The last congress tried to ban TikTok, someone here posted a giant effortpost that explained the red scare propaganda reasoning, complete with a bunch of Chinese history and a focus on Deng. And then the instructions to install the app without using the App Store were at the bottom. Real leftist meme territory.
It's the same as with the Great Firewall, just much more weakly enforced. Block off enough people to get them to move to competitors that don't have ties to the Chinese government.
I’ve never used TikTok and don’t care if it dies, but the whole stupid saga has hysterical Chinese spy balloon energy.
TikTok has been the one platform that censors content far less than US owned ones. For example, it was basically the only place where people could post videos from riots in Europe or of what was happening in Gaza. Most of this stuff was quickly scrubbed from places like Reddit, Instagram, of Facebook. Once they get rid of TikTok, there's going to be a lot more control over what people in US get to see.
Ah well, we can’t have that! Which is why military-industrial complex think tanks have their eyes on the fediverse.
Indeed, the only reason they haven't gone after the fediverse in full force yet is cause it's still too niche. If it ever blows up to the volume of TikTok, I guarantee they're gonna try to ban it as well.
If I need to use a fucking VPN to access to Tiktok, I goddamn will. Fucking bullshit.
I don't use TikTok, but if they ban it I sure as fuck will start.
“This will damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deny artists an audience,”
That sounds like an overestimation of their importance.
My understanding is that TikTok did not introduce anything new nor does it offer anything truly unique. They did a major marketing push about 6 years ago to grab market share of an existing and crowded arena, which they have continued to grow. If they go away, the others actors in this space are already poised to fill any "void", without hesitation, until the next social media trend emerges.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The measure passed unanimously by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday reflects renewed bipartisan efforts to respond to national security concerns linked to the popular app.
“Today, we will take the first step in creating long-overdue laws to protect Americans from the threat posed by apps controlled by our adversaries, and to send a very strong message that the US will always stand up for our values and freedom,” said Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the panel’s chair.
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, its ranking Democrat, compared the bill to prior efforts to regulate the US airwaves, citing testimony from national security officials from a closed-door hearing earlier Thursday.
For years, US officials have warned that China’s intelligence laws could enable Beijing to snoop on the user information TikTok collects, potentially by forcing ByteDance to hand over the data.
In Montana, a federal judge last year temporarily blocked a statewide ban on TikTok, calling the legislation overly broad and threatening Montanan users’ First Amendment rights to access information through the app.
“The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would infringe the First Amendment rights of private businesses, including app stores, to curate and display content they believe is appropriate for their communities.”
The original article contains 1,381 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
These headlines continue to be misleading.
The objective is not (explicitly) to "ban TikTok" but to remove ~~China's~~ "a "foreign adversary"'s control over the most widely used / misused social media app. Congress wants ByteDance to sell the service. Even the most ardent TikTok users should be in support of this bill.
Meanwhile, it's being reported that the app is prompting users to call their representatives. Some offices have reported that their phones are literally ringing off the hook in some districts preventing people with more legitimate concerns to be left unheard.
I'd like to know if the same people calling their representatives about banning TikTok are also calling them about banning books.
Thing is that TikTok is a company registered in Singapore.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
TikTok Ltd owns four entities that are based respectively in the United States, Australia (which also runs the New Zealand business), United Kingdom (also owns subsidiaries in the European Union), and Singapore (owns operations in Southeast Asia and India).
Oh well. Maybe kids should get interested in STEM and shit instead of getting addicted to these pranksters and influencers with nothing of value and nothing intelligent going on in their heads..