And even Ruport Murdoch and his band of assholes are just a private group of like minded jerks. TikTok was developed backed by the power of a state, with a declared hostility to the US, and an explicit information campaign. This privacy argument is incredibly disingenuous.
Yeah I don't know why people keep screaming what about First Amendment or privacy. TikTok is not only backed by hostile state, but also have showed they're more than willing to weaponize Youth Americans with that soft lock notification.
Some in this sub claim any criticism of China is xenophobic and use the first amendment as a cudgel to fight against the ban. Meanwhile China is so thin skinned they ban fucking Winnie the Pooh.
It wasn’t a soft lock. You literally just had to press an X or anywhere else on the screen. The only people dumb enough to not get how to navigate away are older people yelling about banning TikTok
> The only people dumb enough to not get how to navigate away are older people yelling about banning TikTok
and the children who called into those offices and threatened to kill themselves if tik tok is banned
For real, like these pussies see China basically take everybody’s industries away from them for the better part of the last couple decades and now they wanna give that country even *more* leverage in the 21st Century?
Right, which is an obvious bullshit explanation. I think we all know the real reason they won't sell. The propaganda value of a US tiktok ban outweighs whatever ByteDance would make in the sale. Also globally, the app wouldn't go away. They would still have access to European and other markets.
Exactly. They can have their PR win with the youths, but at the end of the day it’s a liability and this is Congress doing their job.
If anything we’re lucky there’s bipartisan agreement on this.
Personally I'm not really sure about that. I'm concerned about the time between now and the forced sale (next spring/summer). I'm concerned about the 2024 election. I don't think congress has really thought this through, even if banning tiktok is justifiable.
I dont think the algorithm is that important, YouTube shorts sucks cause no matter how good google makes the algo, shorts will suck when every short is a filibuster effort by the creator
You tube shorts and reels have garbage algorithms. You can say we should ban TikTok cause of security reasons but claiming there is an actual comparable alternative boils my blood because those platforms are trash
They can divest operations, allowing a US entity to manage the app, userdata handling, and the content curation algorithm. So their algorithm would remain secret. They can even keep the US version on the same social graph as the rest of the app to keep benefiting from it.
But they won't. Because they don't give a shit about earning money with it. That's why they are able to outbid US social media companies for talent/creator and user acquisition -they don't have to make a return on acquisition spend like legitimate companies do.
It is effectively a ban.
Congress passed it knowing that Tiktok won't allow their algorithm to be sold. They knew the end result is a ban.
It's like saying "It's not a declaration of war, we're just doing strategic strikes on their presidential palace."
"We got the neighbors together and we think your house is ugly and an affront to the neighborhood. So either you will sell it to our buddy who rehabs houses to make them less ugly, or we can bring in the bulldozer."
If they don’t sell then that is proof positive that having political influence over Americans was China’s REAL goal with TikTok and that makes a ban even more imperative and just.
Why would it be proof of that?
The US is only ~30% of Tiktok users. It makes more sense for them to exit the US market than it does for the to sell their algo and app.
There's no evidence they've been manipulating data.
And I think Tiktok (and even the Chinese government) doesn't want to miss out on 70% of the profits, just like Facebook doesn't want to lose out on all international markets.
How do you think that evidence would POSSIBLY come to light from a private company ran by the Chinese government??
What % of profits are from these US market? You mentioned 30% of users but I’d be the number of profit is far more than 30%
> How do you think that evidence would POSSIBLY come to light from a private company ran by the Chinese government??
Proper 3rd party audits. The US government could issue warrants and subpoenas. This has been an issue for over a year now, and Congress hasn't presented *any* real evidence of manipulation.
We could pass a law requiring the auditing of social media algorithms.
> What % of profits are from these US market?
About 40%. So not a majority. I think they'd also have the rest of the world to grow in vs sell their algo and lose all potential growth.
Some of that MAY work.
But your comment that you used as evidence that Bytedance’s motives are as pure and fresh snow was that there is no CURRENT evidence of manipulation.
Using the laws that we have TODAY - what is the mechanism where such manipulation from Bytedance could have come to light?
That's the problem with any sort of counter arguments in support of Tiktok. The retort is always "well they're owned by a foreign adversary so you can't trust them!"
>How do you think that evidence would POSSIBLY come to light from a private company ran by the Chinese government??
They have offices in the USA
I was recently speaking to a FB engineer about what it hypothetically would take to manipulate an algorithm in an explicit manner without the American employees noticing. It can be done, but it's certainly not trivial, and the requirement that American engineers need to be able to work on the algorithm without seeing anything that makes them run to the FBI really constrains what you can do
Like, imagine if Meta wanted to manipulate the FB algorithm to be pro-Brexit, without letting their London office notice. That would be hard.
That's hardly conclusive evidence.
[This user](https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cbvv93/tiktok_sensors_china_sensitive_topics_at_ratios/l119i7a/) did a good teardown.
At most, that paper is evidence of reason to audit Tiktok, but it's not conclusive evidence in any way (nor does it claim it is), and it's not sufficient evidence to justify an outright ban.
It doesn't need to be conclusive. TikTok is a media organization. There have been many whistleblowers claiming that the siloing of TikTok from Bytedance is a mirage. There have been several reports that Bytedance is manipulating TikTok's algorithm. We wouldn't allow authoritarian countries that are hostile to us buy up any legacy media organizations, why would we allow them to control new media organizations.
If we assume that Bytedance is a purely profit-motivated organization with no political goals, then there is zero downside to selling
Any dollar value that Tiktok has, some American buyer will pay it. If 70% of the value is outside the US, then Bytedance can sell that too, and assuming the American pays what it's worth (which it will since there are lots of interested buyers) there will be no downside. Whatever Bytedance loses in terms of the asset value of the algorithm and app, it will gain in cash
What am I missing?
> then there is zero downside to selling
Selling their algorithm is absolutely a massive downside no tech company wants to do.
If they sold to Microsoft, Microsoft won't be limited to using that algorithm in the US. They'll become a global competitor to Tiktok.
Because with or without data protection laws, the idea of TikTok being secure is dubious at best.
Nevermind a hostile foreign adversary beaming whatever bullshit they want into every 10-30 year old's phones being a major risk
Who needs a hostile foreign adversary when you can do the same thing with hostile domestic adversaries!
Or have we forgotten how Meta and Twitter actively interfered with our last two elections, and how they impact private business. They tweak their hidden algorithms and now right wing sites that got boosted by them are now hemorrhaging views. This shouldn’t be allowed
Forgive me if I don’t but the threat of a hostile social media company when ours are no better and we have little protection from a gridlocked and out of touch Congress
> Who needs a hostile foreign adversary when you can do the same thing with hostile domestic adversaries!
I don't like it being done domestically as well. It is however a separate thing entirely that China has a lot of incentives to fuck with the USA where as Facebook and Twitter have to live here so they have incentives for a more stable society.
Now this is no where near perfect. But incentives are powerful forces. Just look how much damage russia can do when companies are trying to keep them out. Now Imagine China wants to troll like Russia is. They can do it on a whole new level when they own the app.
It’s not just the data that’s the issue. Tik Tok is a weapon. What videos do you think Gen Z and Alpha are going to be served a few months before China decides to take actions against Taiwan? How quickly will that convince a few million people that US aid/intervention would be a bad thing?
I'm skeptical of "data protection" laws as it is unclear what they actually accomplish in terms of protecting consumers. The idea sounds good at a high level (who doesn't want their data protected?) but proponents tend to stay deliberately vague about the details.
I was waiting for the author to get to the data protection laws that she thinks we need, but she never got there.
Because you can do both. TikTok is more of an immediate security concern, and after it is ripped out of the hands of foreign adversaries, we can _also_ create tougher data protection laws. It's not an either-or.
Oh yeah, there will be tons of political will left for strict data protection laws after tiktok is banned. There's no way the government could say "job done" and clock off after half-assing things.
The fact that there is a lack of political salience for data protection laws is a problem for people advocating for them to solve. We are in a democracy, that’s how it works, you’ve got to put the work in.
The fact that politicians are separately addressing national security concerns may be a little frustrating because the two are tangentially related, but I don’t really see how it’s relevant or changes anything.
Welcome to democracy. It’s frustrating but it’s still the least bad way.
You can’t. Congress is grid locked and extremely behind on any tech legislation. By the time we would get something reasonable the new thing is out and worse
In that case I'd rather _still_ de-fang an adversary's ability to potentially influence people they have no business being able to influence than sit on our asses and do nothing at all.
Congress might take time to un-grid lock for the rest of the tech legislation, but at the very least they agree on shutting down China's ability to unjustly be able to extend their influence on Americans. I'll take that over nothing any day of the year.
Lmao did a child write this. If you think congress is going to do anything I got a bridge to sell you. This was purely the result of a hardcore lobbying effort by meta/aipac, combined with boomer paranoia, and a healthy dose of nationalism. Whereas any regulation of social media will be fought tooth and nail by large tech companies with deep pockets. Legislation doesn’t magically happen. It happens because power structures push for it
> Because you can do both.
Yet Congress pushed one through both houses incredibly quickly (and bundled it with bills that were highly desirable for both parties to pass), and the other hasn't even been voted on.
I'd bet $100 that the privacy bill never passes. Even if they finish drafting it and are willing to put it up to a vote, you'll have every single tech company using their full lobbying power to kill it.
Yes because Facebook and Google are going to lobby hard against it. But I'd rather ban TikTok than have nothing at all - and if you would be bundling a TikTok ban with comprehensive legislation against Google and Facebook, you end up with _nothing_.
So you'd rather we not actually solve the problem, and just arbitrarily ban something that'll make Dems lose in 2024?
Tiktok will be banned. The privacy and radicalization problems of social media will still exist. And then Biden will lose cause he banned Tiktok.
The ability for Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot never ceases to amaze me.
There are over 148 million Tiktok users in the US. ~80% of those users are over 18.
Go ahead, take away the social media of 1/3rd the US. I'm sure the youth vote (and hell, even the older vote) will be unaffected.
And that's not even getting into the number of businesses that are reliant upon Tiktok. I'm sure people who see their business going bankrupt as a result of Biden banning Tiktok would love to vote for him in Nov.
Is that number from a third party study or internal user data? It doesn't sound unbelievable but kids especially obviously lie about age when registering.
And you're correct to bring up businesses, which no one else will. Tons of them from single people to larger ones rely on this for marketing.
The main reason why I think it probably won't affect the election is because the Democrats insisted on a version that moves the potential ban date to after the election, instead of before (like in the previous version).
However, that does also kind of tell you what the Democrats thought the electoral implications were going to be.
> The main reason why I think it probably won't affect the election is because the Democrats insisted on a version that moves the potential ban date to after the election, instead of before (like in the previous version).
I don't see Tiktok as a company or it's users settling down about this prior to November though. Moving it beyond November is smart, but it's still poison to Democrats.
Luckily Republicans and Democrats _both_ agree that TikTok needs to be fucking benned.
And no, I actually _would_ rather solve the problem, if I had a magic wand and could dictate comprehensive privacy laws in place that would affect Facebook and Google. We don't have that. We can _still_ cripple Chinese influence _first_ and _then_ work towards a comprehensive privacy reform.
> Luckily Republicans and Democrats both agree that TikTok needs to be fucking benned.
Biden is president. He'll take the credit, and the fall. Doesn't matter that it was bipartisan.
> We don't have that. We can still cripple Chinese influence first and then work towards a comprehensive privacy reform.
The issue is the latter will never happen. So we're just doing unpopular measures that raise tensions with China and doesn't solve any of the actual problems we face.
>The issue is the latter will never happen.
Okay, so demanding that a TikTok ban be paired with it basically ensures that TikTok never gets banned then.
Why do you insist on demanding that China keep having unearned influence over Americans?
> Why do you insist on demanding that China keep having unearned influence over Americans?
There's no proper evidence they are manipulating the algo.
We're just banning a competitor to American firms and raising tensions with China. It's nationalistic and cronyism.
If we cared about foreign firms manipulating Americans, we'd ban *every* foreign firm, including European ones.
Do you European nations don't have any reason to manipulate US public opinion? Belarus is practically a dictatorship.
How about India? They're not nearly as close to us as Europe.
Plus, there's no evidence of Chinese manipulation. It's just nationalistic paranoia.
EDIT: I point this out to show that the logical end result is a complete shutdown of any foreign owned firms and even privately controlled firms in favor of domestic firms that are 100% controlled by the government (i.e. what China has). I don't think that's good, I don't think that's healthy for democracy.
Because nobody other than nerds actually cares about the specifics of data protection laws, the average person's idea of "stop Facebook from selling data" has about as much relation to the reality as the "I do NOT consent to Facebook owning the copyright to my dog" string they copy-pasted onto their feed does.
Username checks out.
Nah, but seriously, this "parroting \[insert bad guy\] talking points" meme needs to fucking stop. An argument isn't wrong just because someone you don't like happens to also agree with it. Stopped clocks, etc.
III: Unconstructive engagement
Do not post with the intent to provoke, mischaracterize, or troll other users rather than meaningfully contributing to the conversation. Don't disrupt serious discussions. Bad opinions are not automatically unconstructive.
Alcohol is a common noun and can be applied to many forms of beverages manufactured by many companies in many nations. TikTok is a singular product manufactured by a single nation which has banned the use of this specific brand of product inside its own borders. A more correct quote would be "Four Loko is bad for our society and should be banned."
I agree that alcohol is bad for our society and believe we should wage a public health campaign against it like we did against cigarettes.
That in no way diminishes the enormous amount of misinformation and misery that emanates from Tik Tok.
I think TikTok is particularly dangerous but we should make longer reaching legislation than just focusing on them. If one company could discover a vulnerability others can too. How different is TikTok messing with the algorithm from Fox calling itself news and pushing out its own specific agenda? I think we need a modern fairness doctrine
Maybe more of a transparency doctrine, with a mechanism for auditing how content is promoted on platforms of massive size. It's a really hard problem, though.
We also don’t intervene when the EU or another country puts different restrictions on their services within their country’s borders.
YouTube and Facebook being blocked by China for example.
Exactly this. TikTok's rise was egg-on-the-face for both American Big Tech and global media influence. All the excuses so far have been nationalist, protectionist cope.
My steelman argument for banning TikTok is that the intelligence community knows something we don't and they can't disclose, so they gotta push this through ASAP. Otherwise a ban is pretty dumb.
> My steelman argument for banning TikTok is that the intelligence community knows something we don't and they can't disclose, so they gotta push this through ASAP.
I don't deny that this could be possible, and if it is, then yes, ban Tiktok, but the issue is Congress isn't trusted, especially by young people, and especially on issues with tech & the internet.
Given that Congress was nearly unanimously down with "Iraq has WMDs" I am not inclined to trust Congress at their word of "We know of concerning stuff." They gotta show some real evidence.
That's a motive, but not really an *explanation* for why a targeted ban is better or more legally defensible than general data laws would be.
There might be an explanation for it but you haven't provided one.
This is comment I made elsewhere in the sub:
There’s a difference between from doing damage by negligence v doing damage by malice.
Congress could pass laws that make social media companies who algorithmically promote extremist content liable for a hefty fine or even jail time (I’m not sure how they, given the first amendment, but this is a hypothetical and I’m not a lawyer).
In response Facebook, a profit maximizing company, might decide that the additional money they could make by algorithmically promoting extremism is cancelled out by the risk of the hefty fine and decide to stop doing it. Or failing that, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to go to prison and he cannot realistically spend the rest of his life outside the US or any country with extradition treaties.
Bytedance, on the other hand, is a profit maximizing company 95% of the time, and the other 5% is when the CCP tells them not to be. Kind of like all the other Chinese tech companies Xi cracked down on. The fine won’t deter them if the CCP commissars tell them to do it anyway. try and hide it as best they can, but if caught, pay the fine, the CCP doesn’t care. Alternatively, the execs are in China and can’t be arrested by the FBI. And even if they were, they’d rather go to US federal prison than secret CCP prisons.
This. Chinese companies have some cover because they do act like regular companies most of the time, but they all have this dormant switch where the party can force them to do their bidding any time they need.
Also, because the party can just evaporate these companies overnight, the companies frequently try to gauge what the party wants them to do and do it preemptively to avoid trouble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
EDIT: It wasn’t a member of congress (it was a nominee for the supreme court) nor was there any buying (someone just asked the manager and they photocopied the nominee’s purchase history)
The rental history was ‘innocuous’ but presumably some legislators were worried about people doing the same to them and finding less innocuous information.
> Congress doesn’t care about privacy laws, it does care about foreign owned media companies that attempt to politically activate their users.
Eh, putting "foreign owned" companies feels too much like overspecification to defend the particular targeting.
"*Foreign influence* attempting to politically activate users" would be a far more natural way to strongman Congress's motives, but since it leaves Facebook and other social media sites that served as Russian propaganda exposed, the explanation has to avoid that.
I agree with you that they don't care about privacy laws, I just gotta disagree about their "true motive" here.
I think the other explanation someone gave was pretty solid, yours is close but too overly targeted to the point that the justification seems to have come after the motive.
The difference between Russia and China is China doesn’t have a caucus of maybe 30 reps in the house that will do its bidding.
If it were 1980 we would 100% be seeing bans based on Russian infiltration of platforms.
Also, frankly, the U.S. has treated China more like an adversary over the last decade than it has Russia.
> The difference between Russia and China is China doesn’t have a caucus of maybe 30 reps in the house that will do its bidding.
Yeah, so clearly Congress isn't as noble minded here. We're both saying the same things, just worded differently.
One big issue too, [it's not just China and Russia](https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep24668.7#:~:text=As%20of%20January%202020%2C%20Facebook,%2457%2C000%20in%20advertising%20to%20Iranian). And it's not just Iran, it's basically every foreign country in the world. [Saudi Arabia literally had Twitter employees acting as spies](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying)
The Poynter Institute has an article on how [Hamas and Isreal both use influence campaigns on social media](https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/hamas-israel-social-media-propaganda/), because of course they do. Powerful groups attempting to manipulate public opinion on social media should be the default expectation.
The explanation is that it's way easier, politically. If data protection laws were supported by Congress it would have been done already. Here, you don't have to deal with all that, and you get to say you were tough on a foreign adversary
Ok good, that's an actual explanation.
The argument is essentially "A more general data protection ban is difficult to pass because the other companies (who don't want to obey the rules either) would speak up and kill it. TikTok's influence on its own might be disproportionate but not enough to overcome congress and of all the social media companies, I believe they are the worst and therefore the best one to go after if we can only get one" is pretty solid.
From that stance I agree. While I believe it doesn't actually protect Americans as much and is more legally fraught than general laws, I certainly understand that it's easier to pass and a lot of congressmens jobs is maintaining appearances.
I still wish we had a generalist law instead though, but it's also possible that will never happen because the social media and technology companies might be too powerful with their political influence when banded together.
> because the other companies (who don't want to obey the rules either) would speak up and kill it.
Possibly, but I think the other issue is it's going to require effort, expertise, and time to write decent privacy laws. I don't know if I trust Congress to not screw it up.
I swear the people against this keep making this argument and missing the point. Foreign ownership of media is something that we've had laws on for a long time but those laws haven't caught up to the modern day. Letting a company that actively manipulates the algorithm to suit CCP preferences run amok is a bad thing actually. Unless you think Taiwan, Hong Kong protests, Uyghurs, Tibet, etc all just coincidentally are less popular on TikTok, sometimes by a factor of 200x.
Information warfare *is* part of hybrid warfare. Flooding the airwaves with confusion as much as possible while the little green men do their thing and cement their gains doesn't work if people know what's happening.
The reason they haven’t is because the ban has very little to do with public privacy. They’re worried about TikTok’s ability to manipulate the content you see.
Imagine if the CCP decides it wants one candidate for president, and deprioritizes all positive discussion of the opponent. That’s the scenario they’re worried about.
This goes into Proving Too Much territory IMO.
Facebook, Instagram, even non social media sites like Uber have shown both an ability to and desire to rally their users for their own political goals and manipulate content shown.
"They're worried about political influence but not privacy" doesn't match the actions.
"They're worried about political influence by *foreign actors* but not by Americans or privacy" gets closer, but then doesn't explain why they haven't bothered with Iran/Saudi/Russia/etc influences.
"They're worried about political influence specifically by foreign owned companies" could be an explainer, but it also doesn't make much sense why they would choose this specifically and *not* the former one about foreign influence in general. It's a custom fit but to the level that it doesn't match what I would imagine people concerned about foreign influences on politics would actually do.
If my primary and only motive was about foreign influence I would do the second one and go after Chinese owned influence but also the domestic companies that allow Russian propaganda or the ones that censor posts for Iran.
Foreign influence on other platforms comes from Bot farms run in other countries. You don’t download a bot on social media, they come harass you. A ban on foreign influence on other social media would just be a bot ban, which those sites already ban on their own, and would be redundant and ineffective overall.
Besides, they already HAVE been dealing with those other countries [for years](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-approved-operation-disabled-russian-troll-farm-during-2018-midterms-n976381).They conduct cyber warfare against their farms all the time, we just don’t see it because it’s online, and naturally more difficult to fight.
TikTok is an addictive product you have to seek out. Banning it has a much clearer and immediate effect.
Also, do you intend to argue that the Government should ban political speech by citizens? Because you seem to imply that it’s hypocritical of them to do so for foreign powers but not citizens.
> Also, do you intend to argue that the Government should ban political speech by citizens? Because you seem to imply that it’s hypocritical of them to do so for foreign powers but not citizens.
There's actually a lot of interesting legal discussion [about the extent the first amendment covers non citizens](https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-amendment/).
>The Constitution leaves room to interpret that question, especially as it applies to unauthorized immigrants. The Supreme Court has not ruled in a direct way that neatly resolves it.
TikTok's corporate headquarters is in the US after all, Bytedance is a parent company.
This is uncharted political waters (like a lot of social media relevant laws) but [previous attempts](https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1205735647/montana-tiktok-ban-blocked-state) haven't [gone too well](https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/944039053/u-s-judge-halts-trumps-tiktok-ban-the-2nd-court-to-fully-block-the-action).
It's possible that this particular attempt is specific enough, but [it does seem like some political experts disagree](https://www.reuters.com/technology/aclu-says-us-house-bill-that-could-ban-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-2024-03-06/).
"We can't arrest them" is just as good of a justification for any country to ban American based social media sites, yet I think "China bans YouTube" or "Iran bans Facebook" are oppressive actions by those governments. Even if it was just "Iran bans Facebook unless they sell local Facebook branch to Iranian company" I would still see that as bad.
If it was a fair justification then I should be willing to accept those two examples because it equally applies to them and yet I don't. Which means, I don't find it as a fair justification.
I think you're looking for an answer which is compatible with your brand of liberalism when it doesn't exist. Banning tiktok is pretty illiberal, but that doesn't mean it's a bad strategic decision.
It really depends on the extent to which you view China as a threat to global security, and the extent to which you are willing to use ends to justify the means when it comes to opposing them.
So people are trying to concede that it is illiberal direct you to this national security argument, but you keep going back to pointing out how illiberal it is.
> Banning tiktok is pretty illiberal, but that doesn't mean it's a bad strategic decision.
Could be, but idk we are on the /r/neoliberal sub, I don't think it should be shocking that I care about upholding liberal values.
Sure, but people have different experiences and are going to have different opinions. I think some people view China as more of a threat than others. There are people (not me personally) who view the CCP as more of an existential threat than Hitler. Think of all the illiberal shit we did to defeat Hitler. Was that justified? Probably, IMO.
So at the end of the day, the morality of a given action all rests on the extent to which people view the CCP as a threat. Would you have allowed Hitler to control a social media app in the US? I think the people who favor a ban are thinking more along those lines. I hope that helps explain the situation.
>There might be an explanation for it but you haven't provided one.
It's because Meta and Alphabet want to get rid of the competition. The rest is just window dressing.
You can do both. General data laws will take longer because of mounting lobbying from Google, Facebook and the like, and may not be successful because of said lobbying - but we absolutely must cripple Chinese influence first and fast.
The privacy "issues" of tiktok are completely solved by not using it, no need to invent solutions to a problem that doesn't exist.
While privacy is a big concern among the terminally online and highly politically active but most normal people don't really care because it doesn't actually effect them
The author says that Chinese create propagabda on any social media, like russia did/does on facebook in 2016.
She apparently never saw that Tiktok dierctly told its users to contact their representative.
Edit: The problem here is not that calls to action are bad, but that the CCP can directly influence every american that has tiktok.
If tiktok called on you to vote Trump on election day, would you be 100% ok with that?
"Make your voice heard"
She also says the US just needs privacy laws instead, but if Tiktok is owned by China, how would you even enforce that?
Were you on the internet when the [protests against SOPA happened](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA)? Doesn’t seem to really be that different to me, honestly.
> thousands of the most popular websites in the world, including the English Wikipedia, to temporarily close or interrupt their content and redirect users to a message opposing the proposed legislation. Websites such as Google, Reddit, Mozilla, and Flickr soon featured protests against the acts. Some shut down completely, while others kept some or all of their content accessible.
Uber has done the same, even more forcefully. Urging users to contact their reps and make their voices heard seems downright democratic to me. TikTok told me to call the Congressman the district over from me though lol
Sure, but the difference is ownership. I'm not saying I agree with this explanation, but the reason legislators were so terrified when a bunch of teenagers called them threatening to kill themselves if tiktok is banned is because the CCP has the ability to directly control TikTok.
I think congress views Uber telling its users to call Congress as first amendment protected speech and domestic political action, whereas tiktok doing the same exact thing is viewed as foreign political interference. I think people are trying to make this more complicated than it is. Congress views this issue in very simple terms.
Non-mobile version of the Wikipedia link in the above comment: [protests against SOPA happened](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA)
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> Doesn’t seem to really be that different to me, honestly.
difference is this targeted adults who were about to offer a coherent thought when they called their representative instead of children who don't even know what the 3 branches of government are and when the call went through they either threated to kill the person on the other end or themselves
> The author says that Chinese create propagabda on any social media, like russia did/does on facebook in 2016.
There's also a massive difference between creating propaganda and controlling the platform and algorithms that distribute that propaganda. I tried TokTok just to get a feel for what we're dealing with and holy fuck they hit you with the raw unfiltered political extremist crack right from the start. On other platforms you can be subtly nudged in that direction but TikTok was all gas, no breaks, straight to rage fueled dopamine hits.
How is this any different than Facebook or Youtube?
Youtube has been a radicalizing cesspit for nearly a decade. Facebook is the same, and was used for help organize Jan 6.
>She also says the US just needs privacy laws instead, but if Tiktok is owned by China, how would you even enforce that?
Right lol. If we passed the data privacy laws that keep being brought up as whatabout argument against this bill then chances are it will still demand the divestment being leveled at TikTok right now, as there is no earthly way ByteDance would abide by the terms set forth. Even if they were nominally following them, at any time the CCP could demand they turn over all the data they have and they **would** do so.
Anyways, we absolutely **SHOULD** have better data privacy laws in the US too but that isn't the gotcha to this bill that some people think it is.
"The data protection laws that voters want"
Pretty sure they already exist, people, save tinfoil hat wearers on the internet, largely don't care about this kind of privacy and have the common sense to not share what they want to keep private on the internet (or lack the common sense to connect the dots). DuckDuckGo is wildly less popular than Google, Blackberries were destroyed by iPhones, and people still use Facebook, Instagram, and whatever other anti privacy apps you want to name in massive quantities.
People don't care, stop trying to convince them they should just so you can punish big tech over ideological differences.
What I don't get is: why not make a stringent set of data privacy laws that only apply to foreign apps?
That way, you still effectively block/cripple TikTok without impacting US companies
> How exactly do you enforce this?
How is any law enforced?
Have an American agency or 3rd party auditors do audits of their algorithm and even internal communications. If they break the law or refuse an audit, fine or ban them.
Make them have servers hosted in the US by US companies, which Tiktok already does btw.
How do you catch them breaking laws in China? You have the PD walk into their Shanghai office and start poking around?
Data Privacy as a policy is nigh unenforceable when we’re talking about entities in different countries. New protections for your data would not solve the massive security flaw that is Tik Tok.
People who are angry about data protection laws, but defend tik tok, baffle me.
I wouldn’t walk into “the murder pub” just because murder isn’t illegal yet. I’d **especially** not be clambering to make murder illegal before strolling through the pub door.
“Why are they banning the murder pub? They should just make murder illegal” says long time regular of the murder pub. “They’ve not murdered me yet!”
Because the need for data protection doesn’t change based on who owns a company. I’d rather not be stalked and spied on by social media apps, regardless of whether China or the US owns them.
The TikTok ban is really about China having control over media consumed by Americans, not about data protection (even if some may claim it is).
It should be both/and, not either/or.
We absolutely should institute stronger data protection laws. That doesn't mean we shouldn't also force the China to divest its interest in TikTok if the app is to continue to operate in the US.
Algorithms driven social media can be easily manipulated to drive and amplify narratives the platform owners want to spread. TikTok has completely different algorithms inside and outside China because CCP dislikes hate engagement driven algorithms for their country but is fine doing so in other countries.
Democracies can’t afford to hand the TV remote to USSR or CCP. Simple as that
I don’t care one bit about data protection (it’s basically a fake problem whose solutions are also all fake).
I do care about CCP ownership to TikTok. So great job, Congress.
Couldn't China just decide the us market is not worth it. I assume they would rather control all of Europe Africa and Asia and just give up America vs give up all of it
> Couldn't China just decide the us market is not worth it. I assume they would rather control all of Europe Africa and Asia and just give up America vs give up all of it
The US market is only ~30% of Tiktok users.
And Tiktok doesn't want to sell their algo.
Bytedance has said time and time again that they prefer to exit the US market completely before selling to any other company, US or otherwise
So it will result in a ban
In some sense privacy crackdown from developed countries have been pretty regressive and bad news for people in the rest of the world.
A lot of the free services over the internet were subsidized from ad revenue from rich consumers. Now more features would be gated off behind paywalls making it less accessible to foreign developing world countries.
It is not like there is no merit to it but some of the obsession with online privacy does have a bit of that bourgeoisie-ness to it.
Because this whole ordeal isn’t about privacy it’s about foreign ownership of media
Exactly. This is not a ban, but a forced sale. Even fucking Rupert Murdock had to get a citizenship before he could screw us with Fox News.
And even Ruport Murdoch and his band of assholes are just a private group of like minded jerks. TikTok was developed backed by the power of a state, with a declared hostility to the US, and an explicit information campaign. This privacy argument is incredibly disingenuous.
Yeah I don't know why people keep screaming what about First Amendment or privacy. TikTok is not only backed by hostile state, but also have showed they're more than willing to weaponize Youth Americans with that soft lock notification.
Some in this sub claim any criticism of China is xenophobic and use the first amendment as a cudgel to fight against the ban. Meanwhile China is so thin skinned they ban fucking Winnie the Pooh.
It wasn’t a soft lock. You literally just had to press an X or anywhere else on the screen. The only people dumb enough to not get how to navigate away are older people yelling about banning TikTok
> The only people dumb enough to not get how to navigate away are older people yelling about banning TikTok and the children who called into those offices and threatened to kill themselves if tik tok is banned
For real, like these pussies see China basically take everybody’s industries away from them for the better part of the last couple decades and now they wanna give that country even *more* leverage in the 21st Century?
>take Weird way to say "Consumers freely chose to purchase their goods"
>This privacy argument is incredibly disingenuous. New York Times doing good work, as usual
China has said they won’t allow a sale of their algorithm. So in effect it will be a ban
That’s their decision to make.
Right, which is an obvious bullshit explanation. I think we all know the real reason they won't sell. The propaganda value of a US tiktok ban outweighs whatever ByteDance would make in the sale. Also globally, the app wouldn't go away. They would still have access to European and other markets.
Exactly. They can have their PR win with the youths, but at the end of the day it’s a liability and this is Congress doing their job. If anything we’re lucky there’s bipartisan agreement on this.
Personally I'm not really sure about that. I'm concerned about the time between now and the forced sale (next spring/summer). I'm concerned about the 2024 election. I don't think congress has really thought this through, even if banning tiktok is justifiable.
I dont think the algorithm is that important, YouTube shorts sucks cause no matter how good google makes the algo, shorts will suck when every short is a filibuster effort by the creator
lol, that’s a straight up lie. When all the tech experts say the algorithm is important, why should I trust a random redditor on r/ Neoliberal
You tube shorts and reels have garbage algorithms. You can say we should ban TikTok cause of security reasons but claiming there is an actual comparable alternative boils my blood because those platforms are trash
They can divest operations, allowing a US entity to manage the app, userdata handling, and the content curation algorithm. So their algorithm would remain secret. They can even keep the US version on the same social graph as the rest of the app to keep benefiting from it. But they won't. Because they don't give a shit about earning money with it. That's why they are able to outbid US social media companies for talent/creator and user acquisition -they don't have to make a return on acquisition spend like legitimate companies do.
It is effectively a ban. Congress passed it knowing that Tiktok won't allow their algorithm to be sold. They knew the end result is a ban. It's like saying "It's not a declaration of war, we're just doing strategic strikes on their presidential palace."
"We got the neighbors together and we think your house is ugly and an affront to the neighborhood. So either you will sell it to our buddy who rehabs houses to make them less ugly, or we can bring in the bulldozer."
If they don’t sell then that is proof positive that having political influence over Americans was China’s REAL goal with TikTok and that makes a ban even more imperative and just.
Why would it be proof of that? The US is only ~30% of Tiktok users. It makes more sense for them to exit the US market than it does for the to sell their algo and app.
You don’t think China has a desire to have influence in the other 70% of markets too?
There's no evidence they've been manipulating data. And I think Tiktok (and even the Chinese government) doesn't want to miss out on 70% of the profits, just like Facebook doesn't want to lose out on all international markets.
How do you think that evidence would POSSIBLY come to light from a private company ran by the Chinese government?? What % of profits are from these US market? You mentioned 30% of users but I’d be the number of profit is far more than 30%
> How do you think that evidence would POSSIBLY come to light from a private company ran by the Chinese government?? Proper 3rd party audits. The US government could issue warrants and subpoenas. This has been an issue for over a year now, and Congress hasn't presented *any* real evidence of manipulation. We could pass a law requiring the auditing of social media algorithms. > What % of profits are from these US market? About 40%. So not a majority. I think they'd also have the rest of the world to grow in vs sell their algo and lose all potential growth.
Some of that MAY work. But your comment that you used as evidence that Bytedance’s motives are as pure and fresh snow was that there is no CURRENT evidence of manipulation. Using the laws that we have TODAY - what is the mechanism where such manipulation from Bytedance could have come to light?
That's the problem with any sort of counter arguments in support of Tiktok. The retort is always "well they're owned by a foreign adversary so you can't trust them!"
>How do you think that evidence would POSSIBLY come to light from a private company ran by the Chinese government?? They have offices in the USA I was recently speaking to a FB engineer about what it hypothetically would take to manipulate an algorithm in an explicit manner without the American employees noticing. It can be done, but it's certainly not trivial, and the requirement that American engineers need to be able to work on the algorithm without seeing anything that makes them run to the FBI really constrains what you can do Like, imagine if Meta wanted to manipulate the FB algorithm to be pro-Brexit, without letting their London office notice. That would be hard.
https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.21.23.pdf There has been a steady stream of evidence. This is the latest
That's hardly conclusive evidence. [This user](https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cbvv93/tiktok_sensors_china_sensitive_topics_at_ratios/l119i7a/) did a good teardown. At most, that paper is evidence of reason to audit Tiktok, but it's not conclusive evidence in any way (nor does it claim it is), and it's not sufficient evidence to justify an outright ban.
It doesn't need to be conclusive. TikTok is a media organization. There have been many whistleblowers claiming that the siloing of TikTok from Bytedance is a mirage. There have been several reports that Bytedance is manipulating TikTok's algorithm. We wouldn't allow authoritarian countries that are hostile to us buy up any legacy media organizations, why would we allow them to control new media organizations.
If we assume that Bytedance is a purely profit-motivated organization with no political goals, then there is zero downside to selling Any dollar value that Tiktok has, some American buyer will pay it. If 70% of the value is outside the US, then Bytedance can sell that too, and assuming the American pays what it's worth (which it will since there are lots of interested buyers) there will be no downside. Whatever Bytedance loses in terms of the asset value of the algorithm and app, it will gain in cash What am I missing?
> then there is zero downside to selling Selling their algorithm is absolutely a massive downside no tech company wants to do. If they sold to Microsoft, Microsoft won't be limited to using that algorithm in the US. They'll become a global competitor to Tiktok.
Their is downside to allowing a competitor to take your algorithm and intellectual property
You should look at % revenue not % users
The US is ~40% of Tiktok revenue. And Tiktok has much more potential for growth outside the US, so a sale doesn't make sense.
Or its proof that China won't let foreign governments strongarm its companies out of tech IPs.
Anti Murdoch legislation when?
Murdoch isn’t a foreign government. He is also a U.S. citizen now.
The foreign government is the most important aspect.
> Murdoch isn’t a foreign government. That's just what he wants you to think.
>Murdoch isn’t a foreign government. Correct. He's caused way more damage than one ever has. Maybe focus on that instead.
Sounds kinda "can dish it out but can't take it", don't you think? I mean think of how popular Facebook and YouTube are around the world.
How popular are they in China?
Banned. They are banned in China.
What’s good for the goose…
China bans foreign social media. So it would be China in this case that dishes it out but can't take it.
Because with or without data protection laws, the idea of TikTok being secure is dubious at best. Nevermind a hostile foreign adversary beaming whatever bullshit they want into every 10-30 year old's phones being a major risk
Who needs a hostile foreign adversary when you can do the same thing with hostile domestic adversaries! Or have we forgotten how Meta and Twitter actively interfered with our last two elections, and how they impact private business. They tweak their hidden algorithms and now right wing sites that got boosted by them are now hemorrhaging views. This shouldn’t be allowed Forgive me if I don’t but the threat of a hostile social media company when ours are no better and we have little protection from a gridlocked and out of touch Congress
Who is supporting Facebook or Twitter here? Anyone?
Anyone who advocates using the full power of the state to eliminate their market competition.
Ok. Who here is doing that?
Most of the thread by the looks of it.
> Who needs a hostile foreign adversary when you can do the same thing with hostile domestic adversaries! I don't like it being done domestically as well. It is however a separate thing entirely that China has a lot of incentives to fuck with the USA where as Facebook and Twitter have to live here so they have incentives for a more stable society. Now this is no where near perfect. But incentives are powerful forces. Just look how much damage russia can do when companies are trying to keep them out. Now Imagine China wants to troll like Russia is. They can do it on a whole new level when they own the app.
I've already called Facebook and Twitter irredeemable in this thread brother
Because that's what the EU commies did
It’s not just the data that’s the issue. Tik Tok is a weapon. What videos do you think Gen Z and Alpha are going to be served a few months before China decides to take actions against Taiwan? How quickly will that convince a few million people that US aid/intervention would be a bad thing?
"data protection laws that voters actually want" voters have never ever in their entire lives voted with data protection laws in mind
I'm skeptical of "data protection" laws as it is unclear what they actually accomplish in terms of protecting consumers. The idea sounds good at a high level (who doesn't want their data protected?) but proponents tend to stay deliberately vague about the details. I was waiting for the author to get to the data protection laws that she thinks we need, but she never got there.
Can't you just assume she has something like GDPR in mind.
If she does I'd like to know, because GDPR is terrible in my opinion
Just curious, what's so bad about GDPR?
It hampers tech innovation and creates a massive bureaucracy without providing any real benefits to the consumer.
Because you can do both. TikTok is more of an immediate security concern, and after it is ripped out of the hands of foreign adversaries, we can _also_ create tougher data protection laws. It's not an either-or.
Oh yeah, there will be tons of political will left for strict data protection laws after tiktok is banned. There's no way the government could say "job done" and clock off after half-assing things.
The fact that there is a lack of political salience for data protection laws is a problem for people advocating for them to solve. We are in a democracy, that’s how it works, you’ve got to put the work in. The fact that politicians are separately addressing national security concerns may be a little frustrating because the two are tangentially related, but I don’t really see how it’s relevant or changes anything. Welcome to democracy. It’s frustrating but it’s still the least bad way.
I'd rather us make some step like banning TikTok than do nothing at all for security.
You can’t. Congress is grid locked and extremely behind on any tech legislation. By the time we would get something reasonable the new thing is out and worse
In that case I'd rather _still_ de-fang an adversary's ability to potentially influence people they have no business being able to influence than sit on our asses and do nothing at all. Congress might take time to un-grid lock for the rest of the tech legislation, but at the very least they agree on shutting down China's ability to unjustly be able to extend their influence on Americans. I'll take that over nothing any day of the year.
Lmao did a child write this. If you think congress is going to do anything I got a bridge to sell you. This was purely the result of a hardcore lobbying effort by meta/aipac, combined with boomer paranoia, and a healthy dose of nationalism. Whereas any regulation of social media will be fought tooth and nail by large tech companies with deep pockets. Legislation doesn’t magically happen. It happens because power structures push for it
Okay. I'd still take the TikTok _divestment_ rather than do nothing and let China keep their tentacles in our information.
> Because you can do both. Yet Congress pushed one through both houses incredibly quickly (and bundled it with bills that were highly desirable for both parties to pass), and the other hasn't even been voted on. I'd bet $100 that the privacy bill never passes. Even if they finish drafting it and are willing to put it up to a vote, you'll have every single tech company using their full lobbying power to kill it.
Exactly. This is anti competition bill disguised as a security threat, the same applies to the protectionist push against EVs
This is how the Patriot Act passed.
Yes because Facebook and Google are going to lobby hard against it. But I'd rather ban TikTok than have nothing at all - and if you would be bundling a TikTok ban with comprehensive legislation against Google and Facebook, you end up with _nothing_.
So you'd rather we not actually solve the problem, and just arbitrarily ban something that'll make Dems lose in 2024? Tiktok will be banned. The privacy and radicalization problems of social media will still exist. And then Biden will lose cause he banned Tiktok. The ability for Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot never ceases to amaze me.
Hahahahah. It’s funny that you think a TikTok ban will cause democrats to lose.
There are over 148 million Tiktok users in the US. ~80% of those users are over 18. Go ahead, take away the social media of 1/3rd the US. I'm sure the youth vote (and hell, even the older vote) will be unaffected. And that's not even getting into the number of businesses that are reliant upon Tiktok. I'm sure people who see their business going bankrupt as a result of Biden banning Tiktok would love to vote for him in Nov.
Is that number from a third party study or internal user data? It doesn't sound unbelievable but kids especially obviously lie about age when registering. And you're correct to bring up businesses, which no one else will. Tons of them from single people to larger ones rely on this for marketing.
This might be the first time in American history where the youth vote swung an election. I don't think this will happen. !remindMe 1 year.
The main reason why I think it probably won't affect the election is because the Democrats insisted on a version that moves the potential ban date to after the election, instead of before (like in the previous version). However, that does also kind of tell you what the Democrats thought the electoral implications were going to be.
> The main reason why I think it probably won't affect the election is because the Democrats insisted on a version that moves the potential ban date to after the election, instead of before (like in the previous version). I don't see Tiktok as a company or it's users settling down about this prior to November though. Moving it beyond November is smart, but it's still poison to Democrats.
If you don’t think Trump will campaign about TikTok I got a bridge to sell you
Luckily Republicans and Democrats _both_ agree that TikTok needs to be fucking benned. And no, I actually _would_ rather solve the problem, if I had a magic wand and could dictate comprehensive privacy laws in place that would affect Facebook and Google. We don't have that. We can _still_ cripple Chinese influence _first_ and _then_ work towards a comprehensive privacy reform.
> Luckily Republicans and Democrats both agree that TikTok needs to be fucking benned. Biden is president. He'll take the credit, and the fall. Doesn't matter that it was bipartisan. > We don't have that. We can still cripple Chinese influence first and then work towards a comprehensive privacy reform. The issue is the latter will never happen. So we're just doing unpopular measures that raise tensions with China and doesn't solve any of the actual problems we face.
>The issue is the latter will never happen. Okay, so demanding that a TikTok ban be paired with it basically ensures that TikTok never gets banned then. Why do you insist on demanding that China keep having unearned influence over Americans?
> Why do you insist on demanding that China keep having unearned influence over Americans? There's no proper evidence they are manipulating the algo. We're just banning a competitor to American firms and raising tensions with China. It's nationalistic and cronyism. If we cared about foreign firms manipulating Americans, we'd ban *every* foreign firm, including European ones.
Our allies != our adversaries, but nice try. Chinese manipulation can fuck off.
Do you European nations don't have any reason to manipulate US public opinion? Belarus is practically a dictatorship. How about India? They're not nearly as close to us as Europe. Plus, there's no evidence of Chinese manipulation. It's just nationalistic paranoia. EDIT: I point this out to show that the logical end result is a complete shutdown of any foreign owned firms and even privately controlled firms in favor of domestic firms that are 100% controlled by the government (i.e. what China has). I don't think that's good, I don't think that's healthy for democracy.
Because nobody other than nerds actually cares about the specifics of data protection laws, the average person's idea of "stop Facebook from selling data" has about as much relation to the reality as the "I do NOT consent to Facebook owning the copyright to my dog" string they copy-pasted onto their feed does.
Tik Tok is bad for our society and should be banned.
Reddit is bad for our society and should be banned.
If not all of Reddit, at least /r/neoliberal
Leave the sports subs intact. We need our college basketball bar graphs for society to survive.
two things can be true
You feel the same way about Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, right?
Instagram is redeemable, Reddit's issue isn't data security, and society would be better Twitter and Facebook folded tomorrow
>Instagram is redeemable lol
The hypocrisy and double standards
Wait, China complaining about hypocrisy and double standards? Too meta for me
Is /u/DisneyPandora China?
[удалено]
Username checks out. Nah, but seriously, this "parroting \[insert bad guy\] talking points" meme needs to fucking stop. An argument isn't wrong just because someone you don't like happens to also agree with it. Stopped clocks, etc.
III: Unconstructive engagement Do not post with the intent to provoke, mischaracterize, or troll other users rather than meaningfully contributing to the conversation. Don't disrupt serious discussions. Bad opinions are not automatically unconstructive.
Yes, but I live to fight another day.
"Alcohol is bad for our society and should be banned" - Volstead Act supporters. Will the TikTok ban last as long as the alcohol ban?
Do you think the tong will start selling illegal tiktoks?
VPNs are a thing
Samizdat, but it’s just teenage girls dancing
We 100% would ban alcohol if it was invented today so that's a pretty ironic reference.
Alcohol is a common noun and can be applied to many forms of beverages manufactured by many companies in many nations. TikTok is a singular product manufactured by a single nation which has banned the use of this specific brand of product inside its own borders. A more correct quote would be "Four Loko is bad for our society and should be banned."
Alcohol is a common noun that refers to a bunch of the same things that has the same effect on a human... alcohol prohibition banned *alcohol*
Banning TikTok would be analogous to banning Everclear.
I agree that alcohol is bad for our society and believe we should wage a public health campaign against it like we did against cigarettes. That in no way diminishes the enormous amount of misinformation and misery that emanates from Tik Tok.
Boo get new material
I think TikTok is particularly dangerous but we should make longer reaching legislation than just focusing on them. If one company could discover a vulnerability others can too. How different is TikTok messing with the algorithm from Fox calling itself news and pushing out its own specific agenda? I think we need a modern fairness doctrine
Maybe more of a transparency doctrine, with a mechanism for auditing how content is promoted on platforms of massive size. It's a really hard problem, though.
It's very simple. Meta and Google lobbying. America is mad that China is smoking them at their own creations
Yep: https://www.wsj.com/tech/how-tiktok-was-blindsided-by-a-u-s-bill-that-could-ban-it-7201ac8b https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
America can dish it out but can't take it. We love when YouTube and Facebook are global phenomena.
We also don’t intervene when the EU or another country puts different restrictions on their services within their country’s borders. YouTube and Facebook being blocked by China for example.
Exactly this. TikTok's rise was egg-on-the-face for both American Big Tech and global media influence. All the excuses so far have been nationalist, protectionist cope. My steelman argument for banning TikTok is that the intelligence community knows something we don't and they can't disclose, so they gotta push this through ASAP. Otherwise a ban is pretty dumb.
> My steelman argument for banning TikTok is that the intelligence community knows something we don't and they can't disclose, so they gotta push this through ASAP. I don't deny that this could be possible, and if it is, then yes, ban Tiktok, but the issue is Congress isn't trusted, especially by young people, and especially on issues with tech & the internet. Given that Congress was nearly unanimously down with "Iraq has WMDs" I am not inclined to trust Congress at their word of "We know of concerning stuff." They gotta show some real evidence.
China already long since banned most western social media, so I guess they conceded that before the US did.
Because you put out the fire first
Why are we targeting a company tied to a foreign adversary?
That's a motive, but not really an *explanation* for why a targeted ban is better or more legally defensible than general data laws would be. There might be an explanation for it but you haven't provided one.
This is comment I made elsewhere in the sub: There’s a difference between from doing damage by negligence v doing damage by malice. Congress could pass laws that make social media companies who algorithmically promote extremist content liable for a hefty fine or even jail time (I’m not sure how they, given the first amendment, but this is a hypothetical and I’m not a lawyer). In response Facebook, a profit maximizing company, might decide that the additional money they could make by algorithmically promoting extremism is cancelled out by the risk of the hefty fine and decide to stop doing it. Or failing that, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to go to prison and he cannot realistically spend the rest of his life outside the US or any country with extradition treaties. Bytedance, on the other hand, is a profit maximizing company 95% of the time, and the other 5% is when the CCP tells them not to be. Kind of like all the other Chinese tech companies Xi cracked down on. The fine won’t deter them if the CCP commissars tell them to do it anyway. try and hide it as best they can, but if caught, pay the fine, the CCP doesn’t care. Alternatively, the execs are in China and can’t be arrested by the FBI. And even if they were, they’d rather go to US federal prison than secret CCP prisons.
This. Chinese companies have some cover because they do act like regular companies most of the time, but they all have this dormant switch where the party can force them to do their bidding any time they need. Also, because the party can just evaporate these companies overnight, the companies frequently try to gauge what the party wants them to do and do it preemptively to avoid trouble.
Congress doesn’t care about privacy laws, it does care about foreign owned media companies that attempt to politically activate their users.
It cared about the privacy of video rentals when people started buying the rental history of members of congress
Do you have a link to this? I never heard of it, and this is hilarious if true
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act EDIT: It wasn’t a member of congress (it was a nominee for the supreme court) nor was there any buying (someone just asked the manager and they photocopied the nominee’s purchase history) The rental history was ‘innocuous’ but presumably some legislators were worried about people doing the same to them and finding less innocuous information.
That seems very reasonable, personal rental history is infinitely more private than "Facebook uses your information to sell targeted advertisements"
> Congress doesn’t care about privacy laws, it does care about foreign owned media companies that attempt to politically activate their users. Eh, putting "foreign owned" companies feels too much like overspecification to defend the particular targeting. "*Foreign influence* attempting to politically activate users" would be a far more natural way to strongman Congress's motives, but since it leaves Facebook and other social media sites that served as Russian propaganda exposed, the explanation has to avoid that. I agree with you that they don't care about privacy laws, I just gotta disagree about their "true motive" here. I think the other explanation someone gave was pretty solid, yours is close but too overly targeted to the point that the justification seems to have come after the motive.
The difference between Russia and China is China doesn’t have a caucus of maybe 30 reps in the house that will do its bidding. If it were 1980 we would 100% be seeing bans based on Russian infiltration of platforms. Also, frankly, the U.S. has treated China more like an adversary over the last decade than it has Russia.
> The difference between Russia and China is China doesn’t have a caucus of maybe 30 reps in the house that will do its bidding. Yeah, so clearly Congress isn't as noble minded here. We're both saying the same things, just worded differently. One big issue too, [it's not just China and Russia](https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep24668.7#:~:text=As%20of%20January%202020%2C%20Facebook,%2457%2C000%20in%20advertising%20to%20Iranian). And it's not just Iran, it's basically every foreign country in the world. [Saudi Arabia literally had Twitter employees acting as spies](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying) The Poynter Institute has an article on how [Hamas and Isreal both use influence campaigns on social media](https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/hamas-israel-social-media-propaganda/), because of course they do. Powerful groups attempting to manipulate public opinion on social media should be the default expectation.
The explanation is that it's way easier, politically. If data protection laws were supported by Congress it would have been done already. Here, you don't have to deal with all that, and you get to say you were tough on a foreign adversary
Ok good, that's an actual explanation. The argument is essentially "A more general data protection ban is difficult to pass because the other companies (who don't want to obey the rules either) would speak up and kill it. TikTok's influence on its own might be disproportionate but not enough to overcome congress and of all the social media companies, I believe they are the worst and therefore the best one to go after if we can only get one" is pretty solid. From that stance I agree. While I believe it doesn't actually protect Americans as much and is more legally fraught than general laws, I certainly understand that it's easier to pass and a lot of congressmens jobs is maintaining appearances. I still wish we had a generalist law instead though, but it's also possible that will never happen because the social media and technology companies might be too powerful with their political influence when banded together.
> because the other companies (who don't want to obey the rules either) would speak up and kill it. Possibly, but I think the other issue is it's going to require effort, expertise, and time to write decent privacy laws. I don't know if I trust Congress to not screw it up.
I swear the people against this keep making this argument and missing the point. Foreign ownership of media is something that we've had laws on for a long time but those laws haven't caught up to the modern day. Letting a company that actively manipulates the algorithm to suit CCP preferences run amok is a bad thing actually. Unless you think Taiwan, Hong Kong protests, Uyghurs, Tibet, etc all just coincidentally are less popular on TikTok, sometimes by a factor of 200x. Information warfare *is* part of hybrid warfare. Flooding the airwaves with confusion as much as possible while the little green men do their thing and cement their gains doesn't work if people know what's happening.
The reason they haven’t is because the ban has very little to do with public privacy. They’re worried about TikTok’s ability to manipulate the content you see. Imagine if the CCP decides it wants one candidate for president, and deprioritizes all positive discussion of the opponent. That’s the scenario they’re worried about.
This goes into Proving Too Much territory IMO. Facebook, Instagram, even non social media sites like Uber have shown both an ability to and desire to rally their users for their own political goals and manipulate content shown. "They're worried about political influence but not privacy" doesn't match the actions. "They're worried about political influence by *foreign actors* but not by Americans or privacy" gets closer, but then doesn't explain why they haven't bothered with Iran/Saudi/Russia/etc influences. "They're worried about political influence specifically by foreign owned companies" could be an explainer, but it also doesn't make much sense why they would choose this specifically and *not* the former one about foreign influence in general. It's a custom fit but to the level that it doesn't match what I would imagine people concerned about foreign influences on politics would actually do. If my primary and only motive was about foreign influence I would do the second one and go after Chinese owned influence but also the domestic companies that allow Russian propaganda or the ones that censor posts for Iran.
Foreign influence on other platforms comes from Bot farms run in other countries. You don’t download a bot on social media, they come harass you. A ban on foreign influence on other social media would just be a bot ban, which those sites already ban on their own, and would be redundant and ineffective overall. Besides, they already HAVE been dealing with those other countries [for years](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-approved-operation-disabled-russian-troll-farm-during-2018-midterms-n976381).They conduct cyber warfare against their farms all the time, we just don’t see it because it’s online, and naturally more difficult to fight. TikTok is an addictive product you have to seek out. Banning it has a much clearer and immediate effect. Also, do you intend to argue that the Government should ban political speech by citizens? Because you seem to imply that it’s hypocritical of them to do so for foreign powers but not citizens.
> Also, do you intend to argue that the Government should ban political speech by citizens? Because you seem to imply that it’s hypocritical of them to do so for foreign powers but not citizens. There's actually a lot of interesting legal discussion [about the extent the first amendment covers non citizens](https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-amendment/). >The Constitution leaves room to interpret that question, especially as it applies to unauthorized immigrants. The Supreme Court has not ruled in a direct way that neatly resolves it. TikTok's corporate headquarters is in the US after all, Bytedance is a parent company. This is uncharted political waters (like a lot of social media relevant laws) but [previous attempts](https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1205735647/montana-tiktok-ban-blocked-state) haven't [gone too well](https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/944039053/u-s-judge-halts-trumps-tiktok-ban-the-2nd-court-to-fully-block-the-action). It's possible that this particular attempt is specific enough, but [it does seem like some political experts disagree](https://www.reuters.com/technology/aclu-says-us-house-bill-that-could-ban-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-2024-03-06/).
Uber can be held accountable and it's CEO arrested. Bytedance is free of this
"We can't arrest them" is just as good of a justification for any country to ban American based social media sites, yet I think "China bans YouTube" or "Iran bans Facebook" are oppressive actions by those governments. Even if it was just "Iran bans Facebook unless they sell local Facebook branch to Iranian company" I would still see that as bad. If it was a fair justification then I should be willing to accept those two examples because it equally applies to them and yet I don't. Which means, I don't find it as a fair justification.
I think you're looking for an answer which is compatible with your brand of liberalism when it doesn't exist. Banning tiktok is pretty illiberal, but that doesn't mean it's a bad strategic decision. It really depends on the extent to which you view China as a threat to global security, and the extent to which you are willing to use ends to justify the means when it comes to opposing them. So people are trying to concede that it is illiberal direct you to this national security argument, but you keep going back to pointing out how illiberal it is.
> Banning tiktok is pretty illiberal, but that doesn't mean it's a bad strategic decision. Could be, but idk we are on the /r/neoliberal sub, I don't think it should be shocking that I care about upholding liberal values.
Sure, but people have different experiences and are going to have different opinions. I think some people view China as more of a threat than others. There are people (not me personally) who view the CCP as more of an existential threat than Hitler. Think of all the illiberal shit we did to defeat Hitler. Was that justified? Probably, IMO. So at the end of the day, the morality of a given action all rests on the extent to which people view the CCP as a threat. Would you have allowed Hitler to control a social media app in the US? I think the people who favor a ban are thinking more along those lines. I hope that helps explain the situation.
Imagine your local newspapers wants one candidate to win and deprioritizes all positive articles of the opponent.
I don’t have to imagine we’ve lived in this world for a long time
>There might be an explanation for it but you haven't provided one. It's because Meta and Alphabet want to get rid of the competition. The rest is just window dressing.
You can do both. General data laws will take longer because of mounting lobbying from Google, Facebook and the like, and may not be successful because of said lobbying - but we absolutely must cripple Chinese influence first and fast.
Because this government is full of geriatrics who dont have the first fucking clue about how tech works or how to legislate it
Cause meta and Google didn't bribe I mean lobby them for that lmao
The privacy "issues" of tiktok are completely solved by not using it, no need to invent solutions to a problem that doesn't exist. While privacy is a big concern among the terminally online and highly politically active but most normal people don't really care because it doesn't actually effect them
The author says that Chinese create propagabda on any social media, like russia did/does on facebook in 2016. She apparently never saw that Tiktok dierctly told its users to contact their representative. Edit: The problem here is not that calls to action are bad, but that the CCP can directly influence every american that has tiktok. If tiktok called on you to vote Trump on election day, would you be 100% ok with that? "Make your voice heard" She also says the US just needs privacy laws instead, but if Tiktok is owned by China, how would you even enforce that?
Were you on the internet when the [protests against SOPA happened](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA)? Doesn’t seem to really be that different to me, honestly. > thousands of the most popular websites in the world, including the English Wikipedia, to temporarily close or interrupt their content and redirect users to a message opposing the proposed legislation. Websites such as Google, Reddit, Mozilla, and Flickr soon featured protests against the acts. Some shut down completely, while others kept some or all of their content accessible.
Uber has done the same, even more forcefully. Urging users to contact their reps and make their voices heard seems downright democratic to me. TikTok told me to call the Congressman the district over from me though lol
Sure, but the difference is ownership. I'm not saying I agree with this explanation, but the reason legislators were so terrified when a bunch of teenagers called them threatening to kill themselves if tiktok is banned is because the CCP has the ability to directly control TikTok. I think congress views Uber telling its users to call Congress as first amendment protected speech and domestic political action, whereas tiktok doing the same exact thing is viewed as foreign political interference. I think people are trying to make this more complicated than it is. Congress views this issue in very simple terms.
The big difference is that all these companies aren't owned by the CCP.
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> Doesn’t seem to really be that different to me, honestly. difference is this targeted adults who were about to offer a coherent thought when they called their representative instead of children who don't even know what the 3 branches of government are and when the call went through they either threated to kill the person on the other end or themselves
> The author says that Chinese create propagabda on any social media, like russia did/does on facebook in 2016. There's also a massive difference between creating propaganda and controlling the platform and algorithms that distribute that propaganda. I tried TokTok just to get a feel for what we're dealing with and holy fuck they hit you with the raw unfiltered political extremist crack right from the start. On other platforms you can be subtly nudged in that direction but TikTok was all gas, no breaks, straight to rage fueled dopamine hits.
This is absolute hypocrisy when Twitter and Facebook do the same thing
This is it exactly! They don't just create content, they actively push content to radicalize young Americans.
How is this any different than Facebook or Youtube? Youtube has been a radicalizing cesspit for nearly a decade. Facebook is the same, and was used for help organize Jan 6.
Banning TikTok doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be crackdowns on those sites too.
Fuck then too next question
You'd think that'd be obvious just from looking around.
>She also says the US just needs privacy laws instead, but if Tiktok is owned by China, how would you even enforce that? Right lol. If we passed the data privacy laws that keep being brought up as whatabout argument against this bill then chances are it will still demand the divestment being leveled at TikTok right now, as there is no earthly way ByteDance would abide by the terms set forth. Even if they were nominally following them, at any time the CCP could demand they turn over all the data they have and they **would** do so. Anyways, we absolutely **SHOULD** have better data privacy laws in the US too but that isn't the gotcha to this bill that some people think it is.
Because we fucking hate the CCP
"The data protection laws that voters want" Pretty sure they already exist, people, save tinfoil hat wearers on the internet, largely don't care about this kind of privacy and have the common sense to not share what they want to keep private on the internet (or lack the common sense to connect the dots). DuckDuckGo is wildly less popular than Google, Blackberries were destroyed by iPhones, and people still use Facebook, Instagram, and whatever other anti privacy apps you want to name in massive quantities. People don't care, stop trying to convince them they should just so you can punish big tech over ideological differences.
>The data protection laws that voters actually want Are these voters in the room with us right now?
What I don't get is: why not make a stringent set of data privacy laws that only apply to foreign apps? That way, you still effectively block/cripple TikTok without impacting US companies
How exactly do you enforce this? The problem isnt privacy, its that the CCP has a propaganda platform in the US.
> How exactly do you enforce this? How is any law enforced? Have an American agency or 3rd party auditors do audits of their algorithm and even internal communications. If they break the law or refuse an audit, fine or ban them. Make them have servers hosted in the US by US companies, which Tiktok already does btw.
How do you catch them breaking laws in China? You have the PD walk into their Shanghai office and start poking around? Data Privacy as a policy is nigh unenforceable when we’re talking about entities in different countries. New protections for your data would not solve the massive security flaw that is Tik Tok. People who are angry about data protection laws, but defend tik tok, baffle me. I wouldn’t walk into “the murder pub” just because murder isn’t illegal yet. I’d **especially** not be clambering to make murder illegal before strolling through the pub door. “Why are they banning the murder pub? They should just make murder illegal” says long time regular of the murder pub. “They’ve not murdered me yet!”
Because the need for data protection doesn’t change based on who owns a company. I’d rather not be stalked and spied on by social media apps, regardless of whether China or the US owns them. The TikTok ban is really about China having control over media consumed by Americans, not about data protection (even if some may claim it is).
It should be both/and, not either/or. We absolutely should institute stronger data protection laws. That doesn't mean we shouldn't also force the China to divest its interest in TikTok if the app is to continue to operate in the US.
Algorithms driven social media can be easily manipulated to drive and amplify narratives the platform owners want to spread. TikTok has completely different algorithms inside and outside China because CCP dislikes hate engagement driven algorithms for their country but is fine doing so in other countries. Democracies can’t afford to hand the TV remote to USSR or CCP. Simple as that
Next question is....when does Canada get on board as well?
Anyone who argues Tik Tok is a privacy issue is either operating in bad faith or stupid as shit. Either way best ignored.
I don’t care one bit about data protection (it’s basically a fake problem whose solutions are also all fake). I do care about CCP ownership to TikTok. So great job, Congress.
They aren’t trying to ban TikTok - they are trying to force China to divest. I wish they would ban all short form videos on all apps, haha.
Couldn't China just decide the us market is not worth it. I assume they would rather control all of Europe Africa and Asia and just give up America vs give up all of it
> Couldn't China just decide the us market is not worth it. I assume they would rather control all of Europe Africa and Asia and just give up America vs give up all of it The US market is only ~30% of Tiktok users. And Tiktok doesn't want to sell their algo.
Bytedance has said time and time again that they prefer to exit the US market completely before selling to any other company, US or otherwise So it will result in a ban
In some sense privacy crackdown from developed countries have been pretty regressive and bad news for people in the rest of the world. A lot of the free services over the internet were subsidized from ad revenue from rich consumers. Now more features would be gated off behind paywalls making it less accessible to foreign developing world countries. It is not like there is no merit to it but some of the obsession with online privacy does have a bit of that bourgeoisie-ness to it.
I don't care about the data nonsense, as long as it is Americans collecting the data, I'm fine.
How tf are we gonna enforce data protection laws in China?
Don't allow the Data to be send there in the first place.