Notably the ban doesn’t kick in until after the election, after which it may not even be Biden’s problem. Maybe ByteDance will shut it down sooner. Maybe the next administration won’t follow through with the ban. 🤷
It's a piss poor attempt to try control tiktok and ensure they play along. They don't really want it banned, they just want to control the flow of information and it's absolutely destroying the illusion of the first amendment!
Well yeah, but saying this was all on democrats isn't true, either. A democratic signed it, but an entire group of Democrats and Republicans are the reason it exists. Besides, I'm ok with the ban. A lot of people are actually, so technically, yeah it will affect who we vote for haha
Maybe in your circles people are okay with banning a social media company due to perceived 'spying', but in reality we know why the blues/reds want to ban it.
People in my circles are fighting and helping share why these bans are bad for our society and free speech in general.
I hope that helps you see a different view from what you are used to!
Well, unless there’s a credible national security angle that’s being kept confidential. I kind of suspect there is, since Trump tried to push through similar legislation, but worded it so badly that it never got out of debate… and the likes of Wyden voted for it even while they said it was the wrong legislation to solve the problem.
Usually it’s about economics. But in this case, it may actually be true.
Generally, I consider real natsec issues to be things they can’t tell the public. So when I see privacy minded reps joining in with reps from both side of the aisle, I’m willing to lend a bit of credence to a security angle.
Assuming it’s not just the US being upset that some other autocratic government is controlling the medium du jour.
If this was an actual national security threat, why would they give them so long to sell? In fact, why even try to buy it? Why not just ban it immediately? Furthermore, why haven't they implemented Biden's executive order to stop China from buying data from Meta or Alphabet? And why haven't they given us any proof of an actual national security threat?
Their actual behavior betrays the truth, just like you said. It's clear this is just national business interests and censorship.
According to the world map in this link the countries that have banned it outright are: North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Krzykstan, India, Nepal, and Somalia.
(For anyone else like me who has trouble with unlabeled maps).
It accomplishes nothing besides pissing people off!
It denies the CCP mainline media access to our society, with which they can sow division. Arguably a lot of what's happening on campuses now is thanks to TikTok.
That they refuse to sell tells me that their investment in this company is not about profit.
The CPC can just buy data from a different broker. You think Alphabet or Meta are loyal to American interests?
Also, TikTok won't be banned for months, so it won't change the campus protests at all. In fact it'll probably piss the protesters off even more, it's very obvious government censorship.
Also also, there's zero proof TikTok is promoting pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content. That's just what is naturally popular, the reality is that all the other social media companies are suppressing pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content. That's it.
Facebook absolutely would sell your info to foreign governments, however I'm not convinced Google would.
I know Google harvests a shitton of data and uses it for advertising, but that's ironically why I think they probably wouldn't actually sell it. Because Google owns a massive advertising company, it's in their best interests to keep the data they collect so that other companies can't pop up and use the data themselves.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, the bill isn't specifically about tiktok but instead covers the sale of personal data to foreign countries in general. It's just that it's worded in a way that tiktok is the obvious target. As such, I'm not sure an American company could sell their customer's info to China; at least not without laundering it through other companies first.
However, all of that said, I'm not trying to defend the bill, tiktok, Google or Facebook. I don't like any of those companies and while I think the concept of the bill is good, it's very obviously focused on tiktok and, like you and others have pointed out, does nothing about the data collection that American companies do.
The law only prohibits the operations of so-called "foreign adversary controlled applications" i.e. companies with Chinese investors.
I'm pretty sure if TikTok was controlled by American investors and sold data to China it would be fine - although there's also an executive action that bans selling data to foreign adversaries, it also hasn't actually been implemented by regulators and is pretty simple to work around anyway since a third-party can just buy data from American companies and then sell it to China.
I think a bill like this that targeted all companies that collect data would be good.
Targeting "foreign adversary controlled applications" doesn't really help anyone.
Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big DealOn the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
Which is the same as a vote for a dictator. And that is super cool if you are looking forward to Project 2025, and selling out loved ones so they can be put in camps as political prisoners.
Mathematician here, I can answer this. Equivalence relations are symmetric, so if staying home is a vote for Trump then showing up to vote for Trump is the same as staying home on election day.
That doesn't make any sense. The idea that staying home could be a vote for Biden seems pretty silly on its face. If that were true, there wouldn't be any point in going out to vote for him, because the majority (or at least a plurality) of the country stays home regardless. He'd win in a landslide.
Why is it that staying home is a vote for Trump but it isn't a vote for Biden. Doesn't that seem strange to you?
And you're right, it doesn't make any sense, and that applies to staying home being a vote for Trump. The plurality of the country stays home, so Trump should win in a landslide, right? Yet he lost once. This seems like a glaring error in the idea that a protest vote is a vote for Trump.
It doesn't seem strange at all. I have never once heard someone suggest that staying home is a vote for Biden, but it's pretty well agreed upon that not voting is a vote for Trump.
...so Trump should win in a landslide, right? Yet he lost once. This seems like a glaring error in the idea that a protest vote is a vote for Trump.
I'm not following your logic here. Not voting, or actually voting for Trump both work in his favor because his base is going to vote for him no matter what. You would only be hurting the side that wants us to continue to have future elections. But at the end of the day if you can look in the mirror and be ok with selling out democracy more power to ya.
They just passed a fascist bipartisan bill to censor TikTok because it was showing the truth about Gaza and because it was disrupting the preexisting media cartel that already exists in the US. This was part of a larger fascist foreign aid package meant to help Israel carry out its genocide and prolong the war in Ukraine instead of seek a peace deal and help provoke a war in Taiwan by arming them to the teeth and pushing us to fucking WW3. By voting for them you are making it clear that they can do anything they want to you and you'll beg for more.
I already decided not to vote for genocide Joe a while ago. If I'm going to vote at all, I'm going to vote the way Bushnell did.
But at the end of the day if you can look in the mirror and be ok with selling out democracy more power to ya.
Brotherman I want Amerika to collapse. You think I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror? I already can't any day I feel like I've sold out to you settlers; selling you out to a better steward would probably be the most tacit sense of relief I've felt in my ENTIRE LIFE.
Have you thought maybe the democrats themselves own some responsibility for the jeopardy the election is in? Maybe banning one of the most popular social media sites right before an election was a bad move?
Pretty sure that funding, aiding and abetting a genocide while denying there's money for anything that benefits their own citizens is what's losing the democrats support.
It had votes/support from both sides. And giving away democracy because you're upset about a social media site seems like a bad take. Imagine telling future generations you traded the country's democracy because you were mad at them because they took away your short video sites.
You can't fear monger about "the end of democracy" every election while also insisting that everyone has to vote for your guy, regardless of him being an antidemocratic, genocidal ghoul.
Can you not comprehend what i said? Tiktok is more popular with younger people, and younger people have historically voted more for democrats. Of course republicans would help democrats shoot themselves in the foot here. How can you see this and not give any responsibility to the democrats?