Only US tech companies can harvest all that data from their products, I mean, customers.
I mean let’s be honest, that’s slightly better than US companies plus the Chinese Communist Party being able to do so.
I don’t know about you, but if I must leak my private data like a sieve to use the internet, I’d much rather that data go to a government that isn’t governing me!
A government that isn’t governing you … yet and that has no ambitions (/s) to take over as much power as possible in the country you live in, you mean?
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I don’t think you’d like ruining your social score by hanging out too much on lemmy and as a result losing access to movies/streaming/games, driving cars and your dog.
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I have enough hate for both governments, no worries.
Ahh yes, I should be worried about how they could in the future, do something while my current government can make me a fucking slave, legally if they decide to.
Look, I don’t know which country you live in but if you’re worried it might make you a slave, you should riot (if at all possible, that is). Be part of the opposition.
Damn I thought private prisons were a loophole and not in the constitution to punish people with slave labor.
So what…?
Not everybody is living in the “default country” and also, with the US we see how well it all works for them and how slavery is not a thing there at all.
They still can, they just have to go back to buying that data lmao
Everybody Sucks Here
It’s obviously more of a problem when a government that actually has agency over you harvests your data. If you can’t even understand this, then you’re truly lost.
Not having the choice is slightly worse I’d say.
What can China do to you? You don’t live there.
TikTok enacted a very obvious influence campaign to fight this legislation that resulted in congressional phone lines becoming jammed. So what China can do is directly influence our laws.
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Because your government can use the information against you while a government on the other side of the planet can’t.
Used to be true. See countries affecting populations in foreign countries. Propaganda is not local.
Because definitionally, fewer people doing a bad thing is better than more people doing a bad thing?
Problems with this app go beyond just privacy and bleed into national security.
You as a citizen of your country have an obligation to not freely offer yourself up as an attack vector for cybercriminals all so you could fry your brain with garbage media.
I hate America though
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just a case of the mask falling off
Case in point: all the college protests. All the arrests happening are from people being encouraged on TikTok to become aggressive and angry towards apartheid. But the question is how the fuck is protesting at a college going to change what a government in another country is going to do in any way? The Israeli government gives little to no fuck about kids opinions protesting at a college campus in the United States. It’s likely civil unrest being spread by TikTok.
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Israel is dropping US bombs. 🙄
How is protesting at a college going to stop it?
The US government provides weapons for the genocide.
One of the main campuses in the protests is opening a campus in Israel, which students are opposing until Israel ends genocide and apartheid.
Many of the campuses donate money to or have partnerships with candidates and organizations that are also complicit in the genocide.
Of course Israel isn’t going to stop genocide because a bunch of college students in the US don’t like it. But that doesn’t mean students have to sit idly as their tuition dollars go to fund genocide.
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Funded by Amerikan money. The government you uplift, and everyone who still supports them after eight months of unmitigated genocide, is complicit. Is a collaborator.
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They have very simple demands, they’re not giving some pie in the sky stuff like “have Joe Biden tried for war crimes and abolish capitalism” or something; the protests all have demands along the lines that their university boycott Israeli companies and cut ties with weapons manufacturers aiding the genocide. To claim otherwise is completely infantalising to the protestors who are risking their university positions and physical health to protest despite the police crackdowns.
Here’s a link to the list of demands of the student protest in new York, for instance
And here’s a picture of the list of the demands of the columbia faculty protest:
I dunno, I absolutely want to see Genocide Joe internationally tried for aiding and abetting a genocide.
All the arrests happening are from people being encouraged on TikTok to become aggressive and angry towards apartheid.
THEY ARE TRYING TO STOP THE GENOCIDE BEING PERPETRATED IN THEIR NAME
WTF is wrong with you?
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College protests have been a thing since Vietnam. Look up Kent State.
It wasn’t China that gave them the idea, it was history.
And it’s working. More and more people are sympathizing with Palestine the more the government overreacts to peaceful protests.
I’m not sure it’s true that the Israeli government doesn’t care about American public opinion, since they do benefit from American military support, but let’s assume what you said is true.
Even if Americans protesting won’t stop the genocide, won’t end apartheid, I’d prefer that those atrocities are not committed with my tax dollars, with support from my government, in my name. The lesson learned from 9/11 shouldn’t have been “we need to enact regime change anywhere in the world where American interest are opposed”. It should have been “Americans better make sure they are OK with the things that their government is doing abroad”.
I’m not OK with it, I’m not willing to risk dying in a terrorist attack so that Gaza can be levelled with “made in America” munitions. I’m not willing to risk dying in a terrorist attack so that oil companies and other big business interests have friendly regimes to collude with in the region as they scam the people out of their resources and freedoms.
If they don’t care then why did satanyahu come out in a speech against it? Protesting does work and does matter. You only need to look at history to see that
Pretty sure people protesting in the US are trying to influence the US govt.
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As if all these other social medias don’t have garbage media or propaganda
We must return to AOL and Friendster.
That’s not the point
Fuck Amerika’s national security; I don’t claim this mf country. I don’t even think twice about lying about where I’m from when I’m in international circles that ask me what it is. If someone offered me citizenship with them to Yeonmi Park y’all asses, I’d do it in a new york minute.
Problems with this app go beyond just privacy and bleed into national security.
Entire world should ban US based apps in this case.
The U.S government doesn’t have the same ability as the CCP to just get whatever info they want out of corporations with no due process. The two are completely incomparable.
Do you seriously believe in this?
Do I honestly believe China has an easier time getting corporations to bend over and violate their citizens rights? Why do you need to clarify this??
What is the difference if both countries access to user data at the end no matter easier or harder way? US is trying to block Tiktok under the name of national security but US itself has been violating other countries’ national security and privacy of people of these countries for years. What bothers me is people like you support this hypocritical action.
Hypocritical action? China’s internet hasn’t allowed external companies to offer services since its inception. All I’m saying is if the US wants to treat Chinese companies like China has treated US companies that should be perfectly fine.
You’re out here complaining that China’s not receiving the same rights it fails to extend to other people and calling that hypocritical??
Here’s Bernie Sanders from a year ago talking about how a handful of companies control the news people see, read, and hear. TL:DR - He makes the argument that it’s not fake news, that journalists are usually hard-working and honest. He says the problem is the limitation of allowed discussion - what topics make it to the consumer. He says for instance that he’s never asked about wealth and income inequality.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control. If the issues justifying a potential ban were truly data security or mental health as some argue (not without merit mind you), then the legislation to address those issues would look a lot different and include companies like Meta, Google, Instagram, etc. Those are valid concerns but the new measure is clearly not designed around them.
Finally, we’ve seen how Trump can tie up the courts for months on end even after all his self-snitching. Thus I very much doubt we’ll see any actual action in the 9 months + 3 months grace period laid out for the resolution of the TikTok matter. There are too many constitutional and business law challenges in my (admittedly layman’s) reading of expert opinion.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control
I mean, if this were true, that would mean you wouldn’t be able to find similar content on Western platforms. Are you really saying similar content isn’t readily available on YouTube? If so, what content?
That’s a solid criticism and I upvoted. I hadn’t thought about YouTube. Anecdotally I’ve had factual comments about how many kids are killed, what Israeli politicians say, etc. auto-moderated into oblivion on YouTube. But at the same time I get a lot of the facts I use from YouTube (basically never been on TikTok) so it holds water. I also get a lot of info from other sources, but I can’t think of something specific I’d get from them that I could never find on YouTube.
In my defense, I’m basing my opinion on why TikTok is particularly targeted on interviews like this one with Ted Cruz. He talks about how TikTok is specifically designed to push messages that are harmful to America, including what he calls pro-Hamas content but I suspect is actually anti-Israeli policy, pro-Palestine content. That is why I would argue there’s some evidence of a campaign against TikTok in particular that might skip over YouTube or other major platforms. Perhaps the Western powers feel that YouTube is still acceptably moderated towards their interests whereas TikTok isn’t. Perhaps Google is just too influential domestically.
Edit: I found a video I was looking for: Biden talking about passing the TikTok/Israel funding/Ukraine funding package. A bit of language he uses that I think is telling is “it continues America’s leadership in the world and everyone knows it” which could signal US dominance as a motivation and thus TikTok as a target and not US companies.
That doesn’t mean your point isn’t worth discussion, or that my points aren’t opinion. I’m interested to see how it develops. I’ve based my opinion on the conversations I can find and language used, but I’m open to adjusting my view if evidence prompts that.
I think this ban is completely agnostic re: content. The issue is more fundamental – it’s fully owned and operated by people in China. This is a geopolitical battle that is currently playing out across many industries. Social media grabs headlines where less sexy industry battles do not.
I think Tom Nicholas gives a great overview.
Also, fuck Ted Cruz with a 20 inch dildo. Don’t take anything that sniveling carcass has to say seriously.
it’s fully owned and operated by people in China
US private equity firms own more than anyone. WSJ: What Is TikTok Worth? Some Say $20 Billion, Others Say $100 Billion
[ByteDance founder] Zhang owns 20% of ByteDance, according to the company, though super shares have given him larger voting rights. Roughly 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors including Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group. The remaining 20% is owned by company employees.
The CEO is Singaporean Shou Zi Chew and the VP is American Michael Beckerman.
TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, and that the Chinese government exerts significant political influence over ByteDance really is not a question
I think it’s a many birds with one stone situation - an industrial battle, a move to monopolize for Facebook after years of lobbying, Censorship etc.
For one the YouTube algorithm is absolute dog shit compared to TT, which is literally the gold standard at this point.
If you haven’t tried, you’re seriously missing out. It’s legit incredible how good it is. I hardly use it because I prefer long-form content (and don’t honestly have much time) but I absolutely can respect what they created
Fuck all the algorithms, I don’t need any of that bullshit.
Nice username, btw 👍🏽
K… you alright? lol. What’s with the aggression 😂
Can you show us on the doll where the algorithm touched you?
Western SM is already in the pocket of the state and any content that goes against their values is suppressed.
Pro-Palestinian content on Tiktok can easily get traction and receive over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.
Considering that younger people are not watching regular media news, channels like fox just do not have comparative reach and they aren’t buying into the zionist propaganda like previous generations.
There are a lot of content creators who are articulate, succinct and organisation has come out of it. People have created sites & apps that list all corporations and products to boycott because of their support for Israel and it’s had an impact.
Sure, TTs algorithm can easily push you down unpleasant rabbit holes but that’s the nature of algorithms, not just specific to TT.
So there might be similar content on western SM but it’s being held down and isn’t showing on people feed ‘organically’.
I just did a brief search on YouTube and found pro-Palestinian content posted over the past week with hundreds of thousands of views too. I’m not arguing about the quality of the platforms, I’m saying this has more to do with geopolitical corporate hegemony (aka money) than with any specific content, as evidenced by the fact that this has been on the table since well before the Oct 7 attacks
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I just randomly selected this Channel 4 (3.8 million subscribers) video with 370K views on YouTube: Israeli soldier speaks out on war in Gaza. The next video it played was In Gaza now, it’s worse than ethnic cleansing from Al Jazeera. Then it gave me another Al Jazeera video, Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The US could have stopped Israel on day one. From where are you driving your accusation that YouTube is delivering you any more pro-Israel content than TikTok?
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Just one of the first 20 hits when I searched for “Palestine.” I have to admit I’m struggling to find any pro-Israel content among those search results. Searching for “Israel” gives a more mixed bag, but still plenty of pro-Palestinian content mixed in
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Israeli soldier speaks out on war in Gaza
In Gaza now, it’s worse than ethnic cleansing
Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The US could have stopped Israel on day one
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Kinda like the not-so-unsupported conspiracy theory that musk bought Twitter to silence protest coordination. That Twitter was too useful to the ‘masses’ and the “sinister cabal” (not my words) said it needed to be taken out.
To reiterate: this is not my position but it is one I’ve heard that matches the sentiment expressed in the parent comment
What we certainly do know is that Musk bought twitter not to enable free speech, but to control speech according to his personal whims and beliefs.
I imagine the Saudi’s went in with Musk on the twitter deal to also control and dilute unfavorable speech. The Saudi ruler is the guy that assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi on foreign soil because he wasn’t exactly a team Saudi ruler kind of guy.
So if the Saudis went in with him, and he worked with them, then it wasn’t solely his personal whims and beliefs. Just, for once, stop psychologizing celebrities and look at what’s actually happening. Twitter was 100% a State Department and military intelligence asset. Musk makes most of his money from federal contracts, mostly related to military intelligence and adjacent domains. The state has all the means to stop Musk from destroying their asset with his personal whims (FTC, SEC, etc). Instead, he buys it with support from the Saudis, a family that leaders of the USA have sworn to protect for decades.
Face it. Musk’s personal beliefs are merely what allows him to work with the power brokers. He is the lightning rod, the money launderer, the public face, the whipping boy, and eventually the sacrificial body. He’s not running the show.
Also Musk is incredibly dumb and for most people, that veil is finally falling.
Some of the real power behind the ‘throne’ is Peter Thiel. That guy is the worst of everything.
It’s his wealth and ego that allows him to attract folks like the Saudi regime. Shared whims, beliefs and goals can also be a thing. The Saudi’s were buying influence. Kind of like how the Crown Prince bought Jared Kusher thanks to all the business deals he was busy working on while his father-in-law was president. Kushner the self-serving stooge of the Saudi Crown Prince helped sweep U.S. intelligence reports on Khashoggi’s killing under the rug. Then was gifted $2billion of investment by the Crown Prince, which not even the Saudi’s believe is a good investment.
"Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman serves as the chairman of the Public Investment Fund, and reportedly personally intervened to approve the investment and overruled a panel of advisors who called the sum “unsatisfactory in all aspects.”
No one is claiming Elon is running ‘the’ show, but he certainly is running some show and has done plenty of damage with his twitter buyout. If you’re calling out US foreign policy and the Mid East you’re not wrong. Short-term selfish goals have lead to a myriad of long-term problems. Elon is not that bright, he has the temperament of a thin skinned teenage boy that never really grew up. I still don’t understand why you’re making him out to be some sort of martyr though.
I’m not saying he’s a martyr, I’m saying he’s not doing this from inside his skull but in concert with power brokers. The same is true of Kushner. Kashoggi’s dad was likely involved with the CIA based on the history of his work and institutions. MBS is not some rogue mastermind - the USA, up to and including presidents, have publicly stated that the Royal Family is under their direct protection and a major part of US policy. The murder of a journo and the subsequent coverup happened within the context of US power brokers calling the shots. MBS is somewhat roguish as he seems he may be trying to decouple from the USA enough to save his house from the inevitable collapse of the USA, and the Kashoggi killing may have been part of that, so the USA powers got a little split over whether to threaten him or cover it up, so they did both, but ultimately Saudi isn’t buying into Twitter with Elon as some part of a scheme against America, or against American liberals or against the Ds or whatever. MBS may be trying to purge Saudi institutions of the CIA, but his foreign policy is still constrained by his country’s absolute need for American protection.
Musk didn’t buy Twitter because he loves Trump and hates wokeness. He couldn’t have because it’s far too disruptive to power. Twitter was majorly important to power. Some moron with a lot of money, mostly money from the USA war machine, isn’t going to be allowed to just go wrecking USA war machine components, especially not when there are so many controls in place. We have to see Musk not as an evil mastermind nor as a sideshow but rather as a state actor. I guarantee most nations adversarial to the USA see Musk as a state actor and not some strange independent anomaly. And if we have to see Musk as a state actor, then we have to see the purchase of Twitter as a behavior beneficial to the USA power centers and that it happened because it was beneficial to them, not simply an accident.
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I 100% admit that my take on the TikTok ban is opinion based on the hearings and arguments + the scope of the bill, so you aren’t being unfair. I have never heard that about the Twitter purchase - I had read it was a poor decision Musk made only half-seriously and then was basically forced to follow through with.
The conspiracy theory, which I must again say is not my opinion, states the reluctance of the purchase was either: (A) A show put on to obfuscate “the truth”, or (B) An internal power struggle between the ruling elites and Musk
Just explaining, not advocating. Please don’t @ me.
TikTok is being banned for a bunch of different reasons all added together.
Republicans agreed to it, among the other reasons, because Democrats will get the blame for it and it will hurt Biden at the election.
Republicans and Democrats supported its ban because of sinophobia. It’s a big, successful business in America, there’s scaremongering around what data it’s collecting or ways it could be used to manipulate people’s opinions—ByteDance did not do itself any favours by coming out and telling all its American users to tell their Congresspeople to vote against this, which was spun as a demonstration of that power.
They also support the ban as part of an ongoing backlash against “big tech”. Republicans are angry at big tech because they think it’s too liberal. Democrats are angry at it for being addictive, abusing monopolistic powers, and other quite legitimate issues. The problem is that neither party is very good at actually dealing with the problem, so they just lash out wildly at whatever comes along that looks vaguely tech. Not realising that in this case, that will give way more power to Meta and Alphabet.
I think the reason it’s happening now is because of the growing protest movement against the genocide in Gaza.
All the other US media companies actively sensor pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content and TikTok doesn’t. Unacceptable!
That’s a bingo.
Y’just say ‘bingo’. /ref
Maybe, but I don’t think so. The US govt is infamously slow and inefficient. I’ve been following this and it’s been a drumbeat that’s been growing for years, since long before Israel’s latest genocidal push began last October.
If there’s any particular reason that it’s succeeded now, I’d put it more down to the upcoming election.
Here’s US Senator Pete Ricketts saying that we need to ban TikTok because pro-Palestine videos “have more reach than the top 10 US news websites combined”
The reason it’s succeeded now is because of Gaza. Crediting the election makes no sense, how does this help anyone’s election chances?
how does this help anyone’s election chances
It doesn’t help. It hurts Biden among younger voters. Because he gets the blame for this.
So why are Democrats doing this? This isn’t just a Republican thing, it’s bipartisan and Biden signed it. Why?
So why are Democrats doing this?
For all the other reasons already listed?
He is wrong though. When the war machine gets going we 100% have fake news. And the Journalists do not matter just look at New York Times massive Zionist propaganda takeover.
Oh shit, how did I miss the Noam Chompsky Bernie Sanders crossover episode!?
Thanks for sharing!
I agree with this. I think you’re right.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time on TikTok knows this is true. The narrative is beyond their control there, lots of eyes see. That terrifies them.
That is some top level propaganda. Mixing facts with half truths and fiction. Nice.
Idk why so many people assumed they would its a data gold mine even with the USA blocked
what does this do to the press freedom index ranking of the united states? nothing im guessing
TikTok is a platform, not press. I just wish they were banning the other walled gardens too.
These are advertisement platforms. Not free speech platforms.
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That’s your words
Can we have like serious discussion without these sensationalising but dumb quips? Is there any adult here at all in this room who would be willing to have a nice conversation about the dangers of safety vs control?
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You draw some false equivalency strawmans and look down upon thinking you are so smart. It’s idiotic. Are you able to have mature conversation at all?
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We should make an Adult in the Room bingo card.
Do you not want lemmy to succeed? People from reddit should be welcomed.
Yall are acting like Voat did when the_donald got banned and the MAGAs tried to migrate to voat. Hows voat doing these days?
A government ultimately does control TikTok though…
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'Cuz here on Lemmy, only the US gov’t matters. Which is, of course, similar to what 95% of people on Reddit think
The only difference between Lemmy and Reddit Is Lemmy is smaller and its down way more often
I wonder if Tiktok will just make a seperate company that would comply before the 2025 ban comes to effect…
Or they will just exit the US market, interesting stuff.
I still think Glenn Greenwald views on this topic hold true.
“ByteDance doesn’t have any plans to sell TikTok,” the company posted on its official account on Toutiao, a social media platform it owns.
The sell-or-ban measure was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
“We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts,” said TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew in a video posted on the platform this week.
“The facts, and the Constitution, are on our side… rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.”
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
The fundamental ethos of the US and its propaganda of why it’s the greatest country on the planet is the first amendment and the current bunch are absolutely destroying that illusion in plain sight of younger generations.
They’re sending billions for wars and to Israel supporting and assisting them in genocide yet are saying to the ones they expect to pay for it that there’s no money for healthcare, infrastructure, education, welfare, raising minimum wage, etc, etc, et al, and then still demanding they should receive their votes “because the other guys much worse”.
I see a lot of younger people saying that both are shit, that the system is rigged and they ain’t playing their game anymore. That is tantamount to revolution.
Funny how you concerned citizens always seem to mention Israel without also mentioning supporting Ukraine. Almost like it’s not on your talking points list.
If you don’t see an issue with a hostile nation state directly controlling something that is consumed by so many Americans, you’re not looking at it properly.
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Also because Ukraine is a nazi state. It has nothing to do with my “talking points” just that Ideologicaly I am opposed to The Ukraine, so I do not want support being sent to them.
Ah, so you’d be perfectly ok with Russia just expanding in Europe and invading the Baltics and Moldova? Oh, you’re a .ml user. Your answer is obviously yes.
Don’t stumble down that slope jackass
Who said anything about the baltics ot moldova?
Ukraine was doing a genocide and violated 2 treaties Russia granted aid and enforced the treaties, and then the areas voted to join russia
If you want to talk about the baltics we can, or Transistria, not Moldova, we can, but that wasn’t the topic of discussion
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There’s literally no reason to retaliate using state actors for this. It won’t fix the economics, it won’t fix the power balance.
The retaliation is when the US sets precedent in international economic relations and China uses it to cut off American tech companies from the Chinese market which is a massive revenue source for them. If China announced anything like that, it would kill the tech stocks future projections because all that growth that US tech was banking on would disappear.
US tech companies betting on China to sustain their growth are foolish. China doesn’t need an excuse to favor its internal tech companies over external ones. It already does favor its own tech companies, and its own industries across any sector in which it can compete. China has already crippled US tech company growth within their borders. Any “retaliation” here is just spin, they are doing it anyway.
The reason regulation is required for this is because private companies, being purely proft-driven, won’t. It’s a state matter.
I have no idea what you’re responding to
Yeah, not too sure why you would forcefully see it as a threat…
If you already see it and think of a country as an enemy (boogeyman) than anything people from that country or gov’t says would look like a threat or to be a scary statements…
At least that is how I see it…
I hope we shall continue to analyze our own way of thinking and talking about such topics!
Imagine WW3 kicking off from TikTok. Not even a cool battle or anything, just massive misinformation campaigns to incite violence and false flag attacks
That’s literally already happening
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
If instead of getting anything they are opting to get $0, that actually confirms the “paranoia”.
The fact that the two countries that are most accused of spreading disinformation (including using Western’s own social media) not only provide their own alternatives, but also bans Western social media shows that West wasn’t paranoid enough.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet; the real reason TikTok is being banned.
Sure. Ignoring that this started in 2020 during Trump’s presidency.
And back then the Republicans were the party screaming about banning TikTok.
Now that israel is involved this became a lot less partisan very quickly.
I vote Democrat. I and everyone I’m aware of who wasn’t already addicted to TikTok supported banning it.
Maybe if your arguments contained an iota of good faith, they’d be taken seriously
Can you explain why we don’t ban the other social media platforms?
Yes. This has been ongoing since TikTok acquired musical.ly. The CFIUS didn’t care as much until it became popular. TikTok has tried to comply, so why isn’t the CFIUS and there considerations being heeded?
This move against TikTok predates the Hamas attacks and Israel’s military action. It’s insane that TikTok’s ban is because teens are more likely to be pro-palestine.
It does. But there are mechanisms within CFIUS that TikTok was working through. Trump and Congress decided to circumvent CFIUS and go after TikTok, which is their right, but why?
So CFIUS would be a good process that would be short of a ban. You know, they could look at the app. They could decide whether or not there are other things that the company could do. But I think Congress has basically gone and kind of short-circuited that process and said, no, we’re not going to have the Committee on Foreign Investment look at this. We’re not going to have other processes look at it. We’re just going to make a decision as the Congress that this app needs to be sold in a short time, or it will be banned.
And so why is it that we’ll still be able to access apps like the clothing company Shein in in the U.S. - that’s also Chinese owned - Temu, which sells all sorts of stuff - clothing and housing goods? These apps are also Chinese owned and are on a lot of American phones. source
It’s because of TikTok’s popularity and influence.
This is the same conclusion Second Thought came to a while back in one of his youtube videos. While I don’t disagree with the conclusion, I also wouldn’t say it’s mutually exclusive to reasoning promoted by the mainstream media of "foreign influence. " What’s really wild is the idea that the ban is also being pushed by “foreign influence.”
The concept that “foreign influence” can destabilize the system means the system itself is not transparent and fair enough.
It means local influence does not work in public interest, and the problem is not abroad, it’s in your government.
Plausible deniability, 2 birds with 1 stone. There are hundreds of companies with foreign investors and influence. TikTok has tried to work with investigators and even spent $1.5 billion on a server framework for Project Texas. If TikTok was a crappy app and wasn’t the primary source of news for young adults, the government wouldn’t care.
You have got to be kidding. Did you really just link the canary? The same canary that got banned from Twitter for making antisemitic remarks.
They also failed dozens of fact checks.
I did. Because the leaked phone call is real.
That’s incredibly damning.
I enjoy your YouTube channel. You read Blackshirts and Reds to me.
Nice, thx! I’ve got 2 more books recorded recently, just gotta do the work of tagging and uploading them (should be ~week or so).
- Zak Cope - The wealth of (Some) nations.
- Domenico Losurdo - Nonviolence - A history beyond the myth.
And irrelevant. You are grasping at straws trying to connect all the dots in your conspiracy theories.
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The ban on tiktok was going through before palestine attacked Israel. This article is just pure speculation and conspiracy theories.
The Canary has faced criticism for claiming that Israel is an apartheid state for its occupation of the West Bank. According to the Jewish Chronicle, Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the editor-in-chief, had her Twitter account suspended when she compared Jewish Labour Supporters with South Africa’s Apartheid “Imagine if during a day of international solidarity with the oppressed of Apartheid South Africa the Labour leadership opted instead to spend the day with white supremacists. That’s what Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are doing today.”
What great journalists.
The Canary has faced criticism for claiming that Israel is an apartheid state for its occupation of the West Bank.
So they’re getting criticized for being factually correct? Typical FIVE-EYES cracker bullshit.
fact checks
Opinion disregarded.
Who would ever think I’ll side with TikTok…
First they came for the TikTok, and I said nothing, for I wasn’t a Tiktoker.
Funny how y’all only oppose monopoly til it’s time to circle the wagons around settler companies that can’t compete on their own merits-- or in Meta, Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft’s cases, de-merits.
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
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.
This isn’t about privacy or Meta and Google would be slapped too, this is just about the newest boogeyman for americans.
Seriously this smacks of McCarthy’s grocery list in the House Unamerican Activities Committee.
If there is evidence then they need to show us. We’ve learned some hard lessons about not trusting our government with this stuff.
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Where is it then? Where is the evidence? Can you link to it? Is there a CSPAN broadcast of it or some talking head making shit up?
I would be very surprised if there was evidence because the newspapers haven’t turned up any and they aren’t about to just let it sit on YouTube.
Here’s the full hearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1xEuK0Fxu8
There are also many articles across tech sites on the internet that you can find evidence of how the TikTok app is a data mining monster. If you haven’t read any about it yet, it’s probably just because you don’t want to hear it. It’s certainly not because the evidence is not out there, as there is a shitload of it.
Oh wow. All you could find is the entire 5 hour hearing? You don’t have any time marks? Articles referencing it? Are you seriously just hoping I’ll give up because you threw 5 hours of raw footage at me?
If there’s so many articles then link them. If they proved something in that 5 hours then give me the time stamp. You don’t get to make assertions that destroy people’s jobs and rights to speech without actually citing something.
Oh wow, I provided literally what I said I would provide, and all you can do is complain like a brat? Go find your own shit, I have already wasted enough time attempting to help you.
Long story short, there’s plenty of evidence out there and you will never look for it. Anything that I send as a reply will not be good enough, because you already have chosen what you want to believe about it.
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.
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.
Won’t people just continue using the app? Wouldn’t it be as easy as side loading future installs?
You overestimate the tech literacy of the majority.
If the tutorial can’t be boiled down to a 30 second video, tiktok users aren’t going to be able to comprehend it.
It’s excruciatingly easy to side load on android, to the point where it is outright dangerous for laymen.
All it will take is a 30s tiktok showing how to side load and they’re done, tech literate or not
iPhone has enormous market dominance in the US and no sideloading.
Shhh, you’re not supposed to point out Apples fla… uh, features.
Worse. Unless they’re going to start the Great American Firewall you can just go to the website.
I expect that Tiktok will strart distributing the app as an apk on their website.
iPhone has left the chat.
Or use it as a Progressive Web App. This could be a good thing for awareness of PWAs and for them being seen as a killer feature that people won’t buy a smartphone unless they support them well. A transition away from app stores to PWAs can only be good.
If they are doing TikTok, maybe they should do Facebook, Reddit and YouTube next.
Banning TikTok in an election year is proof Democrats don’t want to win.
Lol it was bipartisan. Not just democrats, Republicans as well.
So what? This only pisses off the Democrat’s base and it will make them stay home.
Notably the ban doesn’t kick in until after the election, after which it may not even be Biden’s problem. Maybe ByteDance will shut it down sooner. Maybe the next administration won’t follow through with the ban. 🤷
It was smart to delay the ban. The original bill would have banned it before the election - monumentally stupid! This, at least, delays the impact.
People are paying attention, though, and TikTok has been buying ads to campaign against this law. It’s still going to have an impact.
And Biden himself has a tiktok account that pumps out content.
The whole thing is very cynical and weird.
It’s a piss poor attempt to try control tiktok and ensure they play along. They don’t really want it banned, they just want to control the flow of information and it’s absolutely destroying the illusion of the first amendment!
Ehhh…I doubt it.
The sell-or-ban measure was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
This is the important part you might have missed, without a president signing it into law it means nothing.
Similar to when Biden said he would never sign a M4A bill (4yrs ago), he would veto, which became a deal breaker to some on the far left.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=biden+veto+medicare+for+all+bill
Well yeah, but saying this was all on democrats isn’t true, either. A democratic signed it, but an entire group of Democrats and Republicans are the reason it exists. Besides, I’m ok with the ban. A lot of people are actually, so technically, yeah it will affect who we vote for haha
Maybe in your circles people are okay with banning a social media company due to perceived ‘spying’, but in reality we know why the blues/reds want to ban it.
People in my circles are fighting and helping share why these bans are bad for our society and free speech in general.
I hope that helps you see a different view from what you are used to!
No, not really. It’s cool of you disagree with me, though.
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!
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.
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.
The USA literally installed state department officials into TikTok https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/17/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-is-run-by-state-department-officials/
Lmao and then they get mad at communist political comissars.
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.
It’s actually already banned in multiple countries, especially for anyone in government positions.
According to the world map in this link the countries that have banned it outright are: North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Krzykstan, India, Nepal, and Somalia.
(For anyone else like me who has trouble with unlabeled maps).
What about according to the text on that damn page?
The text is poorly organized, the map is faster.
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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…
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.
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
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yes, that is just another reason the DNC/Democrates will continue to lose support, compared to 2020.
Some also left the duopoly due to following the DNC Fraud Lawsuit, Bernie Sanders 2016.
Interesting times we are living in, we shall continue to follow!
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?
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.
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.
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.
Brotherman I want Amerika to collapse. You think I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror? I already can’t any day I feel like I’ve sold out to you settlers; selling you out to a better steward would probably be the most tacit sense of relief I’ve felt in my ENTIRE LIFE.
Have you thought maybe the democrats themselves own some responsibility for the jeopardy the election is in? Maybe banning one of the most popular social media sites right before an election was a bad move?
Pretty sure that funding, aiding and abetting a genocide while denying there’s money for anything that benefits their own citizens is what’s losing the democrats support.
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?
But but but… the American government HATES having a light shined on it.
Long as they dont criminalize possession
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