House passes bill that could lead to a TikTok ban; fight shifts to the Senate
The House approved a bill that calls for China tech giant ByteDance to divest TikTok or the popular social video app will effectively be banned in the U.S.
I don't like TikTok. As much as I don't trust social media ran by US companies. I dont like the idea of one ran by a foreign adversary even more.
That said, I'd hate to see the US equivalent of the Chinese firewall come into being because of legislation like this.
I think delisting it from ios and android appstores would probably be half-sufficient to kill it. Most people won't go out of their way to sideload an app or use a website. Making it so American advertising companies cannot exchange money with tiktok would probably be the other half. No money, extra effort = dead platform.
Edit: just read the draft bill, it probably deosn't even go far enough. It does the first half, but not the second half. It looks like under the bill, advertisers as businesses would still be able to interact with the platform, but the platform would only be accessible via a browser, and no US hosting/vps provider could host any of their services. Any violations would be a civil penalty of up to $500/user (presumably with the penalty of completely being cut off from us businesses if they didn't pay up).
Honestly seems more reasonable than I'd have initially given it credit. It mostly solves the "a foreign adversary could update the app to use my phone as a wiretap" or "a foreign adversary could use their legitimate business dealings to spy from within a datacenter" without actually creating a great firewall.
Everyone keeps saying “Tik Toc ban,” but this is more of a ByteDance ban. If they want to sell off or spin off the business for markets outside of China, they could 100% do that.
The product itself is not the problem.
China literally does the same shit. You can open up production for sales in China but it has to be majority domestically owned.
Not saying that I agree with it but it is kind of funny to see tankies whine about this.
It's also funny to see "free" market worshipping liberals explain how emulating the CCP's policies is essential to protecting our liberty
It's less funny to see the ACLU EFF and Amnesty International get ignored
This.
Everyone on hexbear is too busy echo-chambering “L liberals” to actually see this for what it is.
I’m so grateful for my frontal lobe development, without it I would’ve indulged in those conversations and lost additional brain matter trying to argue
This is actually an expansion of the PATRIOT act, and it gives immense powers to the president over web based platforms.
People really are not reading the law or articles about it at all.
This has nothing to do with TikTok. TikTok is already incredibly controlled by the US and particularly by the CIA: https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-former-cia/286780/
FUD wins.
It's better to be screwed over by [YOUR COUNTRY'S] ruling class than [OTHER COUNTRY'S].
Buncha tools, the lot of you.
isn't it odd that tiktok (which is used by the youngs) is this MAJOR SECURITY ISSUE but facebook (which was credibly implicated being used by the russians to interfere in the election but not used by the youngs) and twitter (which is actively promoting disinfo and white supremacy including from the site's owner and also not really used by the youngs) are skating off scott free.
seems to me that the issue is that established media and political influencers don't know how or can't get any kinds of traction on tiktok that they could via twitter or fb so they're trying to get rid of it. with the existence of facebook and twitter and their known privacy issues, getting all out of sorts about tiktok because they're controlled by the chinese when in reality any government could get their hands on that kind of data is very much misplaced outrage bordering on hysterical. especially since the chinese could get your data by means other than tiktok.
rule 1 is don't put your private self out on public social media.
I might be more in favor of this ban if it wasn’t in the hands of a bunch of stodgy, bickering, out-of-touch morons who don’t understand technology.
where does this put the united states on the press freedom index