Since when does Congress ban websites or dictate what apps people can have on their devices? Regardless of how you feel about this particular company, I feel like no one is talking about the internet-killing precedent that's being set here, and that should be concerning.
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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To be fair they didn't actually name TikTok. That would be clearly Unconstitutional. Instead they made a bill that will only apply to one company. So unconstitutional but most people won't notice.
And even better Meta, Alphabet, Apple, and GM are all busy selling China your information as fast as they can anyways.
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I'm not a ban fan but social media like that is psychological cancer that is definitely harming the young and old mentally.
Kids growing up these days have the burden of the disgusting need for social media self-promotion. They are conditioned that attention and Likes are the most valuable social currency, and waste so much of their valuable youth pursuing that hollow bullshit.
I'm keeping my kids off social media for as long as I can so they can experience growing up without Cloud-automated peer pressure.
Look what it did to boomers. Legit. Ban all that shit. Geocities for the win.
Lead exposure was probably a big part of that as well to be fair.
This will do nothing about that. If TikTok is banned, kids will just move to something else. You would have to ban all social media. Good luck with that.
You can't ban peer pressure. That's like trying to stop the flow of water.
Surely engineers have devised ways to reduce pier pressure caused by the flow of water.
They said this about TV. And game consoles. And computers. And every social media website. They said this about movies when they first came out too.
Social media is a reality of the world. This ban isn't getting rid of that, just banning one specific platform. Why is Intagram Reels acceptable but Tik Tok isn't? Because ones is owned by a Chinese company and the other isn't. That's all this ban is about. Literally nothing else.
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This is all true which is why it's obvious that this ban has nothing to do with any of this considering they allow this behavior to continue just as long as these companies are also under their influence.
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How about a digital bill of rights instead of playing ineffective whackamole?
Harm the stock portfolios of US billionaires? You sound like someone who hates receiving RVs and fishing trips.
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Because the US can control the topics shared in the other platforms, but since tiktok is owned by a chinese parent company, they can't
Also, tiktok was originally told they had to sell to a us based owner to avoid the ban (see hostile takeover)
This ban has nothing to do with privacy and Chinese manipulation, and everything about control and profits.
Hell, Besos and The Zuckster are the two main forces pushing for this ban.
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Good.
Let's go further. Any company using an algorithm to profit off people's engagement has to publish the code.
Code's not enough. The data the algorithm is analyzing (both the training data and live data) has to be public too, in order to actually understand what the algorithm is doing.
Is there a way to publish the data without harming the users?
The training data, yes. As for the live data... I would say "yes" in the sense that the service shouldn't be storing anything but what the users explicitly choose to make public to begin with.
Do you think there's a difference between the training data and the live data? Didn't most of these platforms start without engagement algorithms?
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If I have it correct, the law wouldn’t immediately ban TikTok but would require it to actually be sold to a real US company within a certain amount of days otherwise it’d get banned. The CCP obviously doesn’t want that. So if this passes, TikTok isn’t removed immediately.
Probably what happens is the CCP, I mean Bytedance, sells it to a US company then puts their people there to still siphon data.
The law is to force any company that isn't US owned that the US doesn't like to hand over ownership. Regardless of your thoughts on TikTok/ByteDance/China in general, this is not a law one should praise. It's incredibly dangerous and is one more step toward the US becoming a full-fledged fascist state.
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I guarantee you that Facebook, Twitter and Google are selling data to China on the regular. And anyone else willing to pay up.
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It's already run by a Singaporean group. Transferring it to the US is just a chance for our Social Media conglomerates to part it out and destroy competition.
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60% of Bytedance is owned by institutional investors. It's a private company. The CCP doesn't own the company. 3 of the 5 board members are American. Don't spread made up bullshit. If there's any reason not to sell the company to a US company is because only 150 million Americans are tiktok users on an app with over a billion monthly active users globally. Not to mention that the US companies are gonna lowball the shit out of their offers because they think Bytedance is gonna be begging to sell. Also, there's a chance that if the US bans tiktok, then maybe they could get access to China, which tiktok is not currently available in.
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Cool, do Twitter next. Wait, ban Elon..into the sun.
Twitter gives US agencies data, they are cool bro
Glad to see Dems are taking the threat of Trump getting into power serious by focusing on issues that their base support:
- ~~Stop funding and supplying a genocide~~
- ~~Packing the clearly biased court so things like student loan forgiveness can pass and all these anti trans and other crazy far right laws get shot down~~
- ~~Not breaking rail road workers strikes~~
- Banning one of the most popular social media apps
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China banned pretty much all the US social media..... I bet, they will complain when the same happens to them......
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Goddam this is dumb as shit.
Please help a fellow non-US citizen understand. How can this be a bipartisan agreement and, what’s its difference to the “video games cause violence” bit? I dislike TikTok as well (and I will never use it) but I think banning it nationwide is taking it too far.
How can this be a bipartisan agreement
Both sides dislike other countries having the spy power. Or anything, really. US got serious overcompensation issues with being the biggest and baddest at everything.
What’s its difference to the “video games cause violence” bit
China likely actually is spying and TikTok probably does actually do some harm, unlike video games and violence. Definetelt nowhere near justification for this shit though.
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The US has two parties, one which is very nationalistic and loves cruelty, and one that is very bureaucratic and loves controlling information. This creates a bureaucratic structure which increases control over citizen info, in a way that presumably hurts another country and stifles progressive youth.
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House Speaker Johnson plans to package TikTok legislation with critical aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and send it to the Senate. President Joe Biden vowed to sign it into law.
So it's a rider with some important and time sensitive other things that need to pass. Headline is totally (and probably intentionally) misleading.
He could veto it, but it would cause actual harm because those funding bills would have to go back to Congress delaying much needed aid to Ukraine and Taiwan.
Biden has already indicated he in on-board with the TikTok ban so even if it wasn't bundled in he would sign it. https://apnews.com/article/biden-tiktok-ban-house-china-aaa884d8c974f0a35856af5ee6aa4e99
Biden has come out in favor of this bill already, the hold up is in the senate.
Even if it passes, I would expect TikTok to immediately sue and gain a temporary stay on enforcement. How it shakes out in court is not my area of expertise.
What else is in this bill? This will probably make VPNs very popular.
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