Cool, now let's ban Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and every single social media platform that does the same exact thing as TikTok. I have never used TikTok, but this is fucking bullshit. Facebook literally ruined elections and lives around the world.
Only the US is allowed to ruin elections.
Eh, I'll take what I can get. The CCP is a far, far worse influence than the US, their global influence should definitely be restricted wherever possible until the regime changes.
Anyone who has problems with US geopolitical behavior should easily be able to recognize the CCP as a path to an even darker fascist future for humanity.
Lets drop this whole "lesser of two evils" thing. It doesn't work in our two party system and it certainly doesnt work with comparing governments. Fascism is fascism. America loves having a boogeyman.
The united states is fascist as fuck. All our tax dollars are funneled into the war machine to ruin lives all around the world to help make a few dick heads rich. We fund far right monsters in order to overthrow democracies and peaceful governments that don't want to fuck with America's banks. Civil liberties are thrown out week after week. The wage gap is a fucking joke. Nobody can afford shit. Homelessness is on the rise. Schools are underfunded. Police are militarized against the citizens. Protesting is becoming illegal basically everywhere. We allow corporations to run slave operations all over the global south in order to placate and distract consumers from their shitty existences.
It is only getting worse. And the big reason they want to get rid of tiktok is because ordinary people are successfully sharing their firsthand experiences with fascist america. Its got nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with control. Young people are mad and organizing on the only platform that doesn't have a US backdoor.
I like how you pretend people weren't sharing their experiences and politics on the million other forms of social media that exist before TikTok. As if everyone was in the dark ages. I've seen all the ugly things happening in the US and I don't use chinese spyware.
China is not just a "boogie man", it's literally a technofascist state that tightly controls all information coming into, out of and circulating within its country. It disappears a million Uyghurs into hundreds of concentration camps and its own population is literally the only one on earth that doesn't realize its happened. The brutalization of peaceful Hong Kong protestors was broadcast around the world and yet mainland chinese still think it was some violent uprising. People there don't even know the truth about Tinanmen or Tibet.
But somehow that's all a gap in your knowledge of the world...hmmm, weird must just be a coincidence that the dude who gets all his info from TikTok doesn't understand that China has the most developed censorship and social engineering apparatus on the planet...surely they suddenly give all that up when operating TikTok in the west.
This comment was brought to you by the US State Department.
Tell me, how many countries' governments has China knocked over in the last century as compared to the US CIA?
How many countries did the US drop bombs on in the last decade, and how many did China?
It's not even close. In terms of physical violence the US is the world's #1 exporter.
Oh, whoops, you thought I was defending the US. Not what I said, but it's the only way you can deflect from what the Chinese government is.
China being economically destitute for the last century thanks to terrible CCP domestic policies doesn't somehow change the fact that they represent an even darker path forward for humanity than the US. It's not really a point that can be argued. China has hundreds of concentration camps, forced mass relocation of Tibetans and other minorities to place them in dormitories they literally can't leave except during work hours, a national information firewall to control everything their populace sees.
Like, Xi Xinping had fucking execution vans in his lead up to power. Your brain would have to be scrubbed bloody to think China and the US represent the same thing.
Why would the American government ban companies based under their own jurisdiction? They can make use of all those other companies just like the Chinese government can make use of TikTok.
Sounds good.
I thought that US was the country of freedom, but turns out that the freedom is just to racists, nazis and for them to fuck up other countries.
That’s an interesting take from this whole thing
Why do you think they are Banning tiktok?
Because China is collecting information from millions of US citizens. Plus they control what the US citizens can see and interact with. US has no control over Tik Tok and that scares them. Why are Facebook and X not banned? Because Facebook and X are US based have to comply with the US regulators and share every collected information with the government.
You do know that the overwhelming majority of investment and control in TikTok is already based in the US, and the only Chinese national involved with the app was the creator who already cashed out and retired a long time ago?
Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company from China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance Data is collected in China. Not sure what you mean. Why do you think US tries to block Tik Tok?
60% of ByteDance is owned by global investors, most of which are based in the US. 20% is owned by the original co-founders, none of whom have any ties to the CCP, and the remaining 20% is owned by employees, almost all of which are in California. The overwhelming majority of the company is already owned by Americans. This entire thing is all about trying to silence a source of information that challenges and refutes government interests, particularly where Palestine is concerned.
None of this changes the fact that the operational headquarter of the company is in China and that they collect data that is send to China. Therefore China gets all the data from US citizen, regardless of who the investor is.
TikTok itself is owned by ByteDance, but is incorporated in the Caymans. It has corporate entities in Singapore, Australia, the US, and the UK. The CEO is US based. Data is collected in Singapore, not China. There is a little evidence someone at ByteDance has access to the info, but according to official statements and documents they do not. But, even if they are lying, China can still buy that information from data brokers just like the US Government does right now.
We need privacy protection laws, not arbitrary bans of apps that do the same thing as US social media apps
We need privacy protection laws, not arbitrary bans of apps that do the same thing as US social media apps
The ban of the application is not to protect our privacy, otherwise they would ban US social media apps too.
Does the legislation also include penalties for Samsung for preinstalling TikTok on my fucking Smart TV and making the app non-removable ?
Who the hell would want to watch vertical videos on a smart tv??
I don't understand why people get so upset about this. Yes, Google, Facebook, etc. hoard your data too. But there's a big difference wether that data is hoarded domestically or by a foreign nation that is pretty blatant about their industry espionage and political propaganda. Yes, the US do it too. But you really can't blame a country for protecting it's interests, be they ethical or not.
As a user and not as a government agent, why should I care? If anything, having a foreign government hoard my data and spy on me is better than the government that actually has jurisdiction over me. If I were posting things critical of my own government I would rather have a foreign government hoard that data than my own government. There's a lot more of a chance that US data hoarding leads to action against US citizens than Chinese data hoarding.
I don't see how this benefits average Americans in any way. This helps the government and corporations.
It's not just about data hoarding, though. It's also about a social media company having considerable influence over the messaging seen by a very large part of the voting population.
Yes, it's no different to other social media companies, but with one exception: the company in question is subject to the whims of the Chinese government. Something the US government is clearly fearful of.
The domestic social media companies are at the whims of the billionaire class which I would argue is just as bad for voter influence. Neither side wants you to vote in your best interest.
Yep, agreed, but at least the government of the day can try and reign them in with legislation and regulation. Not saying they are (or will), but they'd have the option, if they had the balls to do it.
Personally, I just find it really disappointing. This Tik Tok issue could have been an opportunity to improve privacy and reduce data collection across the board. Instead, it's a surgical strike in order to not disrupt American tech companies doing the same thing.
What will happen is that Bytedance will sell the US Tik Tok to an American VC firm and it will continue data hoarding as before. This time, the US government will be getting the data instead of the CCP. I'd rather nobody got it.
You can absolutely blame a country for doing that actually. What kind of argument is that? People shouldn't be upset when their government does something unethical as long as it's "protecting its interests"?
That's not quite what I meant.
The argument I most often see and is that TikTok should stay because Facebook and Google are just as bad. That's stupid because foreign espionage is obviously worse than domestic espionage to any government.
If your argument is that the TikTok ban is good and Facebook and Google should be next because of the similar practises then I'm 100% with you.
They aren't banning it for privacy issues though. They literally passed a domestic surveillance bill at the same time lol
They want to get rid of tik tok because they can't control the narrative and people are successfully organizing on the platform.
There is also a massive difference in user experience in China vs abroad, to the point where they might as well be two fundamentally different apps. Even just things like time limits for children exist by default in China and are unavailable elsewhere, which kind of feels like an admission that they only take things like platform safety seriously at home.
The US encourages international business competition, but not if you do it better than they do.
We've not actually seen for sure that TikTok data is being passed to the Chinese government - supposedly the USA data is being kept separately. But we have certainly seen US data brokers gathering data from all over in the US and selling that on to any 3rd party (domestic government, as well as anyone else). Facebook has been caught more than once being in the business of leaking private data. I'm just surprised that the US gov did not leave this choice up to its citizens to choose on - the ideas of freedom of choice and speech seem to be rather dictated here now.
I'm just wondering if it is not more a case of the US gov has no control itself over TikTok (think US CLOUD Act) and this is what is irking them. I'm not in the US so one way or the other I don't really mind. What I do mind about though is that TikTok does not sell out to a US company. We really don't need one single country controlling all the mainstream social media platforms. US laws after all do not represent all of mankind, so some diversity is a good thing.
So I guess I'm rather for a "ban" than a "sell out".
I don't like big government but I have zero sympathy in this case. TikTok is the greatest cancer on modern society and I will not change my mind on that.
We literally have a global rise in violent fascism and multiple ongoing genocides, and TikTok is the worst thing you can think of?
Social media in general is likely contributing to the rise of violent facism. Anything that can reverse that trend is good IMO.
Tictok is horrible but this entire ban is being driven by the swamp being upset that young people have come to the wrong conclusion about Israel. I think that the idea is that as long as people are using facebook or google-owned properties, people can be shown only information that will lead them to the correct, approved opinions.
I love that this and more funding for other countries' wars are a higher priority than the housing crisis.
Conservatives have been purposely tanking uncontroversial legislation so that "Biden doesn't get any wins". Do you genuinely think it is possible for the current legislature to pass bills that would fix something as complex as the housing crisis?
I would accept that as an excuse if the Democrats did anything meaningful when they have a majority, but they don't.
The last time they had a meaningful majority they spent their time (72 working days) on ACA (a major healthcare reform), pulling us out of a recession, appointing two supreme court justices, and so much more. They are known as the most productive Congress since Lyndon B Johnson was president. The last official majority they had they spent their very thin majority cleaning up after Donald Trump and dealing with COVID.
Democrats don't get strong majorities for long periods of time like Republicans do, and they are expected to fix every issue plus clean up after the newest national disaster that Republicans created. Maybe if we gave them time and a strong enough majority they would get more done.
First, you should put this in air quotes: "a major healthcare reform". It's only a reform if you the consumer can absorb the price gouging required to access our health care system in the first place.
Secondly, Obama had a supermajority for a time. He could have done anything if he'd have been willing to do the work.
Americans can't eat excuses, and for me at least, it's no longer acceptable to simply be slightly less conservative than the other conservatives.
So much easier than passing an actual data privacy law--and maybe Bobby Kotick will buy TikTokUSA!
VPN subscriptions about to explode.
Naturally, they'll try to ban VPNs next.
Then why is the bill about DIVESTMENT of Tiktok from Chinese ownership? The operation headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore. I'm beginning to think you don't know what you're talking about.
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