Don’t forget this part
yeah this bill is not about tiktok at all. they're just using tiktok as an excuse to setup internet censorship for the future
I thought that was the patriot act
People acting more terrified at the loss of tik tok from their lives than they did during covid, while losing people from their lives.
Tik tok might as well just change their name to empathy box, because they have convinced their users that the act of watching content on empathy box makes them more moral and politically aware than the rest of us.
At the end of the day, we have to be nervous when a foreign nation has content reach to 80℅ of Americans. This foreign nation is banning Americans from accusing it of genocide while allowing an economic incentive for Americans to accuse themselves and everybody else of doing it.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
So when are we shutting down Facebook for their 2016 targeted ad campaign specifically meant to fuck with an election?
Don't use TikTok, don't really care too much either way, but watching this whole thing unfold is starting to open my eyes to the ways these companies can shape public opinion.
They're apparently sending notifications to people to contact their reps and it seems very likely that they're promoting content that advocates against the ban.
I'm not a fan of censorship or blocking internet services but TikTok really seems to trying to make a good case for it.
My understanding is that while rights are inalienable, meaning we recognize that Chinese citizens have the inherent right of free speech as well, not just in our direction, I'm not sure we grant free speech to mean a foreign state gets to use its technology to determine our national conversation.
I'm sure there would be teenage trans kids who through confusion ended up pro hamas, but I think tik tok could almost be accused of creating and fostering a movement that is certainly close to that very thing.
As an Australian who gets bombarded by the US point of view and agenda from their tech companies - I think America could do with an outside influence undermining the government's point of view.
As the post points out - the US government is doing an incredibly shitty job looking out for its citizens, and if they were afraid of a propaganda machine holding them accountable and creating civil unrest it might be for the best.
It's just a shame the power that owns the means to do that happens to be china. I wonder if things will return to normal once the citizens pack away the guillotine
The government does a shitty job, but it is representative. American culture is dominated by billionaire worship, consumerism, and greed. We shouldn't be so surprised when our elected officials share our values.
American social media companies are also controlled by foreign powers. I have no interests in common with the ultra wealthy and massive corporations that control this country. They are just as foreign to me as anyone in another country. I trust them less than I trust TikToc.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
I disagreed with you up until this point. You're exactly right about this.
The problem is that nobody should have this kind of power. But our government thinks this kind of power is just fine as long as it's a US company they can control.
If nobody should have this power than nobody should have this power. Not China. Not Musk. Not Zuckerberg. NOBODY.
But we have a feckless, ineffective government written by racists 250 years ago and this is literally all they can do.
I am much less concerned about foreign news reaching the American people than the outright lies being spread in the American news without people batting an eye. And the fact that a foreign government (Israel) literally owns our government.
Oh so a chinese news source pointed this out to the youth? Good. It shows that we are so sick of not being able to trust OUR news that we’re looking elsewhere. Banning TikTok won’t fix that. I won’t go back to CNN or Fox if you take away that option. I’ll continue to look elsewhere
Who’s next? Al Jazerra? The hindustan times? The BBC?
So glad to see this argument here.
They don't actually want to get rid of tiktok. They just want it to be owned by a consortium of American billionaires so they can influence public policy more easily.
That is a just cause in theory
Except billionaires aren’t loyal to any accepted borders
Part of me would rather have it with capitalistic sociopaths that want to extract my money rather than an authoritarian government that is provably responsible for (multiple?) genocide(s). Like, in a perfect world, there’s a better system, but at least our government still, in theory, can control the businesses within our country. They won’t though.
Our two parties that refuse to address relevant problems:
Skill issue
They're not protecting you from Tiktok. They are protecting their interests from China.
Not even. They're doing it for cheap nationalistic points.
Isn't Zoom supposed to be basically Chinese spyware too? Why are they trying to ban TikTok and not Zoom?
Rhetoical question. I know why. Zoom helps funnel more money to shareholders.
Because the bill lets them ban anything that they want, not just TikTok. All the have to do is assert “foreign influence” and they can block, censor, or force sale to “American interests”.
Basically these motherfuckers are doing their best to make it so you only see, hear, and read what they want. And if that’s not actually their intent, they’re leaving the door wide open for the next guy to do it.
And if the current guy doesn't get his shit together, that next guy is going to be the former guy and then the entire world's fucked.
Not true. They have to show that the company is headquartered in or owned by the "sensitive country".
Giant loophole for American Data vendors and marketers to sell data and targeted advertising to China. (Which is just an algorithm by a different name.)
Because the bill lets them ban anything that they want, not just TikTok. All the have to do is assert “foreign influence” and they can block, censor, or force sale to “American interests”.
How long until this is used against a Fediverse instance?
Usa invented the Online psyops/spy game with facebook/google. Now they pissed china beat them at there own game.
Wanting to ban a app/service that basically gives your biggest economic and political enemy direct conact to the local networks/brain of your population is understandable.
I mean those are the reasons why china banned Facebook/Google years ago.
Reality is more complicated tho, cause unless the usa is willing to build a chinese firewall for themself, it will be impossible to keep people from using TikTok via VPN.
If the usa would actually care for its citizen privacy they could just outlaw closed source software.
willing to build a chinese firewall for themself, it will be impossible to keep people from using TikTok via VPN.
A majority of people probably won't bother and just move on. A decent chunk, 30/40% maybe but that still leaves a 70/60% reduction and it's influence permanently neutered so the gov will still see it as a win
It's my understanding this is designed for TikTok to be sold off, not to ban it.
Anyway, yeah I agree with everything else. Anyone "defending China" here is ignoring the Chinese firewall, but also everyone "defending the US" must also agree the Chinese firewall has a useful purpose. The fact is this is just about control and/or greed. It's not any more or less evil than all the other shit the governments do to control people. It's not going to hurt anyone here, but it's also probably not going to help them either.
I won't touch TikTok anyway, so I really don't care. It just seems like everyone is misunderstanding what's going on and hypocritical with their stance, whichever position they hold.
unless the usa is willing to build a chinese firewall for themself
Honestly, I feel like in the next decade we're going to see a whole lot of great firewalls. Every other country wants to control everyone and get in people's heads. We're either going to invent some way to regulate this desire (unlikely, if you ask me) or end up with a lot of spying and/or fractured network 😞
The correct law is staring them in the face.
Sensitive country is defined by the following list, (xxx,xxx,xxx)
Any company that sells, or gives American data to a sensitive country; or cause their data to come into possession of a sensitive country shall cease operations in the US.
Any company allowing a sensitive country to manipulate their algorithm, examples of (but not exclusively) with targeted advertising, bots, or by manipulating the ranking of posts, shall cease operations in the US.
That achieves the mission and holds the entire industry accountable without unconstitutionally targeting a single company.
Helping the working class doesn’t net them a fat profit.
How is TikTok helping the working class? It's an app that wastes your time and sells you products. There is no intent to help the working class. Stop glorifying governments. China doesn't want to help liberate the working class or anything like that, if that's what you're implying.
TikTok doesn’t help anyone but that wasn’t the point of what I said. I was saying that the US government doesn’t actually help its citizens because it’s not profitable for them. The reason the government even cares about “banning” TikTok is because it means their tech buddies (specifically people like Zuck) can benefit from it. It’s corporate greed. TikTok doesn’t care about anything other than profit and data hoarding.
how does this give them a fat profit?
Moreso gives google and meta a fat profit, and they bought congress. I personally also think that suppression of info about Palestine is a driver of the bill as well, and that rewards congress through the legal bribery that is lobbying.
It’s the corporate class protecting one another’s shared interests in the US. Kick TikTok out and suddenly it paves the way for a competitor like Meta.
They're trying to force a sale or ban it, and I don't think it's certain what the details are, so who knows what criteria the owner needs to have
(it might be so specific only a handful of people/groups qualify, so they can suppress the price and ensure it goes somewhere specific... It's shockingly common, especially when legalizing something or when other nations are concerned)
They're trying to force a sale or ban it, and I don't think it's certain what the details are, so who knows what criteria the owner needs to have
(it might be so specific only a handful of people/groups qualify, so they can suppress the price and ensure it goes somewhere specific... It's shockingly common, especially when legalizing something or when other nations are concerned)
Sounds to me like they don't want to ban it, they want it sold to American business at a massively discounted rate. Standard mafia shit.
I did hear a solid counter point recently.
All American social media is banned in China. Effectively, if we don't do something like this, the Chinese social media becomes the biggest (because they restrict ours but we wouldn't restrict theirs).
Mafia shit or international power politics shit.
The danger here is they could do this to Facebook or Instagram in other countries (eg India)and use this as a precedent. I'm not sure India wants to pick that fight with the US, but this is all a weird game that's being played.
But yes, on the surface, and the immediate impact, this seems like such a fucking dumb tone deaf thing that our legislature pushed through without most Americans wanting this.
If they had happened to write a good privacy law that happened to prevent most of Tik Tok's abuses, I'd have way less of a problem with it because then US companies who do the same shit would have to follow the same rules. But instead we let Zuckerberg and Musk do the exact same shit without repercussions.
But we have a government that's basically carriage with a steam engine bolted on plus a V8 and also rockets and the thing is broken beyond repair and we just have to wait until most people realize that to get out because they didn't install emergency exits.
That's a fair point, it is a game as much as it is a racket.
I think it's rather hilarious, how fast something can get passed if it's against a foreign adversary
Tell that to Ukraine funding
Right? It's probably less about foreign enemies and more about hiding genocide.
It's not about protecting the people. It's about who gets and controls the data. Data is the new oil.
Yeah the information age is turning into the profit maximized end game.
We all had access to information, then gave up our own in response. And now having specific data to find truly only the most useful and profitable people and marketing is the new gold. But honestly I think the data isn't actually as useful as oil. It's more like gold. And these companies are trying to sell shovels. Tools for scraping and using the data but eventually people must realize that it isn't enough.
As someone who's never used tiktok, has no interest in doing so, and finds the whole platform + 99.99% of the content dumb as all fucking fuck:
The US government can eat my shit and hair
They aren't protecting us from TikTok, they are protecting themselves from us. They put a lot of resources into controlling mass media then got blindsided by social media. Now they have social media mostly under control, but only in this country. They can't risk the next Bernie Sanders giving people hope for a better world.
🤓 "Uhrm axetually, inflation is dropping and wages are slightly rising, so people shouldn't complain because the economy is actually great. They're really just imagining things and suffering because they weren't responsible with their covid checks."
Seriously, liberals think that's all people are upset about. They don't recognize that already existing trends and enshitification of capitalist products are making things suck for people. They don't appreciate that housing inflation has been way too high for decades, and that cheaper nonessential junk doesn't make up for it. Inelastic demand that the government will not address because politicians don't understand the struggles of new homeowners and renters.
When most people can't win at the game, they don't care to uphold it.
Don't leave out healthcare inflation. It's as bad or worse than housing inflation, but it's easy to forget until you need it.
Yeah, but as of July 2022 the credit bureaus don't report medical debt. After I got a surprise $5,000 bill in the mail after my copay for an ER visit where the doctor spent 5 minutes misdiagnksing me and sending me to to wrong specialist, I was able to tell them to go to hell.
Fucking tell me about it 😭
Someone is going to see this and downvote you because they saw you use the word "liberal" negatively and immediately think you're a right-winger or something.
But yeah, if the media outlets would understand that "the economy" (rich peoples yacht money) is based on garbage metrics, maybe they wouldn't act so offended when people call them out on it
This place has become more liberal recently. I don't love smug leftists who think being a socialist automatically makes you virtuous, but it is annoying to deal with people that aren't fully awake to reality. Capitalism is the problem, and while being scant on solutions and strategies is awful, not even seeing the problems is worse.
I really don't think people even understand inflation enough to realize "inflation is dropping" just means prices are still going up but only a little at a time instead of the near doubling it was a year or 2 ago and how little people have been wage matched to the stipl increasing costs.
Two genocides actually. The Russian and the Israeli one.
Is Russia doing a race thing? I thought it was an imperialism thing, needed access to Crimea for the black sea and needs to get that pesky foreign government out of the way to ensure that access
Ukrainians have their own culture, language, religion, and ethnicity distinct from Russia. Russia is killing the native population to replace them with Russians, they are abducting Ukrainian children to raise them as Russian, and they are destroying Ukrainian art, museums, and churches. It is a genocide.
The Ukrainian thing is more of a cultural genocide with Putin having a plan on "integrating" all current Ukrainians into Russian society, but it checks out, because "integration" means "throwing away their own culture for the holy Mother Russia".
You forgot the Uighurs, that is still happening
Hey, at least they got one thing right.
ok, to be fair. There have been recent investments into people generally in poverty, in regards to improving their financial situation, as a means to improve their overall health, it's still in trial stages, and very new, but it IS happening, and it IS positively affecting people.
Also, "we" aren't really witnessing a genocide, i'm assuming to this is referring to war, if not, I'll take my leave.
There's like 8 recent 'genocide emergencies' declared by Genocide Watch not including Palestine and Ukraine
Should have said while approving/enabling of a genocide.
The current administration has vetoed multiple UN drafts for a conflict resolution over Gaza as well as other UN resolutions proposed. We're still sending the Israelis weapons. Neither congress nor the current administration care.
i suppose complacency is fair. Wouldn't be america if we didn't pretend shit wasn't a problem half the time.
Free speech!
No wait not like that you can't criticize israel
“These are OUR slaves!”
This post is inaccurate. It fails to state that you actually work 2 jobs each at 25 hours a week so neither megacorp has to provide any benefits, and you'll be fired from one next week because despite requesting otherwise they keep scheduling overlapping shifts and you can only go to one job at a time.
Waiting for ban on Australian infiltration and manipulation of the American populace.
If that's Rupert Murdoch, he had to get US citizenship to be allowed to own Fox.
Honestly the genocide part of this meme bothers me. It's not just one after all.
witnessing a genocide
*funding the genocide
In fact they are not only purposely funding the genocide, they are actively ignoring majority of people against it, even surpassing the senate just to be sure they can send the money to Israel quickly
Actually since TikTok is where most of the popular support for Palestine is from and probably why after decades of this genocide it finally became well-known, they are trying to shut it down, since China won't censor it for them. Classic fascist moves from the government.
Did we forget about the Uighur’s? China isn’t even TRYING to hide that, but, yeah. Except that they ban any mention of it within their borders.
Mind you, I’m not trying to take away from what the US is and has done, but, currently, the only super power locked in a provable genocide, is china. Simple as that. The US is so fucking sideways that we’re simultaneously bringing food into Gaza while also supporting its destruction. Really nothing new there, money goes up. But, different than state sponsored genocide. Fuck, I hate that that’s a buzzword.
the only super power locked in a provable genocide, is china This statement is absolutely false. Isreal genocide is almost exlusively funded by the US.
we’re simultaneously bringing food into Gaza while also supporting its destruction Small amounts of food into gaza is PR and changes nothing in the big picture. There is a big difference in amount of money sent for weapons to Isreal and food to Gaza. You can send few trucks of food, get pirctures, run it in media, and then silently give billions for weapons. There is no two sides of this, US government is fully running a genocide in Gaza with full knowledge and intent. There is nothing that Chinese government does that US and Russia government don't do as well. There is only difference in the media coverege of these things in each of the countries and is the result of difference in opinion between people who are exposed to that media.
Whataboutism
No. I really do want my government to focus on governing instead of handing itself unprecedented and unconstitutional powers to force private sales.
So there's an app that's operated out of an authoritarian country that's spewing propaganda from a terrorist organization that's making you hate your own democratic government.
You can't understand why people might have some concerns over this if Tik Tok is your only source of information. And that only adds to the concerns over Tik Tok.
How angry are is the Tik Tok crowd over how China treats the Uighurs? It's all ok as long as you don't witness it on Tik Tok, right?
To answer your question just about as angry as any other major social media is about it these days? Right now the sentiment on TikTok is very strongly anti Isreal and outrage over the current genocide. I don't know why you just assume they're all over there praising China or whatever. China doesn't come up there any more than here or other social media. China has their own version of the app where I assume their own censorship is applied.
Unless you want to pretend that lemmy or other social media is actively discussing the Uyghurs right now I don't think this is a very valid point. You're just using their suffering to feel superior when you probably haven't even thought about them in who knows how long before now. You can search for them in TikTok and there are plenty of videos criticizing China about it.
It's not hard to be informed and it's incredibly hypocritical of you when you couldn't even be bothered to fact check your own assumptions.
Yeah all social media sucks. They're all run by psychopaths. But a psychopath will do what's in their own best interests and therefore don't want to see the country they live in country brought down. You don't shit where you eat.
So which country do the psychos making the TikTok algorithms live in?
They have no incentive to ensure their algorithms don't cause political destabilization in the US or other western countries. In fact there may be incentives going the other way.
Unless you want to pretend that lemmy or other social media is actively discussing the Uyghurs right now I don’t think this is a very valid point.
Top search result for "Uyghurs" on lemmy: https://lemmy.ca/post/5945175
Top Search result for "Uyghurs" on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alicerehemutula/video/7197149227728768298?q=uyghurs&t=1710720741130
If you understand anything about the internet you know there's too much information for a person to see everything. Which means that you don't have to explicitly remove content (though the Chinese government does a lot of that too) you just need to tweak the algorithm to so that no one sees it. Generally someone in the west searching for Uyghurs is likely to want to find out about how the Chinese government is mistreating them. Yet TikTok's algorithm conveniently de-prioritizes that kind of content.
It’s not hard to be informed and it’s incredibly hypocritical of you when you couldn’t even be bothered to fact check your own assumptions.
We're starting to see a lot of young people have a similar level of distrust in news media to the MAGA crowd. Again it's not purely about having access to information on the internet, it's whether people will actually look at that information. If you've been conditioned to think that everyone is wrong if they disagree with the people you've formed unhealthy parasocial relationships with, then it's a serious problem. Especially since TikTok targets a very young demographic who are susceptible to these parasocial relationships.
operated out of an authoritarian country
Parent company is operated out of China, actually company is operated out of Singapore, US, Europe.
Spewing propaganda from a terrorist organization
You referring to Hamas? They barely have Internet access, and they certainly don't get any special treatment on the app. The people criticizing Israel are not terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, and mislabeling them as such doesn't do you any favors. And TikTok has been allegedly suppressing any videos talking about that subject.
Making you hate your own government
Wrong. The only people making me hate my government is my government. I actually realized that Republicans pushed me left, but it was mostly the left that pushed me so far left that I want my guns back.
The TikTok crowd
You don't understand how many people are on the app and their demographics do you?
Parent company is operated out of China, actually company is operated out of Singapore, US, Europe.
Where do they make decisions about the algorithm that decides what you're seeing on TikTok? That's what's relevant here.
Also Huawei played similar games, but we later found out how connected it was basically just a branch of the Chinese government. If you believe the shell company shenanigans, it's probably because you've spent a lot of time on TikTok.
You referring to Hamas? They barely have Internet access, and they certainly don’t get any special treatment on the app.
I'm pretty sure the billionaire leaders of Hamas living in palaces in Qatar have internet access. Did Tik Tok not tell you that there are literal billionaires that are leaders of Hamas? Loses some of the appeal when you realize it isn't some rag tag group of freedom fighters but actually a fascist movement that wants to restore the ethnic makeup of a region to how it was in old maps. Something to think about when you see people cosplaying as Hamas at the protests.
And TikTok has been allegedly suppressing any videos talking about that subject.
Did you hear this on TikTok?
Wrong. The only people making me hate my government is my government. I actually realized that Republicans pushed me left, but it was mostly the left that pushed me so far left that I want my guns back.
You don't even have a cohesive concept of any kind of politics, other than hating your own government. Where did that come from? You obviously don't put a lot of thought into political issues if you swing from one party to the next and you admit the only consistency you have is a hatred of your own government. You've just proven my point about TikTok influencing you into hating your government.
You don’t understand how many people are on the app and their demographics do you?
Somewhere between 150 to 170 million Americans get their news from TikTok. Do you think that if there's more people getting news from a source where the relevant news stories could be decided by an authoritarian country somehow makes it less of a concern?
We know a lot of people use TikTok, and we know that ultimately authoritarians decide what is shown to people on that site. We know that people on TikTok are being fed disinformation, we know that people are being pushed towards being sympathetic towards terrorist movements. It has all of the signs of a campaign to destabilize western countries. But maybe TikTok has influenced you towards wanting to destroy your own country.
Seriously, I hate TikTok, yet I still recognize that everything you've said is bullshit. I get 0 news from TikTok and still know that none of your concerns are justified. Foreign countries can just buy your data from every other social media company. It's not uniquely spyware for the CCP.
There's no evidence that China has a secret backdoor to suppress evidence of their genocide, while Israeli and Christian fascists are openly manipulating social media to hide their genocidal actions and promote hate. TikTok is evil, but not a unique evil worth fighting in particular. They're evil as a social media company, not because of their ownership.
Democrats are ridiculous for supporting this, as they rely on the youth vote more than Republicans. If right wing billionaires take over TikTok to promote fascism, Democrats have shot themselves in the foot. If the app shuts down, they've shot themselves in the foot. This political theater will probably hurt them more than help, but they genuinely believe there are enough nationalistic liberals who give a fuck about banning TikTok to outweigh young people they'll dissuade. Nationalistic liberals aren't going to change their voting behavior much over this, while young people honestly might.
Edit: missing words
I've learned long ago from many conversations with MAGAs that the request for evidence is a tactic to get someone to waste their time. If I provided you evidence it would be rejected as being from a biased media or some other excuse. The indoctrinated cannot be convinced by words on the internet because you can always find other words on the internet that say the opposite.
But maybe take a moment to consider that you're behaving in the exact same way as the MAGA crowd when the sources of their narratives are questioned. Do you really want to be like the MAGAs? Not able to question the motives of people that are shoving out endless narratives that making you constantly angry? Is that who you want to be? Someone that's made to be constantly angry and just trusting that authoritarians would never try to manipulate you?
Do you think Xi Jinping is a good guy in the same way as the MAGAs think Vldimir Putin is a good guy? Yeah they're authoritarians but they'd never ever cross the line and use their power to manipulate you... right?
There are Hollywood level propaganda ads being played on multiple platforms as well as the fkn superbowl. So I'm gonna assume the terrorist propaganda you are talking about is the Israeli government.
frfr, i can't believe how many smug takes i saw about this the day it passed. left and right giddy to oppress the youth just because the dances are stupid
It's not even just an app full of kids or even dancing. If it ever was that was well before my time. I'm sure it still exists but it never makes it to me. It's full of young adults and millennials these days. Other than the outrage over the genocide by Isreal another current big drama going around is about NC rep Jeff Jackson because he got a huge following on TikTok and then voted to ban it. There's also a big thing about boycotting kellogs and we've been pretty active in discussing businesses that are stifling unions. Hell, half the front page of reddit is just badly cropped TikTok videos these days anyway lol
Well, ok. I lied. Sometimes I do get dancing videos: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLFVoyUw/
Save me from TikTok because of what? I mean, we know the hidden reasoning, but what is the official concern?
officially: data mining and algorithm manipulation to promote propaganda
unofficially: data mining that hasn't been approved by the US government and algorithm manipulation to promote propaganda that hasn't been approved by the US government
They just don't want you to talk about it
The very concept of a state is the problem.
State - a group of people who claim they are allowed to use violence to get their way and that nobody else is allowed to protect themselves from this violence.
(Others may define "state" to be essentially synonymous with "government". The above definition contains the only quality in common with every entity I am speaking of.)
There is no reality in which any state is not taken over by those willing to cause the harm necessary to do so.
This does not mean the best course of action is attempted immediate destruction of any state, that will cause the boot to stomp harder on us. The best course of action is minimize dependence on the economic system that state depends on. That is to say, growing some portion of your food is just about as radical as it gets.
Is the distribution significantly different on other social media platforms? Because if not, what you're insinuating might not actually be real.
Who said the government doesn't do anything for the public?
...and TikTok will still have horrible data privacy and domestic spying capabilities, it will just be owned by US Big Tech instead of Chinese Big Tech.
Glad we can keep Chinese billionaires from influencing politics for cheap, they will have to pay an American billionaire to do it like Russia does.
There's no world where they sell to preserve 10% of their users
The government isn't protecting us from tictok, they are protecting themselves...
It’ll be fun watching Americans try to talk about internet censorship in China now when I get to bring up this ban and the internet censorship bill their government has.
Culture war bullshit honestly
As long as it doesn't hurt corporate profits, actual change can hapoen.
Yeah that's about right. What exactly is the point of this post?
