[deleted]
I thought that US was the country of freedom, but turns out that the freedom is just to racists, nazis and for them to fuck up other countries.
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Submitted 7 months ago by hedge@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
Comments
BaalInvoker@lemmy.eco.br 7 months ago
TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 7 months ago
That’s an interesting take from this whole thing
Fizz@lemmy.nz 7 months ago
Why do you think they are Banning tiktok?
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Because China is collecting information from millions of US citizens. Plus they control what the US citizens can see and interact with. US has no control over Tik Tok and that scares them. Why are Facebook and X not banned? Because Facebook and X are US based have to comply with the US regulators and share every collected information with the government.
BaalInvoker@lemmy.eco.br 7 months ago
Because is Chinese. And that’s not what I think, it is what it is.
mctoasterson@reddthat.com 7 months ago
Does the legislation also include penalties for Samsung for preinstalling TikTok on my fucking Smart TV and making the app non-removable ?
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
Who the hell would want to watch vertical videos on a smart tv??
Daze@feddit.de 7 months ago
Just mount the TV at a 90° angle. Problem solved.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Have you met the people of the land?
Sina@beehaw.org 7 months ago
I think people that are very interested in TikTok largely overlap with the vertical video crazies :-)
krolden@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
No. And they never will
ISOmorph@feddit.de 7 months ago
I don’t understand why people get so upset about this. Yes, Google, Facebook, etc. hoard your data too. But there’s a big difference wether that data is hoarded domestically or by a foreign nation that is pretty blatant about their industry espionage and political propaganda. Yes, the US do it too. But you really can’t blame a country for protecting it’s interests, be they ethical or not.
CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
As a user and not as a government agent, why should I care? If anything, having a foreign government hoard my data and spy on me is better than the government that actually has jurisdiction over me. If I were posting things critical of my own government I would rather have a foreign government hoard that data than my own government. There’s a lot more of a chance that US data hoarding leads to action against US citizens than Chinese data hoarding.
I don’t see how this benefits average Americans in any way. This helps the government and corporations.
DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com 7 months ago
It’s not just about data hoarding, though. It’s also about a social media company having considerable influence over the messaging seen by a very large part of the voting population.
Yes, it’s no different to other social media companies, but with one exception: the company in question is subject to the whims of the Chinese government. Something the US government is clearly fearful of.
jarfil@beehaw.org 7 months ago
If I were posting things critical of my own government I would rather have a foreign government hoard that data than my own government.
At first glance, that would be true… but beware, since either will be happy to throw you under the bus whenever it helps their agenda.
If, for example, China was to hoard data about voters for A, B, and C… whenever they wanted to favor B voters, they could “leak” the most compromising data about A and C so the US government would take action… or if they wanted to wreak havoc and favor D, they could leak all data about everyone. A much simpler case, is that having more data on more people, allows them to better tailor and target misinformation campaigns that benefit them. So really, any kind of hoarding has a similar chance of getting acted upon.
As a simple user, you are right that you shouldn’t care much about who hoards data about you, your main care should be about anyone hoarding that data at all.
JillyB@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Personally, I just find it really disappointing. This Tik Tok issue could have been an opportunity to improve privacy and reduce data collection across the board. Instead, it’s a surgical strike in order to not disrupt American tech companies doing the same thing.
What will happen is that Bytedance will sell the US Tik Tok to an American VC firm and it will continue data hoarding as before. This time, the US government will be getting the data instead of the CCP. I’d rather nobody got it.
bogpunk@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
You can absolutely blame a country for doing that actually. What kind of argument is that? People shouldn’t be upset when their government does something unethical as long as it’s “protecting its interests”?
ISOmorph@feddit.de 7 months ago
That’s not quite what I meant.
The argument I most often see and is that TikTok should stay because Facebook and Google are just as bad. That’s stupid because domestic espionage is obviously worse than foreign espionage to any government.
If your argument is that the TikTok ban is good and Facebook and Google should be next because of the similar practises then I’m 100% with you.
sonori@beehaw.org 7 months ago
There is also a massive difference in user experience in China vs abroad, to the point where they might as well be two fundamentally different apps. Even just things like time limits for children exist by default in China and are unavailable elsewhere, which kind of feels like an admission that they only take things like platform safety seriously at home.
JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 7 months ago
As someone who doesn’t live in the US:
The data from google and facebook is hoarded by a foreign nation (the US is basically a quasi-democratic plutocracy which also has extremely extensive surveillance both legally and agencies caught working in grey areas) to boost surveillance and that is pretty blatant about their espionage and political propaganda. We get US political right wing propaganda on these platforms all over the rest of the world.
There is a difference of course, but the gap is closing significantly every few years.
kandoh@reddthat.com 7 months ago
The US encourages international business competition, but not if you do it better than they do.
ChallengeApathy@infosec.pub 7 months ago
I don’t like big government but I have zero sympathy in this case. TikTok is the greatest cancer on modern society and I will not change my mind on that.
BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
We literally have a global rise in violent fascism and multiple ongoing genocides, and TikTok is the worst thing you can think of?
metaridley@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Social media in general is likely contributing to the rise of violent facism. Anything that can reverse that trend is good IMO.
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
Hey, did you know that Facebook is responsible for a more recent genocide? So, considering TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government, which is also known to commit genocides, I’m gonna go ahead and say this is probably a good thing.
anachronist@midwest.social 7 months ago
Tictok is horrible but this entire ban is being driven by the swamp being upset that young people have come to the wrong conclusion about Israel. I think that the idea is that as long as people are using facebook or google-owned properties, people can be shown only information that will lead them to the correct, approved opinions.
krolden@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
I dunt lik big gubmint butt…
Alice@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Nah, this entire thing is about US control. They’re upset that it’s a different government that’s spying on us this time. No sympathy for TikTok but there’s no good way to spin this.
Btw, you know if TikTok sells to a US company, they’ll be just as rancid, right?
ChallengeApathy@infosec.pub 7 months ago
I agree but TikTok is worthless in general. The content it serves people is literal brain rot. Also, I don’t want it to sell, I just want it to die and never come back.
GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 7 months ago
We’ve not actually seen for sure that TikTok data is being passed to the Chinese government - supposedly the USA data is being kept separately. But we have certainly seen US data brokers gathering data from all over in the US and selling that on to any 3rd party (domestic government, as well as anyone else). Facebook has been caught more than once being in the business of leaking private data. I’m just surprised that the US gov did not leave this choice up to its citizens to choose on - the ideas of freedom of choice and speech seem to be rather dictated here now.
I’m just wondering if it is not more a case of the US gov has no control itself over TikTok (think US CLOUD Act) and this is what is irking them. I’m not in the US so one way or the other I don’t really mind. What I do mind about though is that TikTok does not sell out to a US company. We really don’t need one single country controlling all the mainstream social media platforms. US laws after all do not represent all of mankind, so some diversity is a good thing.
So I guess I’m rather for a “ban” than a “sell out”.
senseamidmadness@beehaw.org 7 months ago
You have guessed right. The US government had a massive hand in the creation of modern social media, such as a significant amount of funding for Facebook during its startup phase. The intelligence agencies are mad that they can’t pull data from TikTok or influence its algorithms, on top of the American social media companies wanting to kill off their foreign competition as much as possible.
This bill has nothing to do with data privacy because if Congress cared about that they would’ve banned other platforms too. It’s about control and unfair competition.
FlashMobOfOne@beehaw.org 7 months ago
I love that this and more funding for other countries’ wars are a higher priority than the housing crisis.
Robin_net@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Conservatives have been purposely tanking uncontroversial legislation so that “Biden doesn’t get any wins”. Do you genuinely think it is possible for the current legislature to pass bills that would fix something as complex as the housing crisis?
FlashMobOfOne@beehaw.org 7 months ago
I would accept that as an excuse if the Democrats did anything meaningful when they have a majority, but they don’t.
Mastengwe@lemm.ee 7 months ago
You just stood directly in the way of a perfect whataboutism….
Now you apologize right now!
krolden@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
In 2013, foreign buyers made up about 7% ($92.2 billion) of transactions in the $1.2 trillion U.S. real estate market. Canada was the main buyer with 19% of sales (decrease from 23% the year before), China was on the second place with 16% of sales, while on the first place considering total foreign sales by dollar value (24% or $22 billion). Mexico ranked third with 9% of sales and India and the UK both accounted for 5%.[2] Florida is the most popular destination with 31% of sales, followed by California (12%), Texas (9%) and Arizona (6%).
But yeah tiktok bad mmmmk
bigfoot@lemm.ee 7 months ago
If you think Taiwan and Ukraine are “other countries’ wars” I have bad news for you. It’s better to pay as much money as we can now before the payment is made with american lives.
Israel is something else obviously, but the bulk of the money is absolutely worth spending if you value your freedom. It has nothing to do with the housing crisis whatsoever.
FlashMobOfOne@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Respectfully, the “fight them there so we don’t fight them here” and “help them stand up so we can stand down” nonsense is straight out of the chickenhawks’ war branding guide.
Meanwhile I can look over the border and see Mexico spending a mere 8 billion a year on war and Canada a mere 26 billion. Meanwhile we’re up to a trillion and a half this year, but sure, it has nothing to do with the housing crisis or the standard of living in this country. We’re definitely not neglecting our own people to feed an insatiable war machine.
Frankly, I’m sick of watching our government impoverish our people to pay for more super yachts for warmongers.
bartolomeo@suppo.fi 7 months ago
cnbc.com/…/former-treasury-secretary-mnuchin-is-p…
It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
jonathanwerewolf@kbin.social 7 months ago
So much easier than passing an actual data privacy law--and maybe Bobby Kotick will buy TikTokUSA!
Onihikage@beehaw.org 7 months ago
VPN subscriptions about to explode.
Naturally, they’ll try to ban VPNs next.
jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
I feel like most people would rather use shady, free VPNs instead. There’ll probably be an increase in them too
RavenFellBlade@startrek.website 7 months ago
Then why is the bill about DIVESTMENT of Tiktok from Chinese ownership? The operation headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore. I’m beginning to think you don’t know what you’re talking about.
jarfil@beehaw.org 7 months ago
why is the bill about DIVESTMENT of Tiktok from Chinese ownership?
“Chinese ownership” == “CCP control”
The US doesn’t want a highly addictive app to be controlled by a potentially adversarial regime… which is still way less than China blocking all “potentially uncontrolled” apps.
Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Lol nice bad faith argument. Fucking Lemmy sockpuppets.
gyrfalcon@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Hey, even if the above is a bad faith argument, this is not a constructive or nice way to bring that up in conversation. Please try to do a better job of communicating going forward. Thanks!
Afkargh@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Interesting that Temu and AliExpress are also China owned, yet there’s no mention of any issues with them.
interolivary@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Well, they’re totally different platforms . The rationale behind the TikTok ban (and I’m not saying I’m in favor of it or opposed to it) is that they can do spooky spooky things with your personal data and your attention – your opinions can be nudged once there’s enough data on you and your eyeballs are on the app half the day.
Temu and AliExpress have their own problems (like the absolutely mind boggling waste of finite resources) but nobody’s worried Temu is radicalizing boys or collecting tons of your personal data. And yes even Temu does collect data just like everyone else nowadays, but it’s a shopping site; compared to a social network there’s not all that much you can get out of your users or too many ways to really influence them outside of making them spend more money
senseamidmadness@beehaw.org 7 months ago
The “data privacy” argument is bullshit and the people pushing for this law know it. That’s what is being sold to people but it is not why this TikTok ban got passed. It got passed because American social media companies are pissed that TikTok is outcompeting them for the attention of young people, and because the US government has a heavy hand in what algorithms are allowed to push on Facebook and Google and others. A good portion of Facebook’s initial funding came from government sources.
“Data privacy” is just an excuse. Lobbying from the intelligence agencies and social media companies is why it’s really being enacted.
Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 7 months ago
I suggest you read the bill. It isn’t a tik tok ban. It’s actually quite a good piece of legislation.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 7 months ago
It is a vague and sprawling piece of legislation that gives money to Israel and Ukraine, makes Fentanyl more illegal, makes money laundering for fentanyl more illegal, allows seizure and use if Russian assets, restricts “foreign adversaries” from distributing and maintaining apps, restricts “foreign adversaries” from transferring data away from the US, and makes Iranian terrorism more illegal.
It does like 3 things that are fine, but these should all be different bills (the data transfer bits, seizing Russian assets, and sending aide to Ukraine, though that is getting iffy)
It IS a TikTok band and explicitly names ByteDance and TikTok, and also vaguely defines foreign adversaries to the point where it could be any person operating in a country that the US doesn’t like.
“Quite a good piece of legislation” is only true if you mean quite as sprawling and good as ill defined
CylustheVirus@beehaw.org 7 months ago
And nothing of value was lost.
Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
My only issue is with Congress telling us all “you have not seen what we have seen, you have not been in the classified briefings”. Yeah, I heard the same shit about WMD’s in Iraq where two of my battle buddies died, two more got wounded beyond any recovery, and a bunch more chose to end their lives after we got home.
“Trust us, bro”. Nah, fuck you. You want the world to support this, you need to share the information.
bigfoot@lemm.ee 7 months ago
These threads/articles always get the facts wrong, TikTok is not “getting banned”, they are just forcing the company to divest from it’s Chinese parent company.
exanime@lemmy.today 7 months ago
they are just forcing the company to divest from it’s Chinese parent company.
… Or get banned
saigot@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
It will be interesting to see if tiktoks newest big selling point (relatively free from US influence) will be able to offset it’s loss in users.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
It’s doubtful that Tiktok would even agree to sell and there is precedent in the courts that a Tiktok ban is unconstitutional considering it’s already been blocked in Montana.
Then there’s the entire notion over the fact that Apple is ALREADY under fire for anti-competitive practices involving the app store and remove the ability for all iDevices to access the app with no other way to access it outside of the app store will just add more fuel to that case.
penquin@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Cool, now let’s ban Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and every single social media platform that does the same exact thing as TikTok. I have never used TikTok, but this is fucking bullshit. Facebook literally ruined elections and lives around the world.
Guntrigger@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
Only the US is allowed to ruin elections.
jarfil@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Technically true of any country: only China is allowed to influence CCP elections, only Russia is allowed to fix Russian elections, only the US is allowed to ruin US elections…
They still try to influence each other’s ones, but they aren’t openly “allowed” to…
natural_motions@lemmynsfw.com 7 months ago
trevron@beehaw.org 7 months ago
senseamidmadness@beehaw.org 7 months ago
This comment was brought to you by the US State Department.
Tell me, how many countries’ governments has China knocked over in the last century as compared to the US CIA?
FozzyOsbourne@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Why would the American government ban companies based under their own jurisdiction? They can make use of all those other companies just like the Chinese government can make use of TikTok.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Sounds good.
4grams@awful.systems 7 months ago
the internet was a mistake