Can the US Lawmakers do anything about the US companies harvesting my data and selling it off… please?
Yes, they can make more money from it.
Can they? Completely wrong question.
“Will they” is what you wanted to ask but the answer is still firmly no
Honestly it might be “Can they” given how partisan issues like industry regulation are.
So when do they plan to do something about those domestic businesses trying to manipulate citizens of America?
Capitalism abusing citizens? Just fine.
“Communism” abusing citizens? Avengers, assemble!
They’re prospective communists. Supposedly they’re going to get there by 2050, but they just built a new massive luxury tower for their ultra wealthy so…
It’s just like Marx said: “If you do an oppressive oligarchy for 100 years, it magically transforms into communism”
If that were true then the United States would have been communist by now
I think they’re more worried that it’s a foreign corporation going after their citizens and not a domestic corporation.
More of a capitalistic dictatorship
I mean, the domestic businesses are the ones who own Congress and are using it to get rid of a competitor.
After the thousands of years of human history I’ve read about, getting rid of competitors seems to have been the primary concern of most of the ruling classes all over the world. Way back to Ur.
Rulers don’t play fair, because power corrupts.
As soon as the foreign businesses get better at harvesting data than the domestic ones, of course.
While you’re not wrong about double standards, anything that discourages the use of vapid social media platforms is a win in my book. Use whatever backwards logic you like to make it happen so long as it’s effective.
Well this goes into the direction of social media monopoly so I’m not sure
He says, on a social media platform
Lemmy is a message board, not social media. Like fark or something awful. You have no idea who the duck i am. How is that social?
Users create and/or share content, check. Users discuss content, check.
Unless you think something is missing from that definition, Lemmy is social media. It is pseudonymous, but it is still social because of the users.
Since when did that define social media? That’s the same thing as IRC. is IRC social media?
ICQ had message boards where people would chat about the news. Was that social media?
Again, fark is a place where people share content and discuss the news. Is that social media?
Yeah, I suppose those would. I wouldn’t have thought it, but definitionally, it would be! I mean, heck, some of those are listed by Meriam-Webster! Isn’t language neat? You learn something new every day.
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It is social media, just because your talking anonymously doesn’t mean you aren’t interacting socially. Jesus Christ your talking to people. Right now. Your being social media’d. Stop acting like your above it.
forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)
My tiktok account is also anonymous.
Your Lemmy account can likely be used to identify you, given a big enough data set.
Undoubtedly, especially since I haven’t taken particular steps to obfuscate my identity here.
But as I said in a comment below, I’m more worried about some unhinged nutbag online randomly targeting me than being a person of interest by any nefarious groups or organizations.
No it isn’t.
When you download the app you let them have the following information/data about you:
Purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers (!!), diagnostics, financial info, contact info, user content, browsing history, and usage data.
Please tell us how any of that is “anonymous”.
Cool dude, you’ve identified that big corporations data farm.
Random bloke user with a vendetta still doesn’t know who I am, and that’s who I’m more worried about on the personal scale.
Cool dude. Well you said your account is anonymous, and it isn’t. Words mean things.
Whatever Tiktok is doing, the correct response is to write enforcable laws to prevent ANY company from doing what Tiktok is doing.
This is bad governance.
That’s what they did. The “correct response” is described in the article as the law 50/50 signed here.
Did you read the article? The bill bans tiktok for being foreign. There is nothing in this article that describes a bill that outlaws any practices, conventions, or actions that tiktok has done.
Being afraid of foreigners for being foreign is not effective regulation.
The bill itself says, more or less, “any foreign adversary controlled app is banned. Also, TikTok is a foreign adversary controlled app”. So it doesn’t apply exclusively to TikTok, but it does explicitly include them.
Interesting wording there, “foreign adversary controlled”, goes a long way to protect all the companies that are based in tax havens, or controlled by foreign allies, like Saudi Arabia or Israel
In a democracy one of the very most important choices that must be made by citizens is what other nations are considered allies or an enemies.
The funny thing is that US citizens have absolutely zero control over who the government decides is our enemy or ally. That aspect of government is entirely partitioned off as separate from the “democracy”, as if the foreign policy element of our government was itself a foreign nation we have no control over.
While we are on the topic, fuck the government of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both governments are horrendously violent.
The point is that companies like Google and Facebook do the same data harvesting and manipulation but aren’t being held to the same standard. The law is clearly written to benefit the US government not the citizens, while the justification is stated to be ‘for the benefit of the citizens.’ It’s like buying your wife a lawn tractor for her birthday even though you know she has no interest in using one. You’re claiming it’s for her but it’s really for you.
The lawn tractor was for my wife’s boyfriend actually, but thanks for just assuming I was being selfish.
I think most of us here are concerned with foreign adversary interference as much as we are concerned with corporate interference and espionage. The law seems to only address the surface level issue (ownership) and none of the actual problems (action).
I’ve read this comment over 10 times now and I have no idea what the words “the law 50/50 signed here” means, so I can’t be sure I understand the argument you are trying to make. My best guess is that you are using circular logic to suggest that every democratically decided upon decision is always the right decision, which is nonsense because democracy is demonstrably fallible.
My point might be a little Covid brain fogged but I’m just pointing out that they did exactly what the guy asked for, if they bothered to click past the title which makes it sound like a targeted “ban Tiktok” law.
I am not a guy. I read the entire article before commenting. The law did not do what I asked for. You would know if you read my comment all the way through.
I think you’re making assumptions that I can read into what exactly you find wrong with Tiktok. That context is not there in the original comment.
Being chinese by definition can’t effect any company. There is enough context.
This was a committee vote. The bill now must advance to the floor, pass a vote there, then go through the same process in the Senate.
Many bills are passed out of committee but are never given an actual vote.
Especially in the least productive congress in US history, the odds of any actual vote are low.
Technically, while that might have been true at the end of 2023, the US House of Representatives of the 118th congress have voted 796 times with 126 items passed, according to Govtrack.us with at least ten vetoes by the POTUS.
So not really the worst by any measure.
But also not functional by modern measures.
Yeah for sure I’d love to see more progress. I’m glad at least the House Republicans have taken a very brief break from impeaching their own speaker on repeat.
Oh that’s coming. He had the audacity to applaud Biden. His days are numbered.
I wonder if this could also be applied to games owned in whole or part by Tencent…
i hope they sell conan exiles to someone else, because then the shitty monitization that is destroying the game will end.
Wishful thinking I’d wager.
yeah
Or websites? Like Reddit? No, never mind, that’s silly talk.
Many users called lawmakers’ offices to complain, congressional staffers told Politico. “It’s so so bad. Our phones have not stopped ringing. They’re teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app and we can’t take it away,” one House GOP staffer was quoted as saying.
and they still voted 50-0. really tells you something about how much these politicians are willing to listen to their constituents.
It was a 50-0 to pass the commission and then go to the House floor for a vote and then the Senate for a vote and finally signed into law by the president unless he vetoes it, which is possible imo.
Honestly, teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves, I might just call in to my local representative to voice my support of forced sale, operating restrictions, or even outright ban.
EDIT: I sent him an email.
Now do Facebook.
Love to, I think the 5 Bn USD FTC fine was a little light considering no jailtime was given. I hope their recent lawsuits lead to breaking the company up again.
what are you even trying to say here? that it’s okay for politicians to ignore entire demographics? or that it’s only okay for them to ignore entire demographics if, ultimately, it’s left up to a different group of politicians to pass the law?
i don’t use tiktok or have any interest in the app itself, but it’s still very alarming to see a vote go through 50-0 despite a “nonstop” flood of calls opposing it.
Ignore them? Gosh no. Protect them. Literally what I said.
“protect them from themselves” is what you said. which carries the connotation that they don’t know what’s best for themselves and aren’t qualified to make judgments about those things. this is different from simply “protecting them”.
To be fair, a big part of a functioning society is a government with proper regulations in place so that people are not expected to be experts in literally every field before making a purchase or performing some kind of action. Obviously, calling it “protect[ing] them from themselves,” is dismissive and patronizing, but it’s pretty much why we need government in the first place.
For example, the EPA recently issued a recall for ground cinnamon from certain specific (dollar store) brands due to unacceptably high levels of lead. Without the career scientists (and yes, bureaucrats) working for that regulatory agency, millions of people would have continued consuming the product and feeding it to their kids (low-income folks too in this case, given the brands) literally indefinitely.
Without the EPA, every person who buys cinnamon is what, expected to use mass spectrometry to determine the exact molecular make-up of every spice (or in the case of the EPA, literally any food or prescription drugs you may ever consume) before using?
If they didn’t do their cinnamon research, then they deserved it, and the government should have no involvement? What happens in cases where companies hide dangerous issues in their products to avoid losing profits?
What if there’s literally no way for anyone but a scientist, with extensive lab access and at least 4+ years of university to know that there is an issue with a product (or a construction site, or a drug, or water treatment, etc)? They’re the only ones who should be able to properly avoid using a product that may kill them and their children? And even then, only when it’s a product they’re an expert in?
Not saying you’re a libertarian, just like pointing out the obvious things that make it so so stupid.
i agree with everything you’ve said here. and i liked the EPA example. sorry if what i said came across as libertarian, that was not my intention.
i was just trying to push back against the “young people don’t know what’s best for themselves” mentality in the other post.
although, to be clear, i think the current state of social media does have quite a few problems that need addressing, and more regulation on that would certainly be welcome.
Ok, sure. Show me what research you or they have done to justify “protecting them from themselves”. Already they’re telling lies by insinuating that only teenagers and old people are calling. And you all just believe it? Wild how biased people can be when presented with information they want to believe.
Would love to see the science or other expert opinions that is being used to justify this ban then.
I haven’t heard anything except politicians making vague references to spying or other things we allow from domestic services.
It’s just politics.
TikTok Data Harvests: Report by AU Cybersecurity Firm or if you can’t be bothered to get past the paywall the news coverage of the event.
Misinformation on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpurol.2022.03.001
Adolescents more susceptible to product placement on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107723
Those things are exactly the same and it is indeed what I just said. Problem?
You’re not doing it to protect people. It’s ridiculous that you’d even pretend to be.
What other reason could I possibly have? You think there is some massive anti-tiktok cabal out there trying to profit by… uh… fucking how?
By banning anything except the few 'murican tech giants doing the exact same shit as TikTok. Even a blind person can see how cancerous american companies are, yet this does nothing to address that.
Actually, they’re not doing that at all, they’re forcing a compromised unethical American to sell to a different unethical American to do exactly the same thing. At no point was a ban even discussed. So, literally everything you just said was wrong.
Yeah honestly if a bunch of addicted teens and old people were calling me screaming that I can’t take away their drug of choice when that’s not even what’s happening, and it’s not being taken away just moved to where there can be more control on quality… Then I would be really considering the damage this is doing to them.
I don’t know if supporting the junkies being taken advantage of is the altruistic take that these “absolute freedom” supporters think it is.
The fact that you guys just ate up that rhetoric without any hesitation… Like, you just happily believe it’s a bunch of “addicted old people and teenagers”? Is this reddit? Did I make a wrong turn at common sense and critical thinking?
Uh dude… I know people addicted that got the email to message their representative. They will stop talking in a conversation and pull out their phone and just scroll through a few videos.
I struggle to believe so many would be messaging just out of laziness but don’t question that being the age groups that would respond most to that kind of targeted messaging into action.
Nobody got an email. You don’t know shit.
I never denied they sent a notification to people in the app. It offered to help get in touch with local reps. Why would people exercising their rights to communicate with politicians bother you in any way? That’s weird.
Messaging out of laziness? What does that even mean? They were calling their local reps to voice their discontent.
The people addicted comment just makes you look petty and ignorant. It might be time for you to graduate to Facebook.
It’s not just teenagers and old people. That’s just some bullshit rhetoric that you ate right up without question. Because of course you did. Millennials/middle age folk are abundant on TikTok as well as young adults.
The audacity of some of you to jump into action just to spite “teenagers and old people” is shameful. So easily manipulated.
Right, sorry, it’s fine to let teenagers and old people be harmed as long as the company can continue to profit off consenting adults as well. /sarcasm
How are they being harmed? Why was it so easy for them to make you believe this? Also, who asked you to protect anyone with your one petty little email lmao
A foreign dictatorship gathering face and voice id, entiry photo library and message history, contacts, and location tracking precise enough to pinpoint nearby devices and tell which floor of a building you’re on regardless of if the app is in use, to me equates to harm. If you disagree, well, I don’t give a fuck what you think tbh.
teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves
Please, big daddy government, protect me from the freedom of choice. I cannot be trusted to consume without your permission.
LMAO pay attention in school, kid, you seem like the type who is going to need it.
They should really educate people about foreign threats like the CCP and Kremlin.
Me when I find out that it’s illegal to sell your organs for profit
Nanny State.
“Mr. Legislator I am 84 and I need my Heroin but the federal government keeps cracking down on my supplier, please stop taking away all my Heroin Mr. Legislator. Also, force my bank to let me transfer 85,000 USD to India, it’s really important that I do that before the 27th.”
Yes. This is called Nanny State.
Rather than educate the populace, take away the tools. Of course, another tool will just rise to the surface but it will make a lot of people feel really good that they did something.
I do appreciate all of the reactionary statements. I don’t use TikTok but I do believe in freedom. Reducing freedoms, no matter how well intentioned does not solve societies problems.
You can’t educate dementia away. You can educate youth away, but that takes years, which would effectively be a ban for them. TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation and by extension their associated foreign dictatorship.
Absolute freedom should not extend to harming each other.
TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation
That pretty much describes every corporation in existence.
Some of them provide utility and some don’t, which is why we don’t allow children to drink, smoke, or gamble. If a company providing those goods and services targets those demographics it gets political action.
Welcome to the nuance of society and the modern world.
TikTok is one of hundreds of vectors to swindle the senile and I doubt it’s even in the top 10.
Grandpa needs to have someone else handling his finances. It’s not the governments job and let’s not pretend this bill is about keeping grandpas money safe.
It also tells you something about all the supposed gridlock in Washington that can magically evaporate when there’s money and power to be gained from it.
From what I read, the calls actually evaporated opposition to the bill.
Which, I’m NGL, if you’re worried about an app being used by a foreign adversary to encourage anti-social behavior in your youth, a bunch of people calling in acting like drug addicts getting their drugs taken away is only going to erase doubts.
It doesn’t help that they’d even be more justified when it’s known that it was caused by users getting pushed notified by Tik Tok to do it.
Encouraging people to contact their representatives and demand action? Congress clearly can’t have this. How will they do their jobs if they are constantly forced to engage with their constituents?
Call to action from, say, activist groups is very different from call to action from a billion-dollar company. This does make me really worried about how much influencer TikTok has on people ngl
How many of us stood up for net neutrality at the behest of Reddit?
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In my opinion, considering Tiktok’s algo they had the best circumstance to notify a mix of their users more aligned with the actual electorate. The fact they ended up with the worst representation of their user base when it came to confirming the suspicions of politicians says everything.
Are they “taking it away” though? Do normal people care about who owns it? Are they just worried about an unlikely ban?
you’re taking it as a given that bytedance will sell the app if this law passes. there is a chance that they won’t want to sell and then the app will be banned. (but i think this unlikely.)
also, if i’m understanding things correctly, there’s the possibility that they do sell and the app still gets banned. the article says
An app would be allowed to stay in the US market after a divestiture if the president determines that the sale “would result in the relevant covered company no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”
depending on who the next president is, there’s no guarantee that they’ll say any sale will result in the company not being controlled by a foreign adversary. (although this past is just speculation.)
anyways. this bill will certainly raise the chances that the app will be banned in the US. (and it opens the door for other apps to get banned if the US doesn’t like the country they were developed in.)
I also just noticed in the article:
TikTok urged its users to protest the bill, sending a notification that said, “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok… Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
Also from a BBC article about the same thing:
Earlier, users of the app had received a notification urging them to act to “stop a TikTok shutdown.”
So they were literally sending out misleading notifications (because a forced sale is not a total ban), and then the users wrote to Congress based on that…
The probability that they will sell seems really high to me, as the same thing almost happened back in 2020.
There’s no guarantee that making the sale will prevent the ban.
Yeah but if they sell then it’s someone else stuck holding the bags so why wouldn’t they?
because its not in the corporation’s interest to incur the expense and organizational disruption if they’re still going to get banned anyway - profit is maximized by continuing with business as usual instead of spending resources attempting to reach compliance
They also claimed that it was only “old people and teenagers” who were calling in and objecting which wasn’t true. One rep stood up and straight up lied claiming that TikTok users were “forced” to call. How would that even work? TikTok possibly being banned isn’t a lie but all that other shit sure was. It was just a popup offering to help locate local reps to call and make their voices heard. The fact that any of you are pretending that people taking this democratic action is a bad thing is appalling and your bias is blatantly obvious. The absolute ego on all of you to act like you just know better than all of those other people because… Reasons? Ridiculous.
Do you have the full text of the notification that you could post here? Kinda hard discussing the specifics otherwise.
If it really contains the quote “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok”, I do consider that misleading.
People here are often making a lot of noise about disinformation campaigns on sites like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube (and that’s just from user-posted content that the sites fail to moderate, not posted by the sites themselves), so I don’t see why this would get a pass.
Tik Tok pushes so much toxic content towards children and teenagers it should be shut down in my opinion.
The can very easily apply to every single social media.
Yes but unlike Facebook and other platforms, Tik Tok is aimed at and consumed by minors specifically.
Unlike? I think you mean they’re JEALOUS of TikTok’s appeal to minors…
I think people forget that Meta owns Instagram which is known to have a very young user base.
They are even currently Suing the FTC because they want to monetize minors more
What I mean is that Facebook for example is aimed at and consumed by older adults in the first place. Most young people in fact see it as a boomer platform.
When I was a kid and Facebook was new, I remember everyone wanting an account. The way I see it, Facebook just kept those users who wanted it when it was new. Who’s to say that the same won’t be true of TikTok later?
Who’s to say that the same won’t be true of TikTok
Who knows but we are talking about the negative effects TikTok has on society right now.
How?
By design. Especially the format (short video clips) and the optimization for being used on phones (not computers) makes it attractive for kids.
63% of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 used TikTok on a weekly basis
Report Estimates One-Third of TikTok Users Are Children Age 14 and Under
A Third of TikTok’s U.S. Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions
I tried googling, can’t find anything that supports these claims
Seriously? it took me one google search to find an endless list of such articles. Also, did you not notice all the kids outside filming Tik Tok dances with their phones, it has been going on for many years now, how is it possible you did not notice it?
Kids using tiktok and tiktok specifically targeting children to use their platform are distinctly different. Just because kids use tiktok doesn’t mean it’s because they were lured there. Those metrics only identify that tiktok is popular among youth, which is not an indication of malice whatsoever.
I appreciate your opinion, but short video clips on Mobile devices are nothing inherent to children. Now if tiktok was giving you pokemon for signing up or posting of their platform, then there’d be a valid argument that they’re targeting children. (I feel like there was a pokeball collaboration with tiktok once, but I can’t find a source to support it)
Getting back to the original context - the argument that Tiktok should be shut down because “it’s short videos on mobile platforms that’s popular among teens” is lunacy. Everyone is throwing shade at me and not realizing how absurd their argument is.
I’m not acting in bad faith either. I don’t care about the fate of tiktok, but I’m seeing a trend of vilification without proper logical discourse. It’s disconcerting to say the least.
I respect your opinion and don’t think you are arguing in bad faith. However, I think you are missing the central point. Which -in my opinion- is that a social media platform that turns out to have extremely negative effects on society and especially kids, should get shut down. If it happens with intent or without is not particularly relevant as far as I see it. I apologize if my initial comments were phrased in any misleading way, I am not a native speaker so I sometimes miss the finer nuances of certain formulations.
No need to apologize, you’re the first person to actually calmly and willingly discuss the topic without completely dismissing being disagreed with.
I know you’re not the originally comment I was replying to, but you conveniently moved the goal posts. The context of the entire conversation is whether TikTok specifically should be shut down because it targets children for it’s own gain. You’re now arguing that social media in general has negative impact on society and children, which I agree with, but is completely skewing the conversation and was, in no way, the central point of the discussion.
So your opinion is that all social media platforms that deem to have negative affects on society should be shut down? Do you not see what’s wrong with that? You’re saying humans can’t decide whether or not they want to use social media. You should understand how absolutely absurd that is - that is a completely dystopian totalitarian dictatorship idea. It sounds like a chapter in 1984.
Advertising.
Source? Examples?
I tried googling, can’t find anything that supports these claims
Edit: third party advertisers abusing tiktoks advertising algorithms is not on topic to the original comment that tiktok itself specifically targets children, and tiktok has addressed these issues.
You can downvote all you want, but I’ve still not been provided any proof that tiktok specifically targets or intends their platform to be for children.
I’m not dismissing the original claim. I’m genuinely curious, but I need logical discourse, not users with mental illness going off on complete tangents.
If you have any cognitive thought or opinionated source that tiktok is a bad faith actor towards the safety or health of children, I’d love to read it. My company builds software, so knowing the failings of tiktok to protect children is in my interest.
Didn’t look very hard
Again, this is not relevant to the original comment.
This is about how advertising was abused to target children.
It honestly sounds like you unjustifiably hate the platform and are throwing every nonsensical argument.
You’ve provided zero justification that tiktok as a company purposely targets children or designs their application specifically for children.
Unrelated - this is just a business tiktok page
Unrelated to original comment
Should I keep finding relevant links for you or do you feel sufficiently foolish enough?
The comment was
Yes but UNLIKE Facebook and other platforms, Tik Tok is aimed at and consumed by minors specifically.
That study shows the opposite. YouTube benefited from minors over 2.5 times more than TikTok. And it shows every other platform is benefiting similar amounts. In fact, Snapchat has half the number of monthly users as tiktok but has almost identical ad revenue from minors. All the major social media platforms suck and are trying to take advantage of us, especially kids
Unrelated
Unrelated
This is about advertising to children within the platform and how tiktok intends to protect unethical advertising to children
Unrelated, and you provided links that tiktok has worked to prevent this behavior from advertised
Again, this supports tiktok protecting children
No seriously – did you even try or did you just want to bloviate online to randos for… no reason at all?
Unrelated
You just ignore anything you dont like. You’re not arguing in good faith.
https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-slammed-in-europe-over-hidden-advertising-to-kid-1846277642
Are you a GOP candidate? You seriously couldn’t find any of these links?? I didn’t even use Google.
Unrelated to original comment
Please find two brain cells to rub together to understand the context of the original comment. You’ve gone on a complete nonsensical tangent akin to mental illness
My prediction is coming true: https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/10ofony/anything_to_protect_the_youth/
I watched that commercial - I guess banning TikTok is gonna work, huh?
What’s more likely to work is something else will appear and distract the gnat-like attention span of our status-obsessed species, and we can go back to tik tok being the sound your you hear at night when you visit your boomer relatives and try to sleep in the guest bedroom.
For the commercial yeah, real life is more of a no.
Good. Fuck them and all social media controlled by any big mega corp. But fuck the CCP especially.
The fucked up thing is they don’t seem to have a problem with rich 1%ers owning and manipulating millions of people. Only when it’s the Chinese. Facebook, Twitter, instagram are just as harmful. Although the delivery method of the content isn’t exactly “tailored” on those services like TikTok. I dunno how I feel about this. I mean, I think all social media services should die out. This just seems like an uneven hand.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
This is a really great way of putting it. I’d never heard that before, but it’s a truly apt way of summarizing one of the biggest problems I have with fellow leftists. However, I think I’d argue this is a slightly different situation.
Yeah, it’s a start toward something good. But it’s still sticky in its spirit.
It’s sort of similar to the complaint against incrementalism. It’s true, incrementalism is not a healthy solution to the problems we face. But fighting against good steps forward because you’re against the concept of incrementalism is…foolish…right? Or is it? Because sinking our efforts into incrementalism takes away effort from broad advancement. And incrementalism has been our MO since forever. And it’s only brought us further down the road to ruin.
But, again, fighting good incremental changes is nonsense. I dunno, it’s a nuanced issue and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. It’s interesting. And as someone who doesn’t use the more “standard” social media and never has, I’m all for erasing social media from existence. I’ve seen what it did to everyone in my life, and I was the perfect age for every step of social media’s growth: xanga/livejournal in middle school, MySpace in middle school/early high school, and then Facebook came about in my senior year, instagram in college and while i traveled in my early 20s…but I was an anti-anything-popular emo kid and goddamn I’m glad I was. But I also saw first hand how much social media changed my interactions with everyone in my life. It wasn’t pretty. People were addicted, constantly being just floored that I wasn’t on FB, countless people threatening to make me a Facebook page? It was severely strange behavior. And now tiktok is like all of that on goddamn super steroids. But it’s less people shoving it down my throat, and more just completely sucked in by it. Which is honestly scarier.
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Well the CCP does exert considerable control over TikToks parent company ByteDance. The CCP has already utilized data from TikTok to track protestors and other “dissidents”
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-china-bytedance-user-data-d257d98125f69ac80f983e6067a84911
No the CCP does not own Tik Tok but it might as well own it.
Unfortunately this situation is not unlike what the US government likely does. However, hopefully this precedence building policy recognizes that data privacy from 3rd party entities is needed. Will that standard be applied to US companies? Not likely any time soon but I’m optimistic.
It’s fucked that an authoritarian government would use social media to track and arrest protestors. I’d love to believe that this is a move toward transparency and protecting people but I think it’s a lot more likely to be a “nobody exploits social media to manipulate and repress my citizenry except me, and maybe the boy” situation.
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There is no evidence that it is banned. ByteDance just made the same app for the PRC market
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-tiktok-banned-in-china/
https://web.archive.org/web/20191127235720/http:/news.cpd.com.cn/n3559/201904/t20190425_836599.html
They don’t have to own it when they can make it do whatever they want. You won’t find critical analysis of anything important on Chinese tik tok.
I dislike TikTok as much as the next guy, but I think there are several issues with this bill:
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It specifically mentions TikTok and ByteDance. While none of the provisions seem to apply exclusively to them, the way they are included would give them no recourse to petition this, the way other companies would be able to (ie, other companies could argue in court that they aren’t controlled by a foreign adversary, but TikTok can’t. The bill literally defines “foreign adversary controlled application” as “TikTok, or …” (g.3.A)). It also gives the appearance that this law is only supposed to apply to them, which isn’t what it says but it might be treated that way anyway.
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It leaves the determination of whether or not a company is “controlled by a foreign adversary” entirely up to the president. He has to explain himself to Congress, but doesn’t need their approval. That seems ripe for exploitation. I think it should require Congress to approve, either in a addition to or instead of the president.
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According to g.2.A.ii (in the definition of “covered company”), the law only applies to social media with more than 1,000,000 monthly active users. Not sure why that’s included.
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There is a specific exemption for any app that’s for posting reviews (g.2.B). I’m guessing one such company paid a whole lot to just not have this apply to them.
According to g.2.A.ii (in the definition of “covered company”), the law only applies to social media with more than 1,000,000 monthly active users. Not sure why that’s included.
I’m glad clauses like this are common. We don’t want some teenager who wants to experiment with creating a “social media” website for his friends to have the full weight of the law immediately fall on their shoulders. People should be free to create website with minimal legal requirements, especially if it’s a small website.
3 months later:
Hottest trending new app: TokTic
The directed scope of the bill is going to do the same thing to TikTok that legislation did to Juul.
If you target Juul with legal repercussions for all their flavored vapes, then only Juul stops selling flavored pods. Now a million other disposable vape companies fill the void with flavored vapes that are worse for the ecosystem.
Targeting TikTok will just lead to another foreign data-harvesting social media app popping up to fill its place.
It’s not about data harvesting, it’s about targeting users with political ideas. If you watch a video for a certain amount of time then they will continue showing you those types of videos. There’s tons of bad faith political targeting on TikTok just like every other platform. The issue is that it’s difficult to avoid because the platform decides what you look at unlike other platforms.
This is why I’m having trouble understanding why people are confused about the bill’s purpose, especially in the context of the last dozen years or so. Allowing a political rival to maintain control over a platform like this is granting them soft power. Even if I agree that companies like Meta should be more heavily regulated (though not in this manner), I can see why they’ve put a bandaid on the issue given that there’s a non-zero chance that TikTok’s content has been actively in the past few years
So we’re censoring political speech?
Foreign adversaries don’t have 1st amendment rights.
Insert astounded meme when a shell partner aquires the Brand and now, (pick your)company is now a known CCP co-conspirator.
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It can still be successful elsewhere. It’s clearly about data sharing.
I think here the point is that the US government seems to be not bothered by Meta’s data collection which by the way has already been used by Cambridge Analytica to swing elections in favour of one of the opponents and most likely used on countless more occasions but it is now super worried about Tiktok.
And what did they do against Meta? To the best of my knowledge nothing effective.
If they do this they should apply the same measures against Meta and other companies but they don’t. Which is disturbing.
Same with Gaza and Israel. Hamas kills around less than 1 K civilians (mind you a lot of the killed on that first day were military), it is utter tragedy. Israel kills 30+K people, starves the local population, destroys almost completely the infrastructure and their homes and it is business as usual. And every now and then they are scorned to please their voting base while weapon sales to Israel are continuing. Replace Israel with Russia/NK/China or any other country the US considers hostile and they will have them sanctioned to hell, but since it is Israel, nothing of this is happening.
At least have the fucking decency not to have double standards, because the rest of the world isn’t blind or stupid.
As I recall they got Zuckerberg on stand and did their best “rabble rablle rabble” at him, with a few decent questions mixed in, then nothing.
Facebook was forced to pay 5 Billion USD in an FTC fine.
Good to hear! Love it when a megacorp gets the screws now and again, wish it happened more frequently (specifically to ISPs who took government funds for fiber infrastructure)
TBH even if it happens a lot people still won’t hear about it in the news.
Yes, you have pointed out the subtext that was there all along and pretended like it’s some new argument.
It is about the data sharing. The US doesn’t like companies sharing data with countries that it views as its geopolitical rivals. Big surprise, am I right?
Seriously. Don’t cover your eyes and pretend you can’t see why the government treats US companies different than companies that are directly in the hands of adversaries. They might not care if Meta uses it to profit off of us, but they certainly do care if China will use it to achieve an advantage over us, militarily or otherwise.
Facebook / Meta was forced to pay 5 Billion USD in an FTC fine over how they used data.
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I can’t order Jimmy John’s on my work computer anymore. Why? Because tiktok is blocked on our work network. What does tiktok have to do with Jimmy John’s? Well I would have thought nothing expect it won’t let you set your delivery option unless it’s allowed to send data to analytics.tiktok.com.
Why is a God damn sandwich shop sending my location to tiktok? No idea, but it’s definitely not just the video app that’s the problem.
I dunno what hill you’re trying to die on here. A stupid dancing app that provides a data collection platform by a foreign surveillance state is a plot on the Orville. Nobody is concerned with it competing with Google, Apple orYouTube. It’s so off-base. Google sucks anyway. If people are searching on TikTok it’s because it’s giving better results for them than Google. It’s about who is collecting the data.
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No, I think it sets a bad precedent. I don’t think TikTok should be allowed in the US (if the US decides it doesn’t want it as they’re seeming to). Taking the property is going to cause a bunch of what you mentioned.
Well if it’s such a useful tool, it will do just fine in China, right? No biggie.
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Isn’t this in some way the same as how China bans a number of foreign companies from operating? I don’t think doing the exact same thing is entirely fair but when others aren’t playing by the same rules, it’s a lot less black and white.
I’m surprised that people are surprised that a country would favor it’s own businesses versus foreign ones.
I’m also unsure of which countries act differently from this.
I’m not surprised but I’m still outraged at the amount of hypocrisy they are pulling off out of this one.
Ah yes, the US, where no foreign company is allowed to be successful.
Such unsuccessful or banned foreign companies include Samsung, LG, Sony, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Aldi, Shell, Siemens…
And if foreign politics won’t take care of it call the CIA and tell it they’re hiding oil under the presidents house.
So TikTok is sending out app notifications that they are at risk of being shut down and urging their users to call their representatives right now. They are not going down without a fight.
The 165 days time limit would land the deadline in August-ish, right before the most intense phase of election season in the States, and I do think TikTok would be a very influential part of the election strategy this year.
On this particular topic, I think “both sides” is true. Both sides want to proceed down this “ban websites by name” road.
Bytedance needs to figure out which congresspeople Meta has been bribing.
Need to donate a couple hundred mil to Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and see if he’ll give up his strategy.
Oh man, is this a game? Are we supposed to name all the reasons this is dumb? The first two are obvious.
MSFT was famous for not taking lobbying seriously until they started getting anti-trust action against them. They quickly became good at it.
Bold move. Who are they going to blame all the online privacy issues once they cant yell about the Chinese? Or are we going to start pretending everythings fine then?
Why do you think that they give a shit about online privacy? This isn’t a privacy bill, it’s a bill stopping another government from doing exactly the same shit that the US government does through domestic apps. They aren’t looking out for people, they’re afraid of the competition.
This is exactly the take I find the most interesting.
This is what the US has been doing everywhere for a decade+ now and suddenly it’s not ok? It’s because the grip is loosening and the sense of control and power is absolutely slipping and while it’s late to be grasping to get it back, it’s not unwarranted.I actually don’t think it’s a bad idea cause seriously creating an addiction that can only be served by other countries is not good for a healthy and good local populace. Is it a bit karma sure but I’d rather not live it as the same non addict if we can help it.
I expect the latter
So NSA backdoors are mandatory but Chinese ones are bad.
Yes. 🤷
Nobody wants to be spied on by their perceived enemies. Also, how do you expect us to maintain an appropriate level of hypocrisy if we don’t constantly do hypocritical things?
I wish we would go after foreign investment, ownership, and political meddling as much as tiktok
