Let's ban one app instead of making laws that govern personal data for everyone.
Not to mention this does nothing. ByteDance could easily just stand up a shell company with a puppet in another country and have it become the owner. Our lawmakers and regulators are fucking morons.
They aren't. They're just well paid. Meta and Alphabet don't want competition.
North American politics don't work like that. We all know there are gigantics gaps in the reasoning behind everything. Domestic companies do the same damn thing, but a part of that money has already gone into someone's pocket, because lobbying is a huge part of the decision making process
It's only bad if other countries are doing it.
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
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.
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.
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.
Lemmy is also a propaganda machine, let's ban this platform too then.
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
This may sound like a rhetorical question but I promise it's sincere.
Why would I be more concerned about China having my data than when the US has the potential to collect that same data AND MUCH MORE through surveillance that we know they do? My own government has a much higher potential to do me harm than one on the other side of the world.
Saw another post that had many great points. What if TikTok leaned into propaganda, topics like reunification with Taiwan? I promise that will effect us, big time.
Because China has interests that are in opposition to US interests, and they can sway US opinion any way they want by covertly manipulating the feed. They absolutely can do significant harm with this, including but not limited to selecting politicians, inciting chaos and political unrest, and even economic destabilization. I'm not sure that the US government actually has a much higher potential to do you harm than a foreign enemy of the US with a weapon like social media as you stated. You could make a strong argument that the political shitshow we are currently in is partially due to foreign interference through social media, and that is before they owned the actual platforms. The US government is not incentivized to destabilize itself at least.
probably because China is a foreign country and the US is (presumably) where you reside, and you should apparently trust your own government only. but i don't know exactly what a foreign government would want with your personal data anyways
I can insult Trump and Biden on social networks, travel to the US then travel back alive to my home country.
I wouldn't try that with China.
This is a misleading headline. It mandates that Tiktok be sold if it's to continue operating in the US.
Which honestly I support. It'll probably just be sold. Even if it's not, the CCP should not have a direct pipeline to feed US citizens whatever they want (even if they're allegedly "not using it for that").
Why doesn't the US government just make their own spyware entertainment app that's better than tiktok? 🤷🏻♂️
YouTube shorts algorithm sucks. It sucks so bad you realize how bad YouTube videos algorithm sucks.
Congress’ priorities are fucked.
I, for one, only want domestic adversaries abusing my personal information. Actual rocks and fence posts are smarter than this.
Tiktok isn't about advertising. It's CCP propaganda. Studies have been done that demonstrate that the Chinese only version Douyin shows more positive content to its users and Tiktok shows far more negative content that has a measurable effect on the mental health of younger people.
Never forget back during height of pandemic Zoom was actually caught routing all data through China. Said oops mistake and giggled. Hey look Tik Tok is evil and connected to China...but how much more evil then Facebook?...uhh CHINA!!
Tiktok has been the only massively popular social media app that hasn't censored pro-Palestinian content. I used to be against tiktok for it's ties to China, but I've been convinced it's important to maintain freedom of speech.
I don't use TikTok but wasn't it heavily criticized for censoring pro-Hong Kong content?
If the same videos TikTok had were instead on YouTube shorts, would all you people be happy? What about if Meta had it? It's pure nationalism and old people being scared of short form woke-ness.
I believe every social media has a misinformation problem, but I'm not just pinning it on TikTok.
Heck, our fear is the same reason we don't have cheaper EVs. We say 'the CCP.. ' and poof less competition and shitter availability for Americans.
I think it's ridiculous. I could care less if the CCP knows what type of short form videos I like. I'm sure our government has the same type of data. Obviously users could care less too. Leave choice to the people: hence freedom.
I believe in freedom of speech. Trying to take this (stupid) app away is a violation of it. I don't care about who owns it or gets data from it.
And no: I don't regularly use TikTok.
Here is the full text of the bill in case anyone was curious.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text?format=txt&r=1&s=1
Congress is after TikTok because it's impacting corporate profits like the boycotts of Starbucks and McD has done. A place where we can collectively communicate with each other outside of the approved echo chambers. They can't control how we act and think without being able to control the algorithm
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
