EFF sent out a campaign to their mailing list this morning about how banning it is a bad move for free speech and a better option would be to create actual data privacy laws that companies have to follow to do business in the US, but of course that would just put more money in politicians pockets to ensure it never sees the light of day.
House likely to pass a bill that could ban TikTok, sending it to the Senate
Submitted 9 months ago by admin@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
Comments
Manalith@midwest.social 9 months ago
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
everybody is pro capitalism until someone else beats them.
slappy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
[deleted]Alice@beehaw.org 9 months ago
It’s just part of the US government’s constant obsession with controlling the internet. They managed to make it sound legit this time due to anxiety around the CCP, but it’s not going to end at TikTok.
emptyfish@beehaw.org 9 months ago
I don’t use the platform so I’m not as familiar to if this is general nationalist issue or about specific practices in TikTok. I do think this is a slippery slope, though. Unfortunately our elected officials are just too far behind on Technology to look at the broader issue. This might pass simply because they can slap “not US = bad” on their campaign bus. It will boost VPN usage and/or drive people to less mature and likely even less privacy concerned services.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 9 months ago
As a conservative I generally hate the idea of Chinese software collecting all our national selfie secrets, but I hate the idea of banning companies even more.
If there’s a problem about national security as it relates to Chinese social media, we need to address that with education not banning apps.
NoOnesLazyInLazyTown@beehaw.org 9 months ago
The people that complain that anything from China is a spyware product are the very same people that use sites like Facebook and Google, that are technically American/Western spyware.
I have a feeling that this was never about the CCP and that it is all racially-motivated.
lilmann@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Basically since Tik Tok launched, literally all I’ve ever seen from everyone regardless of age or political affiliation is that it needs to be blocked since it’s a data mining machine for the CCP. Now that it’s actually happening, everyone is saying the opposite, that we need to keep it, even though the data mining for the CCP is still happening. What the fuck is actually going on?
megopie@beehaw.org 9 months ago
It’s probably not a data mining machine for china, they’ve done a fair bit to divest them selves from china at this point. If the CCP wanted to data mine Americans they can just buy that information from data brokers.
I suspect the main reason so many establishment politicians are terrified of it is because of how it suggest content.
Because there is very little direct user input on what it shows, It tends to spin people off in to communities and places people wouldn’t normally end up in. Trends there also tend to spread fast and unpredictably, most people won’t know about a trend until it shows up in their feed, making it difficult to monitor by a third party.
It can really throw a wrench in political messaging when you can’t be sure what narratives and ideas your constituents have been exposed to. These issues come from social media generally, but most big social media platforms are a lot less volatile in the trends, are easier to monitor, and are less likely to send people off in to spaces that they wouldn’t normally be exposed to.
TehPers@beehaw.org 9 months ago
I suspect the main reason so many establishment politicians are terrified of it is because of how it suggest content.
I’m not convinced the politicians even have a clue what the app is, let alone how it serves content. To me, it seems like they really just want to keep data out of the hands of the CCP. The bill itself doesn’t state that TikTok is banned - only that ByteDance needs to divest it to keep operating it in the US.
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 9 months ago
they’ve done a fair bit to divest them selves from china at this point. If
As a Chinese company, that’s impossible.
I suspect the main reason so many establishment politicians are terrified of it is because of how it suggest content.
That’s the biggest issue for sure. It’s the recommendation algorithm. You can use all the data you use for marketing based on feeds that people have followed to algorithmically create a sort of psychological profile.
Once you have that, you have a weapon because you can spoon feed an active user through radicalizing content. YouTube did it accidentally for years (though this has largely been fixed from what I’ve seen recently).
The CCP could do it intentionally and as they have the final say over anything and everything that happens at ByteDance, that’s a huge risk. We don’t need the millions of TikTok users being subject to an information psychological warfare operation.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 9 months ago
From a European perspective I can only say that the US is as bad as China in terms of privacy violations. The whole Snowden and NSA scandal really broke any trust in nations or corporations to respect anyone’s privacy. I want to see how the US stops spying on everyone and regulates its own companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft. I get that banning tiktok is done out of competition over information etc. But the US certainly has no right to claim moral high ground or argue in favor of trying to protect anyone.
ex10n@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Sounds like a good move, that ticktock voiceover voice is like nails on a chalkboard.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 9 months ago
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
WASHINGTON — The House is poised to pass legislation Wednesday that could ban TikTok in the U.S. as Republicans and Democrats alike sound the alarm that the popular video-sharing app is a national security threat. TikTok, owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, is mounting an aggressive lobbying campaign to kill the legislation, arguing that it would violate the First Amendment rights of its 170 million U.S. users and harm thousands of small businesses that rely on it. That means TikTok, which FBI Director Christopher Wray has testified poses a risk to national security, could face a ban unless ByteDance acted quickly to divest it. U.S. lawmakers and intelligence officials worry the Chinese government could use TikTok to access personal data from its millions of users and use algorithms to show them videos that could influence their views, including in the coming presidential election. Testifying before Congress a year ago, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew denied that the Chinese government controls the app and pushed back against suggestions that China accesses U.S. user data. Outside the Capitol, a handful of young House Democrats — Robert Garcia and Sarah Jacobs of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Delia Ramirez of Illinois — rallied alongside TikTok creators to express their opposition to the bill. — Saved 73% of original text.
tygerprints@kbin.social 8 months ago
What about the content generators who earn their living from Tik Tok? Banning it is not the solution to fixing the problems with it.
tygerprints@kbin.social 8 months ago
In Utah they're so frightened of social media that they have made it almost impossible for any social media companies to thrive here. Tik Tok is now in their crosshairs because it's the fashionable GOP target, but previously it was facebook and the internet in general. Now they've passed laws to restrict internet usage for anyone under 21 - on the off chance some kid might see a cartoon of a bare butt or something, and their head might explode.
kbal@fedia.io 9 months ago
That's one way to spread the message to the world that you've given up on freedom and democracy.
someguy3@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Well yes they want an American company to do it instead.
eveninghere@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Or they don’t want the tool of specifically the CCP.
vintageballs@feddit.de 9 months ago
I am not advocating for the “alternatives” (i.e. Instagram and the likes), however I think banning a Chinese Psy-OP indoctrinating a whole generation with far-right ideas can only be positive for society. Hopefully the EU does something similar.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 9 months ago
They aren’t just targeting the far-right and they are not just spreading far-right lies. There’s misinformation for everybody and of every color on that platform.