Since when does Congress ban websites or dictate what apps people can have on their devices? Regardless of how you feel about this particular company, I feel like no one is talking about the internet-killing precedent that’s being set here, and that should be concerning.
To be fair they didn’t actually name TikTok. That would be clearly Unconstitutional. Instead they made a bill that will only apply to one company. So unconstitutional but most people won’t notice.
And even better Meta, Alphabet, Apple, and GM are all busy selling China your information as fast as they can anyways.
It’s being used as an infiltration device by the Chinese government. Not that I agree butvits not just a website. Same as Twitter and Facebook bit we have more control over those.
It’s being used as an infiltration device by the Chinese government
Please prove this.
Spoiler: they can’t
The heard it from a professional liar - aka politician - so it must be true.
There’s obviously not going to be proof, it’d be huge news if there were. At the same time, I also wonder why people so adamantly defensive of TikTok in particular? It seems trivial enough to establish that they could exert an undue influence on a global audience through social media with just a few (I would think uncontroversial) assumptions
- Social platforms have more than enough information to create a good idea of your politics, personality, and interests
- Platforms such as TikTok operate on “pushing” content the algorithm wants instead of users “pulling” content they want to see
- You are not immune to propaganda. Nobody is.
With a state ownership stake in the picture, it creates a pretty uneasy tension, right? If they know (1), they could just push ads and content which would help prime you emotionally and mentally to receive that advertising via mechanism (2). This is their actual business model.
Alternatively, if so motivated, they could just as easily use that same profile and mechanism to push content which nudges the content consumer in any myriad ways (politically, socially, etc.). Start with something that’s “close” to the viewer’s existing views, and cumulatively keep pushing content which leads folks down pipelines. They don’t even need to make the content. The users create it; the sentiment, quality, and popularity data informs which shorts to push where; refine the model based on receptivity; repeat as necessary.
Given (3), especially at the scale we’re talking about with TikTok, I think it’s obviously possible that the platform could be used to meaningfully influence public opinion, sow discord, spread misinformation, whatever. Whether they actually do this is purely speculative, but I also have a hard time thinking people would be quite so enthusiastically defensive of a similar social platform under direct influence from their own government?
I’m pretty sure an American company already reviews all their code - Oracle, iirc. They already did this after people complained last time. The CEO isn’t even Chinese.
Platforms such as TikTok operate on “pushing” content the algorithm wants instead of users “pulling” content they want to see
This is just outright wrong, like hilariously wrong and if you used the platform for more than 10 minutes you’d see that. Tiktok is the ONLY social media that feeds me content I want to see as accurately and often as I want. It will even adjust the videos I see within the same 30 minute session to feed me more of what I’m favoring within that 30 minute session.
There is not any other single social media that does this.
Please don’t take my post as a claim that the algorithm isn’t absolutely amazing at what it does. All I’m saying is that it is, by nature, pushing you content rather than serving you content which you actively seek out. I don’t believe the things we’re claiming are mutually exclusive here.
Same as Twitter and Facebook bit we have more control over those.
Only in the sense that the people using them to manipulate us are the same ones making the laws. They’re leveraging it for their own ends, not stopping it.
The correct course of action (from the perspective of the American people, in stark contrast to that of the American government/oligarchy) would be to ban TikTok as the threat it is, and also ban Facebook, Twitter and Reddit for the threats they pose as well. The trouble is that it won’t, because it is the entity wielding that weapon against the American people and will not voluntarily disarm itself.
Banning them is the exact wrong way to go about the problem. That just gives the government the power to ban apps that contain information that doesn’t fit the narrative the government wants to put out. It gives them control over the consumer.
What should happen is comprehensive privacy protections for consumers and extensive fines when companies don’t abide by them. That way, the consumer benefits and the government has more oversight over companies, not people.
The way I see it, the problem is centralized social media with opaque engagement and content-boosting algorithms. Think of it not as the government banning apps with content it doesn’t like but instead as enforcing anti-trust law.
How about a digital bill of rights instead of playing ineffective whackamole?
Harm the stock portfolios of US billionaires? You sound like someone who hates receiving RVs and fishing trips.
I do, fishing sucks
Just get drunk on a boat without the act, cowards
Because the US can control the topics shared in the other platforms, but since tiktok is owned by a chinese parent company, they can’t
Also, tiktok was originally told they had to sell to a us based owner to avoid the ban (see hostile takeover)
This ban has nothing to do with privacy and Chinese manipulation, and everything about control and profits.
Hell, Besos and The Zuckster are the two main forces pushing for this ban.
Corporate lobbying doesn’t want digital rights for people, more work for them.
I’m not a ban fan but social media like that is psychological cancer that is definitely harming the young and old mentally.
Kids growing up these days have the burden of the disgusting need for social media self-promotion. They are conditioned that attention and Likes are the most valuable social currency, and waste so much of their valuable youth pursuing that hollow bullshit.
I’m keeping my kids off social media for as long as I can so they can experience growing up without Cloud-automated peer pressure.
Look what it did to boomers. Legit. Ban all that shit. Geocities for the win.
Lead exposure was probably a big part of that as well to be fair.
This will do nothing about that. If TikTok is banned, kids will just move to something else. You would have to ban all social media. Good luck with that.
You can’t ban peer pressure. That’s like trying to stop the flow of water.
Surely engineers have devised ways to reduce pier pressure caused by the flow of water.
They said this about TV. And game consoles. And computers. And every social media website. They said this about movies when they first came out too.
Social media is a reality of the world. This ban isn’t getting rid of that, just banning one specific platform. Why is Intagram Reels acceptable but Tik Tok isn’t? Because ones is owned by a Chinese company and the other isn’t. That’s all this ban is about. Literally nothing else.
They said it about stories that were written down instead of memorized and told our loud.
Yeah, I’m almost 100% sure the “tiktok is damaging kid’s brains” is the millennial equivalent of boomers “videogames and TV are damaging kid’s brains”.
I’m a millennia by the way, and we are starting to sound a bit afraid of technologies.
Short form video is genuinely pretty bad though… Most social media is too, it’s not just a new medium people are scared of, it deliberately trains people to maximize use of it
Facebook pioneered most of the (unethical) experiments that make it so bad. They experimented with what makes people use the app for longest - controversial topics, quickly decreasing the amount of “desired” content as you scroll to push you to the optimal reinforcement schedule in operant conditioning, and copious amounts of alerts to give you fomo
Video games can be bad for the same reason - they can also be built to cultivate addiction. And social media can be built without it… The difference between Reddit pre-investment (which coincidentally, I think was also related to tencent/bytedance… They have an obscene amount of money invested everywhere) and Reddit now is a good example
It’s not just people clutching pearls about the new thing or a rise in mental illness coinciding with the growth of social media - there’s a science-backed arms race between engineering more time in app and understanding/treating the effects
(That being said, I agree we millennials are starting to emotionally reject new technology - in this case there’s just solid science showing how this is being misused with bad effects)
Check out the new video by “some more news”, it’s more comedy than anything, by it deals with some reputable sources.
https://youtu.be/5aFQY6-Mxcw?si=IFkuuPCQ6Pmv7YOK
The effect is not clear cut, and there are many other confounding effects that might be more important, and being glued to your phone might be a symptom more than a cause, but I agree that excessive social media and short format videos are bad for you, but that can be said about video games or even regular games.
Like you said, that guy is more comedy than anything. I really can’t stand his videos… While I agree with most of the positions I’ve seen him take, there’s a clear bias (maybe in the name of humor… He seems like he’s going for a Jon Steward/John Oliver thing, but I just don’t find him funny)
Most of all, he seems like he’s got researchers pumping out scripts at a furious pace
I don’t think that’s a great source for this, the guy isn’t a science communicator - social issues and current events sure. This is a hot pop science issue turned cultural - you really want to hear from experts on this kind of topic, it’s such a muddied issue. They’ve been writing articles about how “social media is destroying the children” and “social media isn’t as bad as it seems” for a decade and a half.
I agree there’s a lot of confounding factors. Smart phones exploded along with social media after all, that alone was transformative
But that’s if you look at it all together, I’m not claiming that social media is the source of all our problems (I’d argue there’s a good case, but one near impossible to prove)
I’m saying social media is bad for you, particularly short form video. And by that, what I mean specifically is that it’s highly addictive, incentivices the spread of misinfo, and is a displacement activity (eats up any amount of time) that doesn’t improve mood or life satisfaction. And unlike the previous new forms of media, it was designed to be addictive by big data crunching - sensationalism isn’t new, but this was too fast and too centralized for the natural push and pull to happen
I can go into each of those aspects deeper, but I don’t think anyone is arguing this is a better way to socialize or a net good for mental health
This is all true which is why it’s obvious that this ban has nothing to do with any of this considering they allow this behavior to continue just as long as these companies are also under their influence.
I’m a new parent trying to navigate all this myself.
Most research I’ve been able to find suggests that social media doesn’t cause problems, but rather kids with problems tend to spend too much time on social media. As in there’s no causal link between social media and whatever social problems.
I guess when my kids get to that age the best I’ll be able to do will be to try to keep them engaged with the physical world however I can.
Good.
Let’s go further. Any company using an algorithm to profit off people’s engagement has to publish the code.
Code’s not enough. The data the algorithm is analyzing (both the training data and live data) has to be public too, in order to actually understand what the algorithm is doing.
Is there a way to publish the data without harming the users?
The training data, yes. As for the live data… I would say “yes” in the sense that the service shouldn’t be storing anything but what the users explicitly choose to make public to begin with.
Do you think there’s a difference between the training data and the live data? Didn’t most of these platforms start without engagement algorithms?
They are making money off a literal public good. EVERYTHING they produce, including the profits, is public property.
If I have it correct, the law wouldn’t immediately ban TikTok but would require it to actually be sold to a real US company within a certain amount of days otherwise it’d get banned. The CCP obviously doesn’t want that. So if this passes, TikTok isn’t removed immediately.
Probably what happens is the CCP, I mean Bytedance, sells it to a US company then puts their people there to still siphon data.
The law is to force any company that isn’t US owned that the US doesn’t like to hand over ownership. Regardless of your thoughts on TikTok/ByteDance/China in general, this is not a law one should praise. It’s incredibly dangerous and is one more step toward the US becoming a full-fledged fascist state.
What exactly is fascist about it? Being able to ban companies from hostile nations seems like a legitimate tool that frankly is concerning that we didn’t have before. Russia and China are using massive propaganda farms and the US has been paying the price of that for too long. We are moving into a hostile multi-polar world and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Internet isn’t segregated sooner or later if hostilities start
I guarantee you that Facebook, Twitter and Google are selling data to China on the regular. And anyone else willing to pay up.
That’s all fine and dandy for Biden though because he gets to sort through it all first unlike with TikTok.
I’m pretty sure Biden is not sorting through everyone’s social media information. I think he’s a little busy.
You’re really going to defend the extension of government surveillance because it’s your favorite neoliberal championing it?
I don’t remember defending anything.
It’s already run by a Singaporean group. Transferring it to the US is just a chance for our Social Media conglomerates to part it out and destroy competition.
The best part is they get to buy it at a discount, because they know there won’t be any other options.
The CEO is Singaporean but it isn’t run by any Singaporean group.
TikTok Ltd was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and is based in both Singapore and Los Angeles.[11] It 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).
From the Wikipedia. This isn’t hard information to find.
60% of Bytedance is owned by institutional investors. It’s a private company. The CCP doesn’t own the company. 3 of the 5 board members are American. Don’t spread made up bullshit. If there’s any reason not to sell the company to a US company is because only 150 million Americans are tiktok users on an app with over a billion monthly active users globally. Not to mention that the US companies are gonna lowball the shit out of their offers because they think Bytedance is gonna be begging to sell. Also, there’s a chance that if the US bans tiktok, then maybe they could get access to China, which tiktok is not currently available in.
Any business that does business in China, especially ones based in China, are under the CCP. Doesn’t matter who the “owners” are and they can have 1000 American board members.
China has private industry AND state owned industry. While everything is monitored by the CCP, they don’t control private businesses. They do indeed have capitalism in China. The only difference is that in China, rich people get killed when they fuck people over. Even the US is an insanely corrupt surveillance state.
99.99999%
While also expanding their own surveillance capabilities, right?
Yeah, tiktok is a Chinese data mine so… they don’t want it to go away, they vwanna control it.
Who downvoted this shit? This is 100% the case. The problem isn’t any of the negative effects of social media. The problem is that the US government doesn’t get to store and sort through all the data on TikTok like they do with US social media companies. They don’t give a shit about its effect on Americans. They just want the ability to use it against Americans like all the rest.
Cool, do Twitter next. Wait, ban Elon…into the sun.
Twitter gives US agencies data, they are cool bro
Glad to see Dems are taking the threat of Trump getting into power serious by focusing on issues that their base support:
Stop funding and supplying a genocidePacking the clearly biased court so things like student loan forgiveness can pass and all these anti trans and other crazy far right laws get shot downNot breaking rail road workers strikes- Banning one of the most popular social media apps
An app that they already made an account for Biden on too lol
Gotta do what big corporations want him to do
Nevermind the bill has bipartisan support! Republicans must have ZERO to do with this bill! 🙄
Get serious or get out.
Nevermind the bill has bipartisan support!
In general, “bipartisan” just means the oligarchs are teaming up to fuck over the people.
The good “bipartisan” bills are the ones that the Republicans and Democrats come together in solidarity to vote down.
Bringing up that it had bipartisan support is completely irrelevant.
The headlines are going to be “Biden signs bill banning Tick Tok”. When his support of a horrible genocide is already depressing how much non republicans want to vote for him going out and doing this is just adding more reasons.
Maybe you and him need to get actually serious and focus on things people actually care about.
He is only campaigning on “I’m not trump” like literally if you got to his website and click on “Joes Vision” you get taken to a 404 page. There’s nothing talking about where he stands on issues or what he offers.
He is only campaigning on “I’m not trump” like literally if you got to his website and click on “Joes Vision” you get taken to a 404 page
(X) Doubt
maybe go check for yourself, clearly your not serious enough to even do that so no point talking about this more
I was specifically referring to the “Joe’s Vision” part. I looked at that website before I replied to you. It isn’t there.
Okay and? How is helping the GOP do this going to win support on the left?
China banned pretty much all the US social media… I bet, they will complain when the same happens to them…
So we should copy China’s policies?
I did not even say that…
Seem like an oddly specific thing to mention if you aren’t using one to justify the other…
Only if that’s the assumption you make. I took it to mean let’s see how China spins this considering they did the exact same thing to ALL social media.
They’re speculating that China will be hypocritical little crybabies about this. Did you even read the post?
I’m not even from the USA… I’m just guessing what’s going to happen…
Bruh you don’t know how to comprehend what you write?
We’re just that far behind China
Goddam this is dumb as shit.
Please help a fellow non-US citizen understand. How can this be a bipartisan agreement and, what’s its difference to the “video games cause violence” bit? I dislike TikTok as well (and I will never use it) but I think banning it nationwide is taking it too far.
How can this be a bipartisan agreement
Both sides dislike other countries having the spy power. Or anything, really. US got serious overcompensation issues with being the biggest and baddest at everything.
What’s its difference to the “video games cause violence” bit
China likely actually is spying and TikTok probably does actually do some harm, unlike video games and violence. Definetelt nowhere near justification for this shit though.
Ahhh you just triggered memories of Tipper Gore.
The US has two parties, one which is very nationalistic and loves cruelty, and one that is very bureaucratic and loves controlling information. This creates a bureaucratic structure which increases control over citizen info, in a way that presumably hurts another country and stifles progressive youth.
Well the video games thing was people thinking games caused violence. This is people thinking the CCP has access to TikTok’s data. The problem is all of our social media apps, and cars, and smart devices are selling data to China. So we aren’t plugging a hole. We’re just forcing a “fire sale” where a rich American can buy TikTok for cheap.
This isn’t a consumer protection thing; it’s a national security thing.
Unfortunately, they’re not banning all social media because they’re vectors for destroying privacy and manipulating consumers; they’re banning only the Chinese one because it’s a vector for Chinese spying and propaganda. They want only American-owned companies to be in a position to manipulate Americans, and they want that manipulation to continue.
The issue is not with the applications psychological effects on children (although i’m sure politicians bring that point up in passing to bolster their argument). The basis for the removal of the application is that it is spyware with rootkit capabilities.
House Speaker Johnson plans to package TikTok legislation with critical aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and send it to the Senate. President Joe Biden vowed to sign it into law.
So it’s a rider with some important and time sensitive other things that need to pass. Headline is totally (and probably intentionally) misleading.
He could veto it, but it would cause actual harm because those funding bills would have to go back to Congress delaying much needed aid to Ukraine and Taiwan.
Biden has already indicated he in on-board with the TikTok ban so even if it wasn’t bundled in he would sign it. https://apnews.com/article/biden-tiktok-ban-house-china-aaa884d8c974f0a35856af5ee6aa4e99
Biden has come out in favor of this bill already, the hold up is in the senate.
Even if it passes, I would expect TikTok to immediately sue and gain a temporary stay on enforcement. How it shakes out in court is not my area of expertise.
What else is in this bill? This will probably make VPNs very popular.
Oh thank God. Tik tok was a mistake. Please for the love of god go after facebook next. Kill the misinformation peddlers one by fucking one
I found this an interesting perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEDGZlG_41k
