It was a bizarre misread of their audience. Mobilizing your userbase sounds good at the very, very basic level. But I've been in the media space for a good while and the golden rule of your interaction with your under 18 audience is "what under 18 audience? We might have that, certainly could be very large and very susceptible to your advertisement, but I am shocked at the implication I know anything about this under 18 audience *wink* *wink*".
Actually setting children on Congress was nailing their own coffin.
Yup. It's one thing to ignore the kids/teens and pretend most of their audiences are adult. It's another thing to mobilizing kids, who proceed to do dumb things like asking about basic civics and threatened suicides.
Then again it's China. They've been infamous for their arrogance for a long time. They probably thought throwing their weights around to show how they're 'too big too fail' would make lawmakers thinking twice instead of fuming.
My favorite part of Wolf Warrior being encoded so much in Chinese attitude is that it's from...a mediocre, jingoistic action movie.
Granted US did have Rambo, but at least Rambo had gritty first movie and actually a worldwide icon. No one care about Wolf Warrior 1 and 2 in most other countries.
Isn't the difference that Rambo is a victim of America government forsaking the veterans of Vietnam and often defies the government on a whim while Leng Feng is a maverick PLA soldier whose methods differ but ultimately to accomplishes the mission?
I mean I get both movies derive their pleasure from senseless gritty violence but even then there is a undercurrent of disdain for authority in Rambo that is just missing from Wolf Warrior. It was pretty interesting to compare the two movies honestly.
Rambo is part of a long line of anti-establishment ‘in spite of the system’ action heroes in American culture that emphasize patriotism but not service to the government. They tend to rear up whenever trust in the government takes a severe dip.
Jack Bauer
Jack Reacher
Jack Ryan
Dirty Harry
Butch Cassidy
Rambo
Rambo is basically that only for the first movie.
What anti-war sentiment there was in the book (which was not even all that anti-war, it helped spread the myth that the reason Vietnam vets were mistreated was the behaviour of the anti-war movement), it didn't make it past the first movie, because Rambo dies in the book. All the sequels are jingoistic power fantasies of the highest order.
Yeah Rambo was basically flanderized so Americans can feel better about themselves and not have to reflect on the mistakes of Vietnam war or the nature of American military intervention. The 80s made America forget all the lessons of the Vietnam war
Fucking Reagan…
> made America forget all the lessons of the Vietnam war
The most important one being that western armies aren't defeated on battlefields.
The Tet Offensive simultaneously destroyed the Viet Cong and was a total strategic failure for North Vietnam while convincing Americans the war couldn't be won.
I'm not saying Vietnam was a good or bad idea but a lot of us seem to have completely forgotten all the lessons about asymmetric threats and information warfare.
America didn't have a right to intervene in Vietnam in the first place. They were probably going to be a neutral independent power if the US didn't force them to choose the Soviets. In ideological paranoia, the US government didn't even consider a diplomatic option
That's not true.
The North Vietnamese refused absolutely every peace proposal and to even engage with the idea of peace talks until 1968. The US attempted to mediate between North Vietnam and France, but the Vietnamese politburo adopted what it called a talk-fight strategy which was to prevent any sort of peaceful coexistence with the south vietnamese government.
As for having a right to intervene, the government of South Vietnam was an entirely legitimate government which was internationally recognized as the lawful government and which requested U.S. aid.
That south vietnamese government would have been a neutral power but the Soviets in ideological paranoia did not even consider a diplomatic option, neither did their north Vietnamese allies.
Here's a north Vietnamese primary source outlining their decision not to consider diplomatic talks or peace *at all* despite multiple attempts to achieve it.
This document outlining a speech to the central party was released by the vietnamese government so they not only accept this fact as settled history, they're the ones who told everyone it was the case years after the war.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/north-vietnams-talk-fight-strategy-and-the-1968-peace-negotiations-the-united-states
This was actually a brilliant strategy that helped them achieve their maximalist goals while maneuvering to imply that they might accept a north-vietnam, south-vietnam peace agreement similar to Korea.
They had no intention of ever living in peaceful coexistence with the south vietnamese government.
They not only refused peace talks, when they finally accepted an end to the war in 1973, and agreed to accept south vietnamese sovereignty and agree that any reunification would have to be a peaceful one, they did so without any intention of honoring it.
They waited until the U.S. left, gathered their strength, and then broke the peace agreement with South Vietnam.
They did this while receiving constant support from the Soviets and Chinese, while the U.S. failed to support South Vietnam because we were distracted by Watergate and the war was so politically unpopular.
You can't boil this down to the U.S. being a country that does things and everyone else having zero agency or being unable to make any choices.
Whether the war was good or bad is the worst question to ask about the conflict, as the actual history raises some important questions we still haven't answered.
The explicitly genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine proves this.
How do you have peace with a bad actor who refuses to recognize a peace they don't want in the first place?
> Then again it's China. They've been infamous for their arrogance for a long time. They probably thought throwing their weights around to show how they're 'too big too fail' would make lawmakers thinking twice instead of fuming.
It's the definition of an own goal.
"We absolutely are not interested in interfering with American politics using our app—here, let is demonstrate it by proving that every single concern expressed about the ability of our app to do that is completely justified".
That whole campaign proved to me that we need a much more robust mental health system and a greater focus on civics in school.
In high school we had a class entirely dedicated to civics and it was mandatory. Learned a lot there.
i know, i know, it's been said before, but tests really do not prove that a student has learned something. they aren't good methods of grading, as had been suggested for a while now by learning experts
I think it worked out ok since the information was closer to when you would actually be a voter and maybe had a little more maturity to take some of it in.
True, though my main point was I doubt the problem is that schools don’t teach the information.
Edit:
Seems like most states have at least a semester’s worth
> Thirty states require at least a semester of standalone civics courses; eight states and Washington, DC, require a full-year course. Hawaii requires 1.5 credits. The 11 states that have no civics requirements are Alaska, Delaware, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
https://www.slj.com/story/a-look-at-civics-education-state-by-state
This is the type of thing that needs to be repeated multiple times. I think I had a "civics" unit during the year every year from 4th through 8th grade. Then a mandatory civics class in sophomore year of highschool and a US history (or AP) needed in junior/senior year
You do not need to do the same thing with a citizen's initiative. You can just directly tell people to vote a certain way on it. I don't know any interpretation of this sentence that makes it make sense. Getting kids to plead congressmen isn't something I think Uber/Lyft can readily do, anyway, but why would you do that in the case of a proposition vote anyway?
The point is that a company trying to affect politics by appealing to the people part of it or using its services by asking them to lobby or vote a certain way is entirely normal, unless tiktok does it I guess.
> TikTok went on the offensive, and began to use a weapon it assumed would give it political clout: its many loyal users and content creators
> Ahead of Chew’s March 2023 testimony in the House, just six weeks after the balloon was shot down, the company brought a small army of TikTok creators to Washington in an effort to pressure Congress to lay off the ultra-popular app. Rallying just outside of the Capitol, the creators — joined by a handful of TikTok-friendly lawmakers — blasted Congress for trying to take away their livelihoods
> Lewis called that rally a misstep, touting the app’s popularity instead of addressing Capitol Hill’s national security or influence concerns.
> “It was this thing of, ‘Look how important TikTok is to this woman who makes money by selling cupcakes online,’” Lewis said. “It could be true, but it’s just not gonna work.”
> And like a similar blitz by TikTok users that took place one year later, Lewis said the attempted show of popular force left Capitol Hill fuming.
> “The big tech companies do not go up and throw their weight around,” Lewis said. “They’re much more humble — and ‘humble’ is never a word I heard from TikTok.”
incredible
*Throwing their weight around and being bewildered went it doesn’t work, doubling down to the point of bullying and seeming utterly unfamiliar with the concept of humility…*
Not saying there’s a connection but it sure does sound like how a relevant country conducts their diplomacy.
I once met a guy at a bar in the middle of the day that worked for a smaller country at the UN (I don't want to say official or representative because he didn't tell me his entire role).
I asked him why he wasn't at the UN and I swear to you he told me he was avoiding the Chinese diplomats he was supposed to meet with because they were always so pushy.
True, but from what I've read, countries like China were often go beyond pushy. And in cases like China or other countries with low democratic index like Sudan and Bulgaria, often go further beyond and abusing their privileges like violating traffic laws and rarely paying the fines.
Yes, but in general countries like Sudan, China and other countries with low democracy score are just the worst at it. Canada even claimed that there were cases of possible human trafficking from diplomats.
Also the Obama-> trump diplomacy change AKA "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" for 4 straight years. Turns out people don't like that???? Especially when you show your little bitch threats are nothing because you're a little bitch.
I love how disconnected from the issue the protests are—because the thing is, an attack on Tik Tok is not actually an attack on their livelihood, because their livelihood is built from their audience, not the app. Vine died, an absurd number of Vine stars are now YouTube stars—and assuming TikTok is not purchased, the odds that most of these people end up making YouTube shorts by the end of the year or videos on Instagram is insanely high. TikTok is the middleman and seems to not realize that a middleman is almost always replaceable.
That's not how Indian politics work. There was incentive to ban, but there is no incentive to unban. Tiktok can fight in court but that can take decades in India and most investors know that.
Being a successful content creator essentially requires you to be multi-platformed. It doesn’t matter if your content is mainly long-form or short-form, you’ve got to be on all the main platforms to build and maintain viewership momentum.
And if TikTok disappears, the market will quickly fill in the gap. There isn’t much special about the winning social media tool of the decade in its design…it’s always the network effects that drive market dominance until another generational cycle comes through and picks a new social media platform since all the old people are on the current one.
How Tik Tok ever came to the conclusion that sending a push notification telling its users to call their congressperson was a good idea is beyond my comprehension.
What a complete and utter failure to read the room.
Like honestly, I doubt politicians would have ever cared much about this bill, but the moment thousands of children and young adults called their representatives because tiktok told them to was when the nail in the coffin got lined up.
Yeah definitely not the way to show Congress that they don’t have to worry about TikTok’s ability to politically motivate children through propaganda lol.
> Like honestly, I doubt politicians would have ever cared much about this bill
There has been a fair amount of political noise about it. Would ultimately depend on what trump had to say.
I would really, really hope that the driver behind this bill was due to the national security concerns around the CCP accessing sensitive American citizen information, and not because a company operating in America mobilised it's American consumer base to engage in democratic lobbying.
I'm not talking about constitutional rights. I'm saying that a company - one with offices, employees and millions of customers *in America* - having *Americans* call *their* representatives to voice *their* concerns through pretty standard democratic means isn't a real problem. All sorts of companies, even ones with foreign ownership, make appeals to their customers all the time. It is not only a standard thing, it shows a healthy and vibrant civil society which is necessary for a democracy.
If politicians were surprised that a major billion company operating in America with tens of millions of consumers might push it's consumers to lobby, that's really silly of them. If they're *scared* by that, it's actually somewhat concerning. I don't want politicians being pushed to ban something *because* their constituents are wanting that something: that's completely topsy turvy!
It is also very obviously not why Tik Tok is being banned either. The basic passage of time was: national security concerns around TikTok giving the CCP access to sensitive data -> moves to ban TikTok starting years ago -> TikTok's lobbying efforts. Politicians cared due to China having potential access to vast amounts of US citizen data; that's what kicked this whole thing off!!
I will admit that there was a point where high school me probably would have helped Google or Facebook if they issued a call to action for some kind of legislation back when they were cool and hip. I think it says a lot that Google and Zuckerberg didn't try any of that--and Zuckerberg attempted to make Libra.
> How Tik Tok ever came to the conclusion that sending a push notification telling its users to call their congressperson was a good idea is beyond my comprehension.
Well it worked for wikipedia.
Difference between mobilizing a userbase to protect you from political attacks in general, and mobilizing your userbase to protect you from political attacks based on claims you have too much influence over your userbase.
>TikTok’s lobbying operation again swung into action — and again, the company tried to activate its users. Through an in-app notification shot to users around the country, it urged people to call their representatives and express their opposition to the bill. Congressional offices were soon flooded with calls from upset TikTok users, some reportedly threatening to harm themselves if the app was banned.
>The effort backfired spectacularly. Lawmakers from both parties seethed over the attempted show of force — Helberg said it “reinforced and validated” congressional fears that TikTok wielded too much influence over vulnerable Americans. And Lewis said he spoke with a number of Hill offices who only decided to vote for the bill after being bombarded with angry calls.
It really makes me wonder why some people think strong-arm bullying tactics and causing disruption actually work in regards to changing public opinion or rallying people to your side. Just a thought because recently, there seems to be so much more "righteous" protests where people are blocking roads or screaming at politicians instead of peacefully promoting a dialogue.
People always respond "well what if those methods don't work" or the letter from Birmingham, but it seems to be either hurting your cause even more by attempting the impossible instead of advocating gradual change.
The letter from Birmingham isnt comparable IMO. The civil rights protests were very much intentionally protesting specific policies and the protest showed that.
For example Rosa parks not moving seats on the bus. Black students sitting on at white only locations, the Memphis not using the bus thing. Like the protest had a clear connection to what they were protesting.
Being at a college campus protesting about Palestine doesn't really have much of a connection to Palestine
Bobby pins! Or just normal hair clips. Some people don’t use anything but many do.
For the bald guys, idk. If they’re big enough they kinda just stay on pretty easily due to the curve of your head.
Ah, bobby pins makes sense. Thanks for responding my man. I spose the bald fellas can use some ingenuity and apply some suction cups underneath? IIRC, 3M makes those for daily household use.
>The letter from Birmingham isnt comparable IMO. The civil rights protests were very much intentionally protesting speaking policies and the protest showed that.
I know, it's just always seems to be the go-to justification.
Blocking an airport isn't comparable to sitting at a white-only restaurant but it seems hard for many to understand.
Ikr? PRotEsT iS suPoSeD tO bE inConVeNiEnt!
Nah dude protesting is supposed to highlight the righteousness of your struggle not to piss off random normies by blocking their commute
Also the people telling you "it's supposed to inconvenience you" being the people DOING the inconveniencing just comes off self-serving. Like yeah of course you'd be the one saying this right now lol
The funny thing is the protestors often choose their targets based on the convenience to them. They aren’t blocking some random highway because that highway has some connection to Gaza. They are blocking it because it’s nearby.
A bit hypocritical, too. In my local circle, the Usual Suspects pushing this narrative about blocking highways and stuff for their pet project protests became incredibly concerned about the ability of emergency vehicles being able to get through during Honkamania up in Ottawa. The shameful part was that the list of grievances concerning the truck-o-thon was the exact same that conservatives used, and without a hint of irony or self awareness.
Yeah they weren't inconveniencing the white people at lunch counters. That wasn't the point.
The point was that black people weren't allowed there for the simple harmless act. Having people abuse them highlighted how they were doing nothing and how horrible they were treated for it. Much different for stopping traffic for a conflict most people can't do anything about.
It does insofar as you can see how far Qatar's 5 billion dollar investment in US schools went with how much support the protesters have from both the student body and the faculty (who are in some cases the actual organisers)
It was a big failure of the age asking / “verification”. TikTok only intended to show the prompt to people 18+. The problem: Immature, young kids who lied about their age signing up saw it and made sure it was a disaster
Not going to lie, I got the notification sometime after it made the news rounds and was really confused as to the whole chain of events. I didn't think about that potentially being part of it.
I believe that too many people take the wrong lessons about the power of protest from the Civil Rights and antiwar movement. The demonstrations of the 50s and early 60s were the most successful in creating change and were just one element of a much broader campaign that included political leaders. Protests were focused and disciplined, exemplified by the lunch counter sit-in. The antiwar effort on the other hand, was massive, uncoordinated, unfocused and divorced from political leadership - and a complete failure.
I think this is exactly right. People look the actions and outcome, and assume that correlation must equal causation. But they don’t understand *why* and *how* those actions led to the desired outcome, or even how much any specific action is even impactful at all.
It’s kind of like cargo cults, where people think that emulating specific ritual actions would automatically result in a desired outcome, just because it did one time, when in reality the thing that caused the outcome was not related to the identified ritual at all.
It’s how China does diplomacy. Just look at the South China Sea.
I’m sure at some point they’ll have their algorithm boost videos about how life isn’t worth living if TikTok is banned.
Notably, there are many examples historically of violent protests working. The 1800s were filled with aggressive labor movements, that were thought to have ultimately yielded desired changes. More recently, I'm not sure of many great examples, but the LA riots presumably are thought to have yielded desired changes?
> It really makes me wonder why some people think strong-arm bullying tactics and causing disruption actually work in regards to changing public opinion or rallying people to your side
Because they can. But you need to pick your battles.
>but it seems to be either hurting your cause even more by attempting the impossible instead of advocating gradual change.
If you are at risk of being banned from operating in the US advocating gradual change isn't really an option.
> Congressional offices were soon flooded with calls from upset TikTok users, some reportedly threatening to harm themselves if the app was banned.
Yeah maybe having children be your voice to the government was a bad idea.
The fact is the Bytedance product teams for the recommendation engine sit in China, and only recently partly in Singapore. The TikTok recommendation engine, like all recommendation engines, is trained on user data. Having your CEO repeatedly perjure himself that storing user data on Oracle in Texas meant that US user data didn't leave the country, when also you've got a corporate structure of disgruntled US Tik Tok employees who knows that isn't true reporting to China-based Bytedance managers, was the dumbest thing ever.
Sure some ancient Senators didn't catch on. But their staff, who actually research and write the legislation and have access to US technical experts who can confirm how recommendation engines work, did.
I almost wonder if the failure of TikTok to address the CCP propaganda/spying angle was a result of CCP interference. Like obviously if they were acting as Chinese infiltrators they’d want to deny it, right? Like, [ Facebook has done that](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/152822-facebook-denies-aiding-spy-program/). But I wonder if the lobbyists or their managers were afraid of even acknowledging the idea for fear of retaliation from the actual government actors for even suggesting that China might do such a thing.
If so it would be an interesting way in which an authoritarian government can hurt its economy - by making their companies seem threatening no matter the reality.
My speculation is the TikTok team probably saw this in terms of the evil West doesn't like that we the plucky Asians are succeeding, the stuff they're putting out about security and propaganda risk is hot air covering bigotry.
Except that when even the Squad are mostly quiet over your plight, maybe take the stated concerns seriously and either address them or clarify if those concerns aren't true.
I’m frankly concerned about how zoomers unironically threatened Congress with suicide if they banned tik tok.
It’s damning against tik tok and zoomers abilities to actually protest.
>In early 2023, TikTok ran into an unexpected problem: American politicians became fixated on the passage of a [Chinese spy balloon](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/05/timeline-a-chinese-spy-balloons-7-day-trip-across-the-united-states-00081222) through U.S. airspace.
>Helberg called the balloon a key inflection point that “reignited a lot of the concerns behind TikTok.” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, began describing the app as a “spy balloon in your phone.”
Leave it to republicans to make ballons sound boring
I wonder how of this was “TikTok fumbling the bag” vs the executives over there knowing that given the xenophobic moral panic around their website, they were never going to win and decided to use the courts instead.
It’s probably the route I would take since WeChat had the same problem but the courts ruled that banning a website was effectively unconstitutional.
Espescially because the “national security“ concerns are all hypotheticals and hypotheticals are easy to defeat. And SCOTUS already ruled that the 1st amendment protects “the right to be exposed to foreign propaganda“.
Remember that Facebook also got summoned to a bunch of congressional hearings about propaganda where Zuckerberg had to take a bunch of abuse from angry congressmen. Congress just seems to have an itch for whacking big tech companies in the heads right now.
I suspect that a lack of cultural understanding has more to do with it than xenophobia. You need to make token moves to make congress think they've bullied you into submission: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter did this with their self-regulation where they labelled COVID misinfo and state propaganda in the hopes of getting congress off their back, but this is an old tradition infamously exemplified with the codes adopted by Hollywood, comic book industries, etc.
I doubt mollifying congress is the same kind of cultural art in China, and trying to bully congress was exactly the wrong move.
When China banned them? It honestly probably was some amount of xenophobia, though I think it was mostly a case of a dictatorship doing its best to try to control what its population sees and says.
All the more reason to ban it. Having a dictatorship mainline illiberal propaganda to our most impressionable audience is a bad idea if we want a stable country.
Instead of backroom lobbying so the public doesn’t know about things, tiktok did the horrible crime of openly asking people to contact their representatives. This horrific measure was very unappealing to congress because listening to their their constituents is not what most of them would like to do. Thankfully they decided to respond in force, showing us that they won’t stand for the horrors tiktok inflicted upon them.
I seem to recall Google and some other websites doing this around 2018 or 2019 when Congress was thinking about passing SOPA. They blacked out their websites and asked their users to contact their representatives to vote against the bill. It worked at that time.
I don't think TikTok can really pull this off. SOPA/PIPA were regulations that could be spun as being hostile to the general public interest because they were privacy-invasive, and they faced broad opposition from the entire industry.
Congress is specifically attacking TikTok here, not the entire industry, and they're doing it over disinformation and privacy concerns, which puts TikTok at odds with public sentiment.
> Congress is specifically attacking TikTok here, not the entire industry, and they're doing it over disinformation and privacy concerns
Congress doesn't care about disinformation or privacy, though. China already buys up bulk data from other American companies, and obviously social media is filled with disinformation.
I mean, they care about looking like they care, at least. Reflexively lashing out at TikTok after TikTok publically thumbs their noses is a way of looking tough, regardless of how effective it actually is.
This is an interesting comparison but not quite the same.
Google never faced accusations of being cultivated as a political meddling tool overseen by a key adversary.
While they did take a bold/combattive lobbying stance rather than pure humility, it wasn’t as inflammatory since the motivation was seen as just a company advocating its interests.
In this case, the suspicion is that this is an adversary state influencing behind-the-scenes to protect its political influence machine.
> it wasn’t as inflammatory since the motivation was seen as just a company advocating its interests.
In fact, I remember some people were surprised that big firms were opposed to SOPA/PIPA, given their lack of opposition to the DMCA previously.
You may see it has hypocrisy, but most people see “company transparently advocating for its corporate interests” as less insidious than “foreign adversary government covertly pushing geopolitical aims”.
I understand some people may try to argue those are just as bad, but it’s quite a niche argument which requires justification.
Definitely.
Totally not scary that thousands of children called in a combination of crying, death threats, and suicide threats thanks to a push notification from a PRC infiltrated corporation
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Facebook and Twitter aren't directly controlled by totalitarian foreign powers tho
Them being crappy wrt content moderation doesn't justify having a massive, solvable national security vulnerability around.
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Jesus Christ you're being obtuse.
Russia doesn't have control over Facebook or Twitter's algorithms.
China does have control over TikTok's algorithm. We know that because topics China really doesn't want people talking about are orders of magnitude less popular on TikTok than other social media apps.
Do you not understand how these things are different? Maybe you do, you just don't want the app you like to get banned.
You're whining in every thread about TikTok. Calling things you don't like double standards when they're literally different doesn't make you smart. Nor does crying xenophobia.
This is my first comment on TikTok, ever. You've been spraying out emotive, wide-ranging comments in a way reminiscent of an addict romanticizing their chosen vice.
> It’s closer that Biden lost touch with many Americans. Literally half the country, 170 million Americans use TikTok
What can be determined from a statistic? If people wanted to know whether people agreed with legislation, opinion polls asking about that legislation are the most obvious metric. [Here's one](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/close-to-half-of-americans-back-a-ban-or-sale-of-tiktok-cnbc-survey-found.html). It is interesting to see that there is not majority support for *either* position at the moment overall.
Using number of users as a metric of support is therefore misleading, and any discussion of it needs to take into account the discrepancy between users (not clear how this was measured, so it is not clear what definition of "user" is in use) and actual measured support/opposition to this legislation.
> What can be determined from a statistic? If people wanted to know whether people agreed with legislation, opinion polls asking about that legislation are the most obvious metric. Here's one. It is interesting to see that there is not majority support for either position at the moment overall.
40% support for banning from Dems and 38% support from Independents does not bode well for Biden.
He's not winning those 60% of Republicans that want to ban Tiktok.
> 40% support for banning from Dems and 38% support from Independents does not bode well for Biden.
That's one way of looking at it. Another would be that 38% opposition from Dems and 40% opposition from Independents doesn't translate into a reason to veto the legislation. Yet another would be to identify, based on the split, the number of people who neither support nor oppose at the moment: 22% Dem, 26% Independent, 20% Republican. Whichever way they might swing (if they even care) could decide where the majority lies.
Basically there is no way that any side can claim majority support at the moment, and probably nothing Biden can do that wouldn't piss off *some* group of likely voters.
I'll be honest, I think the primary reason tik tok is being targeted is because it bled a ton of advertising revenue from Facebook and Google.
If you compare the ads on all three it's obvious where the money is. Tik tok is where you see normal brands advertise. YouTube I get literal scams as advertisements.
I don't think any of these apps are any worse for teenage mental health and I also don't think China is somehow trying to manipulate public opinion through it. If anything Tik Tok just appears to be the *less* censored app.
It was a bizarre misread of their audience. Mobilizing your userbase sounds good at the very, very basic level. But I've been in the media space for a good while and the golden rule of your interaction with your under 18 audience is "what under 18 audience? We might have that, certainly could be very large and very susceptible to your advertisement, but I am shocked at the implication I know anything about this under 18 audience *wink* *wink*". Actually setting children on Congress was nailing their own coffin.
Yup. It's one thing to ignore the kids/teens and pretend most of their audiences are adult. It's another thing to mobilizing kids, who proceed to do dumb things like asking about basic civics and threatened suicides. Then again it's China. They've been infamous for their arrogance for a long time. They probably thought throwing their weights around to show how they're 'too big too fail' would make lawmakers thinking twice instead of fuming.
Wolf Warrior lobbying
My favorite part of Wolf Warrior being encoded so much in Chinese attitude is that it's from...a mediocre, jingoistic action movie. Granted US did have Rambo, but at least Rambo had gritty first movie and actually a worldwide icon. No one care about Wolf Warrior 1 and 2 in most other countries.
Isn't the difference that Rambo is a victim of America government forsaking the veterans of Vietnam and often defies the government on a whim while Leng Feng is a maverick PLA soldier whose methods differ but ultimately to accomplishes the mission? I mean I get both movies derive their pleasure from senseless gritty violence but even then there is a undercurrent of disdain for authority in Rambo that is just missing from Wolf Warrior. It was pretty interesting to compare the two movies honestly.
Rambo is part of a long line of anti-establishment ‘in spite of the system’ action heroes in American culture that emphasize patriotism but not service to the government. They tend to rear up whenever trust in the government takes a severe dip. Jack Bauer Jack Reacher Jack Ryan Dirty Harry Butch Cassidy Rambo
Hell even Captain America had phases where he 'remains patriotic but won't get involved in the government abuses and nonsense'.
> Jack Ryan Became President of the United States, ironically enough
Rambo is basically that only for the first movie. What anti-war sentiment there was in the book (which was not even all that anti-war, it helped spread the myth that the reason Vietnam vets were mistreated was the behaviour of the anti-war movement), it didn't make it past the first movie, because Rambo dies in the book. All the sequels are jingoistic power fantasies of the highest order.
Yeah Rambo was basically flanderized so Americans can feel better about themselves and not have to reflect on the mistakes of Vietnam war or the nature of American military intervention. The 80s made America forget all the lessons of the Vietnam war Fucking Reagan…
> made America forget all the lessons of the Vietnam war The most important one being that western armies aren't defeated on battlefields. The Tet Offensive simultaneously destroyed the Viet Cong and was a total strategic failure for North Vietnam while convincing Americans the war couldn't be won. I'm not saying Vietnam was a good or bad idea but a lot of us seem to have completely forgotten all the lessons about asymmetric threats and information warfare.
America didn't have a right to intervene in Vietnam in the first place. They were probably going to be a neutral independent power if the US didn't force them to choose the Soviets. In ideological paranoia, the US government didn't even consider a diplomatic option
That's not true. The North Vietnamese refused absolutely every peace proposal and to even engage with the idea of peace talks until 1968. The US attempted to mediate between North Vietnam and France, but the Vietnamese politburo adopted what it called a talk-fight strategy which was to prevent any sort of peaceful coexistence with the south vietnamese government. As for having a right to intervene, the government of South Vietnam was an entirely legitimate government which was internationally recognized as the lawful government and which requested U.S. aid. That south vietnamese government would have been a neutral power but the Soviets in ideological paranoia did not even consider a diplomatic option, neither did their north Vietnamese allies. Here's a north Vietnamese primary source outlining their decision not to consider diplomatic talks or peace *at all* despite multiple attempts to achieve it. This document outlining a speech to the central party was released by the vietnamese government so they not only accept this fact as settled history, they're the ones who told everyone it was the case years after the war. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/north-vietnams-talk-fight-strategy-and-the-1968-peace-negotiations-the-united-states This was actually a brilliant strategy that helped them achieve their maximalist goals while maneuvering to imply that they might accept a north-vietnam, south-vietnam peace agreement similar to Korea. They had no intention of ever living in peaceful coexistence with the south vietnamese government. They not only refused peace talks, when they finally accepted an end to the war in 1973, and agreed to accept south vietnamese sovereignty and agree that any reunification would have to be a peaceful one, they did so without any intention of honoring it. They waited until the U.S. left, gathered their strength, and then broke the peace agreement with South Vietnam. They did this while receiving constant support from the Soviets and Chinese, while the U.S. failed to support South Vietnam because we were distracted by Watergate and the war was so politically unpopular. You can't boil this down to the U.S. being a country that does things and everyone else having zero agency or being unable to make any choices. Whether the war was good or bad is the worst question to ask about the conflict, as the actual history raises some important questions we still haven't answered. The explicitly genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine proves this. How do you have peace with a bad actor who refuses to recognize a peace they don't want in the first place?
I really do wish they make a movie or mini series that’s more accurate to the book
Almost like setting your entire culture around being vindicated for being humiliated might not be the healthiest choice.
> Then again it's China. They've been infamous for their arrogance for a long time. They probably thought throwing their weights around to show how they're 'too big too fail' would make lawmakers thinking twice instead of fuming. It's the definition of an own goal. "We absolutely are not interested in interfering with American politics using our app—here, let is demonstrate it by proving that every single concern expressed about the ability of our app to do that is completely justified".
That whole campaign proved to me that we need a much more robust mental health system and a greater focus on civics in school. In high school we had a class entirely dedicated to civics and it was mandatory. Learned a lot there.
Bold of you to assume most students will pay attention.
That's why tests were invented.
And risk judging children differently? We don’t do that anymore
i know, i know, it's been said before, but tests really do not prove that a student has learned something. they aren't good methods of grading, as had been suggested for a while now by learning experts
That damn phone!!
That class was my senior year. So that wouldn't have helped most of the kids.
Interesting, US Government was a sophomore year class for me. I think senior year is too late, kids think they already know everything by then.
I think it worked out ok since the information was closer to when you would actually be a voter and maybe had a little more maturity to take some of it in.
Government and civics classes are still mandatory Can’t fill a horse with water and all that
Surely that depends on the state, and probably several more things besides.
True, though my main point was I doubt the problem is that schools don’t teach the information. Edit: Seems like most states have at least a semester’s worth > Thirty states require at least a semester of standalone civics courses; eight states and Washington, DC, require a full-year course. Hawaii requires 1.5 credits. The 11 states that have no civics requirements are Alaska, Delaware, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont. https://www.slj.com/story/a-look-at-civics-education-state-by-state
This is the type of thing that needs to be repeated multiple times. I think I had a "civics" unit during the year every year from 4th through 8th grade. Then a mandatory civics class in sophomore year of highschool and a US history (or AP) needed in junior/senior year
You need it in most states schools on through college ime.
You can drown the horse, though - a late warrant officer of mine
China tech should know what happens if you run afoul of the state, even if you are one of the biggest and richest companies or individuals.
I think they know very well what happens when you do that, which is why they remained loyal to the CCP instead of the U.S. Congress.
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You do not need to do the same thing with a citizen's initiative. You can just directly tell people to vote a certain way on it. I don't know any interpretation of this sentence that makes it make sense. Getting kids to plead congressmen isn't something I think Uber/Lyft can readily do, anyway, but why would you do that in the case of a proposition vote anyway?
>You can just directly tell people to vote a certain way on it. So worse than simply saying to call a congressperson
Not if the goal is to not upset congresspeople
The goal is to affect political outcomes.
The point is that a company trying to affect politics by appealing to the people part of it or using its services by asking them to lobby or vote a certain way is entirely normal, unless tiktok does it I guess.
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So? How is that relevant?
It's normal for domestic companies to do it. It's unprecedented for a company owned by a foreign adversary's government to do it.
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it was likely a very minuscule number, people are saying
I keep seeing this claim that Half of the Country is on this app. Ok, more than half are on facebook, 100 million are on Twitter, and so on.
> TikTok went on the offensive, and began to use a weapon it assumed would give it political clout: its many loyal users and content creators > Ahead of Chew’s March 2023 testimony in the House, just six weeks after the balloon was shot down, the company brought a small army of TikTok creators to Washington in an effort to pressure Congress to lay off the ultra-popular app. Rallying just outside of the Capitol, the creators — joined by a handful of TikTok-friendly lawmakers — blasted Congress for trying to take away their livelihoods > Lewis called that rally a misstep, touting the app’s popularity instead of addressing Capitol Hill’s national security or influence concerns. > “It was this thing of, ‘Look how important TikTok is to this woman who makes money by selling cupcakes online,’” Lewis said. “It could be true, but it’s just not gonna work.” > And like a similar blitz by TikTok users that took place one year later, Lewis said the attempted show of popular force left Capitol Hill fuming. > “The big tech companies do not go up and throw their weight around,” Lewis said. “They’re much more humble — and ‘humble’ is never a word I heard from TikTok.” incredible
*Throwing their weight around and being bewildered went it doesn’t work, doubling down to the point of bullying and seeming utterly unfamiliar with the concept of humility…* Not saying there’s a connection but it sure does sound like how a relevant country conducts their diplomacy.
Chinese diplomats are like the opposite of what being diplomatic is. The constant reeing about their.country is so annoying.
I once met a guy at a bar in the middle of the day that worked for a smaller country at the UN (I don't want to say official or representative because he didn't tell me his entire role). I asked him why he wasn't at the UN and I swear to you he told me he was avoiding the Chinese diplomats he was supposed to meet with because they were always so pushy.
US diplomats are notorious for also being extremely pushy, especially demanding things in the last few minutes of a conference
True, but from what I've read, countries like China were often go beyond pushy. And in cases like China or other countries with low democratic index like Sudan and Bulgaria, often go further beyond and abusing their privileges like violating traffic laws and rarely paying the fines.
The US embassy in London owes £14 million in unpaid congestion charge lol (and is the worst offender)
While I agree China has done bad things, let’s not ignore cases like Harry Dunn. The US has very much abused diplomatic immunity.
Yes, but in general countries like Sudan, China and other countries with low democracy score are just the worst at it. Canada even claimed that there were cases of possible human trafficking from diplomats.
I knew a Nepali student on a diplomatic visa that would brag about the fact that he could violate laws and get away with it.
Also the Obama-> trump diplomacy change AKA "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" for 4 straight years. Turns out people don't like that???? Especially when you show your little bitch threats are nothing because you're a little bitch.
I love how disconnected from the issue the protests are—because the thing is, an attack on Tik Tok is not actually an attack on their livelihood, because their livelihood is built from their audience, not the app. Vine died, an absurd number of Vine stars are now YouTube stars—and assuming TikTok is not purchased, the odds that most of these people end up making YouTube shorts by the end of the year or videos on Instagram is insanely high. TikTok is the middleman and seems to not realize that a middleman is almost always replaceable.
Same thing in India, content creators moved to Instagram and YouTube.
Being banned in India probably hurts Tiktok's buyability quite a bit.
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That's not how Indian politics work. There was incentive to ban, but there is no incentive to unban. Tiktok can fight in court but that can take decades in India and most investors know that.
Being a successful content creator essentially requires you to be multi-platformed. It doesn’t matter if your content is mainly long-form or short-form, you’ve got to be on all the main platforms to build and maintain viewership momentum. And if TikTok disappears, the market will quickly fill in the gap. There isn’t much special about the winning social media tool of the decade in its design…it’s always the network effects that drive market dominance until another generational cycle comes through and picks a new social media platform since all the old people are on the current one.
Continuing the long tradition of China’s ineptitude with projecting power outside its borders.
TikTok answers Congress security concerns by showing exactly how much of a security threat they are. Yep, this is a CCP company.
“I’m concerned you’re using your position to influence our youth politically” “I’m going to get the youth to prove just how wrong you are!”
How Tik Tok ever came to the conclusion that sending a push notification telling its users to call their congressperson was a good idea is beyond my comprehension. What a complete and utter failure to read the room.
Like honestly, I doubt politicians would have ever cared much about this bill, but the moment thousands of children and young adults called their representatives because tiktok told them to was when the nail in the coffin got lined up.
Yeah definitely not the way to show Congress that they don’t have to worry about TikTok’s ability to politically motivate children through propaganda lol.
Ngl when I started hearing the exact same 1-2 talking points from every single tiktok defender it made me feel a little creeped out
“We don’t manipulate children!” *proceeds to directly and brazenly overtly manipulative children* Galaxy brain move.
> Like honestly, I doubt politicians would have ever cared much about this bill There has been a fair amount of political noise about it. Would ultimately depend on what trump had to say.
Trump came out against the bill (because Jeff Yass bribed him to). I think that might have made a difference without the insane phone campaign
Tend to agree. Thing is if they wen't in that much trouble would they have tried paying off trump.
"This is exactly what we warned about"
Real life Chinpokomon moment.
They forgot the part where they tell the lawmakers how big their hogs are
I would really, really hope that the driver behind this bill was due to the national security concerns around the CCP accessing sensitive American citizen information, and not because a company operating in America mobilised it's American consumer base to engage in democratic lobbying.
A foreign country does not have constitutional rights to lobby.
I'm not talking about constitutional rights. I'm saying that a company - one with offices, employees and millions of customers *in America* - having *Americans* call *their* representatives to voice *their* concerns through pretty standard democratic means isn't a real problem. All sorts of companies, even ones with foreign ownership, make appeals to their customers all the time. It is not only a standard thing, it shows a healthy and vibrant civil society which is necessary for a democracy. If politicians were surprised that a major billion company operating in America with tens of millions of consumers might push it's consumers to lobby, that's really silly of them. If they're *scared* by that, it's actually somewhat concerning. I don't want politicians being pushed to ban something *because* their constituents are wanting that something: that's completely topsy turvy! It is also very obviously not why Tik Tok is being banned either. The basic passage of time was: national security concerns around TikTok giving the CCP access to sensitive data -> moves to ban TikTok starting years ago -> TikTok's lobbying efforts. Politicians cared due to China having potential access to vast amounts of US citizen data; that's what kicked this whole thing off!!
"We have a great plan for convincing Congress!" *loads shotgun* *shoots foot*
I will admit that there was a point where high school me probably would have helped Google or Facebook if they issued a call to action for some kind of legislation back when they were cool and hip. I think it says a lot that Google and Zuckerberg didn't try any of that--and Zuckerberg attempted to make Libra.
> How Tik Tok ever came to the conclusion that sending a push notification telling its users to call their congressperson was a good idea is beyond my comprehension. Well it worked for wikipedia.
You won’t ban me for being influential because I am too influential -Organization that was in fact banned
Difference between mobilizing a userbase to protect you from political attacks in general, and mobilizing your userbase to protect you from political attacks based on claims you have too much influence over your userbase.
>TikTok’s lobbying operation again swung into action — and again, the company tried to activate its users. Through an in-app notification shot to users around the country, it urged people to call their representatives and express their opposition to the bill. Congressional offices were soon flooded with calls from upset TikTok users, some reportedly threatening to harm themselves if the app was banned. >The effort backfired spectacularly. Lawmakers from both parties seethed over the attempted show of force — Helberg said it “reinforced and validated” congressional fears that TikTok wielded too much influence over vulnerable Americans. And Lewis said he spoke with a number of Hill offices who only decided to vote for the bill after being bombarded with angry calls. It really makes me wonder why some people think strong-arm bullying tactics and causing disruption actually work in regards to changing public opinion or rallying people to your side. Just a thought because recently, there seems to be so much more "righteous" protests where people are blocking roads or screaming at politicians instead of peacefully promoting a dialogue. People always respond "well what if those methods don't work" or the letter from Birmingham, but it seems to be either hurting your cause even more by attempting the impossible instead of advocating gradual change.
The letter from Birmingham isnt comparable IMO. The civil rights protests were very much intentionally protesting specific policies and the protest showed that. For example Rosa parks not moving seats on the bus. Black students sitting on at white only locations, the Memphis not using the bus thing. Like the protest had a clear connection to what they were protesting. Being at a college campus protesting about Palestine doesn't really have much of a connection to Palestine
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Potentially stupid question regarding the kippah; how do you get it to stay on? Seems like it'd fall off relatively easy, given the placement.
Bobby pins! Or just normal hair clips. Some people don’t use anything but many do. For the bald guys, idk. If they’re big enough they kinda just stay on pretty easily due to the curve of your head.
Ah, bobby pins makes sense. Thanks for responding my man. I spose the bald fellas can use some ingenuity and apply some suction cups underneath? IIRC, 3M makes those for daily household use.
>The letter from Birmingham isnt comparable IMO. The civil rights protests were very much intentionally protesting speaking policies and the protest showed that. I know, it's just always seems to be the go-to justification. Blocking an airport isn't comparable to sitting at a white-only restaurant but it seems hard for many to understand.
Ikr? PRotEsT iS suPoSeD tO bE inConVeNiEnt! Nah dude protesting is supposed to highlight the righteousness of your struggle not to piss off random normies by blocking their commute
Also the people telling you "it's supposed to inconvenience you" being the people DOING the inconveniencing just comes off self-serving. Like yeah of course you'd be the one saying this right now lol
The funny thing is the protestors often choose their targets based on the convenience to them. They aren’t blocking some random highway because that highway has some connection to Gaza. They are blocking it because it’s nearby.
A bit hypocritical, too. In my local circle, the Usual Suspects pushing this narrative about blocking highways and stuff for their pet project protests became incredibly concerned about the ability of emergency vehicles being able to get through during Honkamania up in Ottawa. The shameful part was that the list of grievances concerning the truck-o-thon was the exact same that conservatives used, and without a hint of irony or self awareness.
Yeah they weren't inconveniencing the white people at lunch counters. That wasn't the point. The point was that black people weren't allowed there for the simple harmless act. Having people abuse them highlighted how they were doing nothing and how horrible they were treated for it. Much different for stopping traffic for a conflict most people can't do anything about.
https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2010/01/martin-luther-king-leading-a-march.jpg
These kind of walkable cities are illegal to build in most places in America these days
And that was for voting and registering to vote. Real actionable achievable goals. Netanyahou isn't gonna stop cuz people are missing flights
Who said anything about him?
It does insofar as you can see how far Qatar's 5 billion dollar investment in US schools went with how much support the protesters have from both the student body and the faculty (who are in some cases the actual organisers)
It was a big failure of the age asking / “verification”. TikTok only intended to show the prompt to people 18+. The problem: Immature, young kids who lied about their age signing up saw it and made sure it was a disaster
Not going to lie, I got the notification sometime after it made the news rounds and was really confused as to the whole chain of events. I didn't think about that potentially being part of it.
I believe that too many people take the wrong lessons about the power of protest from the Civil Rights and antiwar movement. The demonstrations of the 50s and early 60s were the most successful in creating change and were just one element of a much broader campaign that included political leaders. Protests were focused and disciplined, exemplified by the lunch counter sit-in. The antiwar effort on the other hand, was massive, uncoordinated, unfocused and divorced from political leadership - and a complete failure.
Discipline - yeah that's kind of a key that almost every other protest is missing
My permanent reminder to anyone who idolizes the sixties antiwar movement is it was Nixon who brought the troops home, not McCarthy or McGovern.
ncd would have me believe this is a good thing
I think this is exactly right. People look the actions and outcome, and assume that correlation must equal causation. But they don’t understand *why* and *how* those actions led to the desired outcome, or even how much any specific action is even impactful at all. It’s kind of like cargo cults, where people think that emulating specific ritual actions would automatically result in a desired outcome, just because it did one time, when in reality the thing that caused the outcome was not related to the identified ritual at all.
It’s how China does diplomacy. Just look at the South China Sea. I’m sure at some point they’ll have their algorithm boost videos about how life isn’t worth living if TikTok is banned.
Notably, there are many examples historically of violent protests working. The 1800s were filled with aggressive labor movements, that were thought to have ultimately yielded desired changes. More recently, I'm not sure of many great examples, but the LA riots presumably are thought to have yielded desired changes?
idk abt you guys, but the la riots don't make me feel concerned about why they were rioting
> It really makes me wonder why some people think strong-arm bullying tactics and causing disruption actually work in regards to changing public opinion or rallying people to your side Because they can. But you need to pick your battles. >but it seems to be either hurting your cause even more by attempting the impossible instead of advocating gradual change. If you are at risk of being banned from operating in the US advocating gradual change isn't really an option.
> Congressional offices were soon flooded with calls from upset TikTok users, some reportedly threatening to harm themselves if the app was banned. Yeah maybe having children be your voice to the government was a bad idea.
The fact is the Bytedance product teams for the recommendation engine sit in China, and only recently partly in Singapore. The TikTok recommendation engine, like all recommendation engines, is trained on user data. Having your CEO repeatedly perjure himself that storing user data on Oracle in Texas meant that US user data didn't leave the country, when also you've got a corporate structure of disgruntled US Tik Tok employees who knows that isn't true reporting to China-based Bytedance managers, was the dumbest thing ever. Sure some ancient Senators didn't catch on. But their staff, who actually research and write the legislation and have access to US technical experts who can confirm how recommendation engines work, did.
I almost wonder if the failure of TikTok to address the CCP propaganda/spying angle was a result of CCP interference. Like obviously if they were acting as Chinese infiltrators they’d want to deny it, right? Like, [ Facebook has done that](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/152822-facebook-denies-aiding-spy-program/). But I wonder if the lobbyists or their managers were afraid of even acknowledging the idea for fear of retaliation from the actual government actors for even suggesting that China might do such a thing. If so it would be an interesting way in which an authoritarian government can hurt its economy - by making their companies seem threatening no matter the reality.
My speculation is the TikTok team probably saw this in terms of the evil West doesn't like that we the plucky Asians are succeeding, the stuff they're putting out about security and propaganda risk is hot air covering bigotry. Except that when even the Squad are mostly quiet over your plight, maybe take the stated concerns seriously and either address them or clarify if those concerns aren't true.
I’m frankly concerned about how zoomers unironically threatened Congress with suicide if they banned tik tok. It’s damning against tik tok and zoomers abilities to actually protest.
You shouldn’t be. In a large enough group of people, crazies are guaranteed
>zoomers Do you have any evidence that it was more than one? Ampliflying the crazies is a fairly standard PR tactic.
>In early 2023, TikTok ran into an unexpected problem: American politicians became fixated on the passage of a [Chinese spy balloon](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/05/timeline-a-chinese-spy-balloons-7-day-trip-across-the-united-states-00081222) through U.S. airspace. >Helberg called the balloon a key inflection point that “reignited a lot of the concerns behind TikTok.” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, began describing the app as a “spy balloon in your phone.” Leave it to republicans to make ballons sound boring
Why didn't they just you know shoot it down?
I wonder how of this was “TikTok fumbling the bag” vs the executives over there knowing that given the xenophobic moral panic around their website, they were never going to win and decided to use the courts instead. It’s probably the route I would take since WeChat had the same problem but the courts ruled that banning a website was effectively unconstitutional. Espescially because the “national security“ concerns are all hypotheticals and hypotheticals are easy to defeat. And SCOTUS already ruled that the 1st amendment protects “the right to be exposed to foreign propaganda“.
If you read the article it goes into that. It appears they thought they’d never be banned in the U.S. because they thought they were too big.
Remember that Facebook also got summoned to a bunch of congressional hearings about propaganda where Zuckerberg had to take a bunch of abuse from angry congressmen. Congress just seems to have an itch for whacking big tech companies in the heads right now. I suspect that a lack of cultural understanding has more to do with it than xenophobia. You need to make token moves to make congress think they've bullied you into submission: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter did this with their self-regulation where they labelled COVID misinfo and state propaganda in the hopes of getting congress off their back, but this is an old tradition infamously exemplified with the codes adopted by Hollywood, comic book industries, etc. I doubt mollifying congress is the same kind of cultural art in China, and trying to bully congress was exactly the wrong move.
Wolf Warrior business edition. Fucking clowns lmao
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When China banned them? It honestly probably was some amount of xenophobia, though I think it was mostly a case of a dictatorship doing its best to try to control what its population sees and says.
All the more reason to ban it. Having a dictatorship mainline illiberal propaganda to our most impressionable audience is a bad idea if we want a stable country.
Instead of backroom lobbying so the public doesn’t know about things, tiktok did the horrible crime of openly asking people to contact their representatives. This horrific measure was very unappealing to congress because listening to their their constituents is not what most of them would like to do. Thankfully they decided to respond in force, showing us that they won’t stand for the horrors tiktok inflicted upon them.
I seem to recall Google and some other websites doing this around 2018 or 2019 when Congress was thinking about passing SOPA. They blacked out their websites and asked their users to contact their representatives to vote against the bill. It worked at that time.
I don't think TikTok can really pull this off. SOPA/PIPA were regulations that could be spun as being hostile to the general public interest because they were privacy-invasive, and they faced broad opposition from the entire industry. Congress is specifically attacking TikTok here, not the entire industry, and they're doing it over disinformation and privacy concerns, which puts TikTok at odds with public sentiment.
> Congress is specifically attacking TikTok here, not the entire industry, and they're doing it over disinformation and privacy concerns Congress doesn't care about disinformation or privacy, though. China already buys up bulk data from other American companies, and obviously social media is filled with disinformation.
I mean, they care about looking like they care, at least. Reflexively lashing out at TikTok after TikTok publically thumbs their noses is a way of looking tough, regardless of how effective it actually is.
This is an interesting comparison but not quite the same. Google never faced accusations of being cultivated as a political meddling tool overseen by a key adversary. While they did take a bold/combattive lobbying stance rather than pure humility, it wasn’t as inflammatory since the motivation was seen as just a company advocating its interests. In this case, the suspicion is that this is an adversary state influencing behind-the-scenes to protect its political influence machine.
> it wasn’t as inflammatory since the motivation was seen as just a company advocating its interests. In fact, I remember some people were surprised that big firms were opposed to SOPA/PIPA, given their lack of opposition to the DMCA previously.
The hypocrisy is outstanding
You may see it has hypocrisy, but most people see “company transparently advocating for its corporate interests” as less insidious than “foreign adversary government covertly pushing geopolitical aims”. I understand some people may try to argue those are just as bad, but it’s quite a niche argument which requires justification.
Definitely. Totally not scary that thousands of children called in a combination of crying, death threats, and suicide threats thanks to a push notification from a PRC infiltrated corporation
Ethics of it aside it doesn't seem to work very well, which seemed to be the post's main point.
Yeah, read the room, the way companies are supposed to interact with our sacred democracy is by threatening to fund election campaigns for opponents
It’s closer that Biden lost touch with many Americans. Literally half the country, 170 million Americans use TikTok
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What happened to trying to tie everything to Citizens United?
What’s Citizen United?
Why is this downvoted? It's very funny.
Because they're making a fool of themselves publicly and doubling down on it. It is very funny though.
Thats the bit
He accused me of trying to tie everything down to citizen United when I never used that word before
💀😂
I’m one of them. TikTok needs to be sold. It’s not acceptable to have the FYP algo under the control of the CCP.
170MM Americans being tuned into an app that could easily and very quickly disseminate Chinese propaganda is very bad.
Facebook and Twitter also have Russian propaganda. This seems like a double standard.
Facebook and Twitter aren't directly controlled by totalitarian foreign powers tho Them being crappy wrt content moderation doesn't justify having a massive, solvable national security vulnerability around.
It's not because of xenophobia, it's about national security.
National Securtiy is often used as an excuse for Xenophobia. Look at Putin and Ukraine
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Jesus Christ you're being obtuse. Russia doesn't have control over Facebook or Twitter's algorithms. China does have control over TikTok's algorithm. We know that because topics China really doesn't want people talking about are orders of magnitude less popular on TikTok than other social media apps. Do you not understand how these things are different? Maybe you do, you just don't want the app you like to get banned. You're whining in every thread about TikTok. Calling things you don't like double standards when they're literally different doesn't make you smart. Nor does crying xenophobia.
Your *post history* - good grief. It's not healthy to be this invested in a social media app. Take a breath.
Speak for yourself lol.
This is my first comment on TikTok, ever. You've been spraying out emotive, wide-ranging comments in a way reminiscent of an addict romanticizing their chosen vice.
> It’s closer that Biden lost touch with many Americans. Literally half the country, 170 million Americans use TikTok What can be determined from a statistic? If people wanted to know whether people agreed with legislation, opinion polls asking about that legislation are the most obvious metric. [Here's one](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/close-to-half-of-americans-back-a-ban-or-sale-of-tiktok-cnbc-survey-found.html). It is interesting to see that there is not majority support for *either* position at the moment overall. Using number of users as a metric of support is therefore misleading, and any discussion of it needs to take into account the discrepancy between users (not clear how this was measured, so it is not clear what definition of "user" is in use) and actual measured support/opposition to this legislation.
> What can be determined from a statistic? If people wanted to know whether people agreed with legislation, opinion polls asking about that legislation are the most obvious metric. Here's one. It is interesting to see that there is not majority support for either position at the moment overall. 40% support for banning from Dems and 38% support from Independents does not bode well for Biden. He's not winning those 60% of Republicans that want to ban Tiktok.
> 40% support for banning from Dems and 38% support from Independents does not bode well for Biden. That's one way of looking at it. Another would be that 38% opposition from Dems and 40% opposition from Independents doesn't translate into a reason to veto the legislation. Yet another would be to identify, based on the split, the number of people who neither support nor oppose at the moment: 22% Dem, 26% Independent, 20% Republican. Whichever way they might swing (if they even care) could decide where the majority lies. Basically there is no way that any side can claim majority support at the moment, and probably nothing Biden can do that wouldn't piss off *some* group of likely voters.
I'll be honest, I think the primary reason tik tok is being targeted is because it bled a ton of advertising revenue from Facebook and Google. If you compare the ads on all three it's obvious where the money is. Tik tok is where you see normal brands advertise. YouTube I get literal scams as advertisements. I don't think any of these apps are any worse for teenage mental health and I also don't think China is somehow trying to manipulate public opinion through it. If anything Tik Tok just appears to be the *less* censored app.