8mo ago

A Federal TikTok Ban is a 'Misguided Detour' from Doing What’s Needed to Protect People’s Privacy and Safeguard National Security

www.commondreams.org A Federal TikTok Ban Is a 'Misguided Detour' from Doing What’s Needed to Protect People’s Privacy and Safeguard National Security

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest its holdings of the popular social-media site or face an effective ban in the United States. The White House has indicated that President Biden will sign the legislation, which – after failing to move ...

A Federal TikTok Ban Is a 'Misguided Detour' from Doing What’s Needed to Protect People’s Privacy and Safeguard National Security

33 comments

Let's face it, the goal was never privacy or security. The killer clowns in charge of US regime are simply upset that there's a popular social media platform they don't control. This is about bullying China into selling this platform to US oligarchs. It's sad and pathetic, and it's not going to happen.
- China chill? The legitimate concern is that China is controlling the way certain messages are pushed ("the algorithms") to control topics that they have an interest in. I.e. pushing misinformation to drive support for Trump or Biden, as an example. That is not free speech or privacy, that is malicious interference and the the fear of the US doing this is the sole reason China has already banned similar US apps in China. That is also the reason they would rather be banned than to "give up the algorithms" (they certainly won't allow anyone to see how they push misinformation).
  
  LMFAO

A federal tiktok ban is a desperate attempt to keep young people from discussing Joes pet genocide where they can't be censored by the us govt.
- Except even if they ban TikTok, that won't work. Because there's always the fediverse and nostr. If somebody wants to talk about something on social media, they will talk about it, and they will talk about it on services that cannot and or will not ban them. So good luck with that.
  
  The fediverse has less than 10M users. Tiktok has a billion. It doesnt compare. Its like saying we should allow banning newspapers or radio because people will still share information over phone calls
- Which Tittok users has the US government censored?

even worse, this may very well become a "let's ban whatever we want" type of power to their disposal.
Not Good.

I might get on Ticktok here soon

“If lawmakers want to rein in the harms of social-media platforms, targeting just one under the guise of national security ignores an entire industry predicated on surveillance capitalism. Like all popular platforms — including those that Meta and Google own — TikTok collects far too much user data. But banning a single platform will not address the privacy problem that’s rotting the core of the entire tech industry.
If domestic social media is collecting dangerous amounts of personal info about Americans, then foreign social media under who are subject to the laws of adversarial nation-states should be seriously concerning.
The matter of domestic social media will have to be addressed by a completely different law because it cannot be addressed by a law similar to this new one. People who bring up domestic social media in discussions of this law are completely missing the point.
- From what I have seen, most people who object to a federal tiktok ban oppose it because they do not want the US government to censor the internet. I think privacy is brought up as a justification of the ban, and so opponents of the ban argue that it is selective to only focus on the app that is controlled by an adversarial country. I see the ban as addressing a symptom of weak privacy laws instead of addressing the root issue/cause. If privacy were actually taken serious by our government and not enforced selectively, then objections would be a lot less.
  
  I've seen that too. But they're mistaken. "Censoring the internet" is not what this law does. That's hyperbole not based on any reasonable interpretation of the actual law.
  Don't misunderstand me; this is not a good law. Nobody should be happy about it. But it is prudent, wise and perhaps even necessary. Refusing to acknowledge this while ignoring that actual 1st amendment concerns that this law will be challenged on does not help your argument.

Well TikTok is not just bad for privacy but also for mental health and everything else you can possibly think about so probably the ban isn't actually that bad
- So Meta, Twitter, Snapchat and all the others who've redefined what data collection looks like and keep folks self centered is fine? The only reason the US is throwing this fit is because they can't access the collected data like they can with US based data brokers, I mean social media. The key aspect of this ban revolves around freedom of speach more than anything else.
  
  Of course but still TikTok is not a good thing imo
  
  No, of course it's not fine.
  But if it's not fine for domestic social media apps to do it, then it's even worse for a foreign adversary to do it. Right?

In the entirety of my time using the internet, I have heard of the lack of freedom that Chinese citizens face regarding internet access. This has always been held up as indisputable evidence that the CCP is an authoritarian regime, and proof that if the CCP is willing to trample on some freedoms, it's willing to trample on others.
Just as the U.S. Congress has (somewhat valid) concerns about a foreign entity holding so much sway over such a large platform, it could be stated that these objections are no different from what China claims. If it's wrong for China to censor and ban platforms, its wrong for the U.S. to do so as well.
Is it concerning how much data is collected by Tik Tok? Yes. But without parroting what's already been said, this bill comes nowhere close to addressing the key issues of data privacy that it claims to. Banning Tik Tok without addressing the egregious data collection of other platforms is nothing short of hypocracy.

33 comments