TikTok Ban Bill Becomes Law, Gives TikTok 9 Months To Sell
https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/tiktok-ban-bill-becomes-law-gives-tiktok-9-months-to-sell/473173Open linkView original on lemmy.world593
Comments410https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/tiktok-ban-bill-becomes-law-gives-tiktok-9-months-to-sell/473173Open linkView original on lemmy.world
I can't believe this is the one thing this congress has actually managed to do. We just want healthcare
I want both.
Healthcare!?! Who needs healthcare when Congress is giving us our god given freedom of domestic surveillance capitalism, which is the freedomist freedom that ever freedomed, you filthy communist!
So anyway, I started violating civil liberties... PEW PEW
🎶 Ain't that America! Home of the free baby! 🎶
Bald eagle screeches
I wonder how many of these lawmakers will be invested in the company that swoops in and saves the American public?
For real. You know Pelosi is already investing.
If she’s investing at the same time you’re getting the information, she missed the best time to buy. She might have hedged her bets and bought early
Fun fact: Congresspeople can legally inside trade, but the rest of us cannot.
Politicians should be banned from stock market. Total conflict of interest.
Eight Democrat Senators agree with you, and cosponsored a bill in September that died at introduction.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2773/all-actions-without-amendments
if we keep electing people trying to maintain the status quo, then it'll never happen
It’s a catch-22. To get elected, you need to learn to manipulate within the system. Once elected, you know how to leverage the system, so why would you change it?
The best chance we’ll have for systemic change will come when boomers die off. That shouldn’t discourage efforts today, but impart some hope for the future.
What does that mean?
It wasn’t put to a vote after being read aloud on two separate introductions. It was then forwarded to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where it went to die.
Good Work just recently put out a video on this very topic. Informative and hilarious as usual!
https://youtu.be/vT-u-SPj4_c
Thanks! I never heard of this show.
I'd be fine if they were allowed to invest in things like mutual funds so that they could take advantage of the market without being able to do insider trading of a specific stock.
that would be better, but they could still invest in specific sectors or industries.
Yep, and maybe that's somewhat acceptable, but we could also confine it to diversified mutual funds meeting specific criteria.
Edit: confine, not congratulations
That’s not true. It’s still illegal even though they get away with it. You’re thinking of
briberylobbying.According to the STOCK Act of 2012, they could be brought up on charges for a trade performed after gaining knowledge of a pending change in legislation that would affect the value of a stock, prior to the legislation being publicly enacted. The SEC just hasn’t charged them.
What they do is not legal, they just live above the law.
Just to clarify. Insider trading is illegal but it is not illegal for politicians in Congress to use the information they obtain from their jobs (such as through classified meetings) to engage in stock market trades.
It’s not a failure of the law. It’s a failure of the SEC for not enforcing it.
https://perry.house.gov/how-can-scott-help/myths-about-congress.htm#:~:text=FACT%3A%20Both%20a%20Congressional%20Research
If everyone doing it gets away with it, then is it actually illegal?
Yes. It is. They just need to be arrested and prosecuted. I agree that it should be taken more seriously, considering that it’s against the law.
No one has ever been prosecuted in the decade and change that it has been illegal, despite frequent violations.
Martha. Stewart.
Fun fact: Everyone with hundreds of millions+ in holdings either trades with insider information or pays others to do it, because our metrics and enforcement for insider trading are a gallows joke.
For sure they’re already in way before general public
Pathetic watching ancient, feeble rich people about to return to the dust from whence they came still frantically positioning to boost their ego scores.
It's as if they believe their preferred invisible sky mommy/daddy will accept a bribe of earthly currency.
I would rather chill in my basement.
it's an addiction
Don't worry everyone, it's just pelosi's 3rd cousin doing the investing so that makes everything totally cool and totally legal.
Congressional Representatives and Senators are shielded from most insider trading laws. She could literately buy in, flip the SEC the bird, and go on her merry way.
Well, as it is what her husband did for a living his entire very successful life, but sure the Lady you don't like is wrong for him doing his job well.
A. Her husband is not a lawmaker. B. I’m sure her position helps C. Don’t simp for politicians. They DGAF about you.
A: which is why him having a ton of money he made more with isn't a relevant condemnation of the woman.
B: his having a shit ton of money already helps a hell of a lot more so fuck off with your unsubstantiated claim.
C: at no point did I remotely suggest she did so fuck off with your attempt to imagine things to argue about since you've not a leg to stand upon.
I’m pretty sure I could be incredibly successful at trading stocks as well if I was married to a Senator who could give me inside information, lmao.
As she didn't join Politics until '87, guess they invented communicating to with their past selves, lmao. If you've got any proof, kindly advise the FBI. Where as you've none, head on back to peddle that shit to fux nooz.
Christ, am I supposed to memory hole that Pelosi’s husband making a shit ton of money off stocks THREE YEARS AGO is what led to a round of antitrust bills getting introduced? Is there literally any criticism of these rich fucks you can hear without immediately shrieking about conservatives?
Well, you are shit holing that he made a shit ton of money before her first Campaign. So perhaps instead of doubling down upon your unsubstantiated right wing bull shit propaganda, actually check what happened. But you won't Instead you'll go on pretending you didn't know that folks with a shit ton of money go on to make more shit tons of money so you can maintain your delusional belief in fux newbs' distraction.
Mnuchin (fmr Trump Treasury Sec) is already setting up a group to try and buy it apparently.
The company behind tik tok said they will not sell they America is only 20% of their global market. They have refused to give their source code.
So guess app just won't work in US. Dumb ass lawmakers only people this hurt are the US citizens that are using it to make money.
I’d counter that basing your livelihood on an app that harvests your and your viewers data for an adversarial government known to use this kind of data in psyops isn’t a sound business idea.
In fact, I’d say this bill actually protects American users who have been using the app.
If TikTok can’t prove that they use our data responsibly, and refuse to do so to the point of just leaving the market, we are all better off. Another company will fill that void and content creators have endless options to move to.
I don’t think “but people need to make money while our data is harvested and provided to a government that uses it against us” is a great argument.
It's never been to protect the public. If that were the case, the law wouldn't apply to just TikTok and foreign companies. They would've passed something to protect us from our own domestic data brokers too, but they didn't.
It’s almost like an action can protect people and enrich elites at the same time. Explain how the American public isn’t better of keeping their personal data away from the CCP. Interested to see how you think this doesn’t protect the public at all from an adversarial foreign government.
When you could just generalize the law to include protecting us from our own oligarchs and they did not, it clearly shows who they work for.
We could also feed the poor, house the homeless, heal the sick etc. we could ask why any law regarding healthcare, housing, nutrition doesn’t fix the issue, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
The FTC is putting in work this administration, and are poised to bring back Net Neutrality (obligatory Fuck Ajit Pai). This is a huge step towards protecting all Americans, so I think you’re confusing this issue (adversarial governments harvesting our data) with the larger issue of domestic policy (which will be much harder to tackle).
Let's open the can of worms. Right here right now.
If the goal of a law is to keep people safe should we pass laws that do that or pass laws that don't? Answer the question.
If goal is X should we try to get X or try to get Y?
Really really simple and you should manage it. Come on brought-to-you-buy-Meta, simple question I am sure you can answer it.
Their personal data won't be kept away from the CCP. People that use TikTok will use VPNs to do so if needed (TikTok also would no longer have to listen to the US government, probably intensifying the data collection), and otherwise the CCP can just purchase (or steal) the data from US data brokers, because those are still very much legal. Did we forget about Cambridge Analytica, where an adversarial foreign government used our own domestic companies against us?
I bet less than 2% of users use VPNs. They won’t have much content, if any, from domestic creators. They’ll only be interacting with the other 2% of American users along with foriegn content.
I don’t think people with enough brain cells to use VPN will are China’s target demographic, and I don’t think VPN users will constitute a fraction of activity you are suggesting they will.
I really like how you point out the danger of the Cambridge Analytica incident, but then bemoan trying to keep data harvesting away from a foreign adversary.
Domestic data policy drastically needs an overhaul, but we have to start somewhere. Also, Cambridge Analytica had a fucking shitstain president/administration running interference because they benefited directly from it. Glad we have accountability this time around.
TikTok users or in general? Either way, it's higher than that, and will only increase with bills like this (and the many state-issued porn bans).
VPNs aren't hard to use, by design. Do you really think people need in-depth tutorials on how to press a button in an app? Also, there's already people demonstrating VPN use on TikTok, for if the ban actually happens.
You have very black and white thinking. I'm bemoaning it because it doesn't actually protect US citizens. It doesn't stop China from harvesting our data, and it doesn't stop domestic companies either. But good try, trying to belittle the massive data breaches that have happened without TikTok's help.
Once again, this isn't the start of that. Congress is more than happy to allow domestic companies to harvest our data, because half of the time they're getting a cut. This will not open any doors for future privacy bills. The only possibility with this is that congress crafts another targeted bill to get rid of another company for whatever reason.
Interesting that you'd bring that up, seeing as congress just set this precedent for banning companies right before that shitstain has a real chance of getting into office. Do you really want the Trump administration to pass a bill like this for another company?
It's almost like we don't have universal healthcare. Are your BFFS in Congress going to fix that soon or are they busy banning a stupid dancing app?
Lmao “BFFS.” You love making me into whatever you want to rail against.
Congress didn’t ban an app. They requested data on where their information flows, and the “stupid dancing app” opted to leave the market instead of comply.
You don’t even know what the fuck you’re going on about haha
Haha did your besties pass universal healthcare?
They passed the bill because someone is getting a cut. It isn't to protect the public. If they wanted to protect the public we would have universal healthcare and a ban on guns.
I disagree. I listened when it was presented to Congress. I read a good amount of the data justifying the required transfer. If you don’t think this bill protects the public, there really is no reasoning with you.
Someone will get a cut specifically because TikTok chooses not to prove where their data flows. They had a choice, and chose to exit the market.
But sure, you can frame it like we forced them to leave the market, which isn’t the case. They could have verified their data flow and remained if they were not abusing it.
Unless it's classified link it.
You can literally watch the congressional hearings yourself.
Here’s one video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhKX8zF2FQw
I watched it live, so I don’t know how complete or edited this recording of the hearing is. Talk to you in 5.5 hours after you watch the thing you requested.
Can you at least try and clarify what in the hearings convinced you so much? I've seen some of these hearings. Some of them are complete BS political threater.
I mean, what would you have liked to see that would've proved the data is treated exactly the same as every other American company that harvests our data?
What part do they talk about universal healthcare?
How is universal healthcare coming?
Taking longer than it should.
Any other completely unrelated questions you’d like to ask?
Unrelated? We were talking about protecting the public and you are talking about a stupid fucking app where people learn dance moves from.
Who are you brought to you by? Meta or Alphabet or Reddit or X?
Yay, more YouTube and Instagram. What we always wanted. Can't wait to have maybe one day Meta and Alphabet will combine so we can only have one service!
That's not how due process and liberal democracy works. The government has to prove you're doing it. Setting any precedent that you have to prove you're not doing something (an impossible task) is incredibly dangerous.
It's cute how you think that the only government that's using our own data against us is china. Might want to step back and look at our own government, then apply your same line of thinking to all big tech companies in existence right now.
Exactly: banning TikTok is nothing more than a good start. We need to destroy Facebook, Twitter and Reddit next.
That will never happen, at least not in this way. Because it wasn't anything to do with their data collection, or their company structure. Congress is happy to allow domestic data collection and want Americans addicted to American apps so that they get a cut.
You’re extremely dull if youre suggesting I don’t know data is abused left and right all over the place. But if TikTok is so bad it’s can’t even fit within our abusive system, it deserves to transfer or exit.
You’re missing the forest for the trees.
And you aren't even reading what I wrote. In no post did I defend tiktok... I merely stated that what it is doing is also being done by american based companies and they should be addressed as well.
No doubt, but accountability starts somewhere, so why have a problem with this? Why not celebrate and then demand equitable action domestically?
“I’m not defending TikTok. I’m just bemoaning action being taken against them because bad things happen with other companies!” Not a great look.
Where did I say I had a problem with this? So much knee jerking in here. I am stating that lawmakers should apply these same laws to our own social media. The same lawmakers who will most likely profit off this decision.
Because this isn't accountability? It won't start any change with domestic companies, because it doesn't apply to them. This isn't the start of anything. If you think they're going to use this as the starting point for actual privacy legislation, you're very ignorant of how congress works.
Data collection will still happen domestically, and another Cambridge Analytica will happen, so long as domestic data brokers are legal.
How about we start with universal healthcare and then we worry about children learning dancing, right here in River City
Maybe they are dull from being sick due to the lack of universal healthcare
Nice alt-account
It's cute how you think many of us haven't applied that big thinking to all big tech. A Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter ban absolutely should happen.
So you know exactly what I think about everyone else based on a single post to one person. Fucking Kreskin over here.
Damn that's a really old ass reference, ok boomer.
You don't have to be old to know history and pop culture references.
The good ending
Nobody is gonna use a VPN to get their TikTok fix. They'll use Facebook Reels or YouTube shorts, since most content creators cross-post their stuff there anyway.
Which is the actual intent of attacking a single point of the problem instead of the actual problem of the abuse of end users by all the corpo's social media and other apps., free or otherwise is no longer important.
People on TikTok are already discussing using VPNs, so it will happen if not sold.
And either way, it's almost like congress doesn't care about addictive social media, seeing as it's fine if domestic companies create addictive algorithms. They'll even let foreign governments manipulate the populous via domestic companies, so long as they get a cut of the cash.
I will probably do it. Out of spite. Might even show my Congressional rep at the next town hall meeting.
You need more than a handful of brain cells for that, so it's not exactly the easily manipulated target audience of TikTok.
Passing a law to give the executive branch overreaching censorship authority over the internet while simultaneously campaigning that the other option in the next election wants to use the power of that office to overthrow democracy. This is the “good ending”.
It’s almost like TikTok was given a chance to prove our data doesn’t flow to the Chinese government, and TikTok decided to exit the market than prove where their data flows.
But sure, let’s just pretend we randomly forced them out with an executive overreach lmao
Almost as if X altered an election and nothing happened. Must be the skin color of the owners.
All the folks quoting what a small part of their audience the US is, never mention what percentage of their gross the US is. CCP won't pay for eyeballs in Azerbaijan.
China. It's China that "said".
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/ensuring-a-safe-authentic-space-during-times-of-conflict
I don't see how anyone is hurt by losing access to Tiktok. The only sad part about this is that all social media isn't banned.
You are literally posting this to social media right now. Do you think it would be cool to ban or force a sale of Lemmy to a US corp?
Is Lemmy using a predatory algorithm designed to enrich itself at the expense of the well being of its users and utilize its platform to influence US policy against its own interests? If that answer was yes, then absolutely. With Lemmy being of service to its users without making us its cattle, I'll advocate for it as opposed to against it.
Dude, the bill has nothing to do with anything you said. You're criticizing capitalism and the lack of regulations on social media corporations.
My understanding is this bill is about forcing the sale of a company owned by a "foreign adversary" which is vague as shit just like the patriot act, which took (some of) the public 20+ years to realize was probably not a good idea.
Does congress care about data collection and predatory algorithms, though? If so, why did they just waste their time crafting a targeted bill rather than actually making those practices illegal?
If congress suddenly decided that they didn't like a company for whatever reason, they'll craft another targeted bill like this one. Trump could win this year, do you really want this precedent set right before that?
Luckily, Lemmy is much more difficult due to it's decentralized nature. However, since congress is clearly more than willing to craft targeted bills, it's not out of the question.
You mean like Facebook? Which isn't being banned?
I love posting how we should ban Facebook, I even post on Facebook about banning Facebook....from the website of course.
Straight up yes, I'm gonna explain this hot take right now so buckle up.
Lemmy operates on the same basic set of principles that Reddit does. Upvotes send a post up, downvotes send a post down, moderation abilities and succession is controlled by the select few who create a popular channel, and also administrators. Pretty easy, pretty simple so far.
Algorithms don't refer only to implicit incentive structures, but explicit ones, as well. How many posts have you seen on lemmy that are just really stupid propaganda memes? That's what the platform explicitly incentivizes with it's system of upvotes and downvotes. Low rent, low effort posts that vibe with a large majority of the audience are what's going to get more attention and more engagement, and that's going to push a post up, in a kind of feedback loop that hopefully tries to separate the wheat from the chaff. Really, all it does is separate the low rent dopamine content from everything else. I would say the incentivization of low rent behavior by these explicit mechanisms is somewhat predatory, yes.
As to how lemmy is enriched by this process, lemmy gets more attention. so lemmy gets more power inside of the sphere of internet attention, culture, and propaganda. Lemmy as a whole, obviously, which probably ends up meaning the developers. The whole thing being more open source and federated obviously puts this much more into contention than Reddit, sure, but that doesn't really eliminate the basic problems that come about at the very conception of this platform, these problems of echo chambers. You can even see that forming now in a bunch of different instances. You can see that bias in hexbear, ml, world being plagued by a bunch of brainlet neolibs. It's pretty obvious that the system confines everyone to their bubbles.
This is all to basically equivocate any interaction having been had online as being predatory in some way, and as enriching some party. Any mechanism which you use to organize the slew of information coming at you is going to have an inherent set of biases, pros and cons, and is inherently going to prey on some of those biases compared to others. So if we've equivocated all social media with basically all form of social interaction online, then the internet itself was probably a mistake.
Tl;dr IRC is a form of social media. Real life is a form of social media.
You are on social media. You can leave any time, that was always allowed.
I see nothing wrong with posting to social media to advocate against it, I'll feel free to stay.
Does your posting history bear out that that’s why you’re here, though? 🤷♂️ I’m not asking for you to justify it to me, it’s just silly to pretend you’re not participating in something you say should be banned.
My posting history bears out extensive shitposting and calling things as they're seen. I don't take any issue with Lemmy/Fediverse due to how they're decentralized and orchestrated. I'm against predatory algorithms and user manipulation. I believe that the Fediverse itself will be a good thing until it becomes the villain, much like how our utopian social experiments usually go.
You joke but this has a chilling effect on all sm platforms based outside of the US. They just took a massive shit on the 1st amendment.
Oh, so the 1A protects Social Media activity again? When did it change?
It always has, at least from US government. Have you not read the constitution?
Oh, so we can agree that the US Government "asking" Twitter and other media outlets to interfere with the coverage of certain stories is also a 1A violation? Excellent!
I do need to ask your opinion on this Supreme Court case though...
Yes, I would argue it was. Not quite as brazenly but yes.
lol
1st amendment protects citizens, not foreigners.
Except this ban is doing the exact opposite. It's only affecting US citizens. Foreigners are not affected
So everyone on TikTok is a foreigner now?
Banning TikTok, a foreign controlled company, does not infringe on the 1st amendment. Freedom of speech isn't impaired because of some dipshit social media app that actively fucks everyone except the Chinese government over.
I didn't say the bill did.
Either way, TikTok is not the only avenue for the Chinese government to use to fuck us. They'll just find another way, one that isn't so visible and easily regulated. This doesn't really solve much; it's just going to piss people off by taking away their choice and push breaches of personal privacy into the shadows where the US has no jurisdiction.
You don't want healthcare. Because we said so.
Its all to get around passing a real privacy law with teeth.
lmao, they don't want a real privacy law, they want to have a monopoly in spying on Americans.
Not only that, they want to have a monopoly on on what kind of media content gets delivered to americans.
Why do bots! Love exclamation marks! So much!
No! You have to interspace the exclamation marks. Otherwise you look crazy!
Why do bots
Suddenly appear? 🐦
CCPA (in California) is a good first step. Ideally something similar should be enacted for the entire country.
Just as a reminder, we have been 'fighting for 15' since 2012. But when it comes to leveraging foreign companies with bans to force them to sell to US oligarchs we can move at blazing speed through the least functional congrss in recent history. There are two very different Americas depending on how much money you have.
Least functional Congress in
recenthistoryToo bad we can't ban Meta, Twitter, and Snapchat while we're at it.
won’t happen
Where do you think the FBI gets their domestic terrorist intel from 😂
TikTok will cut a deal to send your dick picks to Greenbelt.
Fuck IKR, call the cops because someone side swiped your car and you'll get no response. Get on FB or Twitter and talk about how you're planning a bombing and federal agents will show up at your house.
This is not a ban and it was never meant to be. They just force tiktok to sell the US market to a US company. Said US company will continue the platform just like it is at the moment, just with a bit more of that sweet American propaganda mixed into it. Tiktok won't be gone, all that data will just go to the NSA instead of the CCP, that's all they wanted.
China says they're not selling TikTok, which makes it a ban, which is excellent news, actually.
Seriously! Ban everything that is bad for people! That has never backfired ever
I mean, remember when we banned all those really bad and dangerous horror comics and nearly collapsed a whole industry of artists, publishers, and distributors for an entire generation so we could feel morally superior about our own hypercritical actions and interests?
We're really making things great again now!
^^/s
Even though i dont think banning tiktok is a good idea purely because of the concept, those boards are funny. "Tiktok changed my life for the better"
They're also all printed, and with the same font. I'm assuming it's a stock photo, but if that's from a real protest I don't trust those protestors.who the hell gets a protest sign printed?
Its because the company literally paid shills to stump for them in person, call Congress, etc.
They paid for lobbyists!?! Holy shit hold the presses!
No *one outside of some influencers were paid lmao. People contacted Congress but they weren't paid, and a quick Google search brought up zero result of people being paid *outside of the influencers. So I'd love to see where you're sourcing this from.
Edit: Correction - about 30 influencers were paid to visit events for Tik Tok. I'll rescind saying that literally no one was paid: that's point is wrong. My main point was that average users weren't paid to call into Congress. And the vast majority that called in or have talked out against the ban did so of their own volition rather than being paid as implied by OP's comment
let me duckduckgo that for you
Literally the first result on ddg: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-rally-washington-chew-testimony/
Other reports from different sources:
The way it was presented was that they paid average users to call Congress which is disingenuous. I'll admit I was wrong when I came to the influencers being paid for in person events, but that's only a smaller group of people and events. The vast majority were not paid and did so of their own volition.
Edit: Didn't realize OP and the replier were different people. That's also on me.
What are you downvoting me for? I didn't write that post lol...
BTW, you might want to update your correction: According to https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-rally-washington-chew-testimony/
30 influencers and their plus ones and 10 other people are paid. These are only people that wired has talked to, so there might be more people being paid one way or another.
And "everyone we talked to took the free hotel": everyone wired has talked to has received some benefit from tiktok.
I don't really know the scale of the rally, but seeing the rally photo from different sources: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dc+tiktok+protest&iax=images&ia=images , it seem like most cameras are pointing towards the same 15 people, all with signs distributed by tiktok.
I don't think I will be as confident as you about the size of the protest. Even if there were 100 people there, that still means over 50% of the protesters received direct compensation from TikTok specifically for this protest.
Lots of protests actually. It's not hard.
A lot of people started their businesses on Tiktok. The Tiktok algorithm is actually way better than that of Instagram to reach your target niche. A lot content creators and marketing exes do realize this.
I don’t understand the mentality of users, of course of obviously older generation here, that realize Tiktok did in fact change a lot of people’s lives. It’s not just an app for dancing.
Let’s not forget the Tiktok Shop section.
Imagine licking the boots of any corporate like this LOL.
I believe they are talking about a specific community that has formed over TikTok, a very anticapitalist and cosmopolitan one, and not about the platform itself.
If your algorithm is favoring that content, your short videos will be full of people talking about all things wrong in our global state of affairs; alternatives and temporal solutions (that happen to harm corporations, ironically because the information is becoming popular thanks to one, so I guess it's the ladder to get to the rooftop); global situations that are not talked or barely talked on regular news (like Congo, Palestine, etc.); the truth behind Western propaganda and lies, especially the ones against populations and ideologies (e.g., "this country doesn't prosper because they're [whatever]" vs "we exploited and condemn this country to scarcity for decades and lied about it"); etcetera. In my time there, I've learnt a couple things.
I know that these content creators will find another platform if TikTok goes down. Lemmy has shown me that social media can be free of corporations, but that's something many people are not aware of yet, especially since the techy people that could explain it on TikTok are not there.
So... yeah, TikTok has some interesting sides content-wise. There's even the rumor that this is one of the reasons they want it banned in the U.S.
Do Facebook and Twitter next.
Yes US needs privacy laws, not just banning one of the many data-mining social networks.
The data that they collect and what they use it for.
"The Chinese oligarchs are taking over!" - US oligarchs probably
US oligarchs most definitely
can we ban or move YouTube shorts elsewhere while we are at it?
Just block them vua Adblock.
Why? Just don't watch them.
They're noise in the search results. If there was a "no shorts" filter, I would have used it long ago.
Revanced and FreeTube.
exactly, i just want videos not noise. i wish Google would make a different app and website focused on shorts
They should call it.... Gine.
This comment section is astounding.
If you think it’s good that congress passed a ban of a social media platform tied to a bill funding two foreign wars you’re either a fed or delusional.
If social media apps exist to slurp up as much user info as possible, and they do, then it makes sense to be concerned about the government that they're subject to.
Why is it okay for domestic companies to collect the same data and sell it to China, then?
This shouldn't just affect foreign companies if it's about data collection. It should have been an actual privacy bill. US citizens' privacy will be no better after this.
It's not ok.
But the fact is that China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia are adversaries of the United States, and the US government is justified in its concern.
They didn't seem to care much when Cambridge Analytica happened, and that was a foreign adversary. So what's different here?
The United Kingdom is not an adversary of the United States. In fact it's one of our closest allies. But, if anything, that suggests this law isn't enough, not that it's too much.
I meant that the data they collected was breached by a foreign adversary, thought that was pretty clear but guess not.
And the fact that a foreign adversary obtained this information was very bad, agreed? Clearly, it makes sense to take steps to keep that kind of information out of adversarial hands.
Yes, my point was this only affects one of them. It doesn't fix the root of the problem, because that's not the bill's target.
In fact, if TikTok remains, and does get banned, it just makes it so they no longer have to listen to the US government for anything.
A foreign adversary was responsible for the theft of the data that Cambridge shouldn't have had. That was what I meant.
I saw that farther down in the chain which is why I came back and deleted my comment.
With the sort of detailed personal profile a social media app has on you, they could target your specific beliefs, religious convictions, sexual preferences, political affiliation, fears, interests, desires, etc. to manipulate your opinion in their interests. Doing this on a population-wide scale is what social media platforms are all about (i.e. targeted advertising). It's wise to be concerned about an adversary having such a tool at its disposal. And this is true for all countries, not just the US.
I probably shouldnt be celebrating this but I am. I fucking despise Tiktok with a passion, I hate its users, its creators, I hate the short form content trend it started and its algorithm based content delivery systems that every other app copied but worse, I hate the sexualisation of minors and peddling that content to pedos, I hate the clout chasing in general, I hate tiktok trends and "challenged". and I hate the general brainrot it has caused.
What are you celebrating, exactly? TikTok isn't going away, it's just going to be sold to American investors.
Also that damned Disco music!
Yeah but that's just on YouTube and Facebook now. Nobody is going to regulate them in the slightest.
It is a slap in the face if they want to say it is too influential to have an adversarial state control it, at the same time leaving it fine for local billionaires to do the exact same things.
I mean... eh? TikTok is hardly the first platform to embrace short-form video. I think the dislike for the app is overblown.
The style is reflective of the medium. No point in making big budget audio/visual multi-hour immersive experiences for a cell phone screen with some headphones. The media has to be short because its for an audience that's stealing time in the middle of a commute or during a break at school or the office. The continuous-feed style is something we just managed to achieve with high speed mobile internet (TikTok would have been impossible on a dial-up device).
Its a young medium. People are still learning what works and what doesn't. And its as prone to getting enshittified as every other venue, thanks to the endless need for higher profits.
But as someone who grew up watching Albino Blacksheep and YTMND meme-tier content and owns a DVD of Super Bowl Commercials, I gotta say that we've had a lot worse.
People say this shit about every medium. And there's definitely awful pieces of individual content.
But a lot of it just comes down to the hyper-sensationalist marketing. And its common to every conceivable media, from Comic Book style front page of print to the "Bwooooong!" they put in every new movie trailer.
If TikToks suck, its largely because they're aping the worst aspects of all the other established media forms.
always has been, with vine.
always has been, with twitter, facebook, instagram, snapchat, youtube, uhhhhh... vine, yeah, just mentioned that one. discord, tinder. literally everything.
Look at what the great adpocalypse of youtube was ostensibly about, then look at what it was really about. In any case, always has been.
Always has been.
Assuming you mean "challenge", you could check out the harlem shake, the ice bucket challenge, god, there's a lot of them honestly. Gangnam style. I think probably this is just like, meme culture more broadly, which, say it with me now: always has been.
And finally, always has been.
Will there be a TikTok dance on TikTok that covers this event?
The Tiktok dance to end all Tiktok dances. Literally.
They never got over Snowden.
They may just pull out of the US completely
They'd be right to do so.
The way this got passed was criminally sleazy. And there's no reason for a foreign company to hand over its IP to some Wall Street thugs.
The can sell to non-us companies no problem. Doesn't have to involve Wallstreet.
Why would they do that? Any arrangement that sees money come back to them more than once will be seen as them still owning it. And they aren't about to open the door to their codebase and algorithm when they still have the entire rest of the world. It's something like 6.5 billion people who aren't American or Chinese on this planet.
I'm not saying they would, just saying it doesn't have to involve Wallstreet.
that's true too
And nothing of value was lost. While I've railed against the unwarranted mass data collection by the NSA and other 3-letter agencies via US carriers and app creators, Tik-Tok is controlled by a foreign adversary that is actively engaging in cyber attacks and has been shown to have far-reaching data collection capacities.
People can be mad about the US policies and celebrate the banning of Tik-Tok at the same time.
Best thing to do if you disobey the first rule: don't stick your Tik in crazy.
Trudat
I have mixed feelings. Like I’m glad we’re funding Ukraine, angry we’re finding Israel, and mixed about TikTok. I dislike the app, but that’s no reason to ban something. I think all social media has the issues associated with it except one: a foreign country controls the algorithm. Also this is standard policy for foreign companies in China and turnabout is fair play.
It seems like a lot of people think moves like this are about actual national security like congress claims,
It blows my fuckin mind now damn stupid the average American is
I mean to an extent it is. America is mad China has a platform that's popular with Americans that they can't control. The effects of this were shown with the fact that America couldn't control the narrative over the Israel-Palestine issue after October 7th. So to increase national security and try to gain back the control they had they're getting rid of TikTok.
Narrative control != National Security in a Democracy.
I agree that the government attempting to have this kind of control in a democracy is wrong but it still does provide national security. Security is good but can be taken too far and in all honestly we've been very far past what's too far for a while with stuff like the Patriot act.
define national security
So the next nine months will be TikTok pushing pro Trump propaganda 24/7, mobilising the youth against Biden, only to be forced to sell by Trump anyway because everyone who hops into bed with populists gets fucked regardless.
Weak, totalitarian strategy. If we’re worried about China taking over, becoming China is not the right way to fight that.
And pretending that forcing American ownership cuts out China’s influence is foolish.
Here comes POS billionaire like Moron Musk to buy TikTok and turn it into Nazi propaganda machine
Nah, it'll get sold to a company registered in the US or Europe that is funded by various shell companies and private investment groups, most of which will be owned by Chinese Billionaires.
I'm convinced that US lawmakers believe that the pro-gaza sentiment is coming from TikTok. The timing, the mechanism. They see themselves as no longer able to control the narrative and are blaming 'non-US' social media.
I'd like to point out that the US has been publicly going after TikTok since the Trump Administration so I'm unconvinced that the timing lines up.
I think it's more so just about controlling narratives in general. Tiktok has a lot of real time tracking of politician corruption and trades. A lot of good useful info for political activism, etc.
So did Twitter and even in the Pre-Elon days the Federal Government didn't go after it like this.
Now they can move to better platforms like mastodon, lemmy, peertube, pixelfed, which unlike tiktok, can be hosted outside the U.S. and don't seek to suck every bit of data out of every user.
Arguably better platforms to organize activism, especially in conjunction with secure messaging apps that are out of the U.S. control.
And yet it finally got the momentum to succeed now, during all these Gaza protests and when the US-Israeli mainline narratives have been starting to break down for the first time.
Is that picture AI-generated? The article claims it's from GettyImages and shot on Capitol Hill, but... The signs are too perfect. They all follow the name design, the text in crispy clear, the colours uniform, and the sign itself 1 atom thin.
Uh yeah, TikTok 100% coordinated those signs. It doesn't invalidate the protest, many of them use coordinated signs.
Almost like they were part of a coordinated campaign
It’s simply photoshopped.
Not to take a page out of tin foil hat gangs book, but paid protesters imo. Byte dance probably funded them and had the signs made / distributed amongst them.
I think we're where China was in 2005--2010: a platform that can (and does) promote values that are against the interests of our nation(s) is popular with our youth. The real dilemma is "can we do better", and these days it seems not.
History suggests that the real solution to TikTok isn't banning it; China trying to block western sites did nothing save foment resentment and foster a VPN industry. Take the next step instead - make something that does TikTok better than TikTok, then push it hard. Either that or do what is being done to YouTube/Google - run it into the ground!
Isn't this unconstiutional?
Yeah thatll go over well with younger more democrat voters
Leave it to Democrats to do the stupidest thing possible
We literally never might win like a generation of voters back. Trump had already come out against the bill. Young "rebels" are absolutely going to flock to him thinking Biden is going absolutely nuts with power - since that's already what they've been hearing
TikTok will just be owned by a different company. It will still exist.
GOOD! An 🦅American🦅 company wouldn't use people's data for nefarious purposes or sell it to the highest bidder. No sir, not a red blooded American company.
Time for some wild conjecture!
Bytedance and the CPC both know how unlikely it is that TikTok will be allowed to continue operating in the US. Despite what they're saying, I don't think they actually believe they have any chance at winning that lawsuit.
They tried to stop the law from passing but now that it's been signed they're shifting strategies. They're going to go all in on using TikTok to paint the US as authoritarian and hypocritical. Their primary targets will be young people outside the US.
Looking around the world I expect this will have a lot of traction in developing countries. If you look at wonky foreign policy publication you'll see that the diplomacy nerds have spent the last decade or so worrying about developing nations realigning with China. That will probably accelerate.
They'll probably also have some success with younger Americans. Older American's will probably be unconvinced.
It obviously won't have any affect on China's ability to buy data on US citizens from any number of data brokers. I wouldn't be totally surprised if China has at least some access to data from Five Eyes.
Chinas ability to influence opinion probably won't change much either. We used to call that sort of tactic "information warfare" or "psychological warfare". Sending messages to an opponent, adversary or rival in order to confuse or demoralize them has been going on for millennia. Nations constantly work to develop new methods to do so. Tiktok isn't the first or last of such tools and any large nation has a host of other such options at their disposal.
Normally yeah but this was a called hit by the wealthy donor class. The same ones giving million dollar vacations to the Supreme Court judges.
On what basis? The legal power of the US government to break up or otherwise force divestment of corporate assets is the basis upon which antitrust law is built. The only way this law could be overturned is it's found unconstitutional, and if that happens, you can say goodbye to the FTC.
On the grounds that they are not breaking it up because it has monopoly but because they don't like it can be used for Chinese propaganda. Which is limiting speech.
Also, they require it to be sold to non-chinese buyer, which is discriminatory.
Pretty sure it's because tiktok is literal Chinese Spyware designed to let them listen through any device that has tiktok installed.
Like I get people are getting pissy about losing a favored social media but let's not act like it's not actually a real potential issue.
Where are you getting that from? Seriously if I saw that from a reputable malware reporter I'd support this in an instant. If this is true please link your source.
As opposed to every other social media? If they want to protect privacy, Congress is allowed to pass privacy laws that apply to all companies. They are not allowed to single just one out.
What other social medias are based in countries that want to manipulate American citizens in an attempt to destabilize our democracy?
Meta is based in America and it seems that this is the country that wants to destabilize american democracy the most.
So its not an issue if american companies destabilize democracy? Just foreign ones?
Yeah I see the irony in my argument.
Idk I just don't see something like that in the hands of an external force that wants to see us fall as a good thing.
At least with American companies I can tell myself "well at least they live here so they're less likely to want to fuck it all up"
Like I said I see the irony but still have severe reservations.
The social media at home (ie Twitter, Facebook, reddit) have been manipulating all citizens into destabilizing democracy with all the right-wing propaganda and it is getting worse every day. I can go to Twitter any day of the week and see some slander in the "What's hot" section for any democratic/liberal leader while ass licking every conservative one depending on which country you are from. And the posts are mostly made by young Russian/etc bots. The problem is it seems to be working.
It's not just tik tok thats used for this shit. But the others are OK because they are 'MURICAN? It's a double standard. I'm not defending tik tok, but I personally think Twitter, etc need to be sold as well.
I agree it's a double standard.
I suppose for me personally it falls into the us us them ideology. I feel better with those companies at least having stake in the country they exist in.
Idk the more I think about it the more I realize how naive of a thought that is but I just don't like the idea of an enemy of the US having that power over US citizens.
They're based in Singapore and Los Angeles.
Yeah! I only want American spyware! USA! USA! USA!
See my reply to your sibling comment. This is wishful thinking. You could be right, but it's just as likely (I'd argue more likely) you're wrong.
Sorry if it sounded like I did not think TikTok is used for espionage. I am sure it is, just like Google, Facebook, etc. are used by the NSA (thanks Snowden for giving us proof of this). Its just funny to me that the US gov has to resort to banning it, because they spent years convincing people Tech Giants spying on them is ok. And now when they say don't use TikTok, everyone laughs at them.
I couldn't agree more. IMO the right solution is to regulate data collection, mandate algorithmic transparency, and require opt out for algorithmic curation.
But the discussion isn't about whether this is the right remedy (IMO it's not) but about whether the remedy will be held up by the courts.
Well, I think the courts should strike it down because:
Lmao. Then bring an anti-trust case? That power is specifically in reference to that and requires the government to prove it's case in court. Not just make a declaration.
You're missing my point.
In the case of antitrust law, the government has to prove its case in court because that's the way the Sherman Act and related laws are written, not because the constitution necessarily requires it. And it's the constitutional interpretation that matters as this is a law passed by Congress. A constitutional challenge is the only way to reverse it.
That said, TikTok is owned by a Chinese organization. So if I'm wrong and the constitution does protect corporations from forced divestment in a situation like this, it wouldn't apply to TikTok. This is much closer to protectionist trade policy and I'm not aware of any cases where such acts were found to be unconstitutional. To the contrary, as a recent example, Huawei was banned from American markets on national security grounds (see: CFIUS) and while challenged in court, those challenges were defeated. And then there's OFAC and the entire American sanctions regime (e.g. Russian asset seizures).
To be clear: I am not saying I support this ban one way or the other. I'm saying the belief that this will easily be struck down in court is misguided and that it's not an obvious slam dunk.
Huawei was banned from critical infrastructure. You can still buy their products for personal use.
And the Anti-Trust laws were written that way because that's the Due Process the Constitution demands. The executive cannot just declare something punitive. That has been the standard for over 200 years.
Also, if there aren't rights for foreigners in the US then there aren't rights for citizens. Because the loss of your rights is always just one declaration away. Which is why rights for everyone inside our borders has been the standard for 70 years.
In what way does that invalidate it as an example?
CFIUS and OFAC would beg to differ.
Bytedance isn't inside your borders and the constitution doesn't protect extra-nationals. There's a reason Guantanamo Bay still exists.
You wouldn't be able to use TikTok as a personal thing. This isn't critical infrastructure.
So again. Not personal use. Also, refunding an investment is entirely different than shutting down a business.
And LMAO. If Bytedance wasn't inside the borders then this wouldn't matter. Saying they aren't inside the borders is possibly the most hilarious bad faith thing I've seen in this entire debacle.
I'm sorry, but this is irrelevant. Look at the list of CFIUS cases. Among them:
Would you agree that Grindr probably doesn't count as "critical infrastructure"?
(BTW, before you mention it, the CFIUS case on that list vis a vis TikTok was reversed by the court because they ruled the executive exceeded the bounds of the IEEPA, not because the IEEPA itself was unconstitutional).
LOL security risks are literally the justification for the bill. The bill even says as much:
So if CFIUS is constitutional, then I fail to see why this law is any different.
Look, again, I get it, I think the law is dumb, too.
But it is absolutely not a slam dunk that the law will get struck down by the courts, whether you like it or not.
The difference between your position and mine is I can acknowledge I may turn out to be wrong.
Furthermore, ByteDance absolutely is not operating within US borders. It's incorporated in China and the Caymans (in the latter case as a variable interest entity so that Americans can buy economic exposure to ByteDance shares that otherwise don't trade on any US stock exchanges).
TikTok, a wholly own subsidiary, is incorporated within the US. A forced divestiture affects the parent company (ByteDance).
The real question is whether the ban itself, if divestment doesn't occur, would be constitutional, given that would affect TikTok Ltd., and that, to me, is unclear, and I expect it's that portion of the law where TikTok is most likely to succeed in courts.
Why would a court be able to "easily find this was handled improperly"?
Tiktok helped my life for the better 😀.... LOL. Sure but it is also a Chinese company that can do things to turn your life and the life of everyone around you into living hell if the government do wishes to.
I think what I would want my relationship with the Chinese country to be like is just simple transactions... I give you this money and I buy that thing. Done, end of transaction. I would like that for all phone tech companies actually. None of this shit about updates because they sold me a shit phone. None of the here's 8 features, then an update leaves you with 3 features only.
Twitter/x is owned by an unhinged South African billionaire and Middle East oil Barrons. We can discuss the theoretical abuse of TikTok, but X is damaging our democracy today.
Fuck them both!
Straight into the garbage.
Meanwhile everyone has already forget when Cambridge Analytics used Meta and Facebook to influence voters into giving us Trump with the help of Russian propaganda. The hypocrisy is so blatant They just want only US oligarchs making money and they want to be able to censor things young people are seeing nowadays from around the world. Every other excuse is a screen.
This is possible. But at home we don't watch TV and I just blocked YouTube altogether from my kids. That website is rancid. I wouldn't let my kids on TikTok either if I was me. And I am me.
However you are absolutely right. How else will you move people who don't know any better to actually vote for you? And what sector of the population doesn't know all the shit you have done in the past 30 years than people who haven't lived 30 years and haven't paid attention in history class, not care much about it? Teenagers! That population lives on TikTok. So you are absolutely right. Because if TikTok was a porn site nobody would give a fuck except Texas.
That's the thing. I definitely think short form content, and spawning even before that, the news bite culture, has been bad for attention spans, and I wouldn't mind some sort of regulation on that with respect to kids probably. If I ever get a kid, they'll be mad at me for being one of the last of their friends to get a smart phone lol.
But the fact that it's only Tik Tok and not the just as algorithm-laden YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, and Snapchat stories kind of proves it's not for the good reasons people keep bringing up, of mental health or privacy. So they have to concoct the red scare, "China can manipulate our youth" angle. Even though we already had foreign companies and states influencing Americans, especially our older people, on other good, homegrown social media companies, like Meta and Twitter. So it won't make a difference on that front, so it's for less good reasons, like protecting American social media monopolies and censorship of news, the exact stuff we criticize China for. Then they're going to pat themselves on the back about solving the problem. That's the part that bothers me, i suppose. The lies and hypocrisy.
TikTok is the primary source of brain-rot in 2024, please, somebody, change my mind.
Bye vertical videos you won't be missed by anybody with a brain in their head.
If only. Vertical videos suck and short form sucks harder.
Yes, you are absolutely correct. Flush that garbage away forever, I say. It's garbage and turds.
Tiktok style video selfie mode talking about random bullshit is the worst kind of social media invented yet. Nobody should care what your random face looks like watching some other bullshit on social media. There's no need for that level of narcissism in society, we have more than enough everywhere else.
Reading through these comments... yikes guys. I use TikTok sometimes, and love the content it provides that YouTube does not provide. Seeing the straight up hate for the app, mixed with the misunderstanding of what the app CAN be if you actually use it, is chilling to say the least. If they were banning ALL social media apps, and their companies, I'd be all for this. As it is, I can not see why you would all be cheering so hard for TikTok to be sold to some American asshole, just for it to start getting enshittified, and then STILL sell your data to Russia, China, and anyone else who wants a slice. The fact you are all hating on TikTok so much, but not questioning our own American social media companies, and wanting them to be banned too, is frightening.
I've seen a few comments saying it is spyware. On iOS at least, there is an icon that pops up to let you know when an app is using your camera or microphone. Not only that, but when you start an app for the first time, it has to request to you the user if you want to allow it access to these things. I said no, of course, because when I first started using it, I fucking hated TikTok. Turns out, when you use it for like a week, it starts to get REALLY good at delivering content you want to see.
Anyway, it doesn't matter, as I'm sure plenty of you will disagree, complain, and then go on using your American owned social medias, that are still hoovering up and selling your data.
The only differences being that China wasn't making a cent out of me, nor do any of these equally shitty American social medias. Oh well, I guess we just really love our own little national narratives.
A lot of people on Lemmy are just… old.
This thread made me realize this.
If this bill passes and any of you criticizes China/Russia for banning Facebook/Instagram/Twitter etc.. under the name of “lack of freedom of speech”. I will be laughing. A lot.
I have news for you, China has already banned everything and if any western app exists in China, it must have its servers in China and it only works in "cooperation" in a local chinese company(which has complete or partial ownership of the chinese part of the app). Have you ever heard the Great Firewall of China?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall
In fact, both facebook/instagram and twitter have been banned from China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Facebook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter
That's basically what the US asked of Tik Tok. They wanted their servers in the US (so they did) and then they wanted them in cooperation with a US company (which they did, Oracle I think it was). And it still wasn't enough. And now everyone is clapping as the US becomes more and more like China.
I hope this doesn't come off as inflammatory, but are you saying we should be more like China?
First of all, i was answering to someone who seemed like a tankie making a bad faith argument.
The fact that Trump is about to get re-elected as president, seems to indicate that information warfare is very effective. Foreign countries can tap in whatever resentment there is, amplify and guide it. And next thing you know, Ukraine no longer exists.
GOP has gone from the party of McCain who warned the US about Putin, and who Obama laughed at and every democrat accused him of having Cold War mentality, to the party of "Yeah, Putin is cool and the US should be more like Russia", in just a couple years.
Personally, i am a very big "fuck it" man, if humans arent capable of making very basic and easy decisions, let Trump get elected and Russia/China do information warfare(while shielding their own population from it). But some people seem to care about the world and they need to decide what they want.
They have to decide whether they want to use authoritarianism to "save" democracy, or risk it all by having a liberal society and hope people can eventually get educated to make informed decision(while information warfare risks bringing the country to a civil war). As i said, decisions have consequences.
They already have. Please spend some time learning about China.
The difference is that in countries that are not dictatorships you have alternatives that don't seek to suck dry every bits of user data for profit and control.
There are services, like tor, proton, tuta, signal, session, blair, matrix, mastodon, wikipedia, and private and secure OS like graphene, calyx etc., seek to keep user data out of their control and respect user choice.
I have yet to see alternatives like these in a dictatorship. If so, I would have much less problem about China's GFW. It is annoying that I have to keep wechat in its own profile, because I have no way to communicate with people in China, or communicate with others outside when I visit China.
That being said, I am not a fan of countries banning services for no good reason, but I don't know if I want to make an exception for instagram and tiktok etc, because they are very much designed to be manipulative.
But I definitely don't think any countries should ban services that are private, essential, and don't impose manipulative algorithms, like signal, session, mastodon, tor, legitimate VPNs, GrapheneOS, etc. including wikileaks.
this exactly. china bans those platforms for the same reasons the us is banning this one. they are the same.
i don't know why everyone in this thread doesn't understand what you're saying. i think its clear
So dropout, now that you’ve been informed that China has been doing this shit for, well ever really, are you going to be critical of China?
I am very much critical of China. And the United States.
Banning?
Since you didn’t back up your statement, I’ll assign you to the category “Is generally angry and just looks for places to project anger.”
Me, laughing as the idiot americans will be banned from the app, and only the pure VPN users will remain:
No but seriously this is pretty dogshit stupid. The only people happy about this are the omega boomers and pick mes that hated tiktok anyways for what are basically unrelated reasons. Otherwise they'd be equally calling for a larger set of privacy enforcements that encompass all social media sites, which I agree should happen. This seems, to me, to be pretty transparently a protectionist racket. Only we shall control the data of americans, only we shall track them.
And then there's also the people saying that any social media getting banned is kind of a net positive. Fuck you mate what the hell? You're on a pretty explicitly manipulative social media platform right now, it's just one that you're able to tailor to your own biases. Probably it's a net negative to have less propaganda from a variety of sources. Both sides my ass, I guess, fuck your corporate-state disinformation, I got mine.
I dunno. I watched this guy that makes sandwiches, back when I used tiktok. I thought he was pretty cool. I think it would be a shame to see his content get disappeared, which tiktok already has a pretty huge problem with.
The benefit of tiktok and short form content is that you can watch it anywhere, and almost anyone with a phone at this point can produce it. Those of you who hate vertical video content should understand that a phone is the optimal platform on which to consume it, and you should probably be happy for that, because it's not going to outright disappear from the internet otherwise, as we saw before all of this had started. You miss the forest for the trees when you call for heavy-handed outright bans of this stuff. The corporate influence, I can understand getting rid of that, but the platforms themselves, there's legitimately value there. Twitter as a microblogging platform has been used for actual reporting, and even as it exists now, it's being used for that. If you were to get rid of youtube, you would be eliminating a frankly staggering amount of information available out there that, sure, might exist in other places, but that both takes a large risk and relies on google MORE to feed you that correctly when you use a search engine, which as we've seen recently, hasn't been the case. You could do the same with reddit. Delete reddit, and you are deleting a metric fuck ton of information on some valuable stuff, you're deleting a fuck ton of internet culture. These platforms need to be disentangled from their corporate overlords and made more free to own, browse, and use, not outright destroyed.
Is it really that far removed from what Meta was doing when they were unhappy with Canada's laws?
It's the same shit
Ever seen this? (2014 protest against net neutrality stuff)
There's nothing wrong with companies informing their customers on how ongoing legislation will affect them.
That being said, I approve of restricting TikTok's power and influence. I don't approve of it happening like this. This is a problem for every social media company, not just TikTok. Americans need full privacy protections and transparency behind algorithms that shape their content.
Forcing the sale of one company doesn't do much but get it out of China's hands (which... okay fine, this is probably good. We wouldn't be in this scenario in the first place if congress could do anything to put more control in consumer's hands in regards to their privacy/content).
Google and Facebook did the same thing when they were trying to pass SOPA or whatever it was before that made midtier services responsible for content and data of their users. Yet we don't see people up in arms to ban those companies.
This is just about young people changing their minds about the Palestine conflict due to videos on the ground.
Dude, SOPA and PIPA were objectively bad for users.
So what if TikTok goes away, there are other short-form video platforms to replace it.
That's just moving some goalposts. My reply was purely for this person who said Tik Tok needs to be banned because they showed a message to users saying they're about to be banned and asking people to defend them, and this is something other tech and social media companies can do and have done as well. They didn't say anything about the message itself, which wasn't terrible at all. It said no lies, there was no mind control in it.
And btw, Meta is bad for their users as well. Cambridge Analytica fucking got us Trump through Facebook and Instagram. That's bad for the whole country, including all their users. We need a general tech privacy bill, like Europeans have been getting, not this protectionist shit to help US oligarchs keep their billions.
There is a difference between a corporation advocating for the public good, and a corporation advocating for its own good. If your direct comparison is "well, why did no one want to ban Google for telling people to not support SOPA/PIPA" you have to acknowledge that distinction. Google et al were perceived to be useful companies advocating for an important cause, while TikTok is not as well-regarded and therefore its advocacy is (or will be) seen as self-serving.
Oh you're not gonna get any disagreement out of me. The point of my rather flippant response was exactly that- TikTok only gets called out because of the Sinophobia being pushed by Conservatives right now, when all media corporations are the problem.
I mean its a company alerting you to an impending loss of service and asking the only people who can turn course to do something. Its not much different to pornhub putting up a "no longer accessible, reach out to your senator" banner instead of aggressive privacy invading age checks. I think a lot of american websites did something similar when gdpr basically forced them to stop tracking us without consent.
Facebook went out of its way to influence US elections for money, but sure it's the scary chinese who are the problem.
Constitutional right to free expression? Lies. So many get this wrong and they don't understand its limited jurisdiction. And most of the time it's all about their narrative and suppressing the opposing view.
The kids were using the platform to talk about how the boomers got everything wrong, especially Israel, and it threatened their view of themselves.
Not sure if the reason Biden can barely walk is because he's 1000 or because of all those holes in his foot.
Not sure if the reason you can't leave a coherent comment is because you're a bot or just as stupid as one.
Didn't realize it was so tough to infer that banning tiktok might upset big parts of Biden's base, who are already alienated by the Gaza situation, and that I was likening it to shooting oneself in the foot. Sorry.
wHaT aBoUt biDeN?!! gEnOCidE !!1!
"I'm a russian bot BTW Contakt [email protected] if I makfunktion"