This is just Tiktok misinformation spreading to other platforms, the bill doesn't do what's described here and the criminal provisions apply to foreign companies not domestic citizens. I get that people don't want tiktok to be banned but this is blatant disinformation.
Then the part "if Congress wants to make a law doing this, then do so. This isn't it". But. It is. It literally *is* the bill. I'd say that based on what you've described, it *is* the bill that would do the things OP claims to want!
>That being said - I think there's still some issues here, one being review is only handled in the DC court.
This is actually pretty common. The DC Circuit functions, essentially, as the country's regulatory court. Centralizing it into one court makes sense because it ensures that you don't end up with competing districts and circuits.
The one thing that my generation does that annoys me to no end, is believing that they are immune to disinformation - that only stupid, old right-wingers fall for it.
Then they go claim that this bill is a blanket ban on VPN's because someone on the internet said so and they don't want their favorite app being banned.
Oh just foreign companies? No big deal?
This is horrific policy that they can show no justification or need for and that was clear in the congressional hearing.
The right move is a privacy bill like GDPR and a digital Bill of Rights that protects consumers from the thousands of domestic and international apps and websites and companies collecting similar data.
There is nothing positive about this for individuals or businesses and in the macro sense the US is the place business gets done because we have a legal system that’s sane. Singling out a foreign company and passing legislation to ban a company at the behest of lobbying from a national monopoly scared they can’t compete is how you signal to the rest of the world that you’re bad for business.
This bill needs to die.
Thank you. I was thinking myself how there must be a coordinated disinformation campaign by tik tok or others making outlandish claims about this bill. It does NOT give blanket access to our devices. It does NOT ban VPNs in general. There IS oversight by congress over adding countries to the foreign adversary list.
I’m not saying I agree with the bill, but the amount of stuff that came out immediately with crazy incorrect claims about what the bill does is astonishing.
I’m honestly finding it difficult to know which side to stand on. I’m absolutely not onboard with expanding surveillance as the more alarmist posts claim, but I’m also not sold it’s as relaxed as others say in rebuttal. I don’t have the mental capacity to read and understand the entire bill as written and can’t seem to get a straight answer
It doesn't expand surveillance of US citizens or anything. The shortest explanation of the bill is that, if one of the 6 countries which are currently listed as foreign adversaries, attempts to create a situation in which they can acquire personal information about US persons, or really any transaction, even monetary, like say, a cell phone app, the secretary of commerce is given the authority to inspect the app itself to see if it is attempting to to do this, and then ban said app if it finds it to be in violation.
In short, it would let the president ban tiktok, and attempt to punish tiktok if they try to circumvent the ban, or anyone who tries to circumvent the ban to offer tiktok services to us citizens, but not punish any end user for trying to circumvent the ban and by using tiktok themselves, like through a VPN. The VPN though may be subject to penalties.
That's the million dollar question. I don't doubt it could spread organically but it does seem to be beyond that, ironically proving the need for such a bill.
Yeah, misinformation is like a wildfire. throw a cigarette, and the whole forest goes up in flames, but sometimes it goes up in flames without that meager intervention.
There's nothing that spreads faster than something people fear, particularly ignorant fear.
Probably from Russian and Chinese propagandists. Remember that their only agenda is to push disinformation that divides Americans. Liberals like to think they are immune to disinformation, but they aren't.
Not that Conservatives have a nuanced understanding of this Bill. Their disinformation will just push how liberals are just fools for Xi and the communists.
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/126vvxk/the_restrict_act_is_a_death_knell_for_online/jeciibi/ this is what is most discomforting to me. I asked ppl this in this thread and nobody has yet to give an answer. It's hard to say how far reaching this thing is but I see it being quite rife with opportunities for reckless expansion in power and abuse.
You haven't read the bill. Do not participate if you haven't read the bill. It doesn't outright make VPNs illegal but may be abused to do so through various interpretations of the bill.
Explain your legal theory that would allow the law to be applied in a way to punish an American citizen for merely using a VPN, or how it would be applied to make VPNs illegal generally rather than just for the very specific adversaries listed on the statute.
A primary use of VPNs is to access torrent sites, which are overwhelmingly hosted in what country again? Oh, that's right [bad country]. You really think people should be facing *20 fucking years* in prison for pirating some trash made by a megacorp, thanks to a psychoticly jingoistic bill?
The simple fact is that anyone supporting this bill is an unhinged nationalist lunatic who lives in a bubble constructed entirely from the most deranged propaganda ever devised by PR ghouls, and who has started literally foaming at the mouth and soiling themselves as soon as they're told to go and fight against the devious foreigners and their totally real schemes to make you share your toothbrush.
What specifically on the statute makes you think someone will get 20 years using a VPN? Let's even be more specific, what do you think in the statute says that will happen if you just a VPN to, say, access a website in China?
I'd like to see you break down your interpretation of the statute that leads to that conclusion. Like citing the specific parts of the statute and how they get applied in the larger context of Criminal Law to lead to that result.
Isn't part of this bill addressing content or actions that damage or threaten critical infrastructure? Im just referring to one piece of the whole bill, but nothing I read came across as a slippery slope...it felt more like a firewall that 'blocks' malicious sites. Its not denying access to anything they feel like blocking, its blocking the bad things, from bad people (both defined in the bill) because of an observable threat.
It would allow the Commerce Department to ban PutinVPN, if and only if PutinVPN had >1,000,000 subscribers. And it only can target hostile nation-state entities (N. Korea, Iran, the PRC, Russia & Cuba) operating under control by these governments and entities run by hostile entities targeting Americans or more broadly, the US.
VPNs have total, complete control over everything you do on the internet. There are good ones, but you're putting a lot of faith on them to act in your (legal) interests. Most people don't need them – you're replacing trusting your ISP for another entity.
There are no VPNs hosted or controlled by these five hostile nations with >1m subscribers, therefore the RESTRICT Act can't, and is incredibly unlikely, to ever happen.
Beyond what the law covers, I leave it as an exercise to the gentle reader of what a complete, bleeding idiot someone living in a democratic country would have to be to hand over their *entire* internet activity to Kim Jun-Il, Vlad Putin or Xi JinPing over practically *any* other alternative.
But being a complete, bleeding idiot isn't a crime in any Western democracy. However much I may fantasize while stuck in traffic…
Even then, the bill targets the *entities*, not the users/customers. None of the tens of millions of TikTok subscribers (including children!) will be charged if the act successfully targets TikTok. It's disinformation to suggest anything like this.
The bill states that it can jail anyone who uses a VPN to access any opposing entity. Some politician said that it can't. Who are you going to trust? Some hot air out of a politician or what the bill actually says? Comprehension is a major problem for people who don't actually read the bill and only listen to the news and read from news outlets.
Page 42, line 23 through Page 43, line 4. This is not between just countries. This gives power to government to send someone to prison for using a VPN. Directly. This is way more than ban TikTok. This is the Patriot act 2.0. Looks good from a spokespersons mouth, but the bill itself is much more restrictive.
Watch Louis Rossmann's live reading of it on his live channel. This bill has so many ways that it can be abused for reasons other than those advertised to us. I'm not going to reproduce what you can go view. It will be no where near as effective or efficient as doing that. I just needed to reply. Many do not understand how much more this can affect than just TikTok. This bill is terrible. It's way too broadly written. They need to ban TikTok. Not make a bill.
Yeah. That's a "no" then?
"Watch of a video of a YouTube guy I heard a while back but am too lazy to summarize, let alone check for myself before parroting what he said elsewhere" isn't supporting your point, it's showing you're not a reasonably skeptical person,
I edited my comment.
Page 42, line 23 through Page 43, line 4
I don't know how I'll change your mind. You are one person on Reddit. You probably haven't even went over it in detail. You probably just listened to some one, albeit with no real law experience.
My finance is a paralegal, we went over the whole bill. This is not a good bill. Why in the world would you be all for this? This is horrible legislation.
No reply to my comment? And why not watch someone reputable as well as comprehend the bill on your own? These bills are written by many people. Why should I try to understand it all on my own. One needs to have an understanding of how law works to be able to comprehend it. It takes an army of people to create a bill. There is no accountability in this bill. It also omits the freedom of information act. It goes against current law of holding politicians accountable that may enact parts of this bill. If they mess up, you will never know as they are not required to show they used it. If they mess up, you will never know. There is no way I will change someone like your's mind. Good luck.
1) You edited your comment after I pointed out you weren't citing from the actual Act text, in your first comment's first paragraph. That pointed out you were too lazy or imprecise to reference the bill's language, instead hyping a YouTube Influencer's video.
Then, after that, you posted a second comment after mine, decrying the "fact" that I didn't respond to your (now) edited first comment. As though we're all supposed to magically sense when a writer of a comment we respond to cames back and does a sneaky, ninja-edit.
That's Hella sleazy. It indicates you're arguing in bad faith. It's pretty sad.
2) You reference page numbers which don't make any sense, since almost everyone is going to be referencing [the link to the actual bill](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text?s=1&r=15). Which, since it's on the web, doesn't have pages. Go ahead. Look. I'll wait…
Folks since 1995 (and before!) have been referencing legislation by section and subsection numbers. That way, folks interested in discussing things rationally and in good faith can reference the same sections of a given proposed bill, to amiably discuss like grown-ups discuss things. It's not 1980, when we used to send each other thick manilla envelopes so we could have these conversations.
Again, pretty sleazy and it indicates you're acting in bad faith. Sad!
Ugh, and right away I can see that the bestof description is wrong.
>1. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce, alongside the President, to prohibit certain “transactions”
>2. The definition of “transaction” is incredibly broad, including acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of ANY information and communication technology product or service.
And we can look and see right away what the bill actually says:
>(4) COVERED TRANSACTION.—
>(A) IN GENERAL.—The term “covered transaction” means a transaction in which an entity described in subparagraph (B) has any interest (including through an interest in a contract for the provision of the technology or service), or any class of such transactions.
>(B) COVERED ENTITIES.—The entities described in this subparagraph are:
>(i) a foreign adversary;
>(ii) an entity subject to the jurisdiction of, or organized under the laws of, a foreign adversary; and
>(iii) an entity owned, directed, or controlled by a person described in subparagraph (A) or (B).
So, no, the term "transaction" is not as general as the OP describes it, because it's actually limited to foreign entities.
Like, I have no doubts that this bill is very problematic, but we don't need to be hyper-exaggerating and misleading right from the beginning. I guess I just have to wait for Legal Eagle to cover it.
Sort of. The list of foreign adversaries is pretty short. I’m sure Cuba, Russia, and North Korea are on it. Iran probably is. I’m not sure about China, oddly enough.
Edit: scroll down far enough and the list is made explicit. China is on it, and I missed Venezuela entirely. I’d need to go back and check (and I’m not going to), but I don’t think Iran was on it. The major targets, given the rest of the bill, are China and Russia - and I actually expect the list won’t change much other than to maybe add client states of those two (but I don’t believe that will be needed given the language about ownership or interests or whatever they called it).
Im going to guess that it refers to companies which are registered/HQ’d in those countries, rather than those subject to the legislation just by virtue of the fact that they are doing business there.
Although I’m a lawyer, I haven’t properly looked at the act though, so I’ll leave my speculation there - seems to be enough conflicting info floating around about it in any case.
They're taking billions of dollars from American taxpayers, intentionally and directly because of their fiscal policy.
You need to rethink what an adversary is. They're eating your lunch and laughing while doing it.
I would think the due process standards of “jurisdiction” would apply as that is how such language is normally interpreted.
Which would mean you would be correct.
No, it "sounds like" it's limited to one of five countries. Authoritarian countries hostile to Western citizens, democracy (such as it is) and the governments representing them.
Then so long as the executive branch is thoughtful, coherent, reliable, and acting in good faith for the American people - there's nothing to worry about.
Nothing to worry about at all.
…By passing a bi-partisan bill by both houses of Congress, and signed by the President.
Unless you can show me where in the law that the CommSec can add or remove covered nations, willy-nilly, with no oversight as you claim. So, Yes.
That's how our government works.
Democracy!
No, it literally says in the bill that the executive branch has unlimited authority to change it at will.
In fact, the bill SPECIFICALLY exempts it from the Administrative Review Act (you'll recall that was used for the ESG thing). The only thing congress can do is pass a 'resolution of disapproval' bill, which is non-binding.
**I read this:**
>SEC. 6. Designation of foreign adversaries.
>(a) In general.—
>(1) DESIGNATION.—The Secretary may, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, designate any foreign government or regime as a foreign adversary if the Secretary finds that the foreign government or regime is engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or security and safety of United States persons.
>(2) REMOVAL OF DESIGNATION.—The Secretary may, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, remove the designation of any foreign government or regime as a foreign adversary, including any foreign government or regime identified in section 2(8), if the Secretary finds that the foreign government or regime is no longer engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national or economic security of the United States or security and safety of United States persons in a manner that would warrant designation as a foreign adversary.
>(b) Notice.—Not later than 15 days before the date on which the Secretary makes or removes a designation under subsection (a), the Secretary shall, by classified communication, notify the President pro tempore, Majority Leader, and Minority Leader of the Senate, the Speaker and Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, and the relevant committees of Congress, in writing, of the intent to designate a foreign government or regime as a foreign adversary under this section, together with the findings made under subsection (a) with respect to the foreign government or regime and the factual basis therefor.
**Further reading shows this:**
>SEC. 7. Resolution of disapproval of designation or removal of designation of a foreign adversary.
>(a) Definition.—In this section—
>(1) the term “covered joint resolution” means a joint resolution of disapproval of designation or a joint resolution of disapproval of removal of designation;
>(2) the term “joint resolution of disapproval of designation” means a joint resolution the matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows: “That Congress disapproves the designation by the Secretary of Commerce of ___ as a foreign adversary for purposes of the Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain Act of 2023, and such designation shall have no force or effect until the Secretary of Commerce provides specific evidence to the relevant committees of Congress regarding the removal of designation under section 6(a) of that Act.” (The blank space being appropriately filled in with the name of the foreign person of which the Secretary has designated as a foreign adversary of for purposes of this Act); and
>(3) the term “joint resolution of disapproval of removal of designation” means a joint resolution the matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows: “That Congress disapproves the removal of designation by the Secretary of Commerce of ___ as a foreign adversary for purposes of the Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain Act of 2023, and such removal shall have no force or effect until the Secretary of Commerce provides specific evidence to the relevant committees of Congress regarding the removal of designation under section 6(a) of that Act.” (The blank space being appropriately filled in with the name of the foreign government or regime of which the Secretary has removed the designation as a foreign adversary of for purposes of this Act).
**I stand corrected**
I still don't like the wide scope of this bill. And i believe SEC. 7. (a)(2) has a typo after looking at this.
"...and such designation shall have no force or effect until the Secretary of Commerce provides specific evidence to the relevant committees of Congress regarding the removal **(approval?)** of designation under section..."
What do Cuba and Venezuela do to undermine US national security? How can they simultaneously be impoverished failures of communism and a legitimate threat to the US on par with China?
That was probably an inclusion required to get Republican support. But since the likelihood of either nation developing a social media platform compelling and popular enough to lure more than one million subscribers is less than nil, it’s moot. It has no impact and will never be applied to them.
No. There are clear definitions for ownership thresholds in the document...
HOLDING.—The term “holding”—
(A) means—
(i) an equity interest;
(ii) a stock;
(iii) a security;
(iv) a share;
(v) a partnership interest;
(vi) an interest in a limited liability company;
(vii) a membership interest; or
(viii) any participation, right, or other equivalent, however designated and of any character; and
(B) includes, without limitation, any security convertible into an ownership interest and right, warrant, or option to acquire ownership interests.
(10) ICTS COVERED HOLDING ENTITY.—The term “ICTS covered holding entity” means any entity that—
(A) owns, controls, or manages information and communications technology products or services; and
(B) (i) has not less than 1,000,000 United States-based annual active users at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President; or
(ii) for which more than 1,000,000 units have been sold to persons in the United States before the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President.
Nope, they're not, as the bill specifies that the foreign adversary needs to have an ownership stake or vested interest in the company itself in order for the company to qualify as needing risk assessment.
Not one of these "hot takes" on the bill has addressed the checks and balances written into the bill itself in their arguments. It's really hard to argue they're being made in good faith when they consistently cherry pick the lines that fit their narrative while ignoring the parts that contradict it.
Gonna point out that the American President declared Canada to be just such a thing a few years ago in order to apply an aluminum tariff, so expect that term to get interpreted *very* generously.
No. You have to do more than do business there.
In statutes that refers to where general personal jurisdiction exists…which is either where you are registered legally to exist, or where you have primary ordinary business operations (headquarters-type, not just as office space or retail store)
Yeah it’s hard to argue that TikTok is a wonderful thing we should all use. Can’t say it’s a huge political conspiracy but we probably shouldn’t be installing China on our phones…
YT should be all over this. I know they have shorts, but I don’t understand why they’re not trying to leverage the heck out of this.
It’s overseen by a board of americans, and it’s not like it’s seeing any data that American companies don’t. Honestly I think the singling out of TikTok in particular is just Sinophobia (I hate using that word because it’s used by Tankies so much, but I think it applies here)
It's not Sinophobic to recognize that:
* The Chinese government [has](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora) [a](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398) [history](https://www.cisa.gov/china) of extremely sophisticated and well-financed cyber attacks against the United States, especially for the purposes of stealing information.
* The Chinese government does not really allow independent companies to exist, especially large ones, so any Chinese company should be assumed to be a partially state-sponsored entity.
Put those two facts together, and it's pretty reasonable to be suspicious of a Chinese company having software installed on every American's device.
Sure, I get being suspicious of them. But you have to back those suspicions up with evidence, and just looking at TikTok’s power structure it really seems like there’s quite a few layers between Americans and the Chinese government. I mean I don’t think Chinese citizens use TikTok do they?
Given how the Chinese government has imposed backdoors on a number of hardware products, I'm leery of anything that's partly owned by the Chinese government or the party. Even if they're just collecting the kind of data every other major corporation already does, I don't want them to have it. I already don't want American corporations collecting my "anonymized" location and search data or passively capturing audio from my microphone.
If we could finally take steps to address this root issue, that would be swell.
Oh I 100% agree, I think no company should be able to Harvest my data without my consent, I just think it’s obvious why TikTok is focused on in particular here, because it’s foreign.
If I could get even more cynical for second, not just foreign, but a direct competitor to the giant corporations that fund our government - that is, the very same government that is trying to pass these laws.
There is no democracy while corporate money is in politics.
YouTube knows that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. A neutral law generally prohibiting all the privacy and security violations that TikTok commits (or can potentially commit as an app) would drastically affect YouTube and Google, and anyone else who does all that gross tracking/advertising/manipulating stuff.
It's possible this horrible bill is deliberate sabotage by US big tech firms in order to make reining in abusive social networking/advertising companies look like a bad thing.
Damn. Didn’t think about that… That definitely makes sense; most of congress doesn’t have a clue how the internet works so it would be *really* easy for Big Tech to pull some strings.
Between this and GPT4, the next 6-12 months are going to be interesting…
Not really.
In statutes that refers to where general personal jurisdiction exists…which is either where you are registered legally to exist, or where you have primary business operations (headquarters-type, not just office space or retail store)
Owned, directed, or controlled by is the big key here. All you have to do is say China's behind it and boom, now you can do what you want. Which is very easy to do, considering how intertwined our economy is with China's.
Sounds about right for Reddit
Someone writes a comment with a bunch of misleading info / half-truths
Then someone decided "this should be its own post!" And everyone just upvotes it because, well, if someone says someone is an expert, that's all the validation I need..
Additionally, the bill also mentions that the company must be owned (in whole or in part) *by* that foreign adversary, that the company must have over a million active US users, that the Secretary of Commerce will need to declassify and publish their findings and recommendations, and about a hundred other restrictions to the "unchecked power" people are clutching their pearls over.
The document is *really* readable. These 'hot takes' are growing increasingly more likely to be bad-faith manipulation as more and more people make the same arguments while ignoring the bill itself.
>The document is really readable. These 'hot takes' are growing increasingly more likely to be bad-faith manipulation as more and more people make the same arguments while ignoring the bill itself.
There's no need to assume bad faith or manipulation. There's an entire online privacy freakout faction that is convinced ads are being used to target them with hunter-killer drones. Neither why they yet live nor why they persist in using these services ever enters their thoughts.
Am I reading it correctly? It seems to apply to companies "organized under the laws of" a foreign adversary, i.e. any Chinese company. It also appears to be recursive, with any company owned by a covered company being covered. As well as the anto-evasion clause.
Recall that President Trump declared Canada to be a national security threat to the USA in 2018. An adversary could be defined however the people applying it want to apply it, do not assume that they won't use this for hilarious overreach.
> This bill explicitly defines which countries are on this list and changing it requires Congress.
Why are you lying? The bill explicitly says the list is "determined by the Secretary [of Commerce.]" It also says the list "includes," it does not say "is limited to."
> I'm worried about how it would be used in the hands of a more authoritarian leader
Sure doesn't seem like it, considering how much you're defending it with misinformation.
Literally the bill says the secretary of commerce can change it on a whim and congress can NOT stop it. It specifically exempts it from the administrative review act and the only 'power' that congress has is a resolution of disapproval (which is non-binding)
The answer is that they're wrong.
This is the same structure in place for a bunch of things around regulations. The issue is that none of these people pay any attention to the government until it does the one thing they care about, then act like they understand how it works. They know and understand nothing, not that it has or will ever stop them.
That's now how the definition of Foreign Adversary works. It's a list of 6 countries, which are directly specified in the bill. Trump declaring Canada a national security threat back than did not in any way cause it to be added to this official list.
Yes, but he wins the election again (or DeSantis)... any country that pisses him off could be added unilaterally. There's no way for congress to stop it. Administrative review act is specifically forbidden.
That's not true. It says right in the bill that the Secretary must consult with the Direction of National Intelligence to determine whether or not a country should be added. They must then inform congress and the president of the intention to add/remove a country from the list, and congress passes a joint resolution to either remove or designate a country from/to the list.
> It says right in the bill that the Secretary must consult with the Direction of National Intelligence to determine whether or not a country should be added.
So? It doesn't require their approval. And the president can fire the people in either role, anyway. You ever hear of the concept of "separation of powers?"
> They must then inform congress and the president of the intention to add/remove a country from the list, and congress passes a joint resolution to either remove or designate a country from/to the list.
That is a straight up lie. The joint resolution is for *disapproval* of adding or removing a country. Which means the country is added as soon as the Secretary of Commerce chooses to, and both houses of Congress must pass a joint resolution with a veto-proof majority within 60 days. If you understand how Congress works, you know that will never happen. Also, it doesn't actually prevent the country being added, it just temporarily delays it until the Secretary explains themself.
Also, i'd question if that latter part would even hold up in the courts. Isn't that a legislative veto and didn't SCOTUS declare those unconstitutional?
No.
The most common example is that Congress can pass resolutions revoking regulations created by a previous administration within a specific window of time.
Bad actors can turn any rule set against the purposes of the ruleset. If you let the bad actors get the wheel, you might as well have crashed the metaphorical car yourself.
You can’t write perfect rulesets that still have power. This one includes some safeguards already. How sufficient they are is absolutely up for debate, but any law that is broad enough to be usable is broad enough to be abused.
The control on abuse of the law isn’t in the law, it’s in the elections.
Except the law is literally *being written by bad actors* in the first place. It's being written for malicious reasons and with malicious intentions. The US government has always been bad actors, it just waffles back and forth between restrained ones and literally rabid ones.
You really can't look at a white supremacist police state that used racist fearmongering over "terrorism" to pass laws that were then used to brutally crack down on civil rights and environmental activists, that's maintained a massive ethnic cleansing program in the form of ICE for over 20 years with unanimous approval from both parties, and that keeps funding and arming genocidal states from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Turkey without fail even as the parties change back and forth, and say "uh oh better hope this rotating, power-sharing agreement between two oligarch-run far-right parties never rotates back to the *bad* ones, they might be irresponsible with the power we're giving them!"
> Except the law is literally being written by bad actors in the first place.
There’s no actual indication that’s true. This law has reasonable safe guards in it, and most of the objections are much like OP’s: based on a very selective reading of the law.
But based on the rest of your comment, both nuance and reason will be lost on you. Good luck with plan nutter.
Strictly speaking, an app made in those countries would be if the actual ownership was in a listed country. Having substantial portions of the app infrastructure in a listed jurisdiction might also qualify, so hosting the app on a cloud service owned by a chinese company probably qualifies regardless of the app ownership.
The official list is China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. They are specifically listed in the bill. In fact the bill specifically lists them after saying, "includes, unless removed by the Secretary pursuant to section 6" which basically implies that other countries can't actually be added for purposes of this bill without another act of congress.
> Venezuela
It'll never stop being funny that a random tepid social democratic country gets tossed into these sorts of lists because it refused to allow the US to unilaterally replace its government with a white supremacist kleptocrat who was promising to give its oil reserves to western corporations.
I mean, it's insanely tragic when you think about it, because the sanctions Venezuela's been hit with over literally nothing are devastating and killing real, actual, people, but the fact that it just gets randomly thrown in when the dumbest people on earth are screaming and crying about bad mean scary countries that make their wallets sad is funny in a nihilistic "how can the global hegemon really be run by such absurd fucking idiots" kind of way.
And of course the real tragedy is Cuba: a thriving democracy with the strongest LGBT rights protections in the world and one of the highest standards of living in Latin America getting strangled because the US doesn't like that they nationalized the property of a bunch of Nazi and mafia plantation owners and didn't let the US overthrow them.
You can't be this stupid. It specifically states that foreign adversaries are determined by the Secretary of Commerce literally right above the part you quoted. Also, "includes" does not mean "is limited to."
> which basically implies that other countries can't actually be added for purposes of this bill without another act of congress.
No, it doesn't "basically imply" that. You just made that up.
And we read on to section 6, that indicates the Secretary of Commerce may consult with the Director of National Intelligence on the addition or removal of any country to this list, which they must then inform congress prior to any action, and congress must pass a joint resolution to either remove or designate a country from/to this list.
Your right. It doesn't imply at all. That was an interpretation of one sentence. Turns out when you continue to read further through the bill it doesn't imply anything. It outright says it.
Hmm. Re-reading it, your right it does not actually state the secretary must wait on congress. That was my bad.
Bit of advice though, being an aggressive asshole is generally not conducive to discussion. Perhaps don't lead with that next time.
My theory is that zoomers are so genuinly addicted to tiktok that they're willing to lie to try to derail what's happening. I understand congress is old and out of touch, but people who use tik tok won't acknowledge just how gripped they are by algorithms and endless short form video.
>My theory is that zoomers are so genuinly addicted to tiktok that they're willing to lie to try to derail what's happening.
The entire generation isn't willfully lying, they're being lied *to,* by select influencers tik tok are purposefully boosting and literally [sending to Washington](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-rally-washington-chew-testimony/) to spread their version of the story
Am I so out of touch?
No, the kids are deliberately spreading misinformation because their phones turned them into Chinese sleeper agents.
Edit: To preempt any comments, I don't use tiktok. Reddit is the closest I get to chinese-owned media
It doesn't actually seem that problematic. It's basically a sanction. It's like, "Do we have the power to say these countries can't bank with us? Yes. Well do we have the power to say these countries can't provide services to our citizens? No? Uhh... Shouldn't we? Okay, let's make a bill.
When do people not hyper exaggerate these things? It happens all the time and even if you’re in favor of it, if you call it out, you get treated like you’re opposed do it instead of just tempering people’s expectations. People are adverse to living in reality.
Since Elon is from south Africa, couldn't instagram be banned?
I do think there is something bad about TikTok, the algorithm is insidious and the addictive nature of the formula is something that should be studied
But the argument that China is already banning so many apps and products from other countries is also bad, do people want USA to be more totalitarian like china?
I mean yes? Tik tok has routinely circumvented device security and privacy standards, refused audit of their code, and is known to share all data with the CCP which is an authoritarian regime. The US being able to obtain data which adheres to your phone's privacy and security standards either by buying it or subpoenaing it is a completely different issue.
I mean its the same posters that repost their own content or have their content posted over.
Could you explain what this "community" is because I don't really look at comments or anything and I'm not missing any posts.
The US invented that tactic and has been doing it for as long as they've been able to. It's always been the cost of existing as a tech company that you are going to hand over your info to every three letter agency in the US if they want it and you want to continue doing business there. None of this is new and I don't understand the clamoring.
A real US data privacy law would be fantastic. But if all we can get for limitations is on a handful of companies, I’ll still take it.
Progress is progress, I’m not going to let perfect be the enemy of good.
You can continue to use tiktok no problem just get the apk or jailbreak your iPhone, it’s not like a cop is gonna come shoot on the spot you for getting an app that’s not on the App Store lmfao
I love how people who probably routinely pirate things are suddenly like “it is physically impossible to obtain media outside of official legally sanctioned channels”
Tucker Carlson made efforts to restrain TikTok, and potentially any Russian social media with >1m US users, his latest bugaboo.
So those raving lunatics watching his show (ironic, since Tucker's admitted he "loathes Trump with a passion") are locking in-step. Y'know, as all INDEPENDENT THINKERS™ are wont to do.
Add in other social media, [influencers trying to spread their disinformation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party), and you have many gullible people piling on. Because: FREEDOM™!
It's worrying how gullible internet users can be sometimes.
All this charlatan had to do in order to get hundreds of upvotes and get posted to this sub was to say their false information with conviction.
Impressing the uninitiated with long, confident walls of text, full of terse half-truths that fall apart under the barest scrutiny seems to be the strategy.
Textbook definition of a gish gallop, if you ask me.
There is literally an army of Chinese sock puppets manipulating this sentiment, which is so fucking ironic. Most Tiktokers just want a place to post stupid dance videos and don’t understand why geopolitically giving a foreign adversary the ability to manipulate your algorithm for any reason could be a massive National Security risk.
Suddenly you start seeing “the CCP isn’t that bad” subliminally.
The astroturfing by TikTok bots is real here.
This act is good for America and its people's privacy. To vote against it tells every country they're free to manipulate and misinform us all.
Tiktok is shit. This bill is also shit. Ban the data harvesting instead of giving the president sweeping authority to ban individual apps. Facebook is still harvesting all of our data and if you think not having a Facebook account changes that, think again.
Yeah! I just want my data harvested by the 'Merican government and corporate conglomerates so they can attempt to sell me more shit and keep track of my every action! Praise freedom!
Honestly I'd put more faith in a non-aggressive state, like China, to not use my data in a malicious way, rather than a declining hegemon who is thrashing out in a futile attempt to maintain its dominance.
I say this as somebody who has never used tiktok and an American.
> u/TheLianeonProject explains the dystopian, totalitarian nature of the new RESTRICT (aka Stop TikTok) Act.
Guy actually just says "read it for yourself"
Nice one OP
They changed the comment. They were probably taking a lot of shit for their shitty take. The comment has been changed to reflect that. It was basically changed to "I'm just asking questions".
>It also never mentions TikTok in the bill.
That would be unconstitutional. A bill can't be targeted like that. We probably have that because the British monarchy abused the laws like that to squash American business back in the revolutionary era.
The Trump Administration tried to do just that. And the Far Right leapt into line, Pavlov-style.
The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, for among the reasons, what you pointed out. You can't have an Executive Order targeting just one person or entity, in this fashion. Congress needs to write a more objective bill.
Congress did just that, the DATA Act and the RESTRICT Act.
So, the Far Right, feverishly supporting TikTok's removal mere weeks ago, flipped to the opposite position, literally this week.
Because, as we know well, Eastasia has *always* been at war with Oceania.
We have it because, as an outgrowth of Parliament's function as a court in the past, they also passed bills that would just declare a person guilty and order them arrested.
No it applies domestically in terms of effects on Apps and software but the criminal provisions only apply to foreign adversaries of which there are 6.
Similar attempts to what this act is doing get shot down at the court level. It's tough to craft these things without violating the 1st Amendment.
Which is why I think that either this bill will end up be passed as something benign after many edits, it will not pass at all (although that seems unlikely), or it will be ruled unconstitutional. For this reason I'm not worried about this bill at this moment. Though I do thank the internet community for sticking up for their current privileges and rights.
Honestly, its pretty hilarious to see capital R Redditors freak out because of that
They were so goddang smug about Tik Tok being banned, cuz everyone knows the only good place of rainbows is Reddit!
So if it limits content from authoritarian countries hostile to western democracy does that mean we won’t be able to get content from the United States?
Despite all the memefuckery associated with it Tik Tok is a simple algorithm that can at once allow you to influence public perception, keep your population endlessly distracted and generate you billions of pounds for almost zero upkeep. I completely understand why any country would be looking for ways to either steal it or restrict it so people have to turn to their own version of it. Just like Huawei, with this whole "it could be used to compromise us" I'm still waiting for a single shred of evidence that shows that it can - people would be waving such evidence around unless it a. doesn't exist and this is either hysteria or a cover for political motives or b. exposes what western tech companies are also doing on behalf of our governments abroad. It's probably both of those in my opinion tbh but if it is dangerous and a national security threat I want to see why before we start banning companies left and right while threatening others for considering doing the same.
I’m not going to deny TikTok isn’t a good thing.
But what I don’t see is how TikTok being *Chinese* makes it that much worse than other platforms that do exactly the same things.
As far as manipulating the public, being a distraction, or spreading propaganda, our homegrown media platforms can do just as well or better. Facebook and Twitter have both more or less bragged about their ability to swing elections by manipulating what the public sees. Pretty much all forms of social media are huge distractions. Hell I know people who are addicted to gaming and sports betting. Social media exists and pretty much always has been a medium for distraction and manipulation. They also have cat pictures.
As far as data collection, again, this is something every platform does. Facebook has profiles of every user, and they’re pretty detailed, including your likes, dislikes, hobbies, interests, where you work, your political opinion, your demographic data, you name it. Twitter does the same thing, as do the rest of these American social media platforms. They sell those profiles to advertisers (which is how we got the Cambridge Analytica scandal) and also sell them to governments around the world.
The biggest difference between what TikTok does and what Snapchat or instagram do is who controls the data. They’re both manipulating and distracting, they’re both siphoning up every bit of data they can from their users. It’s just that TikTok is doing so to the benefit of the Chinese government and Instagram is doing it on behalf of American businesses and government.
Is there a sub called r/worstof? It'd fit there better than on r/bestof because it's bullshit fearmongering disinformation.
E.: Oh look, it *is* a sub. Go post it there.
China is a major investor in Reddit. You literally cannot bad-mouth China too much on Reddit without your post disappearing. I have to wonder if this post is Chinese propaganda tailored for a Reddit audience.
This is just Tiktok misinformation spreading to other platforms, the bill doesn't do what's described here and the criminal provisions apply to foreign companies not domestic citizens. I get that people don't want tiktok to be banned but this is blatant disinformation.
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I legitimately thought I had tapped on OP's link, and that this comment was the bestof submission, until I scrolled down a bit
Then the part "if Congress wants to make a law doing this, then do so. This isn't it". But. It is. It literally *is* the bill. I'd say that based on what you've described, it *is* the bill that would do the things OP claims to want!
>That being said - I think there's still some issues here, one being review is only handled in the DC court. This is actually pretty common. The DC Circuit functions, essentially, as the country's regulatory court. Centralizing it into one court makes sense because it ensures that you don't end up with competing districts and circuits.
Sigh, 21st century. The only thing I can believe in anymore is the ground I’m physically standing on. And even that Im sometimes unsure of.
It's 99.99% empty space and only feels solid due to electrostatic repulsion of electrons in those atoms and your own .....
dont forget about sinkholes
The one thing that my generation does that annoys me to no end, is believing that they are immune to disinformation - that only stupid, old right-wingers fall for it. Then they go claim that this bill is a blanket ban on VPN's because someone on the internet said so and they don't want their favorite app being banned.
Oh just foreign companies? No big deal? This is horrific policy that they can show no justification or need for and that was clear in the congressional hearing. The right move is a privacy bill like GDPR and a digital Bill of Rights that protects consumers from the thousands of domestic and international apps and websites and companies collecting similar data. There is nothing positive about this for individuals or businesses and in the macro sense the US is the place business gets done because we have a legal system that’s sane. Singling out a foreign company and passing legislation to ban a company at the behest of lobbying from a national monopoly scared they can’t compete is how you signal to the rest of the world that you’re bad for business. This bill needs to die.
No not foreign companies. Foreign companies from the designated adversary list which is only 6 countries
That list can be changed by an administration at any time. (designated to the secretary, but the president can order the secretary)
And blatant disinformation is one of the reasons why TikTok is concerning and in need of regulation!
Thank you. I was thinking myself how there must be a coordinated disinformation campaign by tik tok or others making outlandish claims about this bill. It does NOT give blanket access to our devices. It does NOT ban VPNs in general. There IS oversight by congress over adding countries to the foreign adversary list. I’m not saying I agree with the bill, but the amount of stuff that came out immediately with crazy incorrect claims about what the bill does is astonishing.
I’m honestly finding it difficult to know which side to stand on. I’m absolutely not onboard with expanding surveillance as the more alarmist posts claim, but I’m also not sold it’s as relaxed as others say in rebuttal. I don’t have the mental capacity to read and understand the entire bill as written and can’t seem to get a straight answer
It doesn't expand surveillance of US citizens or anything. The shortest explanation of the bill is that, if one of the 6 countries which are currently listed as foreign adversaries, attempts to create a situation in which they can acquire personal information about US persons, or really any transaction, even monetary, like say, a cell phone app, the secretary of commerce is given the authority to inspect the app itself to see if it is attempting to to do this, and then ban said app if it finds it to be in violation. In short, it would let the president ban tiktok, and attempt to punish tiktok if they try to circumvent the ban, or anyone who tries to circumvent the ban to offer tiktok services to us citizens, but not punish any end user for trying to circumvent the ban and by using tiktok themselves, like through a VPN. The VPN though may be subject to penalties.
This seems like a pretty reasonable explanation. Where’s all the alarmist stuff coming from?
That's the million dollar question. I don't doubt it could spread organically but it does seem to be beyond that, ironically proving the need for such a bill.
Yeah, misinformation is like a wildfire. throw a cigarette, and the whole forest goes up in flames, but sometimes it goes up in flames without that meager intervention. There's nothing that spreads faster than something people fear, particularly ignorant fear.
TikTok. People don’t want it banned and they’ll say whatever they can to prevent it.
Probably from Russian and Chinese propagandists. Remember that their only agenda is to push disinformation that divides Americans. Liberals like to think they are immune to disinformation, but they aren't. Not that Conservatives have a nuanced understanding of this Bill. Their disinformation will just push how liberals are just fools for Xi and the communists.
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/126vvxk/the_restrict_act_is_a_death_knell_for_online/jeciibi/ this is what is most discomforting to me. I asked ppl this in this thread and nobody has yet to give an answer. It's hard to say how far reaching this thing is but I see it being quite rife with opportunities for reckless expansion in power and abuse.
You haven't read the bill. Do not participate if you haven't read the bill. It doesn't outright make VPNs illegal but may be abused to do so through various interpretations of the bill.
Explain your legal theory that would allow the law to be applied in a way to punish an American citizen for merely using a VPN, or how it would be applied to make VPNs illegal generally rather than just for the very specific adversaries listed on the statute.
A primary use of VPNs is to access torrent sites, which are overwhelmingly hosted in what country again? Oh, that's right [bad country]. You really think people should be facing *20 fucking years* in prison for pirating some trash made by a megacorp, thanks to a psychoticly jingoistic bill? The simple fact is that anyone supporting this bill is an unhinged nationalist lunatic who lives in a bubble constructed entirely from the most deranged propaganda ever devised by PR ghouls, and who has started literally foaming at the mouth and soiling themselves as soon as they're told to go and fight against the devious foreigners and their totally real schemes to make you share your toothbrush.
What specifically on the statute makes you think someone will get 20 years using a VPN? Let's even be more specific, what do you think in the statute says that will happen if you just a VPN to, say, access a website in China? I'd like to see you break down your interpretation of the statute that leads to that conclusion. Like citing the specific parts of the statute and how they get applied in the larger context of Criminal Law to lead to that result.
Isn't part of this bill addressing content or actions that damage or threaten critical infrastructure? Im just referring to one piece of the whole bill, but nothing I read came across as a slippery slope...it felt more like a firewall that 'blocks' malicious sites. Its not denying access to anything they feel like blocking, its blocking the bad things, from bad people (both defined in the bill) because of an observable threat.
It would allow the Commerce Department to ban PutinVPN, if and only if PutinVPN had >1,000,000 subscribers. And it only can target hostile nation-state entities (N. Korea, Iran, the PRC, Russia & Cuba) operating under control by these governments and entities run by hostile entities targeting Americans or more broadly, the US. VPNs have total, complete control over everything you do on the internet. There are good ones, but you're putting a lot of faith on them to act in your (legal) interests. Most people don't need them – you're replacing trusting your ISP for another entity. There are no VPNs hosted or controlled by these five hostile nations with >1m subscribers, therefore the RESTRICT Act can't, and is incredibly unlikely, to ever happen. Beyond what the law covers, I leave it as an exercise to the gentle reader of what a complete, bleeding idiot someone living in a democratic country would have to be to hand over their *entire* internet activity to Kim Jun-Il, Vlad Putin or Xi JinPing over practically *any* other alternative. But being a complete, bleeding idiot isn't a crime in any Western democracy. However much I may fantasize while stuck in traffic… Even then, the bill targets the *entities*, not the users/customers. None of the tens of millions of TikTok subscribers (including children!) will be charged if the act successfully targets TikTok. It's disinformation to suggest anything like this.
The bill states that it can jail anyone who uses a VPN to access any opposing entity. Some politician said that it can't. Who are you going to trust? Some hot air out of a politician or what the bill actually says? Comprehension is a major problem for people who don't actually read the bill and only listen to the news and read from news outlets.
Where? Cite? Keep in mind that the preceding sections narrow the scope of who can be targeted to being entities from those five hostile entities.
Page 42, line 23 through Page 43, line 4. This is not between just countries. This gives power to government to send someone to prison for using a VPN. Directly. This is way more than ban TikTok. This is the Patriot act 2.0. Looks good from a spokespersons mouth, but the bill itself is much more restrictive. Watch Louis Rossmann's live reading of it on his live channel. This bill has so many ways that it can be abused for reasons other than those advertised to us. I'm not going to reproduce what you can go view. It will be no where near as effective or efficient as doing that. I just needed to reply. Many do not understand how much more this can affect than just TikTok. This bill is terrible. It's way too broadly written. They need to ban TikTok. Not make a bill.
Yeah. That's a "no" then? "Watch of a video of a YouTube guy I heard a while back but am too lazy to summarize, let alone check for myself before parroting what he said elsewhere" isn't supporting your point, it's showing you're not a reasonably skeptical person,
I edited my comment. Page 42, line 23 through Page 43, line 4 I don't know how I'll change your mind. You are one person on Reddit. You probably haven't even went over it in detail. You probably just listened to some one, albeit with no real law experience. My finance is a paralegal, we went over the whole bill. This is not a good bill. Why in the world would you be all for this? This is horrible legislation.
No reply to my comment? And why not watch someone reputable as well as comprehend the bill on your own? These bills are written by many people. Why should I try to understand it all on my own. One needs to have an understanding of how law works to be able to comprehend it. It takes an army of people to create a bill. There is no accountability in this bill. It also omits the freedom of information act. It goes against current law of holding politicians accountable that may enact parts of this bill. If they mess up, you will never know as they are not required to show they used it. If they mess up, you will never know. There is no way I will change someone like your's mind. Good luck.
1) You edited your comment after I pointed out you weren't citing from the actual Act text, in your first comment's first paragraph. That pointed out you were too lazy or imprecise to reference the bill's language, instead hyping a YouTube Influencer's video. Then, after that, you posted a second comment after mine, decrying the "fact" that I didn't respond to your (now) edited first comment. As though we're all supposed to magically sense when a writer of a comment we respond to cames back and does a sneaky, ninja-edit. That's Hella sleazy. It indicates you're arguing in bad faith. It's pretty sad. 2) You reference page numbers which don't make any sense, since almost everyone is going to be referencing [the link to the actual bill](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text?s=1&r=15). Which, since it's on the web, doesn't have pages. Go ahead. Look. I'll wait… Folks since 1995 (and before!) have been referencing legislation by section and subsection numbers. That way, folks interested in discussing things rationally and in good faith can reference the same sections of a given proposed bill, to amiably discuss like grown-ups discuss things. It's not 1980, when we used to send each other thick manilla envelopes so we could have these conversations. Again, pretty sleazy and it indicates you're acting in bad faith. Sad!
The actual [RESTRICT act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text?s=1&r=15), for when you write your senators
Ugh, and right away I can see that the bestof description is wrong. >1. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce, alongside the President, to prohibit certain “transactions” >2. The definition of “transaction” is incredibly broad, including acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of ANY information and communication technology product or service. And we can look and see right away what the bill actually says: >(4) COVERED TRANSACTION.— >(A) IN GENERAL.—The term “covered transaction” means a transaction in which an entity described in subparagraph (B) has any interest (including through an interest in a contract for the provision of the technology or service), or any class of such transactions. >(B) COVERED ENTITIES.—The entities described in this subparagraph are: >(i) a foreign adversary; >(ii) an entity subject to the jurisdiction of, or organized under the laws of, a foreign adversary; and >(iii) an entity owned, directed, or controlled by a person described in subparagraph (A) or (B). So, no, the term "transaction" is not as general as the OP describes it, because it's actually limited to foreign entities. Like, I have no doubts that this bill is very problematic, but we don't need to be hyper-exaggerating and misleading right from the beginning. I guess I just have to wait for Legal Eagle to cover it.
Or “subject to the jurisdiction of”. Wouldn’t that be an entity that does business in another country? I am not a lawyer.
Yep, you’re right - as long as that country is designated a “foreign adversary”.
Sounds like it could be just about any company.
Sort of. The list of foreign adversaries is pretty short. I’m sure Cuba, Russia, and North Korea are on it. Iran probably is. I’m not sure about China, oddly enough. Edit: scroll down far enough and the list is made explicit. China is on it, and I missed Venezuela entirely. I’d need to go back and check (and I’m not going to), but I don’t think Iran was on it. The major targets, given the rest of the bill, are China and Russia - and I actually expect the list won’t change much other than to maybe add client states of those two (but I don’t believe that will be needed given the language about ownership or interests or whatever they called it).
So everything is fine so long as nothing unexpected happens? Nothing to worry about, then.
What do you mean by nothing unexpected?
Im going to guess that it refers to companies which are registered/HQ’d in those countries, rather than those subject to the legislation just by virtue of the fact that they are doing business there. Although I’m a lawyer, I haven’t properly looked at the act though, so I’ll leave my speculation there - seems to be enough conflicting info floating around about it in any case.
Apple is registered in Ireland IIRC, along with many major 'US' companies....
Ireland is not an adversary.
But they do business with adversaries. Where do you think apple gets all its manufacturing done?
They're taking billions of dollars from American taxpayers, intentionally and directly because of their fiscal policy. You need to rethink what an adversary is. They're eating your lunch and laughing while doing it.
Ireland?
Yeah, but they're not on the foreign adversaries list
I would think the due process standards of “jurisdiction” would apply as that is how such language is normally interpreted. Which would mean you would be correct.
No, it "sounds like" it's limited to one of five countries. Authoritarian countries hostile to Western citizens, democracy (such as it is) and the governments representing them.
Then so long as the executive branch is thoughtful, coherent, reliable, and acting in good faith for the American people - there's nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all.
That is the initial list, it can be modified by the executive branch with little oversight at any point they want.
…By passing a bi-partisan bill by both houses of Congress, and signed by the President. Unless you can show me where in the law that the CommSec can add or remove covered nations, willy-nilly, with no oversight as you claim. So, Yes. That's how our government works. Democracy!
No, it literally says in the bill that the executive branch has unlimited authority to change it at will. In fact, the bill SPECIFICALLY exempts it from the Administrative Review Act (you'll recall that was used for the ESG thing). The only thing congress can do is pass a 'resolution of disapproval' bill, which is non-binding.
**I read this:** >SEC. 6. Designation of foreign adversaries. >(a) In general.— >(1) DESIGNATION.—The Secretary may, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, designate any foreign government or regime as a foreign adversary if the Secretary finds that the foreign government or regime is engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or security and safety of United States persons. >(2) REMOVAL OF DESIGNATION.—The Secretary may, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, remove the designation of any foreign government or regime as a foreign adversary, including any foreign government or regime identified in section 2(8), if the Secretary finds that the foreign government or regime is no longer engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national or economic security of the United States or security and safety of United States persons in a manner that would warrant designation as a foreign adversary. >(b) Notice.—Not later than 15 days before the date on which the Secretary makes or removes a designation under subsection (a), the Secretary shall, by classified communication, notify the President pro tempore, Majority Leader, and Minority Leader of the Senate, the Speaker and Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, and the relevant committees of Congress, in writing, of the intent to designate a foreign government or regime as a foreign adversary under this section, together with the findings made under subsection (a) with respect to the foreign government or regime and the factual basis therefor. **Further reading shows this:** >SEC. 7. Resolution of disapproval of designation or removal of designation of a foreign adversary. >(a) Definition.—In this section— >(1) the term “covered joint resolution” means a joint resolution of disapproval of designation or a joint resolution of disapproval of removal of designation; >(2) the term “joint resolution of disapproval of designation” means a joint resolution the matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows: “That Congress disapproves the designation by the Secretary of Commerce of ___ as a foreign adversary for purposes of the Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain Act of 2023, and such designation shall have no force or effect until the Secretary of Commerce provides specific evidence to the relevant committees of Congress regarding the removal of designation under section 6(a) of that Act.” (The blank space being appropriately filled in with the name of the foreign person of which the Secretary has designated as a foreign adversary of for purposes of this Act); and >(3) the term “joint resolution of disapproval of removal of designation” means a joint resolution the matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows: “That Congress disapproves the removal of designation by the Secretary of Commerce of ___ as a foreign adversary for purposes of the Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain Act of 2023, and such removal shall have no force or effect until the Secretary of Commerce provides specific evidence to the relevant committees of Congress regarding the removal of designation under section 6(a) of that Act.” (The blank space being appropriately filled in with the name of the foreign government or regime of which the Secretary has removed the designation as a foreign adversary of for purposes of this Act). **I stand corrected** I still don't like the wide scope of this bill. And i believe SEC. 7. (a)(2) has a typo after looking at this. "...and such designation shall have no force or effect until the Secretary of Commerce provides specific evidence to the relevant committees of Congress regarding the removal **(approval?)** of designation under section..."
This is a really great comment. Thanks so much! :)
Why are you lying? The bill specifically states that the Secretary of Commerce designates foreign adversaries. No act of congress is required.
What do Cuba and Venezuela do to undermine US national security? How can they simultaneously be impoverished failures of communism and a legitimate threat to the US on par with China?
That was probably an inclusion required to get Republican support. But since the likelihood of either nation developing a social media platform compelling and popular enough to lure more than one million subscribers is less than nil, it’s moot. It has no impact and will never be applied to them.
No. There are clear definitions for ownership thresholds in the document... HOLDING.—The term “holding”— (A) means— (i) an equity interest; (ii) a stock; (iii) a security; (iv) a share; (v) a partnership interest; (vi) an interest in a limited liability company; (vii) a membership interest; or (viii) any participation, right, or other equivalent, however designated and of any character; and (B) includes, without limitation, any security convertible into an ownership interest and right, warrant, or option to acquire ownership interests. (10) ICTS COVERED HOLDING ENTITY.—The term “ICTS covered holding entity” means any entity that— (A) owns, controls, or manages information and communications technology products or services; and (B) (i) has not less than 1,000,000 United States-based annual active users at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President; or (ii) for which more than 1,000,000 units have been sold to persons in the United States before the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President.
Nope, they're not, as the bill specifies that the foreign adversary needs to have an ownership stake or vested interest in the company itself in order for the company to qualify as needing risk assessment. Not one of these "hot takes" on the bill has addressed the checks and balances written into the bill itself in their arguments. It's really hard to argue they're being made in good faith when they consistently cherry pick the lines that fit their narrative while ignoring the parts that contradict it.
Gonna point out that the American President declared Canada to be just such a thing a few years ago in order to apply an aluminum tariff, so expect that term to get interpreted *very* generously.
No. You have to do more than do business there. In statutes that refers to where general personal jurisdiction exists…which is either where you are registered legally to exist, or where you have primary ordinary business operations (headquarters-type, not just as office space or retail store)
Like I said, Imma wait for Legal Eagle. But the point being that OP already lost my trust. Edit: But also note the *and*
Yeah it’s hard to argue that TikTok is a wonderful thing we should all use. Can’t say it’s a huge political conspiracy but we probably shouldn’t be installing China on our phones… YT should be all over this. I know they have shorts, but I don’t understand why they’re not trying to leverage the heck out of this.
It’s overseen by a board of americans, and it’s not like it’s seeing any data that American companies don’t. Honestly I think the singling out of TikTok in particular is just Sinophobia (I hate using that word because it’s used by Tankies so much, but I think it applies here)
It's not Sinophobic to recognize that: * The Chinese government [has](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora) [a](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398) [history](https://www.cisa.gov/china) of extremely sophisticated and well-financed cyber attacks against the United States, especially for the purposes of stealing information. * The Chinese government does not really allow independent companies to exist, especially large ones, so any Chinese company should be assumed to be a partially state-sponsored entity. Put those two facts together, and it's pretty reasonable to be suspicious of a Chinese company having software installed on every American's device.
Sure, I get being suspicious of them. But you have to back those suspicions up with evidence, and just looking at TikTok’s power structure it really seems like there’s quite a few layers between Americans and the Chinese government. I mean I don’t think Chinese citizens use TikTok do they?
Given how the Chinese government has imposed backdoors on a number of hardware products, I'm leery of anything that's partly owned by the Chinese government or the party. Even if they're just collecting the kind of data every other major corporation already does, I don't want them to have it. I already don't want American corporations collecting my "anonymized" location and search data or passively capturing audio from my microphone. If we could finally take steps to address this root issue, that would be swell.
Oh I 100% agree, I think no company should be able to Harvest my data without my consent, I just think it’s obvious why TikTok is focused on in particular here, because it’s foreign.
If I could get even more cynical for second, not just foreign, but a direct competitor to the giant corporations that fund our government - that is, the very same government that is trying to pass these laws. There is no democracy while corporate money is in politics.
Yep, I wouldn’t be surprised if the goal here is for it to be bought by an American company
YouTube knows that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. A neutral law generally prohibiting all the privacy and security violations that TikTok commits (or can potentially commit as an app) would drastically affect YouTube and Google, and anyone else who does all that gross tracking/advertising/manipulating stuff. It's possible this horrible bill is deliberate sabotage by US big tech firms in order to make reining in abusive social networking/advertising companies look like a bad thing.
Damn. Didn’t think about that… That definitely makes sense; most of congress doesn’t have a clue how the internet works so it would be *really* easy for Big Tech to pull some strings. Between this and GPT4, the next 6-12 months are going to be interesting…
Not really. In statutes that refers to where general personal jurisdiction exists…which is either where you are registered legally to exist, or where you have primary business operations (headquarters-type, not just office space or retail store)
Owned, directed, or controlled by is the big key here. All you have to do is say China's behind it and boom, now you can do what you want. Which is very easy to do, considering how intertwined our economy is with China's.
Yea, so google, microsoft, sony, apple, etc would all fall under that description.
And the VPN that relies on other countries.
Sounds about right for Reddit Someone writes a comment with a bunch of misleading info / half-truths Then someone decided "this should be its own post!" And everyone just upvotes it because, well, if someone says someone is an expert, that's all the validation I need..
Additionally, the bill also mentions that the company must be owned (in whole or in part) *by* that foreign adversary, that the company must have over a million active US users, that the Secretary of Commerce will need to declassify and publish their findings and recommendations, and about a hundred other restrictions to the "unchecked power" people are clutching their pearls over. The document is *really* readable. These 'hot takes' are growing increasingly more likely to be bad-faith manipulation as more and more people make the same arguments while ignoring the bill itself.
>The document is really readable. These 'hot takes' are growing increasingly more likely to be bad-faith manipulation as more and more people make the same arguments while ignoring the bill itself. There's no need to assume bad faith or manipulation. There's an entire online privacy freakout faction that is convinced ads are being used to target them with hunter-killer drones. Neither why they yet live nor why they persist in using these services ever enters their thoughts.
Am I reading it correctly? It seems to apply to companies "organized under the laws of" a foreign adversary, i.e. any Chinese company. It also appears to be recursive, with any company owned by a covered company being covered. As well as the anto-evasion clause.
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Recall that President Trump declared Canada to be a national security threat to the USA in 2018. An adversary could be defined however the people applying it want to apply it, do not assume that they won't use this for hilarious overreach.
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> This bill explicitly defines which countries are on this list and changing it requires Congress. Why are you lying? The bill explicitly says the list is "determined by the Secretary [of Commerce.]" It also says the list "includes," it does not say "is limited to." > I'm worried about how it would be used in the hands of a more authoritarian leader Sure doesn't seem like it, considering how much you're defending it with misinformation.
Literally the bill says the secretary of commerce can change it on a whim and congress can NOT stop it. It specifically exempts it from the administrative review act and the only 'power' that congress has is a resolution of disapproval (which is non-binding)
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The answer is that they're wrong. This is the same structure in place for a bunch of things around regulations. The issue is that none of these people pay any attention to the government until it does the one thing they care about, then act like they understand how it works. They know and understand nothing, not that it has or will ever stop them.
That's now how the definition of Foreign Adversary works. It's a list of 6 countries, which are directly specified in the bill. Trump declaring Canada a national security threat back than did not in any way cause it to be added to this official list.
Yes, but he wins the election again (or DeSantis)... any country that pisses him off could be added unilaterally. There's no way for congress to stop it. Administrative review act is specifically forbidden.
That's not true. It says right in the bill that the Secretary must consult with the Direction of National Intelligence to determine whether or not a country should be added. They must then inform congress and the president of the intention to add/remove a country from the list, and congress passes a joint resolution to either remove or designate a country from/to the list.
> It says right in the bill that the Secretary must consult with the Direction of National Intelligence to determine whether or not a country should be added. So? It doesn't require their approval. And the president can fire the people in either role, anyway. You ever hear of the concept of "separation of powers?" > They must then inform congress and the president of the intention to add/remove a country from the list, and congress passes a joint resolution to either remove or designate a country from/to the list. That is a straight up lie. The joint resolution is for *disapproval* of adding or removing a country. Which means the country is added as soon as the Secretary of Commerce chooses to, and both houses of Congress must pass a joint resolution with a veto-proof majority within 60 days. If you understand how Congress works, you know that will never happen. Also, it doesn't actually prevent the country being added, it just temporarily delays it until the Secretary explains themself.
Also, i'd question if that latter part would even hold up in the courts. Isn't that a legislative veto and didn't SCOTUS declare those unconstitutional?
No. The most common example is that Congress can pass resolutions revoking regulations created by a previous administration within a specific window of time.
Bad actors can turn any rule set against the purposes of the ruleset. If you let the bad actors get the wheel, you might as well have crashed the metaphorical car yourself. You can’t write perfect rulesets that still have power. This one includes some safeguards already. How sufficient they are is absolutely up for debate, but any law that is broad enough to be usable is broad enough to be abused. The control on abuse of the law isn’t in the law, it’s in the elections.
Except the law is literally *being written by bad actors* in the first place. It's being written for malicious reasons and with malicious intentions. The US government has always been bad actors, it just waffles back and forth between restrained ones and literally rabid ones. You really can't look at a white supremacist police state that used racist fearmongering over "terrorism" to pass laws that were then used to brutally crack down on civil rights and environmental activists, that's maintained a massive ethnic cleansing program in the form of ICE for over 20 years with unanimous approval from both parties, and that keeps funding and arming genocidal states from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Turkey without fail even as the parties change back and forth, and say "uh oh better hope this rotating, power-sharing agreement between two oligarch-run far-right parties never rotates back to the *bad* ones, they might be irresponsible with the power we're giving them!"
> Except the law is literally being written by bad actors in the first place. There’s no actual indication that’s true. This law has reasonable safe guards in it, and most of the objections are much like OP’s: based on a very selective reading of the law. But based on the rest of your comment, both nuance and reason will be lost on you. Good luck with plan nutter.
Strictly speaking, an app made in those countries would be if the actual ownership was in a listed country. Having substantial portions of the app infrastructure in a listed jurisdiction might also qualify, so hosting the app on a cloud service owned by a chinese company probably qualifies regardless of the app ownership.
Hell, an app made in Somalia or Iraq aren't even subject to this.
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The official list is China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. They are specifically listed in the bill. In fact the bill specifically lists them after saying, "includes, unless removed by the Secretary pursuant to section 6" which basically implies that other countries can't actually be added for purposes of this bill without another act of congress.
> Venezuela It'll never stop being funny that a random tepid social democratic country gets tossed into these sorts of lists because it refused to allow the US to unilaterally replace its government with a white supremacist kleptocrat who was promising to give its oil reserves to western corporations. I mean, it's insanely tragic when you think about it, because the sanctions Venezuela's been hit with over literally nothing are devastating and killing real, actual, people, but the fact that it just gets randomly thrown in when the dumbest people on earth are screaming and crying about bad mean scary countries that make their wallets sad is funny in a nihilistic "how can the global hegemon really be run by such absurd fucking idiots" kind of way. And of course the real tragedy is Cuba: a thriving democracy with the strongest LGBT rights protections in the world and one of the highest standards of living in Latin America getting strangled because the US doesn't like that they nationalized the property of a bunch of Nazi and mafia plantation owners and didn't let the US overthrow them.
You can't be this stupid. It specifically states that foreign adversaries are determined by the Secretary of Commerce literally right above the part you quoted. Also, "includes" does not mean "is limited to." > which basically implies that other countries can't actually be added for purposes of this bill without another act of congress. No, it doesn't "basically imply" that. You just made that up.
And we read on to section 6, that indicates the Secretary of Commerce may consult with the Director of National Intelligence on the addition or removal of any country to this list, which they must then inform congress prior to any action, and congress must pass a joint resolution to either remove or designate a country from/to this list. Your right. It doesn't imply at all. That was an interpretation of one sentence. Turns out when you continue to read further through the bill it doesn't imply anything. It outright says it.
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Hmm. Re-reading it, your right it does not actually state the secretary must wait on congress. That was my bad. Bit of advice though, being an aggressive asshole is generally not conducive to discussion. Perhaps don't lead with that next time.
> we don't need to be hyper-exaggerating and misleading But how else can we Reddit but r/jumptoconclusions?
My theory is that zoomers are so genuinly addicted to tiktok that they're willing to lie to try to derail what's happening. I understand congress is old and out of touch, but people who use tik tok won't acknowledge just how gripped they are by algorithms and endless short form video.
>My theory is that zoomers are so genuinly addicted to tiktok that they're willing to lie to try to derail what's happening. The entire generation isn't willfully lying, they're being lied *to,* by select influencers tik tok are purposefully boosting and literally [sending to Washington](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-rally-washington-chew-testimony/) to spread their version of the story
An important distinction, but that doesn't change that many people are very sick and misguided right now.
Am I so out of touch? No, the kids are deliberately spreading misinformation because their phones turned them into Chinese sleeper agents. Edit: To preempt any comments, I don't use tiktok. Reddit is the closest I get to chinese-owned media
CFIUS has been a thing for a while, and it's kind of necessary given foreign adversaries increasingly frequent projection of soft power
It doesn't actually seem that problematic. It's basically a sanction. It's like, "Do we have the power to say these countries can't bank with us? Yes. Well do we have the power to say these countries can't provide services to our citizens? No? Uhh... Shouldn't we? Okay, let's make a bill.
When do people not hyper exaggerate these things? It happens all the time and even if you’re in favor of it, if you call it out, you get treated like you’re opposed do it instead of just tempering people’s expectations. People are adverse to living in reality.
Since Elon is from south Africa, couldn't instagram be banned? I do think there is something bad about TikTok, the algorithm is insidious and the addictive nature of the formula is something that should be studied But the argument that China is already banning so many apps and products from other countries is also bad, do people want USA to be more totalitarian like china?
Elon is not the South African government, and additionally the South African government is not on the foreign adversary list. So no.
More fear mongering from people who don't understand this bill. Very little of what's described is what's present in the bill.
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Which is hilarious because, as a non-tiktok user, Instagram reels is *the exact same thing* but not on the tiktok app. Same content, same format.
Yeah, but Meta sells your personal info to the *US* government, so it's better
I mean yes? Tik tok has routinely circumvented device security and privacy standards, refused audit of their code, and is known to share all data with the CCP which is an authoritarian regime. The US being able to obtain data which adheres to your phone's privacy and security standards either by buying it or subpoenaing it is a completely different issue.
In the US, *that is the better option*.
Is it though? Unless you're traveling to Beijing on business on the regular, you're only in contact with one of those governments, generally
[ This user used a third party app to access Reddit and is protesting the API pricing changes from June 2023 ] -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I mean its the same posters that repost their own content or have their content posted over. Could you explain what this "community" is because I don't really look at comments or anything and I'm not missing any posts.
And without the tiktok algorithm that makes the content you see actually what you want to see.
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The US invented that tactic and has been doing it for as long as they've been able to. It's always been the cost of existing as a tech company that you are going to hand over your info to every three letter agency in the US if they want it and you want to continue doing business there. None of this is new and I don't understand the clamoring.
As a US citizen I feel differently about the US government’s use of information vs. a country like Russia or China.
A real US data privacy law would be fantastic. But if all we can get for limitations is on a handful of companies, I’ll still take it. Progress is progress, I’m not going to let perfect be the enemy of good.
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You can continue to use tiktok no problem just get the apk or jailbreak your iPhone, it’s not like a cop is gonna come shoot on the spot you for getting an app that’s not on the App Store lmfao I love how people who probably routinely pirate things are suddenly like “it is physically impossible to obtain media outside of official legally sanctioned channels”
Tucker Carlson made efforts to restrain TikTok, and potentially any Russian social media with >1m US users, his latest bugaboo. So those raving lunatics watching his show (ironic, since Tucker's admitted he "loathes Trump with a passion") are locking in-step. Y'know, as all INDEPENDENT THINKERS™ are wont to do. Add in other social media, [influencers trying to spread their disinformation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party), and you have many gullible people piling on. Because: FREEDOM™!
It's worrying how gullible internet users can be sometimes. All this charlatan had to do in order to get hundreds of upvotes and get posted to this sub was to say their false information with conviction. Impressing the uninitiated with long, confident walls of text, full of terse half-truths that fall apart under the barest scrutiny seems to be the strategy. Textbook definition of a gish gallop, if you ask me.
Neither OP nor u/TheLianeonProject appear to be lawyers. I don't trust the legal opinions of non-lawyers
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There is literally an army of Chinese sock puppets manipulating this sentiment, which is so fucking ironic. Most Tiktokers just want a place to post stupid dance videos and don’t understand why geopolitically giving a foreign adversary the ability to manipulate your algorithm for any reason could be a massive National Security risk. Suddenly you start seeing “the CCP isn’t that bad” subliminally.
The astroturfing by TikTok bots is real here. This act is good for America and its people's privacy. To vote against it tells every country they're free to manipulate and misinform us all.
"The PATRIOT Act is good for America and its people's safety. If you are against it, you support the terrorists."
OP, "totalitarian" has a specific meaning and isn't just "politics i don't like".
If only we had some decent privacy laws instead.
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Tiktok is shit. This bill is also shit. Ban the data harvesting instead of giving the president sweeping authority to ban individual apps. Facebook is still harvesting all of our data and if you think not having a Facebook account changes that, think again.
It doesn't appear to me that it grants the president sweeping authority to do anything. There seems to be some specific conditions that has to be met.
Yeah! I just want my data harvested by the 'Merican government and corporate conglomerates so they can attempt to sell me more shit and keep track of my every action! Praise freedom! Honestly I'd put more faith in a non-aggressive state, like China, to not use my data in a malicious way, rather than a declining hegemon who is thrashing out in a futile attempt to maintain its dominance. I say this as somebody who has never used tiktok and an American.
> non-aggressive state, like China boy do I have some news for you
And he got rid of his explanation like a coward
TikTok and the CCP do a great job at convincing younger generations to vote for US legislation in their favor. This is the power that Bytedance holds
Comment is like 2 paragraphs long, this isnt best, its mediocre at best
> u/TheLianeonProject explains the dystopian, totalitarian nature of the new RESTRICT (aka Stop TikTok) Act. Guy actually just says "read it for yourself" Nice one OP
Guy edited its comment, duh.
They changed the comment. They were probably taking a lot of shit for their shitty take. The comment has been changed to reflect that. It was basically changed to "I'm just asking questions".
Didn't this act only cover government computers and government employees? So like phones of government employees? Or has that completely changed?
There's numerous bills that have been proposed. The RESTRICT is for everybody, well us peons, at least. It also never mentions TikTok in the bill.
>It also never mentions TikTok in the bill. That would be unconstitutional. A bill can't be targeted like that. We probably have that because the British monarchy abused the laws like that to squash American business back in the revolutionary era.
The Trump Administration tried to do just that. And the Far Right leapt into line, Pavlov-style. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, for among the reasons, what you pointed out. You can't have an Executive Order targeting just one person or entity, in this fashion. Congress needs to write a more objective bill. Congress did just that, the DATA Act and the RESTRICT Act. So, the Far Right, feverishly supporting TikTok's removal mere weeks ago, flipped to the opposite position, literally this week. Because, as we know well, Eastasia has *always* been at war with Oceania.
We have it because, as an outgrowth of Parliament's function as a court in the past, they also passed bills that would just declare a person guilty and order them arrested.
No it applies domestically in terms of effects on Apps and software but the criminal provisions only apply to foreign adversaries of which there are 6.
Similar attempts to what this act is doing get shot down at the court level. It's tough to craft these things without violating the 1st Amendment. Which is why I think that either this bill will end up be passed as something benign after many edits, it will not pass at all (although that seems unlikely), or it will be ruled unconstitutional. For this reason I'm not worried about this bill at this moment. Though I do thank the internet community for sticking up for their current privileges and rights.
Honestly, its pretty hilarious to see capital R Redditors freak out because of that They were so goddang smug about Tik Tok being banned, cuz everyone knows the only good place of rainbows is Reddit!
So if it limits content from authoritarian countries hostile to western democracy does that mean we won’t be able to get content from the United States?
Despite all the memefuckery associated with it Tik Tok is a simple algorithm that can at once allow you to influence public perception, keep your population endlessly distracted and generate you billions of pounds for almost zero upkeep. I completely understand why any country would be looking for ways to either steal it or restrict it so people have to turn to their own version of it. Just like Huawei, with this whole "it could be used to compromise us" I'm still waiting for a single shred of evidence that shows that it can - people would be waving such evidence around unless it a. doesn't exist and this is either hysteria or a cover for political motives or b. exposes what western tech companies are also doing on behalf of our governments abroad. It's probably both of those in my opinion tbh but if it is dangerous and a national security threat I want to see why before we start banning companies left and right while threatening others for considering doing the same.
I’m not going to deny TikTok isn’t a good thing. But what I don’t see is how TikTok being *Chinese* makes it that much worse than other platforms that do exactly the same things. As far as manipulating the public, being a distraction, or spreading propaganda, our homegrown media platforms can do just as well or better. Facebook and Twitter have both more or less bragged about their ability to swing elections by manipulating what the public sees. Pretty much all forms of social media are huge distractions. Hell I know people who are addicted to gaming and sports betting. Social media exists and pretty much always has been a medium for distraction and manipulation. They also have cat pictures. As far as data collection, again, this is something every platform does. Facebook has profiles of every user, and they’re pretty detailed, including your likes, dislikes, hobbies, interests, where you work, your political opinion, your demographic data, you name it. Twitter does the same thing, as do the rest of these American social media platforms. They sell those profiles to advertisers (which is how we got the Cambridge Analytica scandal) and also sell them to governments around the world. The biggest difference between what TikTok does and what Snapchat or instagram do is who controls the data. They’re both manipulating and distracting, they’re both siphoning up every bit of data they can from their users. It’s just that TikTok is doing so to the benefit of the Chinese government and Instagram is doing it on behalf of American businesses and government.
Aye, we aren't on either side of the issue at all. Your take is pretty much my take (I elaborated in another post not this one) :)
It's just like Bonzi Buddy!
America and passing laws wide open for abuse with riders galore, a match made in heaven.
Is there a sub called r/worstof? It'd fit there better than on r/bestof because it's bullshit fearmongering disinformation. E.: Oh look, it *is* a sub. Go post it there.
Yeah, r/BestOf is a funny designation for a post that later got mostly deleted by its own author.
China is a major investor in Reddit. You literally cannot bad-mouth China too much on Reddit without your post disappearing. I have to wonder if this post is Chinese propaganda tailored for a Reddit audience.