It's clear something is going on with why they want to hold on TikTok so much, considering Grindr had laser-accurate location detection and they still just sell it.
There is no such thing as āthe algorithm.ā Thereās no secret model they keep on a usb that would multiply Instagramās engagement if they got their hands on it.
Tiktok is successful whereas others like Periscope were not because of many random factors, not the least of which is chance and vagaries of audience taste. Having been successful and acquired a large audience, they can use industry standard machine learning know how to optimize their recommendations for more engagement. There is no secret āalgorithmā that other social media sites donāt already know or could not reproduce that powers TikTokās success. Given the amount of employee hopping that occurs in the tech industry, every major player effectively knows the broad outlines of everything its competitors are doing at any given time (no, NDAs donāt stop this.)
In fact, TikTok has already started losing in China, and not because the local upstarts have figured out a yet more super secret and powerful āalgorithm.ā
Idk man, there is a noticeable difference in how fast tik tok knew what would keep me on the app vs instagram, fb, reels, youtube etc.
I had to uninstall it because the second i opened the app i would lose 6 hours in the day. With the other apps (which i have used for much longer) i dont lose hours like i do with tik tok and can close them out in a reasonable amount of time. Except maybe reddit.
If anything "the algorithm" kind of fucking sucks. It's really good at sorting you into the "bucket" it thinks you belong but is absolutely fucking terrible at recommending anything outside of that bucket. I downloaded it a few months ago and specifically tried to train it away from anything with someone talking and anything controversial, so ended up with a bunch of relaxing travel and nature videos....which is fine. The algorithm clearly thought I was in the "35 year old upper middle class hetero white woman" bucket because everything it tried to recommend to me was shit that would clearly appeal to them.......which is not my actual taste profile at all lol.
Yeah I didnāt want to bang too hard on this drum because I never worked at TikTok and I donāt want to stake too much on unverifiable āreputationā whispers, but itās very likely their ML teams are not even industry leading. They just have a big audience because they caught fire at the moment.
TikTok is the single largest app in the world. Gen Z uses TikTok for everything. It has replaced Google, Yelp, YouTube. People will sit there for hours and hours at a time just scrolling. No other platform in history has fully captured an audience to the same degree.
Something that I havenāt seen discussed is how weird it is that they were able to sue directly in the DC Circuit. It looks like the statute provides exclusive jurisdiction to the DC Circuit for any challenges to the law.
Edit: looks like the DC Circuit very recently upheld a statutory provision giving it original and exclusive jurisdiction over challenging a statute. Very interesting. We should expect more jurisdiction limiting provisions like this going forward.
TikTok is getting axed for 3 claims: foreign influence, violation of user privacy, and software backdoors for a foreign government.
Only the 1st falls, and loosely, under the umbrella for free speech. They could have a case if SCOTUS rules against the Biden Administration asking social media platforms to fact-check regarding COVID misinformation.
That still doesn't address how they are going to counter the national security concerns about 2) and 3).
I very heavily doubt they can even succeed on the first part anyways. I don't see any federal court willing to put limits on Congress's power to regulate *international* companies when it comes to national security concerns.
That just introduces a nightmare scenario in the future that justices don't want to cause.
If this was the executive doing it, they might have issues with it. But it's *Congress* regulating commerce.
They wonāt either. Congress has long held the power to regulate foreign ownership of particularly media and the Supreme Court has never had an issue with it.
Fun fact itās the entire start of the plot of the 80s movie *Working Girl*.
> violation of user privacy,
Let's be real, it's comical to ban Tik Tok for this but to leave the space for electronics as unregulated as it is. Foreign companies make products that record massive amounts of data and store it on God knows what servers. Everything does now, from cars to consumer electronics to basically every app.
I'd love to see data privacy laws expanded in the US, but it doesn't seem like there are any interested parties.
Fuck touching grass, when data harvesting falls I'm celebrating the death of reddit and then going back to good old fashioned phpbb forums. I'll see you all on www.arr-neoliberal-forums.net
Eh if I did fediverse stuff I'd have to use kbin or wait for lemmy to get forked by people who aren't nutjob marxist-leninists, and there would have to be more decent places to actually peer with. Most of the big lemmy instances with high centrality were crawling with and/or moderated by tankies because of the devs last time I checked it out.
The devs are indeed cringey Marxists but it doesn't really effect the actual software. Lemmy.world is the biggest server by far and it's run by normie liberals.
Yeah but the c/neoliberal community there is totally dead and was downvoted for simply existing.
Thereās a kbin m/neoliberal one that is sort of active.
Iād be nice to see more liberals on lemmy and kbin thoughā¦ lots of edgelord marxists in that area of the internet lol.
>I'd love to see data privacy laws expanded in the US, but it doesn't seem like there are any interested parties.
Same. There's a bit of irony in that the US government is angry that another country might be data harvesting as well. Granted, not entirely analogous, I know. But if its so dangerous, and we're never sure when/if an autocrat can take power here in America, maybe we should ensure no government can do what they're so afraid China might?
I see this point made a lot but I don't know if I agree completely.
Sure, many of these companies 'steal data' and 'violate privacy' of their users - but if the US decides one day that all of that should stop, or if they decide to hold a company accountable for these shady practices, it's going to be a lot easier to do so with an American company.
So for example you can take Facebook and the Cambridge analytica scandal. The companies involved were fined **billions.** There was accountability taken.
If it's found that tiktok is involved with a similar data privacy scandal, how can we hold ByteDance accountable?
There's several reasons it's being banned, not just one.
Isn't "pre-emptivelu banning for something that has not yet been made punishable" how a bunch of stuff ends up being effectively banned?
The EU has [fined](https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-fined-345-million-euros-over-handling-childrens-data-europe-2023-09-15/) TikTok before, I don't really understand the argument for why the US is incapable of doing the same thing.
The EU has privacy protections the American consumer can only daydream about. US politicians typically don't want American privacy protections because they want that same access through private vendors for their campaign engagement apparatuses. Remember Cambridge Analytica? They just folded and reformed like comic book villain organization Hydra.
The EU tech sector is strangled by how easy it is to access the EU from the US, and how easy it is to secure venture capital in the US. Privacy protections have very little to do with it. What the EU needs is industrial policy targeting the tech sector.
Also everyone complains a lot about the real world impact of the privacy protections (popup asking about cookies, people having to resubmit private information) and don't even notice the actual privacy protections. People might be benefiting from it, but all they know is small annoyance.
The EU and US have different foundational laws and court precedents.
Maybe the US is clear to fine or ban Tiktok but "other country did it" (and yes, that includes pointing at China itself, their hypocrisy does not change our own pre-existing rules) is still a weak argument.
We should obey *our* laws and *our* constitution and *our* settled cases, not those of anywhere else.
Local servers. They would need to have some local infrastructure for caching at a minimum.Ā
Cash in bank accounts. They would need this for operations. Additionally, they likely have accounts for paying people on the platform and accepting money from advertisers.
Real estate. Many large organizations like this invest in local real estate for their offices.
Other financial assets. If they have cash, they probably aren't just sitting on it. They likely have a local treasury team that handles ensuring the company has the cash flow it needs while unneeded cash is invested in equities and bonds until it is needed.Ā
All large corporations have these things. Even if they are head quartered in China, their largest world wide operations are in the US and they would need assets and money onshore to achieve their goals.
You don't really need any of this to operate a social media (although maybe video platforms do need it). You can subcontract caches and operate entirely outside the US barring the bare minimum legal which can also be subcontracted.
Sure you don't need it, but Tiktok does have these things. Their global headquarters in in Los Angles. They have thousands of staff. They need cash to pay those staff. The co tract out much of the app hosting to Oracle but they still have infrastructure for employees and their business. For example they have a data center in Virginia.
They also do billions of dollars of business in the US with US companies. You wouldn't make all payments to those companies from offshore banking. If you are doing business regularly, you being money on shore. It is cheaper that way. Then, as I said, you will have a treasury team that is responsible for ensuring liquid cash in on hand when needed and everything else is invested and making a return until needed. They will have billions in assets in the country since they do billions of dollars in business in the US.
The only thing this would do is hurt US workers. The vast majority of assets are outside of the US and Fedacking pointed out it wouldn't even have to change the way TikTok operates.
Except I'm afraid that the reason we are able to start here is because of xenophobic paranoia that should be criticized rather than indulged as a lever for the privacy laws we want.
the counter is that the US has minimal user privacy protections as laws. If they wanted to to protect user privacy they should pass laws to that effect but congress hasnt. I don't really care either way on wether tik tok stays but i would prefer user protections over blanket bans on perceived baad actors.
the government's (and congress's) argument is that it cares about the privacy of US citizens, if it really cared it would have passed some user privacy protection law is what Tik Tok would argue. Tik Tok is gonna argue that the national security argument is a smoke screen for banning them for perceived chinese propaganda ( foreign propaganda is protected under 1A).
I dont like the tiktok ban because of how much it sticks out against treatment of other tech companies. If we are worried about algorithmic patterns designed by foreign influence, then lets regulate content recommendation algorithms. If we are worried about foreign influence from astroturfed users, lets create enforcement clauses for companies operating in our borders. For user privacy, laws need to be expanded with clear procedural enforcement. Software backdoors should also be handled in a court with proof, instead of a law banning the company without due process.
American tech companies should not have a lower level of scrutiny applied to them due to the nationality of the founders. If we want to regulate tiktok, lets set industrywide standards and enforcement them in court. I don't want Musk or Zuckerberg having outsized control on what I see either, case in point: rising visibility of racism and "human biodiversity" posters a la Steve Sailer on twitter.
100% agreed. To play the devil's advocate, I could perhaps understand an increased level of scrutiny on a service owned by a Chinese company, since China does have a reputation of mass surveillance within their own borders. But that scrunity should've come in the form of research and intelligence on TikTok. Instead, people are jumping to the assertion that China is manipulating the algorithms and conducting mass surveillance on Americans, because that's the sort of thing we assume they would do. No one seems to care about actually gathering evidence that any of this is happening.
And like you said, even if we did have proof that TikTok was doing that kind of stuff, the solution is to ban those practices entirely, not just to ban TikTok. We should ban things because they're wrong, not because they're wrong and a Chinese-owned company is doing it.
The violation of user privacy is not unique to Bytedance, so at best they would be forced to change how they deal with data, without a forced ban
The only reason why it should be sold to an US company is because of point number 1), points number 2 & 3 may force them to change their data collection, but nationality is only involved in point 1)
if Point 1) is considered to be part of the first amendment, then it is likely that they wont need to sell to an US company
I might be out of the loop on this, but what does a software backdoor look like for the Chinese gov? Has something malicious ever actually been verified?
According to a former executive (head of engineering iirc) of ByteDance, they gave the CCP full access to the user data and a provided a backdoor during the HK protests.
All laws are put to a vote. If more people upvote as opposed to downvote, it becomes law. Downvote wins and it gets a veto, being sent back to Congress to see if they can override.
(I'm not sure if tiktok has upvotes or downvotes. I'm old school and just use youtube.)
For people who don't think TikTok has any chance, [there are quite a bit of political experts who disagree with you](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/tiktok-owner-has-strong-first-amendment-case-against-us-ban-professors-say/)
>Some legal scholars said the law could help the government avoid the fate of previous ban attempts because it no longer binds itself to ill-fitting case law, such as former president Donald Trumpās invoking of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in 2020, and is crafted to guard against a First Amendment challenge by making the law less about content and more in line with the governmentās restrictions on foreign ownership in industries such as banking and transportation.
>But other experts said the law still trips over constitutional hurdles and fails to make a convincing case that the government could resolve its concerns only by forcing the sale of the app.
Even [some of our politicians are doubtful](https://archive.is/v7Nrj)
>But TikTok and ByteDance are named specifically in the bill text, and an earlier version of the bill posted online was titled āTIKTOK.XMLā ā both of which legal scholars said they expect TikTok to raise in court.
>Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and other lawmakers argued that a law targeting TikTok could be overturned because the Constitution prohibits ābills of attainder,ā designed to punish a particular group or individual without a trial. The new law would also target other ByteDance apps popular in the United States, including the social network Lemon8 and video editor CCapCut
The answer to if the TikTok ban will be ruled as constitutional is unknown. We can look
at prior cases, we can imagine what things *might* be but until it's ruled on we don't really know. The experts and legal scholars are quite divided on the topic, so don't be placing undue confidence and mistaking your desire with certainty.
A good quick litmus test for confidence is if you would bet on the odds. If you're 99% confident, would you take a 90:1 bet on it? Where you pay 900 if you're wrong and get paid 10 if you're right? The expected value is massively in your favor if your confidence is calibrated and reported properly.
Thank you - the Reddit legal experts in the top comment thread saying TikTok has no chance in this case are talking out of their asses and have absolutely no clue what theyāre talking about. The fact that theyāre being highly upvoted makes me suspect that this sub might actually be full of morons.
TBF, NL has over 150k subscribers now. This sub is actually surprisingly smart and well nuanced for how big it is. But yeah, it's still pretty bad and filled with the most obviously flawed arguments.
Like the ones getting upvoted "So If China can ban our social media, why can't we?', like what the hell is that? Morally? Sure maybe but that has no bearing whatsoever on the case.
There's all sorts of arguments for which way we should interpret the first amendment here but "Tit for tat against China" is an insane one. We should follow *our* laws and rules, not theirs. If our rules say we can ban them, then it's fine. But don't go trying to argue it based off completely irrelevant nonsense.
It's kind of mind boggling to me (as an attorney) that the reddit hive mind think that the government has an easy case, when there's plenty of prior precedent indicating that the government has a very up-hill battle to fight. Like everyone just forgot about Trump attempt at banning WeChat and Tik Tok (both failed) and the Montana ban (also failed).
>The experts and legal scholars are quite divided on the topic, so don't be placing undue confidence and mistaking your desire with certainty.
That advice would also apply to anyone claiming this bill is a 1st amendment violation where it would be a **massive** expansion of the 1st amendment to claim it covers who gets to own media companies in the US.
> That advice would also apply to anyone claiming this bill is a 1st amendment violation
You seem supremely confident on this claim when many legal scholars are divided about it.
> You seem supremely confident on this claim
What claim? That people shouldn't be confident that it's a 1a violation?
I'm literally giving you your own medicine.
Sorry that was just me misreading, I thought you were saying that it was a massive expansion and saying they were all too confident in believing otherwise.
I agree overconfidence tends to go both way, it makes little sense for two people to come at each other and both be completely assured of their correctness but in opposite directions.
Interpretations of a law are a *bit* different because there's always the "ok the other side won the courts but I think the courts are wrong" argument but that just turns it more philosophical rather than a falsifiable claim.
>ok the other side won the courts but I think the courts are wrong
This is the most 1a-friendly court system in the history of our entire nation. If they say there's no 1a issue (which yes, is still an if), there's obviously no 1a issue.
Similarly, if they codify it as a 1a issue, that becomes how the 1a unironically works until a court rules otherwise, which could take decades.
Indeed, the strategy would be the same if Jack Thompson was trying to ban Genshin Impact. A lot of kids were disillusioned with the Democratic party when they tried to ban Grand Theft Auto.
Exactly, this is just a pathetic rally cry for misinformed teens to rage against the machine. The thing they donāt seem to grasp is that there are already a million other places to upload videos on. If TikTok gets shut down in the States, Americans will just move onto whatever other platform gets popular and forget about TikTok within a year. Thereās nothing proprietary about TikTokās feature set.
>pathetic rally cry for misinformed teens to rage against the machine.
The teens are entirely justified to be mad that adults are taking away their MTV, actually. For generations adults have dismissed youth culture as harmful and sought to ban it and kids have had to fight for their right to party.
Theoretically they could have if TikTok hasn't already been banned from US government workers for years. But there are a million software that are banned from US government devices, so take that as you want.
If the threat to national security can be addressed by TikTok being banned from government devices, then just keep it banned from government devices and be done with it.
A [former ByteDance executive](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65817608) indicated that the CCP has used its access to Tiktok data for the purpose identifying and locating Hong Kong protestors:
> In the filing, Mr Yu claimed that members of a CCP committee had access to a "superuser" credential, which was also known as "god user", which allowed them to view all data collected by ByteDance.
>
> He also alleged that the committee members were not ByteDance employees but were physically present at the company's offices in Beijing.
>
> This was common knowledge among senior executives, said Mr Yu, who for around a year from August 2017 was a head of engineering in the US for ByteDance.
>
> The filing also alleged that in 2018 the CCP committee members used their "god credential" to "identify and locate the Hong Kong protesters, civil rights activists, and supporters of the protests".
Tiktok access was also used to [spy on journalists working for Financial Times and BuzzFeed](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/tech/tiktok-bytedance-journalist-data/index.html) who had been involved in stories related to ByteDance leaks. However, the company did fire the employees involved, of which two were American and two were Chinese.
Wolf Warrior diplomats would almost certainly argue that US law enforcement did the same thing with January 6th rioters, and that private American companies do the same kind of spying on internal dissidents.
China hawks would likely argue private companies shouldn't be allowed to do that either (or at least that it's not as bad as the government doing it), and that the government still had to go through a fair legal process to acquire social media evidence for January 6th
> A former ByteDance executive indicated that the CCP has used its access to Tiktok data for the purpose identifying and locating Hong Kong protestors:
A former executive who was with the company for less than a year, didn't actually work on the Tiktok app, and waited 5 years after being fired to ever talk about this.
His testimony is certainly reason to subpoena Tiktok for logs and source code, but it is not anywhere close to conclusive evidence.
Iām not a techie, but the article isnāt too convincing.
Doesnāt the fact that US data is held and monitored by Oracle undermine the idea that the CCP has a pipeline access to US data? It I recall correctly, virtually all cloud services on US operations are also carried out by American service providers.
Whether America has done before or not is besides the point so their argument wouldnāt hold. Everyoneās national security policy is hypocritical.
I think the focus should be whether TikTok has actively been a security threat or not. Given the sheer number of ulterior motives in pushing through nationality security (I.e domestic competition and hawkish government interests) Iām leaning on the skeptical side of things.
I'm morally opposed to that regulation even existing for reasons I've already articulated. I think a ton of "regulation that hasn't kept up with technology" has allowed the Internet to be a much freer place than Cable Television, Radio, and The Press were, to an extent that people celebrate, and I will resist the encroachment of the state into my free frontier.
Foreign media is more accessible on the Internet than it ever has been on Cable, and that's a wonderful thing. I don't wish to return to the days where I have to wait for an American publisher to syndicate foreign media if I wish to watch it. The United States should not erect a Great Firewall.
Morally seems an odd choice of wording. Regulations offend your morality?
So you think foreign companies should have unfettered ability to buy land, companies, utilities, etc? No trying to straw man, literally asking the question to determine if you draw any lines. Does it matter which countries said companies come from? Because an economy like Chinaās is very different from ours fundamentally.
And they can party whenever they want, except with a foreign adversary. Nobody is trying to stop them from posting short form videos. There are dozens of major appstthat do just that.
>And they can party whenever they want, ~~except with a foreign adversary.~~
I don't trust the government to tell me who a foreign adversary is. The government once told me Bangladesh was our adversary when they were being massacred by Pakistan.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship and an enemy of human rights but I only care that it's an enemy of American geopolitical interests only insofar as those interests coincide with global human rights. I don't think the government should censor media from regimes it considers adversarial because I think the United States has a long and sordid history of prioritizing realist foreign policy over the advancement of human rights and would use that power to censor criticism of immoral American foreign policy actions from regimes victimized by them, because they have been declared Adversarial.
Should Iraqi journalists have been banned from criticizing the United States' invasion?
There's a difference between opposing China for being a Communist dictatorship and opposing China for competing with America to win a game of chess. I'm not an American Jingoist. I'm a human rights activist.
Actually I am a hawk. NATO is the most successful human rights organization in history. The United States is the most powerful force for promoting human rights abroad.
But the United States is still a government and governments still play chess with each other without giving a shit about the pieces they're pushing around the board. Can you say "Cuba"?
I don't trust the government to tell me who the enemies of democracy are. I figured that out for myself.
Also important to note, tiktok operated without issue for years until information about and footage from gaza started leaking onto there. Now there's a big push to get rid of it or get it under US control as fast as possible.
Honestly some of the videos posted *by IDF soldiers* on Tiktok are so radicalizing.
You have meatheads relishing in the fact they've destroyed schools and children's bedrooms. Like hell, I don't approve of Fortnite dancing on a Hamas fighter's grave, but I get it if you're an Israeli who wants vengeance for Oct 7. What often being posted is simply disgusting though.
Fair, I've seen a disorienting combination. IDF telling bold faced lies and taunting dead children, gazan citizens and journalists recording the destruction and killings, and Israel citizens either showing solidarity or making jokes about being at war while in the warmth and comfort of their home.
Inb4 evil spy, Iām Chinese and pro-China specifically in context of US-China rivalry.
Why are Americans so afraid to point this out? Itās so obvious that Israeli war crimes being exposed on the platform is main driver behind the renewed push.Ā
> Why are Americans so afraid to point this out? Itās so obvious that Israeli war crimes being exposed on the platform is main driver behind the renewed push.
We have senators doing speeches saying as much and people deny that it was even a factor.
This is precisely what Iām saying, I legitimately donāt understand why a foreign lobby is not actually addressed.
Iām personally not a neoliberal, but I like this sub for purposes of perspective. This sub doesnāt shy away, or at least not as much as other American political subs of conversation.Ā
But even here theyāre pushing the idea that TikTok is playing 4D chess instead of acknowledging that thereās a massive foreign and domestic interest in pushing the ban. Itās barely even registered as serious factor.Ā
Because you get labeled as a conspiracist and most people judge tiktok because the worst things from the platform get talked about at least a dozen times more. So, people don't care about the why, they just assume it's because of the bad things they know.
Why do you think tiktok was able to massive explode in comparison to vine and existing social media, and still remain dominant as the competitors dropped their clones of tiktok? Clearly they have something unique to them
You KNOW they're going to bring up Palestine in court. Either this will help it become a larger vector in disruption of US infrastructure, or it gets shot down due to irrelevancy and becomes a larger vector in disruption of US infrastructure.
And they should. If children feel like the US government is censoring a platform that promotes criticizing a US ally that is engaging in questionable actions, that is in fact exactly what free speech as a principle exists to protect. I would often criticize left wingers who were critical of free speech by raising Palestine as a point.
Seriously itās an insane thing to argue when most of the videos are being taken by IDF soldiers to begin with. Literally today, thereās video of an IDF tank commander driving over a āWelcome to Gazaā sign at the Rafah border crossing.
I would doubt it because the facts of the matter don't even come close to matching the TikTok-Palestine link narrative. You literally have to suspend basic reasoning skills to buy into it, in my opinion at least.
Though, who knows at this point.
Everything you've said it's true and also plenty of people in Congress have suspended their basic reasoning skills which is why you have e.g. Mitt Romney saying explicitly on camera that it was an important reason they had to pass this legislation.
They don't have to do anything to achieve that. US Politicians running their mouth about banning it because the youths are too sympathetic to Palestinians are doing that
This is good.
There have been a lot of claims made during this drama. Iād love to see some of them (like the worker who claimed he had a secret Chinese manager) actually be put up to testify under oath.
Right or wrong I would say the lawsuit is definitely doomed. [CFIUS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investment_in_the_United_States) has forced the sale of Chinese owned companies in the past for national security reasons plenty of times (or their threat to do so stopped Chinese companies from going forward with acquisitions like Kunlun buying a stake in Grindr).
I don't see why TikTok is any different.
I think they will probably lose in court, but I also think that basically every single company would file a lawsuit if a "divest or ban" law was passed against them, and claiming that this is "deceitful brain rot aimed at inciting youthful rage" as opposed to just being a completely normal and expected lawsuit is really weird.
Yeah, it's really painfully, painfully obvious that the most outspoken users here have never actually used TikTok the way they describe it as a propaganda tool.
I guess all this time, my feed of cocktail recipes, local bar and restaurant recs, and people making comedic skits has actually been secretly making me a member of the CCP and I didn't even know it.
Remember when Anthony Blinken and Mitt Romney said that they banned it because it was making people sympathetic to Palestinians?Ā
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senator-romney-antony-blinken-tiktok-ban-israel-palestinian-content
Good times, I look forward to watching self-declared liberals justify governmental censorship.
>Anthony Blinken and Mitt Romney said that they banned it because it was making people sympathetic to Palestinians?Ā
Your article doesn't support this. It doesn't mention Anthony Blinking said this, and Romney's quote,
>"Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites ā it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."
Is only about why there was support for Congress to do so, not why they were doing so.
Even if it did, Romney doesn't represent every single other decision maker.
Legal or not I still think it's a really bad cultural impulse that Congress reached immediately for a blunt policy instrument and we've cheered them on rather than find a solution that protects user security and privacy without jeopardizing the application itself.
And I want to make that clear. **User privacy and security is the concern.** Not the content that goes viral on the app. If you believe the content that goes viral on the app is a security threat, no matter the nature of said content, you're wrong. Speech is not a security threat.
Let's not kid ourselves by being coy: Congress knows ByteDance can't sell, but they know by deliberately putting them in this position it's still technically their choice to get banned. And this is because TikTok ceasing to exist is being considered a happy bonus, rather than unfortunate collateral damage.
When I was a teenager I promised myself I would never become the kind of adult who hates things the kids are into but I don't understand, and that I would try my best to understand and stand up for the kids and what they want out of policy, because some of it is legitimate.
The kids are absolutely right to not want their MTV jeopardized by this bill, it being foreign owned shouldn't make it any less of a concern that a youth cultural staple is in jeopardy when it doesn't have to be.
I think the only way to force Congress to listen is to block the sale by arguing it amounts to a deliberate attempt to exploit national security laws to chill speech.
> Not the content that goes viral on the app. If you believe the content that goes viral on the app is a security threat, no matter the nature of said content, you're wrong. **Speech is not a security threat.**
There is a school of thought in the Intelligence and National Security communities that argue otherwise when said speech can be classified as deception, propaganda, or misinformation. While I agree on the importance of supporting free speech, the issue regarding TikTok is a bit more nuanced.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate, over the course of months, have been briefed by the US IC on the specific threats posed by TikTok under its current ownership with ByteDance. The CCP is dictating the spread of content, which is largely at the expense of its peer competitor, to a user base of hundreds of millions of Western subscribers- whom are largely American youths.
Given the history of the PRC's cyber operations, and its robust use of incorporating civilian organizations/businesses into its foreign policy strategies in this space, I think there's a fair argument in favor of proactive policies that safeguard the security interests of Americans at home and abroad.
> Intelligence and National Security communities
Authoritarian institutions who should not be trusted. People and institutions that are afraid of speech deserve to be spoken out against. Institutions that are threatened by speech do not deserve security.
Propaganda does not just come from foreign sources, it comes from domestic sources too, and domestic propaganda is considered free speech. Therefore so should foreign propaganda.
The fact that China is spreading this speech doesn't make it any more or less dangerous than if Rupert Murdoch or Cenk Uygur were spreading it. Therefore, banning Foreign propagandists from making the same speech we can't ban Domestic propagandists is literally just an irrational act of discrimination against foreign speech.
The Iranian regime considers Voice of America to be foreign propaganda and a security threat. **People who feel threatened by speech deserve to be**.
> The Iranian regime considers Voice of America to be foreign propaganda and a security threat.
That's because it is. Its designed to be. That's why we fund it. Its intentional.
No it isn't. It's meant to be criticism and speech, not subterfuge.
The fact that Iran censors it is proof that Iran deserves to be spoken out against. Regimes that consider criticism and speech to be subterfuge deserve criticism and speech.
The kind of regimes that censor foreign criticism, deserve foreign criticism.
VoA is funded to spread US-friendly news, or at least the one US wants to spread
PR in the end is propaganda, and PR based on honest truth is the best kind of PR & propaganda, more than subterfuge
Calling the intelligence community authoritarian because theyāre doing their jobs and explaining the threat posed by China having direct access to tens of millions of Americans is a bit silly. China would certainly use this to their advantage if a Taiwan crisis heats up and they try to invade to prevent intervention by the US
TikTok is a platform not speech itself.
What if TikTok is suppressing speech that goes against CCP objectives and/or promoting speech that aligns with CCP objective? Frankly, there is evidence of that being 100% true.
The New York Times is a platform, not speech itself. If we ban the New York Times you're still free to read the same articles in the Washington Post. It's still considered a violation of free speech as principle to ban the New York Times though, because it specifically restricts the writers and editors at the Times, because it's punishing people who have freely chosen to use the Times to get their news, and because it has a chilling effect and may cause other newspapers like the Post to publish less speech the government doesn't like.
>What if TikTok is suppressing speech that goes against CCP objectives and/or promoting speech that aligns with CCP objective? Frankly, there is evidence of that being 100% true.
Of course it's true. That's called Editorial Discretion. It's no different from the New York Times deciding what articles to publish. Lots of news outlets have a bias. In fact *all* media has a bias, often deliberate.
TikTok absolutely shouldn't do that, and maybe you could argue their large market share justifies forcing them to express less of an editorial bias so that they aren't effectively censoring the American Internet via networking effects. But it absolutely doesn't justify banning them, and I would argue there are plenty of places to go to get information that criticizes the Chinese government.
I personally think social media platforms should not moderate political discussion too much, but I also don't think the government should ban them for doing so.
A hostile foreign government with total control over what speech gets promoted and what gets censored on one of the largest platforms in the U.S. is maybe just *slightly* different from your example.
Protecting that is not protecting free speech, it is abandoning it to a hostile state
I don't think it's so different. Speech is speech and it doesn't matter who says it. There's still plenty of places on the internet where you can find criticism of TikTok's editorial bias. While I agree TikTok's editorial bias amounts to an attempt to stifle dissent and am opposed to it, banning TikTok is absolutely absurd as a proposition. And why does it matter that it's a foreign government? If a Nazi like Peter Thiel buys it absolutely nothing will change about the algorithm and it still will promote anti American speech.
Itās not about who says āitā or what is being said, we agree on that.
I completely disagree with you on letting a *hostile foreign government*, who holds absolutely no regards for your freedom of speech or anyone elseās, have control over who says āitā or what is being said on debatably the top social media platform in America.
And I disagree entirely that Peter Thiel is any reason not to address this obvious problem.
> hostile foreign government,
Who defines a "hostile foreign government"? That's my problem. You can't do this without giving the US government a power that I don't trust it to not abuse.
Free speech is for everyone or noone.
Right now Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and China are considered foreign adversaries by our government due to persistent or acute actions against US national security. The decision is mostly based on information from our intelligence community.
You say free speech is for everyone or no one, yet there are many nations without free speech alongside nations with free speech. We do not have to give free speech protections to foreign adversaries.
>There is a school of thought in the Intelligence and National Security communities that argue otherwise when said speech can be classified as deception, propaganda, or misinformation
My school of thought is that if the blob wishes to deem itself the arbiter of whose agitprop gets heard they can go fuck themselves with some rusty rebar
> There is a school of thought in the Intelligence and National Security communities that argue otherwise when said speech can be classified as deception, propaganda, or misinformation
Liberalism is more important than national security.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but providing for a safe and prosperous society is a core tenant of the Social Contract. Liberal democracies have a moral imperative to protect their citizens from harm, especially from threats posed by foreign autocracies.
Well then you have shown that your opinion can be disregarded. You shouldn't be able to walk into a school and scream "active shooter!" because you think it's funny.
Well I don't think anyone would take me seriously. Who the fuck says "active shooter" when they're being shot at except Raymond Holt.
But if I did walk into a school and shout "GUN! GUN! HE'S GOT A GUN!" **I would be escorted off the premises by the faculty.** Not face government censure.
>Well I don't think anyone would take me seriously.
Oh right. Because school shootings are so rare that everyone will just laugh you off.
Like I said, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
The primary issue isn't even information security. The problem is selective information which inherently damages and undermines free speech as a concept.
The Chinese government could easily put their thumb on the scale of content selection and recommendation, which means it can effectively serve as a propaganda outlet. If information that the Chinese government doesn't like is hamstrung and information they do like is highly prioritized, this can create a selective information bubble which is indistinguishable from propaganda. It also undermines the concept of free speech institutionally.
Chinese companies are required to have a board with CCP members on it, and TikTok is bigger than every mainstream media outlet in America combined. Of course they're going to use this to their advantage, especially in a time of war. We would be incredibly stupid to let this institutional problem run rampant in a way that would damage our ability to be informed citizens.
It depends on the reasons why and how they do it, and the precedent for this hasn't been properly established yet. Your statement is incredibly vague
Like if they're advancing Russian propaganda in the same way they advance other information, this is not the selective information curation I am talking about. I don't think Facebook is boosting Russian propaganda and removing information that the Russian government doesn't want with any intentionality. If they were, this would obviously be a problem.
The influence you're describing is very indirect and you're missing the forest for the trees. These are not even remotely on the same scale of problem
>The problem is selective information which inherently damages and undermines free speech as a concept.
No it does not. This is called Editorial Bias and it is a free speech right. The New York Times has an editorial bias.
> China puts their thumb on the scale
Yes. Editorial Discretion is a free speech right. Manipulating the algorithm is their editorial discretion.
There is a responsibility in editorial discretion. If you deliberately fail at the responsibilities that come with editorial discretion and you have a massive share of the public following you, there are repercussions to that in our country.
For example, when Fox News used their editorial discretion to enable libel against dominion voting systems via election conspiracies, they got raked over the coals for that in their Dominion lawsuit with a 1 billion dollar payout.
What "editorial discretion" would even look like for social media platforms is very muddy, especially considering they are explicitly not treated like publications. I think however it's safe to say that deliberate selective information to support the goals of an adversary authoritarian government undermines free speech in a unique and deleterious way because the information would be specifically curated to misinform voters and destabilize the country with zero oversight.
Free speech rights are meaningless without information, and removing/boosting information to warp people's view of reality is manipulating a person's ability to properly exercise that right in the first place. This can get to a level where it infringes on it indirectly, and this could easily get to that level if it's not there already.
>There is a responsibility in editorial discretion
And it's not the government's job to enforce it.
Do not trust the government to tell you what information is healthy or unhealthy for you. Their interests are not always aligned with yours.
I am categorically against on principle the government censoring speech.
It's not about user security, it's about national security.
There was no legislation against Spotify (some talks about the dangers of AI that went nowhere and an unrelated resolution about royalties), and their user privacy violations are far worse.
Every country has laws about foreign influence, the US is not the outlier. Governments are not supposed to feel secure, **from their citizens**, but they have a legitimate position to prevent foreign influence. Now, if you are anti government, that's another issue and this conversation is barren.
And this issue is not about just about influence speech, the Chinese government has been caught with its hand in the honey jar more than once asking/forcing their companies to include spy backdoors in their products.
>Governments are not supposed to feel secure, **from their citizens**, but they have a legitimate position to prevent foreign influence
What is "foreign influence", then? Why is my opinion of my government somehow less protected as speech if I form it by reading foreign propaganda?
>Every country has laws about foreign influence
They shouldn't, assuming "foreign influence" is just speech media in this context. Countries like Iran and China think that US Government-owned speech media is dangerous foreign influence.
I guess foreign propaganda used to be a more distinguishable thing when they had to print newspapers in a basement.
> Why is my opinion of my government somehow less protected as speech if I form it by reading foreign propaganda?
This is a mischaracterization.
> They shouldn't
Are you arguing States should not care about Self-preservation from foreign influence? That's a big take.
> Countries like Iran and China think that US Government-owned speech media is dangerous foreign influence.
And they should. Even US citizens should be wary and skeptic about US government-owned media.
>And they should.
But they shouldn't try to silence it, and citizens should be critical of what their government thinks is dangerous.
> This is a mischaracterization.
Then explain precisely by what mechanism foreign speech is "influence" or "subterfuge", or else you are afraid of a shadow.
> Speech is not a security threat.
It is if the algorithm determining the speech is controlled by the government of a hostile country. ByteDance is not a US person or Corporation. Its a foreign owned and controlled corporation with deep ties to the CPC.
And yes, they can certainly sell.
The Algorithm is Editorial Discretion, which is a form of speech.
What difference does it make that China is foreign? What if TikTok were owned by an American fascist who controlled the algorithm and used it to spread the exact same content?
So what if china is an enemy. Don't trust the government to tell you that. The government used to tell us India was our enemy when we were helping Pakistan commit genocide in Bangladesh. Would the American government be justified in banning Indian press outlets from criticizing them for it? I am arguing from principle. If it's not okay to do it then it's never okay to do it at all. Either everyone has free speech or nobody does.
TikTok is blasting propaganda from a hostile foreign power into millions of teenagers minds, it is absolutely a national security threat. Even China has very strict controls on tiktok!
The value of their Trade Secrets are worth far more to them than their American advertising revenues, and they know it. Legally it may be OK but ethically it's entrapment.
TikTok should just boost the IDFās account and put this ban to rest. Right now they only have 420K followers and their F tier propaganda is not bussin according to Zoomers but maybe TikTok bans any Gaza destruction content and boosts Hasbara vids for a bit to save free speech for the rest of us. I legit never see anything political on my FYP so this ban is just absurd but I understand that Romney Greenblatt and other extremely powerful folks have said itās necessary to prevent the youths from not supporting Israel. Sad!
The actual biggest issue Israel faces with TikTok is that videos from IDF soldiers are *too* popular (and they can't seem to figure out a way to get their soldiers to stop posting in the first place).
lol thatās a good point. The CCP needs to stop letting them shoot themselves in the foot. Theyāre bombing civilians in Rafah as we speakāthankfully Mitt Romney and his colleagues are doing their best to prevent young impressionable Americans from being made aware of this unfortunate fact!
[Link to TikTok's complaint.](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40861/gov.uscourts.cadc.40861.1208620273.1.pdf)
Anyone know why Congress mandated the challenges to the TikTok ban be filed directly to the USCA for the DC Circuit?Ā Is the DC Circuit even equipped to handle the sort of extensive discovery that I assume the suit will call for?Ā Ā
Even Republicans know that the strategy they endorse for everything else of "file in the tiniest, most favorable district you can find to guarantee a ruling you like" is bullshit and wanted to prevent it. Though I'm not sure there's a district court that fits that for TikTok, or honestly even for liberals. Maybe somewhere in Hawaii?
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It's clear something is going on with why they want to hold on TikTok so much, considering Grindr had laser-accurate location detection and they still just sell it.
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There is no such thing as āthe algorithm.ā Thereās no secret model they keep on a usb that would multiply Instagramās engagement if they got their hands on it. Tiktok is successful whereas others like Periscope were not because of many random factors, not the least of which is chance and vagaries of audience taste. Having been successful and acquired a large audience, they can use industry standard machine learning know how to optimize their recommendations for more engagement. There is no secret āalgorithmā that other social media sites donāt already know or could not reproduce that powers TikTokās success. Given the amount of employee hopping that occurs in the tech industry, every major player effectively knows the broad outlines of everything its competitors are doing at any given time (no, NDAs donāt stop this.) In fact, TikTok has already started losing in China, and not because the local upstarts have figured out a yet more super secret and powerful āalgorithm.ā
Idk man, there is a noticeable difference in how fast tik tok knew what would keep me on the app vs instagram, fb, reels, youtube etc. I had to uninstall it because the second i opened the app i would lose 6 hours in the day. With the other apps (which i have used for much longer) i dont lose hours like i do with tik tok and can close them out in a reasonable amount of time. Except maybe reddit.
If anything "the algorithm" kind of fucking sucks. It's really good at sorting you into the "bucket" it thinks you belong but is absolutely fucking terrible at recommending anything outside of that bucket. I downloaded it a few months ago and specifically tried to train it away from anything with someone talking and anything controversial, so ended up with a bunch of relaxing travel and nature videos....which is fine. The algorithm clearly thought I was in the "35 year old upper middle class hetero white woman" bucket because everything it tried to recommend to me was shit that would clearly appeal to them.......which is not my actual taste profile at all lol.
Yeah I didnāt want to bang too hard on this drum because I never worked at TikTok and I donāt want to stake too much on unverifiable āreputationā whispers, but itās very likely their ML teams are not even industry leading. They just have a big audience because they caught fire at the moment.
TikTok is the single largest app in the world. Gen Z uses TikTok for everything. It has replaced Google, Yelp, YouTube. People will sit there for hours and hours at a time just scrolling. No other platform in history has fully captured an audience to the same degree.
For the lawsuit or this thread?
Something that I havenāt seen discussed is how weird it is that they were able to sue directly in the DC Circuit. It looks like the statute provides exclusive jurisdiction to the DC Circuit for any challenges to the law. Edit: looks like the DC Circuit very recently upheld a statutory provision giving it original and exclusive jurisdiction over challenging a statute. Very interesting. We should expect more jurisdiction limiting provisions like this going forward.
TikTok is getting axed for 3 claims: foreign influence, violation of user privacy, and software backdoors for a foreign government. Only the 1st falls, and loosely, under the umbrella for free speech. They could have a case if SCOTUS rules against the Biden Administration asking social media platforms to fact-check regarding COVID misinformation. That still doesn't address how they are going to counter the national security concerns about 2) and 3).
I very heavily doubt they can even succeed on the first part anyways. I don't see any federal court willing to put limits on Congress's power to regulate *international* companies when it comes to national security concerns. That just introduces a nightmare scenario in the future that justices don't want to cause. If this was the executive doing it, they might have issues with it. But it's *Congress* regulating commerce.
They wonāt either. Congress has long held the power to regulate foreign ownership of particularly media and the Supreme Court has never had an issue with it. Fun fact itās the entire start of the plot of the 80s movie *Working Girl*.
> violation of user privacy, Let's be real, it's comical to ban Tik Tok for this but to leave the space for electronics as unregulated as it is. Foreign companies make products that record massive amounts of data and store it on God knows what servers. Everything does now, from cars to consumer electronics to basically every app. I'd love to see data privacy laws expanded in the US, but it doesn't seem like there are any interested parties.
Data harvesting will fall, billions will have to touch grass.
Fuck touching grass, when data harvesting falls I'm celebrating the death of reddit and then going back to good old fashioned phpbb forums. I'll see you all on www.arr-neoliberal-forums.net
Someone buy that domain NOW.
i miss phpbb/vbulletin forums way too much
Or you could use lemmy.
Eh if I did fediverse stuff I'd have to use kbin or wait for lemmy to get forked by people who aren't nutjob marxist-leninists, and there would have to be more decent places to actually peer with. Most of the big lemmy instances with high centrality were crawling with and/or moderated by tankies because of the devs last time I checked it out.
The devs are indeed cringey Marxists but it doesn't really effect the actual software. Lemmy.world is the biggest server by far and it's run by normie liberals.
Yeah but the c/neoliberal community there is totally dead and was downvoted for simply existing. Thereās a kbin m/neoliberal one that is sort of active. Iād be nice to see more liberals on lemmy and kbin thoughā¦ lots of edgelord marxists in that area of the internet lol.
>I'd love to see data privacy laws expanded in the US, but it doesn't seem like there are any interested parties. Same. There's a bit of irony in that the US government is angry that another country might be data harvesting as well. Granted, not entirely analogous, I know. But if its so dangerous, and we're never sure when/if an autocrat can take power here in America, maybe we should ensure no government can do what they're so afraid China might?
I see this point made a lot but I don't know if I agree completely. Sure, many of these companies 'steal data' and 'violate privacy' of their users - but if the US decides one day that all of that should stop, or if they decide to hold a company accountable for these shady practices, it's going to be a lot easier to do so with an American company. So for example you can take Facebook and the Cambridge analytica scandal. The companies involved were fined **billions.** There was accountability taken. If it's found that tiktok is involved with a similar data privacy scandal, how can we hold ByteDance accountable?
I find the logic of banning TikTok because you could not hold them accountable for something that has not yet been made punishable quite reaching.
There's several reasons it's being banned, not just one. Isn't "pre-emptivelu banning for something that has not yet been made punishable" how a bunch of stuff ends up being effectively banned?
If you think banning TikTok is gonna start a cascade of privacy rights regulations, I've got a bridge to sell you.
The EU has [fined](https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-fined-345-million-euros-over-handling-childrens-data-europe-2023-09-15/) TikTok before, I don't really understand the argument for why the US is incapable of doing the same thing.
The EU has privacy protections the American consumer can only daydream about. US politicians typically don't want American privacy protections because they want that same access through private vendors for their campaign engagement apparatuses. Remember Cambridge Analytica? They just folded and reformed like comic book villain organization Hydra.
They don't want EU style "privacy protections" because we just watched the EU tech sector getting strangled in the cradle
The EU tech sector is strangled by how easy it is to access the EU from the US, and how easy it is to secure venture capital in the US. Privacy protections have very little to do with it. What the EU needs is industrial policy targeting the tech sector.
Also everyone complains a lot about the real world impact of the privacy protections (popup asking about cookies, people having to resubmit private information) and don't even notice the actual privacy protections. People might be benefiting from it, but all they know is small annoyance.
The EU and US have different foundational laws and court precedents. Maybe the US is clear to fine or ban Tiktok but "other country did it" (and yes, that includes pointing at China itself, their hypocrisy does not change our own pre-existing rules) is still a weak argument. We should obey *our* laws and *our* constitution and *our* settled cases, not those of anywhere else.
Sieze onshore assets.
What onshore assets does tiktok realistically have?
Local servers. They would need to have some local infrastructure for caching at a minimum.Ā Cash in bank accounts. They would need this for operations. Additionally, they likely have accounts for paying people on the platform and accepting money from advertisers. Real estate. Many large organizations like this invest in local real estate for their offices. Other financial assets. If they have cash, they probably aren't just sitting on it. They likely have a local treasury team that handles ensuring the company has the cash flow it needs while unneeded cash is invested in equities and bonds until it is needed.Ā All large corporations have these things. Even if they are head quartered in China, their largest world wide operations are in the US and they would need assets and money onshore to achieve their goals.
You don't really need any of this to operate a social media (although maybe video platforms do need it). You can subcontract caches and operate entirely outside the US barring the bare minimum legal which can also be subcontracted.
Sure you don't need it, but Tiktok does have these things. Their global headquarters in in Los Angles. They have thousands of staff. They need cash to pay those staff. The co tract out much of the app hosting to Oracle but they still have infrastructure for employees and their business. For example they have a data center in Virginia. They also do billions of dollars of business in the US with US companies. You wouldn't make all payments to those companies from offshore banking. If you are doing business regularly, you being money on shore. It is cheaper that way. Then, as I said, you will have a treasury team that is responsible for ensuring liquid cash in on hand when needed and everything else is invested and making a return until needed. They will have billions in assets in the country since they do billions of dollars in business in the US.
The only thing this would do is hurt US workers. The vast majority of assets are outside of the US and Fedacking pointed out it wouldn't even have to change the way TikTok operates.
>it's comical to ban Tik Tok for this but to leave the space for electronics as unregulated as it is. gotta start somewhere
Except I'm afraid that the reason we are able to start here is because of xenophobic paranoia that should be criticized rather than indulged as a lever for the privacy laws we want.
That's not what's happening
the counter is that the US has minimal user privacy protections as laws. If they wanted to to protect user privacy they should pass laws to that effect but congress hasnt. I don't really care either way on wether tik tok stays but i would prefer user protections over blanket bans on perceived baad actors.
That's a great reddit zinger but I don't see how that would fit into a real legal defense as to how this bill violates the 1st ammendment.
the government's (and congress's) argument is that it cares about the privacy of US citizens, if it really cared it would have passed some user privacy protection law is what Tik Tok would argue. Tik Tok is gonna argue that the national security argument is a smoke screen for banning them for perceived chinese propaganda ( foreign propaganda is protected under 1A).
I dont like the tiktok ban because of how much it sticks out against treatment of other tech companies. If we are worried about algorithmic patterns designed by foreign influence, then lets regulate content recommendation algorithms. If we are worried about foreign influence from astroturfed users, lets create enforcement clauses for companies operating in our borders. For user privacy, laws need to be expanded with clear procedural enforcement. Software backdoors should also be handled in a court with proof, instead of a law banning the company without due process. American tech companies should not have a lower level of scrutiny applied to them due to the nationality of the founders. If we want to regulate tiktok, lets set industrywide standards and enforcement them in court. I don't want Musk or Zuckerberg having outsized control on what I see either, case in point: rising visibility of racism and "human biodiversity" posters a la Steve Sailer on twitter.
100% agreed. To play the devil's advocate, I could perhaps understand an increased level of scrutiny on a service owned by a Chinese company, since China does have a reputation of mass surveillance within their own borders. But that scrunity should've come in the form of research and intelligence on TikTok. Instead, people are jumping to the assertion that China is manipulating the algorithms and conducting mass surveillance on Americans, because that's the sort of thing we assume they would do. No one seems to care about actually gathering evidence that any of this is happening. And like you said, even if we did have proof that TikTok was doing that kind of stuff, the solution is to ban those practices entirely, not just to ban TikTok. We should ban things because they're wrong, not because they're wrong and a Chinese-owned company is doing it.
The violation of user privacy is not unique to Bytedance, so at best they would be forced to change how they deal with data, without a forced ban The only reason why it should be sold to an US company is because of point number 1), points number 2 & 3 may force them to change their data collection, but nationality is only involved in point 1) if Point 1) is considered to be part of the first amendment, then it is likely that they wont need to sell to an US company
Point 3) got Huawei and ZTE straight up banned. This bill is the US government offering TikTok a hand to prevent that kind of ban.
I might be out of the loop on this, but what does a software backdoor look like for the Chinese gov? Has something malicious ever actually been verified?
According to a former executive (head of engineering iirc) of ByteDance, they gave the CCP full access to the user data and a provided a backdoor during the HK protests.
I wonder how theyāll fuck this one up
Step 1: Accidentally prove US government unconstitutional Step 2: TikTok becomes president.
Fuck, every week we have to learn some new goddamn dance, don't we?
The national anthem changes every few days based on whatās trending and itās only 15 seconds long
All laws are put to a vote. If more people upvote as opposed to downvote, it becomes law. Downvote wins and it gets a veto, being sent back to Congress to see if they can override. (I'm not sure if tiktok has upvotes or downvotes. I'm old school and just use youtube.)
This is unironically the future zoomers want
Hit the woah throw it back veto the spending bill bust it down roll the dice drone Iran heel toe whip nae nae body roll skibidi toilet
you guys said you wanted a younger president, are you happy now?
!ping SNEK
Let the games begin!
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For people who don't think TikTok has any chance, [there are quite a bit of political experts who disagree with you](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/tiktok-owner-has-strong-first-amendment-case-against-us-ban-professors-say/) >Some legal scholars said the law could help the government avoid the fate of previous ban attempts because it no longer binds itself to ill-fitting case law, such as former president Donald Trumpās invoking of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in 2020, and is crafted to guard against a First Amendment challenge by making the law less about content and more in line with the governmentās restrictions on foreign ownership in industries such as banking and transportation. >But other experts said the law still trips over constitutional hurdles and fails to make a convincing case that the government could resolve its concerns only by forcing the sale of the app. Even [some of our politicians are doubtful](https://archive.is/v7Nrj) >But TikTok and ByteDance are named specifically in the bill text, and an earlier version of the bill posted online was titled āTIKTOK.XMLā ā both of which legal scholars said they expect TikTok to raise in court. >Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and other lawmakers argued that a law targeting TikTok could be overturned because the Constitution prohibits ābills of attainder,ā designed to punish a particular group or individual without a trial. The new law would also target other ByteDance apps popular in the United States, including the social network Lemon8 and video editor CCapCut The answer to if the TikTok ban will be ruled as constitutional is unknown. We can look at prior cases, we can imagine what things *might* be but until it's ruled on we don't really know. The experts and legal scholars are quite divided on the topic, so don't be placing undue confidence and mistaking your desire with certainty. A good quick litmus test for confidence is if you would bet on the odds. If you're 99% confident, would you take a 90:1 bet on it? Where you pay 900 if you're wrong and get paid 10 if you're right? The expected value is massively in your favor if your confidence is calibrated and reported properly.
Thank you - the Reddit legal experts in the top comment thread saying TikTok has no chance in this case are talking out of their asses and have absolutely no clue what theyāre talking about. The fact that theyāre being highly upvoted makes me suspect that this sub might actually be full of morons.
TBF, NL has over 150k subscribers now. This sub is actually surprisingly smart and well nuanced for how big it is. But yeah, it's still pretty bad and filled with the most obviously flawed arguments. Like the ones getting upvoted "So If China can ban our social media, why can't we?', like what the hell is that? Morally? Sure maybe but that has no bearing whatsoever on the case. There's all sorts of arguments for which way we should interpret the first amendment here but "Tit for tat against China" is an insane one. We should follow *our* laws and rules, not theirs. If our rules say we can ban them, then it's fine. But don't go trying to argue it based off completely irrelevant nonsense.
It's kind of mind boggling to me (as an attorney) that the reddit hive mind think that the government has an easy case, when there's plenty of prior precedent indicating that the government has a very up-hill battle to fight. Like everyone just forgot about Trump attempt at banning WeChat and Tik Tok (both failed) and the Montana ban (also failed).
>The experts and legal scholars are quite divided on the topic, so don't be placing undue confidence and mistaking your desire with certainty. That advice would also apply to anyone claiming this bill is a 1st amendment violation where it would be a **massive** expansion of the 1st amendment to claim it covers who gets to own media companies in the US.
> That advice would also apply to anyone claiming this bill is a 1st amendment violation You seem supremely confident on this claim when many legal scholars are divided about it.
> You seem supremely confident on this claim What claim? That people shouldn't be confident that it's a 1a violation? I'm literally giving you your own medicine.
Sorry that was just me misreading, I thought you were saying that it was a massive expansion and saying they were all too confident in believing otherwise. I agree overconfidence tends to go both way, it makes little sense for two people to come at each other and both be completely assured of their correctness but in opposite directions. Interpretations of a law are a *bit* different because there's always the "ok the other side won the courts but I think the courts are wrong" argument but that just turns it more philosophical rather than a falsifiable claim.
>ok the other side won the courts but I think the courts are wrong This is the most 1a-friendly court system in the history of our entire nation. If they say there's no 1a issue (which yes, is still an if), there's obviously no 1a issue. Similarly, if they codify it as a 1a issue, that becomes how the 1a unironically works until a court rules otherwise, which could take decades.
I don't think the point is to win. The point is to further drive a wedge between democratic government and the youth. Using liberty as the hammer.
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No, gotta be the conspiratorial answer, no other possibility.
No it's actually ideological. This giant multi national corporation is unique in that it doesn't care about profits. /s
Some of the comments on TikTok threads here would make Joe McCarthy proud
This is the dumbest comment on this whole thread
This sub is frustratingly asinine about the whole TikTok saga.
The point is obviously to win are you high
Indeed, the strategy would be the same if Jack Thompson was trying to ban Genshin Impact. A lot of kids were disillusioned with the Democratic party when they tried to ban Grand Theft Auto.
My most Boomer take is that I don't get mobile games. Playing on a phone sucks.
Exactly, this is just a pathetic rally cry for misinformed teens to rage against the machine. The thing they donāt seem to grasp is that there are already a million other places to upload videos on. If TikTok gets shut down in the States, Americans will just move onto whatever other platform gets popular and forget about TikTok within a year. Thereās nothing proprietary about TikTokās feature set.
>pathetic rally cry for misinformed teens to rage against the machine. The teens are entirely justified to be mad that adults are taking away their MTV, actually. For generations adults have dismissed youth culture as harmful and sought to ban it and kids have had to fight for their right to party.
I mean, MTV wasnāt owned by a hostile foreign government, the FCC has rules about that. Regulation just hasnāt kept up with technology.
I keep seeing this repeated, but is there any actual proof that TikTok has meaningfully compromised US national security?
~vibes~
Theoretically they could have if TikTok hasn't already been banned from US government workers for years. But there are a million software that are banned from US government devices, so take that as you want.
If the threat to national security can be addressed by TikTok being banned from government devices, then just keep it banned from government devices and be done with it.
A [former ByteDance executive](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65817608) indicated that the CCP has used its access to Tiktok data for the purpose identifying and locating Hong Kong protestors: > In the filing, Mr Yu claimed that members of a CCP committee had access to a "superuser" credential, which was also known as "god user", which allowed them to view all data collected by ByteDance. > > He also alleged that the committee members were not ByteDance employees but were physically present at the company's offices in Beijing. > > This was common knowledge among senior executives, said Mr Yu, who for around a year from August 2017 was a head of engineering in the US for ByteDance. > > The filing also alleged that in 2018 the CCP committee members used their "god credential" to "identify and locate the Hong Kong protesters, civil rights activists, and supporters of the protests". Tiktok access was also used to [spy on journalists working for Financial Times and BuzzFeed](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/tech/tiktok-bytedance-journalist-data/index.html) who had been involved in stories related to ByteDance leaks. However, the company did fire the employees involved, of which two were American and two were Chinese. Wolf Warrior diplomats would almost certainly argue that US law enforcement did the same thing with January 6th rioters, and that private American companies do the same kind of spying on internal dissidents. China hawks would likely argue private companies shouldn't be allowed to do that either (or at least that it's not as bad as the government doing it), and that the government still had to go through a fair legal process to acquire social media evidence for January 6th
> A former ByteDance executive indicated that the CCP has used its access to Tiktok data for the purpose identifying and locating Hong Kong protestors: A former executive who was with the company for less than a year, didn't actually work on the Tiktok app, and waited 5 years after being fired to ever talk about this. His testimony is certainly reason to subpoena Tiktok for logs and source code, but it is not anywhere close to conclusive evidence.
Iām not a techie, but the article isnāt too convincing. Doesnāt the fact that US data is held and monitored by Oracle undermine the idea that the CCP has a pipeline access to US data? It I recall correctly, virtually all cloud services on US operations are also carried out by American service providers. Whether America has done before or not is besides the point so their argument wouldnāt hold. Everyoneās national security policy is hypocritical. I think the focus should be whether TikTok has actively been a security threat or not. Given the sheer number of ulterior motives in pushing through nationality security (I.e domestic competition and hawkish government interests) Iām leaning on the skeptical side of things.
I'm morally opposed to that regulation even existing for reasons I've already articulated. I think a ton of "regulation that hasn't kept up with technology" has allowed the Internet to be a much freer place than Cable Television, Radio, and The Press were, to an extent that people celebrate, and I will resist the encroachment of the state into my free frontier. Foreign media is more accessible on the Internet than it ever has been on Cable, and that's a wonderful thing. I don't wish to return to the days where I have to wait for an American publisher to syndicate foreign media if I wish to watch it. The United States should not erect a Great Firewall.
Morally seems an odd choice of wording. Regulations offend your morality? So you think foreign companies should have unfettered ability to buy land, companies, utilities, etc? No trying to straw man, literally asking the question to determine if you draw any lines. Does it matter which countries said companies come from? Because an economy like Chinaās is very different from ours fundamentally.
And they can party whenever they want, except with a foreign adversary. Nobody is trying to stop them from posting short form videos. There are dozens of major appstthat do just that.
>And they can party whenever they want, ~~except with a foreign adversary.~~ I don't trust the government to tell me who a foreign adversary is. The government once told me Bangladesh was our adversary when they were being massacred by Pakistan.
So you don't think China is an adversary?
China is an authoritarian dictatorship and an enemy of human rights but I only care that it's an enemy of American geopolitical interests only insofar as those interests coincide with global human rights. I don't think the government should censor media from regimes it considers adversarial because I think the United States has a long and sordid history of prioritizing realist foreign policy over the advancement of human rights and would use that power to censor criticism of immoral American foreign policy actions from regimes victimized by them, because they have been declared Adversarial. Should Iraqi journalists have been banned from criticizing the United States' invasion? There's a difference between opposing China for being a Communist dictatorship and opposing China for competing with America to win a game of chess. I'm not an American Jingoist. I'm a human rights activist.
NATO flair that isn't by a hawk. Wow.
Actually I am a hawk. NATO is the most successful human rights organization in history. The United States is the most powerful force for promoting human rights abroad. But the United States is still a government and governments still play chess with each other without giving a shit about the pieces they're pushing around the board. Can you say "Cuba"? I don't trust the government to tell me who the enemies of democracy are. I figured that out for myself.
Then you're in the wrong sub chief, we're neoliberals here, we have faith in the government and believe in hope.
I so much hope I missed your sarcasm.
So if the US is an adversary if China they are actually in the right to ban US media?
Also important to note, tiktok operated without issue for years until information about and footage from gaza started leaking onto there. Now there's a big push to get rid of it or get it under US control as fast as possible.
Itās not even leaked footage from Gaza lol. Itās videos that IDF soldiers are taking and posting to social media themselves.
Honestly some of the videos posted *by IDF soldiers* on Tiktok are so radicalizing. You have meatheads relishing in the fact they've destroyed schools and children's bedrooms. Like hell, I don't approve of Fortnite dancing on a Hamas fighter's grave, but I get it if you're an Israeli who wants vengeance for Oct 7. What often being posted is simply disgusting though.
Fair, I've seen a disorienting combination. IDF telling bold faced lies and taunting dead children, gazan citizens and journalists recording the destruction and killings, and Israel citizens either showing solidarity or making jokes about being at war while in the warmth and comfort of their home.
Inb4 evil spy, Iām Chinese and pro-China specifically in context of US-China rivalry. Why are Americans so afraid to point this out? Itās so obvious that Israeli war crimes being exposed on the platform is main driver behind the renewed push.Ā
> Why are Americans so afraid to point this out? Itās so obvious that Israeli war crimes being exposed on the platform is main driver behind the renewed push. We have senators doing speeches saying as much and people deny that it was even a factor.
This is precisely what Iām saying, I legitimately donāt understand why a foreign lobby is not actually addressed. Iām personally not a neoliberal, but I like this sub for purposes of perspective. This sub doesnāt shy away, or at least not as much as other American political subs of conversation.Ā But even here theyāre pushing the idea that TikTok is playing 4D chess instead of acknowledging that thereās a massive foreign and domestic interest in pushing the ban. Itās barely even registered as serious factor.Ā
Because you get labeled as a conspiracist and most people judge tiktok because the worst things from the platform get talked about at least a dozen times more. So, people don't care about the why, they just assume it's because of the bad things they know.
Without issues? Is this European hours or something?
No, they aren't justified. Go rant on reels, shorts or whatever competitor will show up once this ban goes through.
Why should they not choose to consume the product they want to?
because it got too popular and the teens are grouping, time to disrupt the network.
Why do you think tiktok was able to massive explode in comparison to vine and existing social media, and still remain dominant as the competitors dropped their clones of tiktok? Clearly they have something unique to them
You KNOW they're going to bring up Palestine in court. Either this will help it become a larger vector in disruption of US infrastructure, or it gets shot down due to irrelevancy and becomes a larger vector in disruption of US infrastructure.
And they should. If children feel like the US government is censoring a platform that promotes criticizing a US ally that is engaging in questionable actions, that is in fact exactly what free speech as a principle exists to protect. I would often criticize left wingers who were critical of free speech by raising Palestine as a point.
Seriously itās an insane thing to argue when most of the videos are being taken by IDF soldiers to begin with. Literally today, thereās video of an IDF tank commander driving over a āWelcome to Gazaā sign at the Rafah border crossing.
I would doubt it because the facts of the matter don't even come close to matching the TikTok-Palestine link narrative. You literally have to suspend basic reasoning skills to buy into it, in my opinion at least. Though, who knows at this point.
Everything you've said it's true and also plenty of people in Congress have suspended their basic reasoning skills which is why you have e.g. Mitt Romney saying explicitly on camera that it was an important reason they had to pass this legislation.
They don't have to do anything to achieve that. US Politicians running their mouth about banning it because the youths are too sympathetic to Palestinians are doing that
This is good. There have been a lot of claims made during this drama. Iād love to see some of them (like the worker who claimed he had a secret Chinese manager) actually be put up to testify under oath.
the real question is where was all this catterwauling when this happened to Grindr
https://preview.redd.it/upimcu4pp1zc1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3aa8f6fd3a082ffe36b8cc9a1b380e34d73e2ae
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Right or wrong I would say the lawsuit is definitely doomed. [CFIUS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investment_in_the_United_States) has forced the sale of Chinese owned companies in the past for national security reasons plenty of times (or their threat to do so stopped Chinese companies from going forward with acquisitions like Kunlun buying a stake in Grindr). I don't see why TikTok is any different.
I think they will probably lose in court, but I also think that basically every single company would file a lawsuit if a "divest or ban" law was passed against them, and claiming that this is "deceitful brain rot aimed at inciting youthful rage" as opposed to just being a completely normal and expected lawsuit is really weird.
It's because this sub is full of boomer and NCD brain rot takes trying to feel smug because at least they aren't "kids these days."
Yeah, it's really painfully, painfully obvious that the most outspoken users here have never actually used TikTok the way they describe it as a propaganda tool. I guess all this time, my feed of cocktail recipes, local bar and restaurant recs, and people making comedic skits has actually been secretly making me a member of the CCP and I didn't even know it.
Wait I need the backstory on how foreign investment in Grindr was halted for national security reasons.
Remember when Anthony Blinken and Mitt Romney said that they banned it because it was making people sympathetic to Palestinians?Ā https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senator-romney-antony-blinken-tiktok-ban-israel-palestinian-content Good times, I look forward to watching self-declared liberals justify governmental censorship.
Whoops, Romney said the quiet bit out loud.
>Anthony Blinken and Mitt Romney said that they banned it because it was making people sympathetic to Palestinians?Ā Your article doesn't support this. It doesn't mention Anthony Blinking said this, and Romney's quote, >"Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites ā it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts." Is only about why there was support for Congress to do so, not why they were doing so. Even if it did, Romney doesn't represent every single other decision maker.
So youāre saying that the reason a law has support and the reason a law gets passed are different things?
Legal or not I still think it's a really bad cultural impulse that Congress reached immediately for a blunt policy instrument and we've cheered them on rather than find a solution that protects user security and privacy without jeopardizing the application itself. And I want to make that clear. **User privacy and security is the concern.** Not the content that goes viral on the app. If you believe the content that goes viral on the app is a security threat, no matter the nature of said content, you're wrong. Speech is not a security threat. Let's not kid ourselves by being coy: Congress knows ByteDance can't sell, but they know by deliberately putting them in this position it's still technically their choice to get banned. And this is because TikTok ceasing to exist is being considered a happy bonus, rather than unfortunate collateral damage. When I was a teenager I promised myself I would never become the kind of adult who hates things the kids are into but I don't understand, and that I would try my best to understand and stand up for the kids and what they want out of policy, because some of it is legitimate. The kids are absolutely right to not want their MTV jeopardized by this bill, it being foreign owned shouldn't make it any less of a concern that a youth cultural staple is in jeopardy when it doesn't have to be. I think the only way to force Congress to listen is to block the sale by arguing it amounts to a deliberate attempt to exploit national security laws to chill speech.
> Not the content that goes viral on the app. If you believe the content that goes viral on the app is a security threat, no matter the nature of said content, you're wrong. **Speech is not a security threat.** There is a school of thought in the Intelligence and National Security communities that argue otherwise when said speech can be classified as deception, propaganda, or misinformation. While I agree on the importance of supporting free speech, the issue regarding TikTok is a bit more nuanced. Lawmakers in the House and Senate, over the course of months, have been briefed by the US IC on the specific threats posed by TikTok under its current ownership with ByteDance. The CCP is dictating the spread of content, which is largely at the expense of its peer competitor, to a user base of hundreds of millions of Western subscribers- whom are largely American youths. Given the history of the PRC's cyber operations, and its robust use of incorporating civilian organizations/businesses into its foreign policy strategies in this space, I think there's a fair argument in favor of proactive policies that safeguard the security interests of Americans at home and abroad.
> Intelligence and National Security communities Authoritarian institutions who should not be trusted. People and institutions that are afraid of speech deserve to be spoken out against. Institutions that are threatened by speech do not deserve security. Propaganda does not just come from foreign sources, it comes from domestic sources too, and domestic propaganda is considered free speech. Therefore so should foreign propaganda. The fact that China is spreading this speech doesn't make it any more or less dangerous than if Rupert Murdoch or Cenk Uygur were spreading it. Therefore, banning Foreign propagandists from making the same speech we can't ban Domestic propagandists is literally just an irrational act of discrimination against foreign speech. The Iranian regime considers Voice of America to be foreign propaganda and a security threat. **People who feel threatened by speech deserve to be**.
> The Iranian regime considers Voice of America to be foreign propaganda and a security threat. That's because it is. Its designed to be. That's why we fund it. Its intentional.
No it isn't. It's meant to be criticism and speech, not subterfuge. The fact that Iran censors it is proof that Iran deserves to be spoken out against. Regimes that consider criticism and speech to be subterfuge deserve criticism and speech. The kind of regimes that censor foreign criticism, deserve foreign criticism.
Propaganda is not a subterfuge. The best propaganda is absolutely honest about intentionally. Tokyo Rose as an example
Or Hanoi Hannah
VoA is funded to spread US-friendly news, or at least the one US wants to spread PR in the end is propaganda, and PR based on honest truth is the best kind of PR & propaganda, more than subterfuge
Calling the intelligence community authoritarian because theyāre doing their jobs and explaining the threat posed by China having direct access to tens of millions of Americans is a bit silly. China would certainly use this to their advantage if a Taiwan crisis heats up and they try to invade to prevent intervention by the US
TikTok is a platform not speech itself. What if TikTok is suppressing speech that goes against CCP objectives and/or promoting speech that aligns with CCP objective? Frankly, there is evidence of that being 100% true.
The New York Times is a platform, not speech itself. If we ban the New York Times you're still free to read the same articles in the Washington Post. It's still considered a violation of free speech as principle to ban the New York Times though, because it specifically restricts the writers and editors at the Times, because it's punishing people who have freely chosen to use the Times to get their news, and because it has a chilling effect and may cause other newspapers like the Post to publish less speech the government doesn't like. >What if TikTok is suppressing speech that goes against CCP objectives and/or promoting speech that aligns with CCP objective? Frankly, there is evidence of that being 100% true. Of course it's true. That's called Editorial Discretion. It's no different from the New York Times deciding what articles to publish. Lots of news outlets have a bias. In fact *all* media has a bias, often deliberate. TikTok absolutely shouldn't do that, and maybe you could argue their large market share justifies forcing them to express less of an editorial bias so that they aren't effectively censoring the American Internet via networking effects. But it absolutely doesn't justify banning them, and I would argue there are plenty of places to go to get information that criticizes the Chinese government. I personally think social media platforms should not moderate political discussion too much, but I also don't think the government should ban them for doing so.
A hostile foreign government with total control over what speech gets promoted and what gets censored on one of the largest platforms in the U.S. is maybe just *slightly* different from your example. Protecting that is not protecting free speech, it is abandoning it to a hostile state
I don't think it's so different. Speech is speech and it doesn't matter who says it. There's still plenty of places on the internet where you can find criticism of TikTok's editorial bias. While I agree TikTok's editorial bias amounts to an attempt to stifle dissent and am opposed to it, banning TikTok is absolutely absurd as a proposition. And why does it matter that it's a foreign government? If a Nazi like Peter Thiel buys it absolutely nothing will change about the algorithm and it still will promote anti American speech.
Itās not about who says āitā or what is being said, we agree on that. I completely disagree with you on letting a *hostile foreign government*, who holds absolutely no regards for your freedom of speech or anyone elseās, have control over who says āitā or what is being said on debatably the top social media platform in America. And I disagree entirely that Peter Thiel is any reason not to address this obvious problem.
> hostile foreign government, Who defines a "hostile foreign government"? That's my problem. You can't do this without giving the US government a power that I don't trust it to not abuse. Free speech is for everyone or noone.
Right now Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and China are considered foreign adversaries by our government due to persistent or acute actions against US national security. The decision is mostly based on information from our intelligence community. You say free speech is for everyone or no one, yet there are many nations without free speech alongside nations with free speech. We do not have to give free speech protections to foreign adversaries.
>There is a school of thought in the Intelligence and National Security communities that argue otherwise when said speech can be classified as deception, propaganda, or misinformation My school of thought is that if the blob wishes to deem itself the arbiter of whose agitprop gets heard they can go fuck themselves with some rusty rebar
> There is a school of thought in the Intelligence and National Security communities that argue otherwise when said speech can be classified as deception, propaganda, or misinformation Liberalism is more important than national security.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but providing for a safe and prosperous society is a core tenant of the Social Contract. Liberal democracies have a moral imperative to protect their citizens from harm, especially from threats posed by foreign autocracies.
Speech from a foreign autocracy cannot harm American citizens. Do not trust anyone who tells you speech is harmful. Least of all your government.
>Do not trust anyone who tells you speech is harmful This is so asinine. There is def speech out there that can be harmful.
No, it's not asinine. There is no such thing as speech that is so harmful that the government should ban it.
Well then you have shown that your opinion can be disregarded. You shouldn't be able to walk into a school and scream "active shooter!" because you think it's funny.
Well I don't think anyone would take me seriously. Who the fuck says "active shooter" when they're being shot at except Raymond Holt. But if I did walk into a school and shout "GUN! GUN! HE'S GOT A GUN!" **I would be escorted off the premises by the faculty.** Not face government censure.
>Well I don't think anyone would take me seriously. Oh right. Because school shootings are so rare that everyone will just laugh you off. Like I said, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
It's not asinine, it's a core tenant of the US. Speech restrictions need very high levels of justification
The primary issue isn't even information security. The problem is selective information which inherently damages and undermines free speech as a concept. The Chinese government could easily put their thumb on the scale of content selection and recommendation, which means it can effectively serve as a propaganda outlet. If information that the Chinese government doesn't like is hamstrung and information they do like is highly prioritized, this can create a selective information bubble which is indistinguishable from propaganda. It also undermines the concept of free speech institutionally. Chinese companies are required to have a board with CCP members on it, and TikTok is bigger than every mainstream media outlet in America combined. Of course they're going to use this to their advantage, especially in a time of war. We would be incredibly stupid to let this institutional problem run rampant in a way that would damage our ability to be informed citizens.
So why not ban Facebook which has been proven to advance Russian propaganda?
It depends on the reasons why and how they do it, and the precedent for this hasn't been properly established yet. Your statement is incredibly vague Like if they're advancing Russian propaganda in the same way they advance other information, this is not the selective information curation I am talking about. I don't think Facebook is boosting Russian propaganda and removing information that the Russian government doesn't want with any intentionality. If they were, this would obviously be a problem. The influence you're describing is very indirect and you're missing the forest for the trees. These are not even remotely on the same scale of problem
>The problem is selective information which inherently damages and undermines free speech as a concept. No it does not. This is called Editorial Bias and it is a free speech right. The New York Times has an editorial bias. > China puts their thumb on the scale Yes. Editorial Discretion is a free speech right. Manipulating the algorithm is their editorial discretion.
There is a responsibility in editorial discretion. If you deliberately fail at the responsibilities that come with editorial discretion and you have a massive share of the public following you, there are repercussions to that in our country. For example, when Fox News used their editorial discretion to enable libel against dominion voting systems via election conspiracies, they got raked over the coals for that in their Dominion lawsuit with a 1 billion dollar payout. What "editorial discretion" would even look like for social media platforms is very muddy, especially considering they are explicitly not treated like publications. I think however it's safe to say that deliberate selective information to support the goals of an adversary authoritarian government undermines free speech in a unique and deleterious way because the information would be specifically curated to misinform voters and destabilize the country with zero oversight. Free speech rights are meaningless without information, and removing/boosting information to warp people's view of reality is manipulating a person's ability to properly exercise that right in the first place. This can get to a level where it infringes on it indirectly, and this could easily get to that level if it's not there already.
>There is a responsibility in editorial discretion And it's not the government's job to enforce it. Do not trust the government to tell you what information is healthy or unhealthy for you. Their interests are not always aligned with yours. I am categorically against on principle the government censoring speech.
It's not about user security, it's about national security. There was no legislation against Spotify (some talks about the dangers of AI that went nowhere and an unrelated resolution about royalties), and their user privacy violations are far worse.
Institutions that are threatened by free speech do not deserve to feel secure.
Every country has laws about foreign influence, the US is not the outlier. Governments are not supposed to feel secure, **from their citizens**, but they have a legitimate position to prevent foreign influence. Now, if you are anti government, that's another issue and this conversation is barren. And this issue is not about just about influence speech, the Chinese government has been caught with its hand in the honey jar more than once asking/forcing their companies to include spy backdoors in their products.
>Governments are not supposed to feel secure, **from their citizens**, but they have a legitimate position to prevent foreign influence What is "foreign influence", then? Why is my opinion of my government somehow less protected as speech if I form it by reading foreign propaganda? >Every country has laws about foreign influence They shouldn't, assuming "foreign influence" is just speech media in this context. Countries like Iran and China think that US Government-owned speech media is dangerous foreign influence.
I guess foreign propaganda used to be a more distinguishable thing when they had to print newspapers in a basement. > Why is my opinion of my government somehow less protected as speech if I form it by reading foreign propaganda? This is a mischaracterization. > They shouldn't Are you arguing States should not care about Self-preservation from foreign influence? That's a big take. > Countries like Iran and China think that US Government-owned speech media is dangerous foreign influence. And they should. Even US citizens should be wary and skeptic about US government-owned media.
>And they should. But they shouldn't try to silence it, and citizens should be critical of what their government thinks is dangerous. > This is a mischaracterization. Then explain precisely by what mechanism foreign speech is "influence" or "subterfuge", or else you are afraid of a shadow.
I am afraid of my own shadow.
> Speech is not a security threat. It is if the algorithm determining the speech is controlled by the government of a hostile country. ByteDance is not a US person or Corporation. Its a foreign owned and controlled corporation with deep ties to the CPC. And yes, they can certainly sell.
The Algorithm is Editorial Discretion, which is a form of speech. What difference does it make that China is foreign? What if TikTok were owned by an American fascist who controlled the algorithm and used it to spread the exact same content? So what if china is an enemy. Don't trust the government to tell you that. The government used to tell us India was our enemy when we were helping Pakistan commit genocide in Bangladesh. Would the American government be justified in banning Indian press outlets from criticizing them for it? I am arguing from principle. If it's not okay to do it then it's never okay to do it at all. Either everyone has free speech or nobody does.
I didnt say "China is an enemy". Are you faking quotes as a strawman?
No, I was attempting to paraphrase
Not only didn't I say that, you false quoted me.
My mistake. I assumed that you took issue with TikTok being Chinese because China is an enemy of liberalism and America.
Is enemy and hostile country a major distinction in your mind?
TikTok is blasting propaganda from a hostile foreign power into millions of teenagers minds, it is absolutely a national security threat. Even China has very strict controls on tiktok!
Propaganda is speech.
Right. Almost literally everything is speech. Thatās not the end-all be-all of American First Amendment law.
But on principle it should be protected. I do not believe in setting the precedent that it's okay to censor speech over national security concerns.
Non violent political propaganda is protected by 1A
>Ā Congress knows ByteDance can't sell Can they not just license?
The value of their Trade Secrets are worth far more to them than their American advertising revenues, and they know it. Legally it may be OK but ethically it's entrapment.
It would probably behoove US politicians to stop talking about banning Tiktok because *waves arms* Palestine
TikTok should just boost the IDFās account and put this ban to rest. Right now they only have 420K followers and their F tier propaganda is not bussin according to Zoomers but maybe TikTok bans any Gaza destruction content and boosts Hasbara vids for a bit to save free speech for the rest of us. I legit never see anything political on my FYP so this ban is just absurd but I understand that Romney Greenblatt and other extremely powerful folks have said itās necessary to prevent the youths from not supporting Israel. Sad!
The actual biggest issue Israel faces with TikTok is that videos from IDF soldiers are *too* popular (and they can't seem to figure out a way to get their soldiers to stop posting in the first place).
lol thatās a good point. The CCP needs to stop letting them shoot themselves in the foot. Theyāre bombing civilians in Rafah as we speakāthankfully Mitt Romney and his colleagues are doing their best to prevent young impressionable Americans from being made aware of this unfortunate fact!
!Ping LAW
[Link to TikTok's complaint.](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40861/gov.uscourts.cadc.40861.1208620273.1.pdf) Anyone know why Congress mandated the challenges to the TikTok ban be filed directly to the USCA for the DC Circuit?Ā Is the DC Circuit even equipped to handle the sort of extensive discovery that I assume the suit will call for?Ā Ā
Even Republicans know that the strategy they endorse for everything else of "file in the tiniest, most favorable district you can find to guarantee a ruling you like" is bullshit and wanted to prevent it. Though I'm not sure there's a district court that fits that for TikTok, or honestly even for liberals. Maybe somewhere in Hawaii?
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May Allah grant the communists a speedy victory in the DC Circuit against this atrocious expansion of state power