and not minding the US taking proactive action on TikTok.
So which is it?
Is the US unable to hold Tiktok accountable or is it/should it be allowed to dictate the ownership of Tiktok?
I'd argue it's neither. The US is perfectly within their rights to enforce US laws within the US, including towards companies not based in the US. That's literally what being a sovereign nation means.
As for forcing the change of ownership of a company that hasn't been found guilty of anything but SUSPICION based on ASSOCIATION, that's some banana republic demagoguery nonsense designed to make right wing voters think that politicians up for re-election are "tough on China" and centrists think they're "standing up for democracy".
It's not "proactive", it's oppressive and unjustified.
I was wrong, TikTok has a US subsidiary, so accountability can been enforced. I was under the mistaken impression they didn’t, so operating on the assumption that any accountability action would be functionally unenforceable.
The difference being that this is about protecting sensitive data like trade secrets, in a complex ecosystem that is impossible to fully oversee. Many western governments have banned Huawei from 5g network components for the same reason and that is solid reasoning.
But with TikTok it is a very different story. Nobody needs to use it. People are using it voluntarily. In regards to steering people to bad content through its algorithm, it is no different from Facebook or Instagram. The argument @Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world made is valid.
It is not about preventing foreign or private influence that his harmful to the citizens. It is about controling that influence.
No, it is about preventing foreign influence on citizens. The fact that some level of control (or more accurately accountability) can be exerted by the US government on companies like Meta is true but unrelated. If ByteDance was a company in the EU we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
So what you're saying is that 'murica is no better than China
Nope that’s not what i’m saying, try again.
It never was.
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it's adults, that's almost more insulting, they think we don't deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction. We may as well dispense with free expression entirely at that point because the government can just say "you're too stupid to read this and we're worried you'll be influenced, so you can only read the books we've pre-approved for you"
It is every American's right to think freely, to speak those thoughts to others, and to have others have the opportunity to hear those thoughts whether or not they are "good influences" according to govt. It is wild how easily people are willing to throw that right away for fears of "foreign influence". What's next, banning TV shows from foreign countries because they might "corrupt our culture"? Banning books with subversive topics because they will "give people bad ideas"?. This is how the road to fascism begins.
Yeah fam, you and me are definitely way too smart to ever be manipulated by military units whose sole job is to effectively manipulate large swaths of the population.
The answer is everyone. They’re worried about anyone and everyone, because they do it also.
https://youtu.be/VA4e0NqyYMw?si=u_d-eDOMYA-FetVn
The problem that many people have with this argument that "China is going to influence us" isn't that we are immune to influence, its that the argument sounds extremely hallow when our own native social media manipulates the absolute shit out of us already... like what is China going to do that our own country isn't already doing.
This is the argument you hear from people on tiktok about why they don't care about the governments concern.
Well that and how its kind of disgusting how completely unified the house is in this bill, but couldn't give a shit about wealth inequality, corporate ownership of residential housing, rampant inflation, rising homelessness, school shootings.
Good point. We are all vulnerable to manipulation and should only read content that is approved by the US Govt. Anybody who breaks this rule should go to jail. That is for our safety ✅
Except that’s not my point, but you already knew that didn’t you? It’s pretty obvious you’re not actually here for a conversation.
Yeah they’re clearly here because they think they have no chance of getting manipulated, that they’re better than others, or even that they think this is some sort of free speech thing. Sorry bud, that’s not how it works. The government routinely bans things that cause foreign influence, it’s just usually not at this scale and not something people are addicted to and use as their news.
Literally Huawei and ZTE are banned from imports and sale in America for the exact same reasons. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-bans-equipment-sales-imports-zte-huawei-over-national-security-risk-2022-11-25/
They're here because they're one of the ones doing the manipulating.
Lemmy.ml is a tankie instance.
Is there any chance that the fact you're lemmy.ml user might be an indication that you're not looking at this completely objectionally? I'm not for the ban either but that doesn't mean I can't be honest about the reasons for it.
I joined this instance at random, look at my history if you think I'm a tankie.
You shouldn’t have to personally defend yourself or this post. They want to censor your speech the same way the government wants to censor Tik Tok. So much for liberal personal freedoms.
Blocking another country's possible influence is not the same as ONLY being fed whatever the Government approves.
TIktok, due to the nature of the company's ownership and board directors WILL have Chinese Government influence. And they've already proven that they're willing to influence the internet to the point of controlling it 99% for their own citizens. China is the latter of the above statement. The USA and most other countries are barely even doing the former.
You are asking if banning books is the next thing. Isnt it already happening in the schools in some parts of USA?
Yep. Unfortunately both the left and right in the US seem to have free speech in their crosshairs one way or another. The right with "don't say gay", their book bans, and war on drag, the left with the TikTok ban, wanting the government to be able to define and regulate "misinformation" on social media, etc. The long-term protectors of free speech like the ACLU have even done a pivot away from free speech cases because they perceive them as unpopular.
Maybe what you think is the left, isn’t really all that left.
Americans are so racist that they can't accept the fact that non-American companies can be successful.
1
Short answer: No
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooo
Its worth adding, TikTok in China (it's called something else, I'm blanking) is entirely controlled on the state and there is absolutely no way that it would be permitted to host any political discussion or advocate mass action not approved by the state. Their "Hey call your congressman" stunt was the most idiotic PR move ever, because they demonstrated that this company is willing and able to leverage the userbase in the US in ways that would never be permitted in "West Taiwan".
China beat America at capitalism and now America big sad. 😢
I was with you until you childishly suggested that the rightful rulers of China are an imperial dynasty rather than the will of the people. It's like calling America West England and claiming Charles is the rightful ruler because you disagree with the Vietnam War.
But yeah china would never allow free expression on their version of tiktok but let's ban free expression because china does is a bad argument. Let's make choices based entirely on merit and circumstance.
But there is part of America that basically is West England. That's called Canada.
What you post on Tiktok is free speech. How it get manipulated and shared to everyone else by an algorithm controlled by a Country that has everything to gain from the downfall of the USA is not free speech.
China doesn't claim to be liberal, so no
So we're no different? Is that your argument? If so we're saying the same thing. This paves the way for more bans in the future.
So the goal is to make laws like China does?
According to that logic we should ban Instagram and Facebook
No. But that’s not the point. America’s government allows foreign aid interests to buy land and other property in America. Should they ban all of it, even if it crashes the economy?
Damn straight they should. No foreign entity should own any American land. Same goes for Canada too, with the obvious problem being their housing crisis caused by foreign real estate investment.
Congratulations, we have just destroyed global capitalism. Let’s go.