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House panel unanimously approves bill that could ban TikTok
(edition.cnn.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Either the propaganda is working or there's no hope for any of us. And I'm not saying this facetiously.
The idea of a company in China versus in the West is very different. In the West a company has near complete autonomy within the confines of law in the democratic country it's in. In China, a company is completely beholden to the will of the CCP. Smaller companies are not worth getting involved with, but larger companies like Bytedance and Baidu are effectively corporate offices of the CCP.
We're talking about a communist dictatorship that's constantly threatening Taiwan with invasion and death threats. Goes around the South China Sea harassing the countries there by attacking their military and civilian ships with high power water cannons. Putting nets and markers right up against those same countries, in some instances within 50 or so kilometers. Then there's the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people. The constant suppression of any negative news. The complete isolation of its people from accessing the internet or news from the rest of the world. It just goes on.
China is an adversarial power to Western nations and even many Asian ones.
The issue isn't that Bytedance is simply Chinese. The issue is that China does not allow a single bit of information leaving its borders without its explicit say so. Which is why any Chinese company that conducts any business outside China has CCP officials stationed at the company's offices and have to examine and approve everything that goes out.
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So what's the difference between the CCP getting it for free from Tiktok and paying for it from an "American" corporation?
None of what you said matters in this. Not when Zuckerberg is specifically courting China to spend advertising dollars and buy data.
Is the money changing hands making the end effect any different?
TikTok is both a sacrifice to make it look like something is being done and a called hit on a competitor.
Whataboutism at its finest.
That word does not mean what you think it means. In fact throwing China's human rights record out there like it matters in preventing American consumer data from flowing to China is far closer to whataboutism.
The only thing that matters in stopping American Consumer Data from being collected by the CCP is stopping American Consumer Data from being collected by the CCP.
If that's your stated goal then you need to hold all the data vendors accountable, not just the scary Chinese one. Because there's nothing stopping them from selling it to China right now. There's a whole chain of articles about Facebook and Meta doing this for over a decade. And you're worried only about Tiktok.
Gee I wonder why that might be?
And how is this accomplished when the CCP has direct control and direct access to the company that develops the app collecting the data?
Well that's a massive assumption. Please show me where I said "I'm only worried about TikTok".
Obviously it doesn't. But this doesn't accomplish that goal. It's like saying I hate bananas, let's ban PBJs.
If you want to ban foreign countries collecting data then make that the law and ban TikTok when they break it. And then ban Facebook when they break it. That's how good legislation is done. This kind of targeted bullshit is just a gift to Musk, Zuckerberg, and whoever runs Google and Apple these days. They're going to funnel data to the CCP just as fast as they can make a profit from it.
The entire algorithm thing is also bullshit. Facebook has been courting the CCP for advertising for over a decade. To think they won't use targeted ads for an info op is just fucking naive.
That's partially true. But there's a difference between having access to a dataset vs having direct control over an app, which includes the algorithms and content being shown.
In any case, if it goes through to a full ban, you can still use the app. It just cannot be distributed on any app stores. It would still be possible to sideload it (on Android).
And that will discourage a lot of people from using it, which would be the point.
I also would like to see any reports or studies showing China buying data from other social media platforms.
Oh? And what would that difference be?
If that needs to be spelled out to you, then that explains your position.
You're either not too smart to understand, or you're a tankie of some kind.
You also completely dodged the part where you need to backup your claims about Facebook selling data to China.
Buddy. I'm not the one here who's naive and I'm not a tankie.
Facebook being sued for giving data to Chinese companies with tighter relationships to the CCP than Bytedance is literally headline news right now. I'm not going to spend time linking reality to you.
The fact is you're bending over backwards to defend an unconstitutional law with unprecedented powers. The common sense and constitutional law is staring you in the face. Make it illegal on pain of ban to give, or sell American data to a sensitive country; or otherwise cause American data in your company's control to come into their possession.
There's one paragraph that removes the xenophobia, holds the entire data industry accountable, and is constitutional.
The question of what's the difference isn't some cute gotcha thing. Datasets are storage containers. China will keep their data in one too. So what is the difference between getting everything Facebook can scrape and getting everything TikTok can scrape?
And you need to look up targeted advertising. It's literally creating a custom algorithm on everything from Reddit to Facebook to Google Search. Which is why it was used by the Russians to impact our 2016 elections via Facebook. Yet another reason your demand for evidence about Facebook is ridiculous.
I looked it up, and you're right that there's an issue there. But that's an issue with an American owned company giving data to an adversarial country (two actually, China and Russia). It's 100% absurd and shouldn't be allowed with heavy penalties. But that's still a different issue than the one we're talking about.
Two things: I'm not American, and it's not unconstitutional anyways. There's nothing in the bill that says no one is allowed to use it. And the first and preferred option of the bill is to sell ownership of TikTok to an American firm, essentially to divorce control and influence of China from the largely American userbase. If, and only if, the transfer of ownership is not possible then the app is to be delisted from all app stores.
That means that it's still possible for existing users to use the app and it's still possible to install the app through official means without either thing being illegal.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/proposed-us-tiktok-ban-not-fair-chinas-foreign-ministry-says-2024-03-14/
Another interesting thing is that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said it will protect its rights and national security interests (paraphrased). What on earth does TikTok, an app that's Chinese owned and banned in the very country that owns it, have to do with Chinese National security?
That a very telling thing to say.
I can agree with this, but the TikTok bill has nothing to do with xenophobia. If China wasn't an adversarial country actively bullying and threatening other countries with war and annihilation then it wouldn't be an issue.
In fact, let's go a step further and implement sweeping data protection laws so that our data can't be sold for any reason.
No, it's not a "cute gotcha thing". It's pointing out the difference between passive data collection and active control to influence content.
I know very well what it is. I work in the tech sector (IT/programming) adjacent to cyber security.
Right, so if you think targeted advertising is bad when company A sells data to company B, who then builds algorithms to target people for political party C, imagine how bad it is when that entire process is vertically integrated and directly controlled by a foreign adversary. And to add to that, we're not even just dealing with ads anymore, we're dealing with grassroots-like influencer content with talking points from the CCP.
You gave me an example of one really bad thing and said it's the same thing as a different and extremely bad thing.
Both of them are bad need to be addressed. But with TikTok being run by a CCP-influenced company in a country that laughs at American laws, there's little recourse to deal with it.
You get a pass on this because you're not an American and most Americans don't know what a Bill of Attainder is. But it's a law that targets a single person or organization. And the Constitution outright bans it.
SCOTUS has also historically been very unhappy with attempts to weasel word around the Constitution. Their position has consistently been if the effect is to do something that would be unconstitutional then it is unconstitutional.
That said. There's no reason to target a single company when we can regulate the industry just as easily. Unless the actual intent is to force a private sale for the benefit of American billionaires.
But with your response to an actual bill and over a decade of American data vendors selling everything to China; I can see that you don't care about regulating the industry. You just want to punish China. Nobody is refuting the horribleness of China. But there isn't any evidence they've even tried to do anything to the international version of TikTok. Or that the Singaporean company that runs TikTok would listen to them
So yeah I'm against giving the US government powers it's called corrupt in every country that's used them. Especially in response to xenophobic jingoism. This is being done the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.
Right, because me saying that Facebook and other social media selling our data even just for advertising is not ok and we should introduce laws for strong data and privacy protection equates to me "not caring about regulating the industry".
Sure there, bud.
Nonsense.
Ok, I get this, but it gets murky when the "organisation" being targeted is a corporate office of a government party.
I'm not claiming to have the answer, but as a non-American I can't get upset at such a bill. Simply because it would push back against a country that lately had been getting away with everything and causing severe and deliberate harm in other countries, including mine and yours.