10mo ago

House panel unanimously approves bill that could ban TikTok

edition.cnn.com House panel unanimously approves bill that could ban TikTok | CNN Business

House lawmakers voted to advance a bill that would ban TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform’s parent, ByteDance, divests the company.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12876226

The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance.
US officials have cited the widespread commercial availability of US citizens’ data as another source of national security risk. The US government and other domestic law enforcement agencies are also known to have purchased US citizens’ data from commercial data brokers.

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our minimum wage is $7.25, no universal health care, the cops are militarized and keeping citizens in their proper places, food/ housing costs are more than our pay, transportation costs have skyrocketed, the postal service needs attention, we have fifty states not working together
but we showed that China TikTok what for BY GOD! they ain't gonna spy on us
- I am still semi convinced that the ban is really because there are a lot of tiktokers devoted to exposing trades and corruption of congress critters in near real time. Tiktok has a lot of flaws, but it's great for finding breaking news.
  
  I'm there as well, but on a broader scale: I think they're wanting to ban it because they don't have a hotline to Xi so they can get shut shit down. Basically want it banned for doing the same things Google does, but the problem is it's not run by their own Musk-on-a-Leash
  
  Pretty sure it’s the other way around, musk and zuck have congress on a leash. Especially musk since he has skynet and tesla and space x
  
  All companies that are heavily involved with government contracts and subsidies. At least a Mexican standoff situation. There goes the George Carlin quote about clubs and who's in them
- Fuck your whatsboutism. This is good news; tiktok is a propaganda machine.
  
  The cyber security professional inside of me wants to agree with you. The Liberal in me doesn't want to give the government the authority to ban speech and what citizens are allowed to watch.
  
  Same. Just make it so Tiktok cannot advertise to American users or monetize American views. Start with that and wait for another non-ccp app to take that market.
  Edit: Curious why every seems to disagree.
  
  are we going to ban youtube as well? which has more than tiktok? or lemmy for that matter? or any other forms of social media?
  people who fear monger tiktok make me worry that they fail to see the bigger picture.
  tiktok isn't the problem. the fact that propaganda is monetized is the problem. and banning tiktok will fix nothing whatsoever.
  
  Propaganda is a major problem no matter what.
  I mentioned in another comment that Tiktok is a massively direct pipeline to the minds of younger people by the CCP. Studies have demonstrated that the Chinese only version of Tiktok (Douyin) promotes positive content to users whereas Tiktok promotes highly negative content. To the point that a study concluded it was affecting the mental health of younger people.
  
  How do you differentiate purposeful manipulation vs it being a natural effect of Western social media? I stopped using Facebook and Twitter because it was obviously toxic and affecting my mental health. I use TikTok a fair amount and don't find it nearly as bad.
  It's also possible that there's manipulation in the other direction. In their own app they could be artificially increasing positive content while allowing the natural social media toxicity and ragebait to dominate in other areas.
  My personal opinion is that TikTok is a way that peer to peer information and news travels very quickly in a way that they can't control, and they don't like that. As with all things, they want to keep us isolated.
  
  How do you differentiate purposeful manipulation vs it being a natural effect of Western social media?
  Well, Tiktok is owned by a Chinese company. Every major Chinese company, especially ones that operate outside of China, have CCP offices within the company. The "rights" that individuals and companies have in China are at best a facade. What the CCP says to do is what happens.
  The major difference is tested by looking at how the algorithm promotes or suppresses certain topics. Tiktok has a Chinese counterpart called Douyin (which IIRC is the "original" Tiktok) that's only available to people in China. The findings point to more positive content being promoted on Douyin and negative content on Tiktok.
  What's also noticed is that Douyin heavily promotes anti-west and specifically anti-American propaganda. And promotes pro-China and pro-CCP stuff, such as "China has solved homelessness and homelessness doesn't exist there" and "China has solved poverty". The second one is technically true on paper, because they recently reduced the poverty threshold to $600 a year.
  On Tiktok huge pro-CCP campaigns have been discovered and that content is constantly being pushed. They use Western shills mostly and the propaganda aspect is cleverly veiled.
  As with all things, they want to keep us isolated.
  In the context of Tiktok, that doesn't make sense. And what's even more ironic is that Tiktok is Chinese owned, and people in China have zero access to the outside world. People are going to jail or even disappeared now for simply using a VPN. News coming out of China is almost completely censored. China has basically become North Korea with more money. And they have direct control over the content on the most widely used social media platform in the West.
  
  I'm not here to be pro-china, and I definitely believe that they're putting those things in douyin. I'm just not convinced they're purposefully putting negative things in TikTok purposefully to harm mental health.
  This is anecdotal and my personal experience, but I haven't noticed any pro-ccp things on my personal algorithm. What I do notice is anti-US and anti-capitalist content by Americans. Whether or not they are shills, I can't say for sure, but it feels like it would border on conspiracy theory thinking to suggest that many of them are.
  To clarify the isolation comment, I mean that TikTok is a place where community building and the spreading of ideas or news (not necessarily good or bad ideas/news) spreads rapidly, especially among young people, in a way the people who run traditional media can't control. Taking away this tool makes us more reliant on forms of media that they do control.
  
  To clarify the isolation comment, I mean that TikTok is a place where community building and the spreading of ideas or news (not necessarily good or bad ideas/news) spreads rapidly, especially among young people, in a way the people who run traditional media can't control. Taking away this tool makes us more reliant on forms of media that they do control.
  This is true for many platforms like Reddit, Lemmy, Mastadon, etc., including ones that no longer exist like Vine. There have always been pages on the internet to share censored free content, and there likely will always be. The issue with Tiktok being a "way to spread news" is that most of the content is just "hearsay" without being verifiable. And that means false information spreads quickly and easily on Tiktok. There's a reason most of the flat earthers have flocked to Tiktok lately.
  Additionally, Tiktok is terrible for searchability. The platform isn't designed to work that way. It's designed to just doom scroll and you see what the platform tells you to see. The only other time you see something else is if someone shares a video. The random nature of the next video is where the issue lies, and considering it's a CCP controlled company that controls the algorithm that picks the next video, I wouldn't trust it with a video of watching paint dry.
  There have been many studies demonstrating that the TikTok algorithm is hugely problematic.
  
  I agree with you. The difference between the other platforms mentioned and TikTok is that TikTok is where the action is right now, so it's the target. The unverified hearsay problem is certainly there, but I don't think it's inherent to TikTok more than any other platform. No matter the platform, rage and engagement are the most important things so the algorithms will always reward them. Even YouTube's algorithm has been highly criticized for funneling people down extremist pipelines.
  The TikTok algorithm is incredibly efficient at locking people, especially young people, into scrolling forever. That's bad. However that same criticism has been made against more traditional social media platforms too. Twitter especially has a similar although less effective problem.
  Besides vague gesturing at China, I don't see any problem that TikTok has that isn't already present in other social media platforms. If we want to go after all of them, I'd 100% be for it, but this legislation is too targeted and creates a dangerous precedent imo.
  100% agree on the searchability. It's totally unusable.
  
  but I don't think it's inherent to TikTok more than any other platform.
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-pushes-potentially-harmful-content-to-users-as-often-as-every-39-seconds-study/
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-04-20/tiktok-effects-on-mental-health-in-focus-after-teen-suicide
  https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/
  The issue is measurable.
  No matter the platform, rage and engagement are the most important things so the algorithms will always reward them. Even YouTube's algorithm has been highly criticized for funneling people down extremist pipelines.
  I'll agree with you up to a point. The difference here is the interests of the company. The money angle is easy to understand and figure out, because there's no reason to hide that.
  It's less obvious or easy when the intention is to influence people away from a societal or political ideation. So many people hand-wave away the fact that Bytedance is a Chinese company. The reason is that most people think "company" like Google or Microsoft in a democratic country, where access to data has (mostly) a lot of red tape and legal protections.
  Now I'm sure anyone reading that would laugh and say "have you heard of Snowden?" which is absolutely a fair and correct thing to say. So with that in mind, Western companies still have a ton of autonomy and legal protections from their governments when compared to China. In China a "company" like Bytedance or Baidu are more like "corporate offices" for the CCP.
  So Tiktok is effectively owned by the CCP, and it's the Chinese Communist Party that's coding the algorithm on Tiktok. There's no other way to approach it.
  Besides vague gesturing at China
  No, it's not vague gesturing. This is 100% a demonstrable issue. The I-Soon leaks demonstrate that. China is absolutely an adversarial country to places like the US, Canada, and Europe. The fact that they have covert Chinese police stations in the US and Canada to track and intimidate Chinese citizens in these countries is being alarming.
  It baffles me that people even want to use Tiktok on the fact that it's CCP owned in the first place.
  https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1765823031966904671
  
  Thank you for those resources, they are pretty compelling, especially the Twitter thread, which if true, is good evidence that China has used the data to target specific individuals. That's a problem. And the individual bit is important because I'm unpersuaded by "mass data collection" arguments because a) everyone is doing that and no one seems to care and b) basically the same data is freely purchasable.
  The harms associated with the first few links are definitely real, but I would certainly be interested in an apples to apples comparison to other platforms, especially YouTube.
  But I think it's also important to recognize that there is a lot of good that comes from TikTok as well. If I can get personal here, I've moved away from family and friends to work a demanding job, and I've found some sense of community on TikTok with people who are into the same hobbies as I am, which I've had difficulty finding IRL. It has also given voice and community to [certain groups of] marginalized people, and, (for better or for worse) is a major platform by which creators can generate revenue by which a lot of them survive.
  Obviously a lot of that COULD and SHOULD be hosted on a different platform without all these issues, but right now they are not, so we need to make sure not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
  I pointed it out in other comments, but I feel as if the current bill provides too much power to the executive to unilaterally ban foreign outlets from functioning in the US. I'm not a nutty free speech absolutist or anything, but I think anything that has the potential to shut out alternative perspectives like that takes us closer to Chinese style censorship, not farther away.
  Ironically, I wonder if a better solution is mandatory integration of positive content algorithms like it seems like douyin has. But then the question is, who picks what's positive? Is religion positive? Patriotism? Depends who you ask.
  All in all, I think social media of all kinds has been basically the worst thing to happen to the world in my lifetime, but I think that that the cat is out of the bag on it and we're just pretty fucked.
  Thank you for the honest and level conversation here, I do appreciate it.
  
  do you have a link to that study?
  
  https://nypost.com/2023/02/25/china-is-hurting-us-kids-with-tiktok-but-protecting-its-own/
  https://www.newsweek.com/douyin-tiktok-use-link-favorable-views-china-public-opinion-poll-1855311
  I can't find the study I'm thinking of. It's been at least 6 months since I saw it. But these articles at least backup some of what I said.
  
  Lemmy is also a propaganda machine, let's ban this platform too then.
  
  So you're going to shut down YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc as well right? Considering they all do the same thing and FB even interfered in an election?
  
  I would 100% be for shutting those down. Doing so would probably lead us into the next Renaissance.
  
  so is instagram and facebook but you don't see people rabidly want to ban them.
  
  Instagram and Facebook aren't run by the CCP
  
  yes they are run by the us empire, which has a more violent history.
  still not seeing the point of banning one over the other
  
  You're just spouting whataboutism. It's not an argument, it's a deflection tactic.
  I have no love for Instagram or Facebook. IMO they should both be banned and have all data erased. The planet would be better off without them.
  But that's not the topic of conversation.
  The US isn't an adversarial country to itself. The CCP is an adversarial country to the US, and most of the world.
  which has a more violent history
  Ah yes, so the CCP is A-OK because you claim they have a "less violent history". Makes perfect sense.
  Tell me, how many people died during the Long March and the "Great" Leap Forward?
  In any case, the bill is not about banning TikTok. The bill is about selling ownership of TikTok to a US owned firm to take away control from the CCP. And then only if a sale cannot be arranged, to ban it as a last resort.
  
  the real enemy of the world is the US by a long shot. what the US does warrants invasions and wars on 3rd world countries by the US, the same isnt true for china.
  no country has such a dark and murderous history. my country is on that list and we are suffering from the consequences still, decades later.
  and yes, having people die of starvation in one of the poorest countries in the planet is sadly expected. no system of government can fix a country that huge overnight.
  banning shit like tiktok like you have a huge moral highground is hypocritical at best when US apps are doing it all around the planet.
  e: how could i forget the genocide you are sponsoring
  
  they are propaganda machines though
  
  To a degree, yes. But nowhere near the same context or scale.
  In democratic countries people have the ability to choose their opinions and voice them loudly. This allows many different groups to hold different viewpoints and then express them to other people. And yes social media has been used as propaganda platforms by those groups. Yet none of those groups have full unilateral control of a country under dictator-like rule.
  The difference is that the CCP is a single party government. Xi Jinping has recently abolished term limits, effectively making himself a defacto dictator. The I-Soon leaks also demonstrate that the CCP is actively trying to disrupt society in other countries (not just the US). They have secret police stations in places like Canada, UK, and US where they monitor and track Chinese people and even intimidate them if they do or say anything the CCP doesn't like.
  Then there's the constant attacks on military and fishing ships from countries like the Phillipines and Vietnam. The constant threats of annihilation of Taiwan. Etc etc.
  You cannot equate the two.
  
  tiktok and Facebook use in the US have nothing to do with anything you are rambling about.
  Facebook manufactures consent for the military industrial complex and capitalist interests and since it is not overtly controlled by Lockheed or the Pentagon, it's propaganda is more sinister. at least you know who pulls the strings at tiktok
  
  You sound like a Wumao
  
  hey i looked up wumao and i was right. you were just pigeonholing.
  if you can't engage in honest conversation without accusations of shilling, you might find a great experience on facebook, x (formerly twitter), or reddit. the youtube comment section might fit your style, as well.
  
  idk wut wumoa means,but it sounds like you are pigeonholing me instead of dealing with what I Said
- the legislation that needs to get passed, cannot, unless and until the house majority swings about 20 points the other way and the sliver of a majority in the senate is boosted by at least another 10.
- Those are the issues they dont want us collectively talking about, sharing our lived experiences and how they dont line up with the bullshit our government is gaslighting us with

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