Only US tech companies can harvest all that data from their products, I mean, customers.
Banning TikTok in an election year is proof Democrats don’t want to win.
What’s the overlap between people who vote Republican and people who use Tiktok? I’m actually curious.
The age range skews younger, so probably not huge. It’s definitely there though - lots of “tradwife” thinly disguised fetish content. 😒
There’s a reason Trump came out against this ban, he knows it’s going to be unpopular and he loses nothing by flip-flopping on it.
This is just a free W for Trump and an L for Democrats with literally zero upsides. It accomplishes nothing besides pissing people off!
Well, unless there’s a credible national security angle that’s being kept confidential. I kind of suspect there is, since Trump tried to push through similar legislation, but worded it so badly that it never got out of debate… and the likes of Wyden voted for it even while they said it was the wrong legislation to solve the problem.
Please don’t tell me you actually believe them when they cry about national security. It’s almost always a lie.
Usually it’s about economics. But in this case, it may actually be true.
Generally, I consider real natsec issues to be things they can’t tell the public. So when I see privacy minded reps joining in with reps from both side of the aisle, I’m willing to lend a bit of credence to a security angle.
Assuming it’s not just the US being upset that some other autocratic government is controlling the medium du jour.
… and so by whining about natsec they can get you to support anything, as long as they don’t tell you about it?
No, I ignore the whining and consider it may be an issue based on actual behavior, as I originally stated.
Hence the “in this case, they might be actually telling the truth” from the original statement.
Just because they over-use an excuse doesn’t mean that it isn’t true on the odd occasion.
The problem is that so much crying wolf makes it more difficult to tell when it’s real.
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The CPC can just buy data from a different broker. You think Alphabet or Meta are loyal to American interests?
Also, TikTok won’t be banned for months, so it won’t change the campus protests at all. In fact it’ll probably piss the protesters off even more, it’s very obvious government censorship.
Also also, there’s zero proof TikTok is promoting pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content. That’s just what is naturally popular, the reality is that all the other social media companies are suppressing pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content. That’s it.
Facebook absolutely would sell your info to foreign governments, however I’m not convinced Google would.
I know Google harvests a shitton of data and uses it for advertising, but that’s ironically why I think they probably wouldn’t actually sell it. Because Google owns a massive advertising company, it’s in their best interests to keep the data they collect so that other companies can’t pop up and use the data themselves.
Also, if I’m not mistaken, the bill isn’t specifically about tiktok but instead covers the sale of personal data to foreign countries in general. It’s just that it’s worded in a way that tiktok is the obvious target. As such, I’m not sure an American company could sell their customer’s info to China; at least not without laundering it through other companies first.
However, all of that said, I’m not trying to defend the bill, tiktok, Google or Facebook. I don’t like any of those companies and while I think the concept of the bill is good, it’s very obviously focused on tiktok and, like you and others have pointed out, does nothing about the data collection that American companies do.
The law only prohibits the operations of so-called “foreign adversary controlled applications” i.e. companies with Chinese investors.
I’m pretty sure if TikTok was controlled by American investors and sold data to China it would be fine - although there’s also an executive action that bans selling data to foreign adversaries, it also hasn’t actually been implemented by regulators and is pretty simple to work around anyway since a third-party can just buy data from American companies and then sell it to China.
I think a bill like this that targeted all companies that collect data would be good.
Targeting “foreign adversary controlled applications” doesn’t really help anyone.
You think Chinese-owned Tiktok is inciting anti genocide protests on purpose?
That train of thought has interesting implications. American-owned Facebook keeps being caught inciting actual genocides in other countries…
lots of “tradwife”
Wild, I’ve never stumbled on any of that. But it has a really sensitive algorithm and I’m pretty firmly entrenched in the science-travel-pets axis.
They’re both dumb as hell and love to be influenced by autocratic governments
You’re saying that 1/3 of Americans are dumb as hell while repeating BlueAnonsense.
- IT Pro: Cambridge Analytica models were exaggerated and ineffective, [UK Information Commissioner’s Office] claims
- Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia
- Jacobin: Democrats and Mainstream Media Were the Real Kremlin Assets
- Washington Post: FEC fines DNC, Clinton for violating rules in funding Steele dossier
- Washington Post: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters
- Jacobin: It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election
- Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
- Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big Deal On the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
- MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
- Jeff Gerth at Columbia Journalism Review on Russiagate: Editor’s Note | Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four
- Matt Taibbi: WMD, Part II: CIA “Cooked The Intelligence” To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016
- Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away
- Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power
You’d be surprised. I used to work in a rural factory. All the big burly red-neck older men were on tiktok during their smoke breaks.
Who votes for the dictator because of losing TikTok?
They’re just going to stay home.
Which is the same as a vote for a dictator. And that is super cool if you are looking forward to Project 2025, and selling out loved ones so they can be put in camps as political prisoners.
🤡
Is a vote for Trump actually two votes for Trump? Oh! Is every dollar you don’t donate to Biden a dollar donated to Trump?
I’m not following your logic here. Not voting, or actually voting for Trump both work in his favor because his base is going to vote for him no matter what. You would only be hurting the side that wants us to continue to have future elections. But at the end of the day if you can look in the mirror and be ok with selling out democracy more power to ya.
They just passed a fascist bipartisan bill to censor TikTok because it was showing the truth about Gaza and because it was disrupting the preexisting media cartel that already exists in the US. This was part of a larger fascist foreign aid package meant to help Israel carry out its genocide and prolong the war in Ukraine instead of seek a peace deal and help provoke a war in Taiwan by arming them to the teeth and pushing us to fucking WW3. By voting for them you are making it clear that they can do anything they want to you and you’ll beg for more.
I already decided not to vote for genocide Joe a while ago. If I’m going to vote at all, I’m going to vote the way Bushnell did.
Mathematician here, I can answer this. Equivalence relations are symmetric, so if staying home is a vote for Trump then showing up to vote for Trump is the same as staying home on election day.
Okay, but then isn’t staying home also a vote for Biden by the same logic?
This isn’t a binary relation, there’s clearly three options (vote for Biden, vote for Trump, vote for neither).
That doesn’t make any sense. The idea that staying home could be a vote for Biden seems pretty silly on its face. If that were true, there wouldn’t be any point in going out to vote for him, because the majority (or at least a plurality) of the country stays home regardless. He’d win in a landslide.
No, it’s not.
Abstaining from voting is an option the voter is given.
I bet you have a heck of a time differentiating apples, oranges, and pears.
“A pear is basically just an orange because you didn’t pick the apple.” - TimLovesTech
The guy you replied to has replied in a similar variant of “x event happened, therefore dems don’t want to win.”
Can’t fault them though, he’s just doing his job and following orders. The opposite would be …. Unthinkable
By the dictator, you mean the one running the genocide and expanding spying on the civilian population as we currently speak, right?
If we could have it banned in Europe or just Germany I would be happy for my people.
Ok boomer
Fucking moron
Where do we start and where do we stop with that kind of stuff?
If we ban TikTok we also would need to ban a lot of Social media platforms from the US for the same reason.
Edit: I don’t live in the United States.
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Oh then please mark and ban American propaganda, too.
And the US is everyone’s friend that would never use big tech to spy on people or spread propaganda in foreign countries.
Sayonara
Good fucking riddance.
Good riddance? Not really cause US still has clones of tiktok present like reels and shorts.
Nothing will change. Data will still be collected. China can easily buy data from the open market. Mental health will still be affected.
In fact, due to lack of competition, things will only get worse.
US and India are 2 moronic countries
Shorts fucking suck. It keeps recommending to me exactly four types of videos:
- stuff I have already watched, liked and commented – sometimes a few minutes prior
- videos I’m wildly uninterested with and systematically mark as irrelevant or instantly skip, yet it keeps bringing up videos of the same subject
- very old old “news” shorts
- stuff of people I’m subscribed to – which is fine, just not what makes great algorithms
Meanwhile, in a very short time, tiktok has managed to make me discover communities I had no idea I’d like to watch content from, while subtly managing to stop showing me some of the content from those communities I don’t enjoy
Idk why so many people assumed they would its a data gold mine even with the USA blocked
Who would ever think I’ll side with TikTok…
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This makes sense as there still billions of other potential users around the world. Add to that the fact that other nations like content of their own cultures in their own languages. It means even if they will feel the change the platform won’t collapse because it is missing US users. Now If other countries follow in the US footsteps then it becomes a different story.
If you as a content creator have a choice between a platform with 3 billion people (US and India included), like Shorts and Instagram Reels, and one without (TikTok), where would you post?
This is a clear disadvantage given to tiktok only to protect its own companies cause if US actually cared about data and mental health, homegrown Tech companies would also face repercussions.
LETS NOT FORGET, China can VERY EASILY buy most of the data it needs from the open market which many US companies, including Big Tech contribute to.
This has done nothing for citizens. Only protected innovation less US companies.
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In fact, even if they wanted to they can’t.
Remember the “algorithm panic” that happened a couple years ago? The one that saw Zuckerberg the subject of a senate hearing?
During that, they made it illegal to sell algorithms.
So the TikTok logo can be sold, but it is illegal for them to sell the algorithm that is TikTok.
I’m not sure what specifically you’re referring to, but algorithms are, generally speaking, code. You can purchase a company and their code.
Admittedly, I don’t know the details, so I’ll concede readily if someone has something to say I’m flat out wrong, but TikTok is on fire with lawyers posting their legal analysis of the situation, and the overwhelming concensus that a couple years ago, a series of laws were passed that would make it illegal for a US company to purchase a Chinese algorithm.
The company, the branding, yes.
Specifically the algorithm, no.
Paranoid people who don’t know how to open a PDF passed laws that make that nearly, if not entirely, impossible.
Or so a bunch of lawyers that have side TikTok gigs say.
They are anticipating that being a core argument when TikTok US sues the federal government.
I feel like this ban WILL start a monopoly. Since Facebook does the same amount or more data mining than TikTok, Facebook will have to be banned alongside Instagram, making YouTube Shorts a monopoly, as there really isn’t any other alternatives that are relevant.
They don’t care about monopoly. They care about evil China. It doesn’t seem to be an issue to strenghten evil Meta and Alphabet.
