This is the wrong way to go about solving this problem IMO, but then again the problem they’re trying to solve is more about security than privacy as a right.
Watching from Europe I have no idea what the problem is. The US spies on our data, the CCP spies on our data. I can see why the US government might worry that they can’t access the data (except TikTok runs its servers on Oracle databases in the US just to satisfy them). But I don’t understand why the citizens of the US would support tightening the monopoly to just Facebook and Google.
It’s not just about data and spying, it’s also about media and influence. The argument being made that it’s not a good idea to have a “hostile” nation effectively controlling one of the major/dominant social media platforms.
There is also the trade issue of reciprocity, China bans many if not most of the western platforms, while they have free rein to operate theirs in the west.
Exactly. They really sealed the deal when they sent a push message to get people to call Congress and stop the ban. https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/7/24093308/tiktok-congress-ban-push-notification
“TikTok can be used to influence our citizens politically” * TikTok proves it true immediately on a personal level for legislators * “See!”
Couldn’t have found a better way to put gas on that fire. You’re supposed to bribe lobby when they start talking shit.
Its actually also a media problem. For example, the largest Tiktok account of a german politician belongs to Maximilian Krah, of the far right party AFD. Just yesterday it was revealed that his personal assistant is actually a Chinese spy. Krah himself voiced a lot of pro-Chinese opinions before, like being pro annexation of Taiwan and denying the genocide on the uigyurs.
This begs the question if his Tiktok popularity is based on a non-biased algorithm or if the CCP made a deal with him, boosting his Tiktok popularity in exchange for being pro-China.
Yeah well, it’s not like it’s beneath the US government to do the same thing. Remember Cambridge analytica, or the Snowden leaks? My point being, as far as I’m concerned as a citizen, banning TikTok just transfers power to a more concentrated group of actors. That makes the problem worse.
The issue is that China controls the algorithm for what users see. This gives them the ability to manipulate users by showing specific content to sway their opinion on things. This is specifically about China’s ability to manipulate US citizens.
Yes but Facebook / Instagram / Twitter also do this and it has caused huge societal problems in the US, arguably much worse than TikTok.
They do, and I’d love to see these laws expanded to include a ban against all algorithm manipulation. Manipulation coming from external sources is much more dangerous, even if local source manipulation is also dangerous.
It’s weird seeing comments that outline the actual problem getting downvoted here more than the superfluous comments that do not address the real problem at all. Bizarroworld.
Agreed. People only hear/read what they want to read, and often tines its flamboyant claims that are not factual. :shrug:
As does Meta and Alphabet. Facebook famously ran a Russian information op in 2016, 2020, and looks to be starting up again this year.
Ew. I looked through the bill, and here are some parts I have issues with:
Main text
PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CON - TROLLED APPLICATIONS .—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following:
(A) Providing services to distribute, main- tain, or update such foreign adversary con- trolled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
(B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
So basically, the US can block any form of software (not just social media) distributed by an adversary county for pretty much reason, and it can block any company providing access to anything from an adversary.
Definition of "controlled by a foreign adversary"
(g) DEFINITIONS .—In this section:6 (1) CONTROLLED BY A FOREIGN ADVERSARY .— The term ‘‘controlled by a foreign adversary’’ means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is–
(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;
(B) an entity with respect to which a for- eign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indi- rectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or
© a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).
The adversary countries are (defined in a separate US code):
- N. Korea
- China
- Russia
- Iran
So if you live in any of these or work for a company based in any of these, you’re subject to the law.
foreign adversary company definition
(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLI - CATION .—The term ‘‘foreign adversary controlled application’’ means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok;
(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
(iv) an entity owned or controlled, di- rectly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
(B) a covered company that—
(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
It specifically calls out TikTok and ByteDance, but it also allows the President to denote any other entity in one of those countries as a significant threat.
So here are my issues:
- I, as a US citizen, can’t choose to distribute software produced by an adversary as noted officially by the US government - this is a limitation on my first amendment protections, and I think this applies to FOSS if the original author is from one of those countries
- the barrier to what counts is relatively low - just living in an adversary country or working for a company based on an adversary country seems to don’t
- barrier to a “covered company” is relatively low and probably easy to manipulate - basically needs 1M active users (not even US users), which the CIA could totally generate if needed
So I think the bill is way too broad (lots of "or"s), and I’m worried it could allow the government to ban competition with US company competitors. It’s not as bad as I feared, but I still think it’s harmful.
Anyway, thoughts?
Isn’t Nginx written by a Russian? So is it now banned in the US? What other software has been effected by this legislation?
Hah, well time to tell our CEO I’m shutting down our prod servers.
Don’t worry an American will be available to own it instead! And there won’t be any problems because we’re the best!
You missed the /s in your comment.
no comment needs an /s
I shouldn’t need one for that. But in the same vein…
I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s impossible for the world’s only bastion of freedom to do anything wrong! We should just have the president and do away with things like courts!
Woops! You forgot the /s again
Dang it. I’ll remember one of these days.
No, but it could be. The President would need to start the process and give them 270 days to relocate to somewhere that’s not Russia or sell to a non-Russian company or whatever.
I’m not sure it would cover open source software since it seems to be more concerned with data than the actual code. If that open source software is being used by a company controlled by a foreign adversary then that would probably apply but if it’s open source software created by a foreign adversary but being used by a US company I don’t think that would.
The actual wording of the bill seems pretty vague so I could be wrong and they might be able to apply it just to software but that would kind of to against the entire option B that they’re currently giving ByteDance where they can keep Tik Tok running by selling it to an American company.
literally all you would have to do for OSS is just fork it to someone living in america, and develop it from there.
The actual wording of the bill seems pretty vague
And that’s the issue. Yeah, it probably won’t apply to FOSS today, but times change and maybe it will in 10+ years.
Thoughts? Someone turned a troll farm loose on this one. We’ve been getting ratioed for weeks saying this and now all the shills screaming that we must support the CCP and hate our own country because it’s an obvious national security measure are gone. Ones that suspiciously needed the Constitution explained to them at the most basic level.
We got played by the people that are supposed to represent us.
It’s not that bad, but I do think it’s bad, and I outlined why. But my concerns aren’t with whether TikTok is good or bad (I think it’s bad, hence why I don’t use it), I’m more concerned with granting the federal government even more power with vaguely written laws.
The CCP can burn to the ground as far as I care.
“Hello, we are ClickClock, a totally different (😉😉😉) social media company hoping to fill the void of that one social media company that recently went under. As a matter of fact, with their recent layoffs we were even able to hire much of their talent and stuff. But totally different!”
That’s about how trivial it would be to get around this if the legislation was too specific
Sure, and the more general it is, the more likely the government can get away with shady stuff, like the NSA did with the FISA rubber stamp courts.
This doesn’t seem nearly as bad as that, but I also don’t think the stakes are all that high if they make things too specific.
Doesn’t that mean games like Genshin Impact and Honkai by Chinese companies like HoYo will be banned then too in the states?
No, but it probably could be. I think Fortnite also qualifies.
The bill only allows the federal government to require companies to sell or be banned, it doesn’t ban anything on its own.
once again - not a ban, a seizure. Steve Mnuchin is heading a group of government insiders who want to buy TikTok, and this bill bans it if and only if they don’t sell. The government has decided that TikTok is a dangerous propaganda and espionage network and intends to steal it and run it themselves. Even if you think that TikTok is that dangerous you have to ask yourself: why is it legal for everyone else and why does our government want so badly to do it themselves?
Yup. And the precedent this sets is horrifying. Even monopolies get due process. Being able to declare a company as a foreign enemy and force them to leave the market or be bought out is a ridiculous measure in a supposedly free society.
Because then Facebook will pay for your reelection campaign?
so they can do the death penalty on a company, they have a model
they just don’t do it to Exxon or Facebook or Monsanto or…
First off, source? Second, the npr interview I heard mentioned specifically that China has to approve the sale because the algorithm is proprietary to a Chinese company. So anyone “buying TikTok” is buying a name and none of the actual bones of the social media platform
Aren’t the bones the cheap part now? Think truth social for instance, why was it supposedly worth so much if anyone can spin up a Mastadon instance and make it the same restrictions over the weekend. The userbase numbers are all that mattered there I assume. Why is reddit worth more than Lemmy? Is it because the bones are expensive? Or is it that they have access to a large userbase already.
the reason truth social was so highly valued is probably related to trumps chronic addiction to over valuing his assets by about 10-100x the original value of them.
you would think the userbase of truth social would be big, it’s not. It’s several orders of magnitude smaller than twitter, and it’s value is theorized to be heavily independent of the actual user count, the board of truth literally said as much. I.E. basically fucking bullshit.
Oh no, this includes “aids” to Israel isn’t it…
Why the hell do Israel needs more money?! They are not even close to poor…
pay for each Palestinian murdered, raped, or tortured.
Whew the propaganda smokescreen almost fully fell apart with people waking up and seeing us support Genocide. Good thing we went full authoritarianism to stop it!
Free speech was always a lie I guess
All parties involved are asinine. The lawmakers, the company, both governments, the voters and the users.
we are now in the process of cooking my friends.
Support your local darknet if you do not like censorship and violation of our rights
It’s free :)
we are now in the process of cooking my friends
Would you like some A1 sauce with your rack of Nathan?
i would just like to experience nature in solitude my friend. That is all.
The free market for me but not for thee
US apps all banned in China.
Yeah, that’s true, but China doesn’t claim to be a beacon of capitalism
“Well he did it first” is really not how I want a government to be run tbh
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Biden signs bill criticized as “major expansion of warrantless surveillance”
This also happened a few days ago
This isn’t good, now we’re only left with the tech giants dictating what people can see.
How is it any different for before the law? TikTok is a tech giant.
From what I know, certain special interests want TikTok under their control so they can censor certain topics. People keep saying this is happening because of CCP, etc. But I believe they want this platform “censored” before the elections. The other major players already play ball with censorship but TikTok caught them by surprise.
Why would it have unanimous bi-partisan support in the Senate if the bill had weight on the election results?
To be devil’s advocate: We already know China loves to be meddlin’ in Western elections, so both parties have a vested interest in getting them out of their pants.
That being said, China can easily meddle all over the place, so I don’t consider that the primary motivator. Like I said before, this is 98% about protectionism.
TikTok is a massively powerful tool of influence and intelligence, in the hands of an adversary that is well understood to proactively meddle with democratic elections.
Yes, obviously the CCP will unabashedly pursue other interference vectors. That should be viewed as more reason to curtail TikTok, not less.
You’re missing the point, though. China has sizable stakes in multiple social media and streaming platforms, movie studios, and popular videogame studios (like the makers of Fortnite). But the fact those are all primarily owned by US companies makes it okay (in this context–I know China has stakes in similar businesses around the world, too).
TikTok is a threat to Meta and Co’s dominance and American companies can’t simply buy it out to make it go away or at least make it directly benefit them. Don’t mistake me in saying it isn’t a national security threat. What I’m saying is, if TikTok is a threat, then all of these corporate platforms are a threat. The government should targeting all of them! But they’re not, and the reason seems pretty obvious to me.
I mean do you think Fortnite has anywhere near the same level of ability to disseminate information or surveil people as TikTok does?
And actually it makes a material difference that ByteDance is based in Beijing, as opposed to just having Chinese investors. Those social platforms, movie studios, etc., being headquartered in the US is exactly what makes it different. Can Chinese firms apply financial pressure to compel them to act against the interests of US citizens? Yes, of course, and they do.
But that’s categorically different than being legally obligated to comply with the CCP, which ByteDance is.
They have until January 19th to divest, with a 90-day extension if they are pursuing sale. They aren’t mandating that it be done by November’s election regardless of the outcome.
Tone down the conspiracy theory angle. It’s lemmy, you can get more interaction by mentioning capitalism rather than censorship.
Not sure what you know, but here’s the head of the FBIs statement about why.
Not this guy again. In my opinion they tell us small truths like CCP bad, etc. Which isn’t wrong but they’re concealing the true motivation. Why ban it now? Not two years ago? It’s because TikTok needs to be under better control for the upcoming election and in the future. We already know big tech all work in concert to conceal topics for the US.
It’s the only big non-US owned social media. They hate that because it’s much harder to control. It’s not even about the profits to be had, tiktok gets more eyeballs and especially it gets the young people’s attention and has more public thrusts than all of the MSM combined and because Bytedance doesn’t hate their HQ in the US the US government, intelligence or special interests, can’t just call them and strong arm them into censoring whatever talking point that they don’t like currently. It’s not much more complex than that. “Chinese spying on Americans” is just projection of what all the other platforms do.
Those who push this will not be happy no matter what Tiktok does or whatever concessions it makes. They already hold american data in American and EU data in the EU for example. Did that stop the “muh CCP influence” propaganda? Well, no… Their main goal would be to get Bytedance to sell the platform to Americans, atleast the american business. I guess they would rather let it get banned and sacrifice American or even all the western markets than to let that happen. It would be a loss to them either way.
😂
The platform is already pretty censored, mentions of Palestine get fucked by the algo, I barely even see it from people I follow if I don’t look up their past videos.
But I could imagine that’s the impetus for congress, Trump tried the same thing after Tiktok was used to organize ~a million people RSVPing free tickets to a trump rally, resulting in him doing his shtick infront of like 100 people in a stadium. He only stopped after a major donor asked him not to, and it was very unpopular. Now dems are in Trumps position after hearing the kids are using Tiktok to organize against them, of course they’d make the same calculation and try to ban it.
Well we already were. Now we’re just down to American tech giants.
Seriously doubt it will kill it
At best it’ll create another spin-off like the hundreds that already exist on the app/play stores.
No doubt
It won’t, but it will be sold, and the moderation and censorship practices will change.
Lmao. Sure buddy.
Ok who’s gonna buy it?
Steve Mnuchin.
Long as it aint musk or bezos or gates
if this thing is being sold because it’s a propaganda and data mining risk, selling it to a cohort of government insiders doesn’t make me feel better.
If there wasn’t a grift in progress they would have banned it in totality instead of banning only if they dont sell.
I honestly don’t like tiktok but this is clearly done to censor the pro palestine content and for exposing the US gov along many others as hypocrites
This has been discussed way longer than 10/7/2023.
but curiously now is when it was acted on.
True, I remember talks about it being acquired by a US company but I think this really pushed it over the edge for them
yep. Facebook’s still running strong, and that company has been a part of how many fucking genocides now?
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If I was Biden and I wanted to make sure absolutely nobody under 35 voted for me, first thing I’d do is genocide.
If that didn’t work, then I’d restart student loans.
If that didn’t work, I’d ban Tiktok.
Edit: To the people downvoting me: Do you think giving Israel the bombs they use to carry out genocide, restarting student loans, and banning tiktok helps Biden’s reelection chances?
Are you republicans who don’t want him to change course? Are you democrats perpetually stuck in 2016, blaming voters rather than asking “What policies caused us to lose? What changes do we need to make to win?”
It really doesn’t seem like they want to win
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Pressure Biden to do the things he needs to do to get elected. Voters are gonna do what they’re gonna do. You cannot shame millions of voters into taking an unpaid day off to vote for someone who has told them through his actions that he does not and will not represent them.
Trying to silence such analysis just helps the DNC maintain the delusion that they can win while standing up to the very voters they need instead of doing what they are telling the democrats to do.
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Nobody is saying the captain needs to be replaced, we’re saying stop sailing directly towards those fucking rocks. No matter how hard we paddle, Biden cannot win the muslim votes he needs if he is facilitating genocide of muslims. He will not get the young votes he needs if he bans tiktok after restarting student loans.
Nothing we can do can change this. Only Biden can.
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What I don’t hear are realistic solutions to the problems
Stop sending Israel the tools to carry out genocide. Problem solved. This is the only way you can make a credible argument to muslims that trump would be worse, because you are no longer facilitating a literal genocide.
Forgive all student loans. Yes, this is realistic, the Department of Education studied the problem and said so. Problem solved. Dare republicans to undo it. This is the only way you can make a can make a credible argument to young people that you actually want this thing and if they don’t vote for you, republicans will make it worse. You can’t credibly make that argument when you’re the one who restarted loan payments and you’ve only undone a tiny portion of the harm that caused via forgiveness.
Order military hospitals to provide abortion care and free contraceptives. You’re the commander in chief, you can do that.
Order the military to destroy the child drowning fence along the rio. Again, commander in chief.
You act like TikTok isn’t a mouthpiece for the CCP
But that’s irrelevant, tiktok is popular. Banning a popular thing in an election year is a dogshit strategy to get reelected.
Well, instead of saying that, maybe you should be saying, “If you think Biden is bad, wait until the great orange dictator takes office. He already has family talking about flipping Gaza real estate.”
You have learned nothing from 2016, and are bound to repeat it.
Actions speak infinitely louder than words, this isn’t a problem messaging can solve.
’ll hold Biden accountable for his transgressions
Pure comedy gold. You’re both delusional. Me too, thanks.
Work to do away with first past the post voting in your state yall.
They are the second bit. They’ve been going hard on saying anyone who won’t vote for Biden is actually a bigot who loves Trump and wants a domestic genocide.
noooo not the cringe app! everything but the cringe app
yes, ban on tiktok is a net positive
Do you think banning tiktok increases or decreases Biden’s popularity?
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The democrats cannot win an election without young people.
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I know plenty of people who will be pissed off about TikTok ban and all of them don’t vote. They don’t do fuckin shit with their lives to improve it.
I just want you to reread this and think about how you sound to other people for a minute.
i will support whoever nukes bytedance datacentres
First they came for TikTok…
tiktokers aren’t a persecuted ethnic minority
this is so funny out of context
Were socialists a persecuted ethnic minority?
Already they are planning to hinder open hardware (RISK-V) as it could help China and will certainly attack foss software as well.
I’m sure you understood my point.
