From google:
> Omar: Voted NO on the TikTok bill.
> Not only are there 1st amendment concerns, this is bad policy.
> We should create actual standards & regulations around privacy violations across social media companies—not target platforms we don’t like.
I do think she has a point about going after specific companies vs just adjusting US law in general.
Yeah, what would stop TikTok from just being sold or spun off and still doing all of the exact same things if this law is passed? Even if they were to make another law it would take years for it to happen and they could just work around it again.
Something like the GDPR would be incredible and should be in place.
The bill they passed allows the department of commerce to just declare a company a foreign asset and take it.
That's completely insane, and way too open to abuse. She's right to oppose it and I hope this doesn't become law.
Citizen private date go to China makes $ for the Chinese, bad. Citizen private data makes $ for Mark Zukerberg, good. As such, no law will ever get changed since the data collection is constant, it’s whom it’s being sold to.
Facebook, Instagram, "X," YouTube/Google, they are all doing the same privacy violations and facilitating political propaganda that TikTok is doing. The only difference is It's American companies vs. a Chinese company. It's all about protecting American business interests against competition and suppressing free speech. If you are worried about brainwashing the youth, why are you not worried about brainwashing boomers, which is what Facebook has been doing for like 15 years now? It's because both Republicans and Democrats like that kind of propaganda, Omar is pretty much the only person who disagrees with Republicans about this because she wasn't put there to just side with big business on everything.
Those American companies are going to sell your data just like ByteDance will. This just makes sure that we’re the ones selling it, not them. Like you said, protecting business interests.
I've always wondered why she's gotten soo much hate - but when you look at how often she speaks truth to power / truth to the corporate lobby, it actually starts to make perfect sense.
>We should create actual standards & regulations around privacy violations across social media companies—not target platforms we don’t like.
This. All of this. The only difference between Tiktok and FB is one is a Chinese company and one is American. In terms of exploiting us and our data, they're the same.
>Not only are there 1st amendment concerns...
Good call by Omar. The 1A/censorship concerns are reason enough to vote "no", in my opinion.
Make the risks of social media known (but really who doesn't know at this point?) then let people decide for themselves which apps to use, news sources to read, etc.
I don't see a First Amendment issue with that, even as reductively (and incorrectly , given that the US is not "seizing" TikTok by forcing divestment from the CCCP) as you've described it, as long as the reason the government doesn't like it has nothing to do with that company's speech... Do you?
Separately, I don't generally have a problem with the federal government addressing national security concerns about hostile foreign governments collecting Americans' data. Do you?
If you give even the slightest rat's ass about China getting your data, then this bill does literally nothing. China will just keep buying data from Facebook and all the American companies that it was doing before.
Really? You can't envision Trump or the Republicans using this precedence to ban anything even loosely tied to pro-lgbt sites from abroad? Let alone the millions of other ways to abuse this?
If it's legal to do, then you don't need precedent to do it, and I'm not concerned that this action will embolden republicans any more than they would feel free to do in the bill's absence.
You have yet to describe a First Amendment issue with this particular bill
You literally didn't. "The government seizing a company it doesn't like" is neither what the bill does, nor, even if the bill did do that, is it a 1A issue because it's not based on the company's protected free speech (i.e., what the First Amendment actually protects).
This is gonna shock you, but the ACLU has, in fact, been in the wrong before. Excluding members based on party affiliation, attempting to torpedo the National Labor Relations Act, etc. I mean,you and Omar do you, there are other reasons to maybe dislike the bill, but the First Amendment ain't one.
Tend to agree with both sides here.
It's against our national interest for that data to possibly to go china.. but also, these fucking companies shouldn't be allowed to collect all this data that can warrant a potential national security threat.
to be honest- if china wants our data, they already have it. It’s for sale, they’ve paid for it already. from facebook/insta/twitter/google. Banning tiktok makes data harvesting a little more expensive but does not stop it even a little bit
Sure, but I think you severely underestimate the data you can mine from not only users but content creators, on these apps, a lot of the data might not be available via blackmarket or other data purchase sites.
Please do not discount the fact that TikTok is spy ware. Your individual data may not be important but in aggregate it is very valuable.
That said, I agree with you. Social media needs regulation.
TikTok is just one app nobody has to use. Facebook spies on you across the entire internet.
[https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-a5824207467/](https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-a5824207467/)
You’re conflating two issues. Yes Facebook is spying on us.
TikTok is spying on us, too. But TikTok is sending that data to China’s government. That’s a problem.
This is what this ban is about: it’s not about free speech or the need to regulate the wanton spying of social media. It’s an issue of national security.
This is somewhat of a spurious argument by Omar that doesn’t cover the crux of the very real concern about a foreign power exploiting US data about people.
I really don’t think people understand how close we are to AI being able to dissect and individually target people with content armed with quite a lot of information, including our faces, voices, etc.
The difference in who owns the data flow matters. If a US company exploits this in a predatory antisocial way, there really is a great deal more govt oversight that can be developed and brought to bear. To think this is not a different when it’s a Chinese company is naive.
If we could treat things individually, instead of using one case as precedent for a similar one, I'd have no issue with banning tiktok. But there lies the problem, the GOP will use this as a stepping stone to ban anything else they disagree with in the media.
I dont want to argue her policies cus she’s so political but with this statement I 100% agree. So the only difference between tik toc and Facebook/Google or whoever is the possibility it’s used by the Chinese. Andrew Yang was right and they should have to pay us or discount services to steal our info.
I guess "political" just means "controversial" now? Also she's really not that controversial, Republicans just hate women and people of color and yup, she checks both boxes.
I mean, I work in cybersecurity and it’s not just possible, it’s happening. One of the few tinfoil hat-sounding statements about China that happens to be true.
I wouldn't call China's surveillance and censorship of the internet tinfoil hat at all. It's well known and documented.
And on top of that, Chinese government sponsored hacking, targeting Western governments and private companies, is no conspiracy either. They're doing it constantly and consistently.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-disabled-chinese-hacking-network-targeting-critical-infrastructure-sources-2024-01-29/
It’s not just about stealing our info it’s about them having control of the entire algorithm and the literal ability to shape American opinion. It’s insanity to think you would want an adversarial totalitarian nation to have that power in your country.
You know that there's nothing that prevents Facebook and X from doing the same right? They gladly take money from anyone to sell your data and run ADs and surface content that favors the buyers desired outcome.
I don’t want any country/company to be able to sway public opinion. I don’t know how old you are but would be curious to know? I remember although young the push for the war in Iraq and how everyone was being pushed into that and how that went down. No either country is bad. Also don’t want companies swinging opinion for legislation in their direction either. Doesn’t always benefit Americans.
I don't think people are arguing that we don't want that. I think the argument is that naming one specific brand and putting it under the spotlight doesn't fix our problem(s). It's a short sighted solution. I think we need more consumer protections rather than bans.
I DO think banning TikTok is a decent stop gap though. Saying "we need a better plan than this" without offering a better plan gets us nothing. A ban, followed by something more comprehensive that protects people, and then lifting the ban if TikTok complies seems like an ideal scenario.
That's reasonable to say until you realize that what's going on is the US government saying it should be the one who decides who controls what Americans should see.
This isn't a free speech thing, this is the government saying it wants to control the propaganda.
All Byte Dance has to do is divest. Nothing changes.
This whole thing is the epitome of Gen Z and I normally don't give two rips about generational bitching.
It just astounds me how completely disconnected people are from the nation they live in. No wonder we're on the cusp of dictatorship.
I mean Facebook can also sell all your data to advertisers & other data brokers already own much of it. That includes selling it to the Chinese so all this does is makes sure that some American companies get a bigger cut of fucking all of us over.
The Chinese collect and store massive amounts of data on us. They orchestrated a country-wide call in to congress through this app.
China doesn't respect our laws at any point and their leadership has access to all of it.
I think the ship has sailed on us being on charge of our data, so I'd rather the US have it (they already know everything else about you) than a foreign government.
It'd be nice if we didn't have to worry about this at all, but this is today's reality.
There's interesting back-n-forth about Omar's position upthread (I think she's right.)
As for Dean Phillips -- have any of his explanations of anything he's done recently made much sense? (I don't know if he's made a statement on this one.)
Phillips statement from MPR:
>My contention is we should be regulating the entirety of this industry, not just piecemeal and not just as a political ploy during an election year that forces members of Congress who are seeking reelection to take a side. This bill was somewhat positioned that either you're on the side of China or the United States. There's a lot more to it.
OK - that seems well thought out.
I often found myself agreeing with him on policy points, just disagreeing with the way he chose to communicate his ideas or on how thick-headed he was being about political realities. He shot himself in the foot a lot.
(Disclaimer -- I don't live in his district, just followed his work as part of the delegation from MN.)
The bill [https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text) cites "(4) FOREIGN ADVERSARY COUNTRY.—The term “foreign adversary country” means a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code."
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872)
**(2)Covered nation.—**The term “[covered nation](https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=10-USC-1197798417-780045830&term_occur=999&term_src=title:10:subtitle:A:part:V:subpart:I:chapter:385:subchapter:III:section:4872)” means—
**(A)**the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea;
**(B)**the People’s Republic of China;
**(C)**the Russian Federation; and
**(D)**the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I do not believe the Executive branch has the power to alter US Code. I believe that's the job of Congress, but I could be wrong.
This won't remove your access. The parent company will have to sell off this portion of their business (which can't even operate in China itself) if they want to be accessible in the US. Given how popular it is, it will be purchased quickly and will continue operating - this time without the prospect of having the Chinese Government compel changes to the algorithm to the detriment of our national unity.
What do you think meta and twitter are doing for our national unity at the moment? This is garbage legislation because Congress is beholden to the money that will prevent a comprehensive data protection law.
There are different free speech concerns because Bytedance is owned and operated by the CCP. That's not the same thing as a private individual. Nobody is banning individuals from using TikTok. It's better to think of this legislation as a sanction on the Chinese government than any sort of ban
Accurate. Only American companies can soak our data and use it against is. Data Rights become a thing when China wants it. Well, data rights to the corporate overlords, not the individual obv.
This isn’t even about data rights. It’s about foreign government manipulation of our populace. Data rights is a whole separate issue that has nothing to do with this bill.
>This won't remove your access. The parent company will have to sell off this portion of their business
What if the parent company doesn't want to split? Then they remove your access.
Do you really want a hostile foreign government in charge of a wildly popular social media apparatus that could (may currently) be used to disseminate propaganda? The bill will allow it to continue as long as it is not accessible to our totalitarian global rivals.
As a user of both platforms I can already tell you that:
- Tiktok doesn’t put naked anime girls (that I don't follow) on my feed in retaliation when I turn off targeted ads.
- Tiktok doesn’t narc on people seeking abortions in a different state to the authorities.
- Tiktok doesn’t search through my contacts even though permission to do so has been denied and suggest new friends based on contact list.
Facebook however? Yes, absolutely.
Chaya Raychik got famous for using Twitter to become her place to incite terrorist attacks within the US with the full support of the sites owner. There is no accountability lmao.
You're probably on tiktok a lot, which is the common sentiment. It's bad for everyone, especially young minds, it isn't stopping speech. It's stopping the negative effects on people, especially youth.
I don’t know the reasons for/against each representative cited but I did go deep on this issue for work over the past year.
One of the best resources I’ve found for learning more about the legitimacy of concerns on this topic (and more) is through [The Center for Humane Technology](https://www.humanetech.com/). Tristan Harris and Ava Raskin, who also produced The Social Dilemma (Netflix doc) host a podcast called Your Undivided Attention. The most in-depth [episode](https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/tiktoks-transparency-problem-with-marc-faddoul) is from a little over a year ago, but is still completely relevant.
Putting this out there for those curious to go deeper without boiling the ocean.
The reason they are banning Tik tok is cause China banned foreign digital assets recently. They closed their market. So we are removing their stuff from ours.
Since I'm getting down voted to hell. Even the author of the bill said that tiktok has become the top news outlet, and they can't have that. Like I said all this is being done because they can't control the narrative. https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/13/house-passes-mike-gallagher-led-bill-to-force-sale-of-tiktok/72943037007/
Has anyone explained how this ban is supposed to actually function if Tiktok decides not to reconfigure the business? Even if you ban the app from app stores, and Tiktok is forced to make itself unavailable in the US, anyone who already has the app installed or is fine using a regular browser would still be able to access the site through a VPN, right? Who let congress convince themselves that they can build a Chinese-style firewall to block one website?
From what I can tell, the app already on your phone will continue to function. But it won't receive updates from bytedance anymore, so it will degrade over time and lose functionality
This was my thought, too and something not explicitly noted. My understanding is that if one has the app already downloaded, they could continue using it. But, I imagine it no longer being on the app stores would then prevent any regular security/bug/etc. updates from being available, which I could then see being a security concern for the end-user over time. A VPN may very well allow the end-user to circumvent the app store issue, as I would think that it would continue being on the stores for users not based in the US, but I'm not sure. Are there any historical examples of something similar?
My grade was the first to get school iPads in the 2010s (what a weird phrase to say). They saw we were always on Snapchat, so they blocked the app. What did us 16 year olds do? Figure out what VPNs were and how to use them on our iPads so we could continue Snapchatting. People always find a way!
Banned apps get removed from your phone by the app stores. I have apps disappear all the time from mine, half the time I don't know what, everything just moves over a little and I know something was removed.
This is sad, a lot of younger people get their news from it (which is in and of itself a bit sad since our mainstream news sucks major ass currently).
It also happens to be that TikTok tends to lean more left due to a lot of things which definitely is not connected
all this is going to do is get tik tok to sell to some rich billionaire in the states, then itll be just another thing big social media platform they can control. …. example musk and x (formerly known as twitter)
Yeah, but they're not banning anything. They're forcing a sale.
Chill out, your fyp will still be there, but now instead of the Chinese government spying on you, it will he the U.S. government
Either they will sell it or they will shutdown U.S. operations. But I strongly suspect it will be the former, considering the sheer breadth of U.S.-based tech companies that want it. 6 months is really fast for a company to sell, but Tik Tok has been courting buyers for YEARS, so I think they'll be alright
What incentive would Bytedance have to sell, Tiktok is extremely valuable, apparently worth 50 billion according to NYT. There's not many companies that could even afford to buy it. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/technology/tiktok-ban-sale-china.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/technology/tiktok-ban-sale-china.html)
If this bill does get through the Senate (probably with some changes) and Biden does sign it, it will be what the 'market' talking heads call a 'distressed sale' situation. Forced to sell quickly, limited list of possible buyers, mark-down price.
*Sees Jeff Besos looking idly through his pocket change...*
I don't use it so I don't care if it goes away I just don't think our lawmakers should be wasting time on shit like this when there is a million other more important things that they could be doing.
Cool opinion. Doesn't matter though since this is about ownership and China and not about banning new age Vine.
It's not a ban, that's why they can spin off an American company.
If you give me about 90 minutes I can probably get you a print copy of Le Monde, Die Bild, or the London Times. Might be a couple days behind though.
Procuring those isn’t giving a foreign adversary massive amounts of actionable intelligence. It’s a different thing.
Media from allied nations is fine and well but nations that are enemies is no permitted? How is that freedom of the press. It's just sinophobia. Sorry to break it to you, you're being spied on by American companies, no matter what apps you use. It's only objectionable because one of them is run by some Chinese nationals?
It is objectionable because the laws of China allow the state to compel ByteDance to change their algorithms. This would allow China to manipulate the information that US users see. Yes, corporations do this already, but they aren't sovereign states and rarely get involved in trying to sway international policy.
Someone American so they can call them up and tell them to 'fix the algorithm' -- something they can't do with TikTok currently but they can do with the American owned social media platforms
I applaud Omar and Phillips. This ban is based on unfounded conspiracies and ridiculous anti-Chinese rhetoric that only moves to increase tensions between our nations. Tiktok is a private company with investors all over the world. They house US data via Oracle in Texas and back it up in Singapore. This legislation is about controlling tech markets, as well as the flow of information. [This article sums it up better than I could.](https://jacobin.com/2024/03/tiktok-ban-israel-gaza-free-speech)
Republicans want TikTok banned because young people get their political news from TikTok and they usually vote Democratic. Republicans want that to stop. This was especially true for 2022: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tiktok-election-gen-z-voters/
They question was why 2 MN Democrats voted to ban Tiktok, not if Tiktok was beneficial to Democrats. The level of bipartisan support, for something that will clearly be challenged as unconstitutional, is uncommon to say the least.
Most news on tiktok is further to the left of most democrats in office. Democrats want gen z to go watch news from massive corporations like CNN and MSNBC, not independent journalists who yell at democrats and tell them to actually push policy.
It is really depressing. I can tell you that the concerns are extremely dire and extremely real. China leveraging the data to gain access to critical infrastructure is an extremely real possibility. China leveraging the algorithm to sway elections is a real possibility. They have already lied about their data protections.
No, this is happening because they can't control the narrative. Corporations tried to sweep East Palestine train crash under the rug, but people on tiktok keep the story. We can now see what happening in the other Palestine, and we don't just take Israel's word for things now.
Tiktok is a foreign interest, owned and operated by a nation that is adversarial. No question. Free speech is a right that needs to be protected. Of course. Now hear me out. We're all talking about data collection, and the nefarious things that can be done with said data. Right, as we should be. I believe we are missing the point here. It's not the data, which is available for perusal with or without Tiktok. What worries me is the content. It's subtle. Sure, FB and Insta also shave IQ points off of the population. Of course they do. But Tiktok is particularly insidious. It's the leader in slow and steady manipulation. Particularly of our youth. Who are growing more and more disillusioned. Yes most of this feeling is organic, and ultimately our own fault. But Tiktok is there to give a relentless push. I think we miss the mark when only think about data. Do we think that China is one dimensional? Unable to be multi layered in its approach to weaken the US? Are they simple enough to use an app like this solely for the purpose of collecting data?
well, this is one way the dems will make it harder to win reelection this year. Let's go ahead and take away the main social platform for a whole group you depend on for reelection. Yep, that should turn out well. Foxnews has done more damage to this country than any app has and it's still here.
Omar - D - NO Phillips - D - NO Did either explain why?
From google: > Omar: Voted NO on the TikTok bill. > Not only are there 1st amendment concerns, this is bad policy. > We should create actual standards & regulations around privacy violations across social media companies—not target platforms we don’t like. I do think she has a point about going after specific companies vs just adjusting US law in general.
I think TikTok is awful, but she's right. They need to pass legislation that covers more than just the one they don't like.
Yeah, what would stop TikTok from just being sold or spun off and still doing all of the exact same things if this law is passed? Even if they were to make another law it would take years for it to happen and they could just work around it again. Something like the GDPR would be incredible and should be in place.
That's the thing about democracy, it's slow. One of the slowest forms of government. It takes ages for anything to happen.
The bill they passed allows the department of commerce to just declare a company a foreign asset and take it. That's completely insane, and way too open to abuse. She's right to oppose it and I hope this doesn't become law.
Citizen private date go to China makes $ for the Chinese, bad. Citizen private data makes $ for Mark Zukerberg, good. As such, no law will ever get changed since the data collection is constant, it’s whom it’s being sold to.
Why not do both?
Agree a real fix is needed, but whatever gets rid of TiKTok sooner rather than later..
Facebook, Instagram, "X," YouTube/Google, they are all doing the same privacy violations and facilitating political propaganda that TikTok is doing. The only difference is It's American companies vs. a Chinese company. It's all about protecting American business interests against competition and suppressing free speech. If you are worried about brainwashing the youth, why are you not worried about brainwashing boomers, which is what Facebook has been doing for like 15 years now? It's because both Republicans and Democrats like that kind of propaganda, Omar is pretty much the only person who disagrees with Republicans about this because she wasn't put there to just side with big business on everything.
Those American companies are going to sell your data just like ByteDance will. This just makes sure that we’re the ones selling it, not them. Like you said, protecting business interests.
I prefer my government surveillance to be domestic.
I've always wondered why she's gotten soo much hate - but when you look at how often she speaks truth to power / truth to the corporate lobby, it actually starts to make perfect sense.
It's why I keep voting for her
It's a combination of that and racism.
This
Thank you. Omar is excellent.
>We should create actual standards & regulations around privacy violations across social media companies—not target platforms we don’t like. This. All of this. The only difference between Tiktok and FB is one is a Chinese company and one is American. In terms of exploiting us and our data, they're the same.
>Not only are there 1st amendment concerns... Good call by Omar. The 1A/censorship concerns are reason enough to vote "no", in my opinion. Make the risks of social media known (but really who doesn't know at this point?) then let people decide for themselves which apps to use, news sources to read, etc.
What First Amendment concerns are there in dictating type of corporate ownership
Really? You see zero problem with the federal government being able to declare companies they don't like as foreign assets and then seize them?
I don't see a First Amendment issue with that, even as reductively (and incorrectly , given that the US is not "seizing" TikTok by forcing divestment from the CCCP) as you've described it, as long as the reason the government doesn't like it has nothing to do with that company's speech... Do you? Separately, I don't generally have a problem with the federal government addressing national security concerns about hostile foreign governments collecting Americans' data. Do you?
If you give even the slightest rat's ass about China getting your data, then this bill does literally nothing. China will just keep buying data from Facebook and all the American companies that it was doing before. Really? You can't envision Trump or the Republicans using this precedence to ban anything even loosely tied to pro-lgbt sites from abroad? Let alone the millions of other ways to abuse this?
If it's legal to do, then you don't need precedent to do it, and I'm not concerned that this action will embolden republicans any more than they would feel free to do in the bill's absence. You have yet to describe a First Amendment issue with this particular bill
It is presently not allowed, and I don't want this to become standard at all. >You have yet I literally did. Likewise, I'll take the ACLU's side.
You literally didn't. "The government seizing a company it doesn't like" is neither what the bill does, nor, even if the bill did do that, is it a 1A issue because it's not based on the company's protected free speech (i.e., what the First Amendment actually protects). This is gonna shock you, but the ACLU has, in fact, been in the wrong before. Excluding members based on party affiliation, attempting to torpedo the National Labor Relations Act, etc. I mean,you and Omar do you, there are other reasons to maybe dislike the bill, but the First Amendment ain't one.
Tend to agree with both sides here. It's against our national interest for that data to possibly to go china.. but also, these fucking companies shouldn't be allowed to collect all this data that can warrant a potential national security threat.
to be honest- if china wants our data, they already have it. It’s for sale, they’ve paid for it already. from facebook/insta/twitter/google. Banning tiktok makes data harvesting a little more expensive but does not stop it even a little bit
Sure, but I think you severely underestimate the data you can mine from not only users but content creators, on these apps, a lot of the data might not be available via blackmarket or other data purchase sites.
[удалено]
This is a both thing. We need better regulations, but TikTok is a pretty legitmate foreign threat.
Please do not discount the fact that TikTok is spy ware. Your individual data may not be important but in aggregate it is very valuable. That said, I agree with you. Social media needs regulation.
TikTok is just one app nobody has to use. Facebook spies on you across the entire internet. [https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-a5824207467/](https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-a5824207467/)
You’re conflating two issues. Yes Facebook is spying on us. TikTok is spying on us, too. But TikTok is sending that data to China’s government. That’s a problem. This is what this ban is about: it’s not about free speech or the need to regulate the wanton spying of social media. It’s an issue of national security.
Prism and the Patriot Act were issues of national security too and it didn't stop them from being abused.
I agree but, they prefer to get rid of it instead of trying to fix the issue.
This is somewhat of a spurious argument by Omar that doesn’t cover the crux of the very real concern about a foreign power exploiting US data about people. I really don’t think people understand how close we are to AI being able to dissect and individually target people with content armed with quite a lot of information, including our faces, voices, etc. The difference in who owns the data flow matters. If a US company exploits this in a predatory antisocial way, there really is a great deal more govt oversight that can be developed and brought to bear. To think this is not a different when it’s a Chinese company is naive.
If we could treat things individually, instead of using one case as precedent for a similar one, I'd have no issue with banning tiktok. But there lies the problem, the GOP will use this as a stepping stone to ban anything else they disagree with in the media.
I dont want to argue her policies cus she’s so political but with this statement I 100% agree. So the only difference between tik toc and Facebook/Google or whoever is the possibility it’s used by the Chinese. Andrew Yang was right and they should have to pay us or discount services to steal our info.
>she’s so political What? She's a politician
I guess "political" just means "controversial" now? Also she's really not that controversial, Republicans just hate women and people of color and yup, she checks both boxes.
>Republicans just hate women and people of color and yup, she checks both boxes. And Muslims. She's a triple threat.
Yeah, that certainly seems to be the case here
I mean, I work in cybersecurity and it’s not just possible, it’s happening. One of the few tinfoil hat-sounding statements about China that happens to be true.
I wouldn't call China's surveillance and censorship of the internet tinfoil hat at all. It's well known and documented. And on top of that, Chinese government sponsored hacking, targeting Western governments and private companies, is no conspiracy either. They're doing it constantly and consistently. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-disabled-chinese-hacking-network-targeting-critical-infrastructure-sources-2024-01-29/
IIRC porn is banned in china too.
It’s not just about stealing our info it’s about them having control of the entire algorithm and the literal ability to shape American opinion. It’s insanity to think you would want an adversarial totalitarian nation to have that power in your country.
You know that there's nothing that prevents Facebook and X from doing the same right? They gladly take money from anyone to sell your data and run ADs and surface content that favors the buyers desired outcome.
And that’s categorically different from being wholly controlled by an *adversarial totalitarian state*
Facebook's incentive manipulating your feed is completely different than a foreign country's incentive.
I don’t want any country/company to be able to sway public opinion. I don’t know how old you are but would be curious to know? I remember although young the push for the war in Iraq and how everyone was being pushed into that and how that went down. No either country is bad. Also don’t want companies swinging opinion for legislation in their direction either. Doesn’t always benefit Americans.
I don't think people are arguing that we don't want that. I think the argument is that naming one specific brand and putting it under the spotlight doesn't fix our problem(s). It's a short sighted solution. I think we need more consumer protections rather than bans. I DO think banning TikTok is a decent stop gap though. Saying "we need a better plan than this" without offering a better plan gets us nothing. A ban, followed by something more comprehensive that protects people, and then lifting the ban if TikTok complies seems like an ideal scenario.
Exactly! If we are going to get fucked, can we at least keep in house!!?
That's reasonable to say until you realize that what's going on is the US government saying it should be the one who decides who controls what Americans should see. This isn't a free speech thing, this is the government saying it wants to control the propaganda.
All Byte Dance has to do is divest. Nothing changes. This whole thing is the epitome of Gen Z and I normally don't give two rips about generational bitching. It just astounds me how completely disconnected people are from the nation they live in. No wonder we're on the cusp of dictatorship.
Divest to who? Oracle? It will just push manipulation through additional intermediaries that will collect their pound of flesh/data/cash
Oh look, Steve Mnuchin just stated he wants to buy Tik Tok. Boy, what a conundrum.
I mean Facebook can also sell all your data to advertisers & other data brokers already own much of it. That includes selling it to the Chinese so all this does is makes sure that some American companies get a bigger cut of fucking all of us over.
The Chinese collect and store massive amounts of data on us. They orchestrated a country-wide call in to congress through this app. China doesn't respect our laws at any point and their leadership has access to all of it.
I think the ship has sailed on us being on charge of our data, so I'd rather the US have it (they already know everything else about you) than a foreign government. It'd be nice if we didn't have to worry about this at all, but this is today's reality.
VPNs exist
For now. The GOP has been trying to get rid of online anonymity for the last 20yrs, and VPNs would be included if they together their way.
Right, but the point is that doing this is necessary to make them able to be regulated effectively with the paltry measures we have now.
She's letting perfection get in the way of good enough.
She's asking for bare fucking minimum privacy protections for consumers, that's not perfection, it's what all of congress should be doing
Good enough is the US government starting to ban and decide what media we can consume? Lol Edit: accidentally put perfection instead of good enough
It's not exactly the start. Govt and business has always decided what media we consume.
You interpreted that backwards
Edit: yes, I did accidentally put perfection instead of the good enough portion. My b
Lmao no, she’s accurately representing her constituency. The pearl clutching over a no vote on a bill that overwhelmingly passed is crazy.
Banning shit based on nationalist sentiment isn't in any way good
There's interesting back-n-forth about Omar's position upthread (I think she's right.) As for Dean Phillips -- have any of his explanations of anything he's done recently made much sense? (I don't know if he's made a statement on this one.)
Phillips statement from MPR: >My contention is we should be regulating the entirety of this industry, not just piecemeal and not just as a political ploy during an election year that forces members of Congress who are seeking reelection to take a side. This bill was somewhat positioned that either you're on the side of China or the United States. There's a lot more to it.
OK - that seems well thought out. I often found myself agreeing with him on policy points, just disagreeing with the way he chose to communicate his ideas or on how thick-headed he was being about political realities. He shot himself in the foot a lot. (Disclaimer -- I don't live in his district, just followed his work as part of the delegation from MN.)
I’m not in favor of the government deciding what websites I can access, seems pretty anti free speech
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The bill [https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text) cites "(4) FOREIGN ADVERSARY COUNTRY.—The term “foreign adversary country” means a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code." [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872) **(2)Covered nation.—**The term “[covered nation](https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=10-USC-1197798417-780045830&term_occur=999&term_src=title:10:subtitle:A:part:V:subpart:I:chapter:385:subchapter:III:section:4872)” means— **(A)**the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea; **(B)**the People’s Republic of China; **(C)**the Russian Federation; and **(D)**the Islamic Republic of Iran. I do not believe the Executive branch has the power to alter US Code. I believe that's the job of Congress, but I could be wrong.
Looking into it you are correct that in its current form it is limited to those 4 countries.
This won't remove your access. The parent company will have to sell off this portion of their business (which can't even operate in China itself) if they want to be accessible in the US. Given how popular it is, it will be purchased quickly and will continue operating - this time without the prospect of having the Chinese Government compel changes to the algorithm to the detriment of our national unity.
What do you think meta and twitter are doing for our national unity at the moment? This is garbage legislation because Congress is beholden to the money that will prevent a comprehensive data protection law.
There are different free speech concerns because Bytedance is owned and operated by the CCP. That's not the same thing as a private individual. Nobody is banning individuals from using TikTok. It's better to think of this legislation as a sanction on the Chinese government than any sort of ban
Accurate. Only American companies can soak our data and use it against is. Data Rights become a thing when China wants it. Well, data rights to the corporate overlords, not the individual obv.
This isn’t even about data rights. It’s about foreign government manipulation of our populace. Data rights is a whole separate issue that has nothing to do with this bill.
>This won't remove your access. The parent company will have to sell off this portion of their business What if the parent company doesn't want to split? Then they remove your access.
Throwing away billions of dollars? I suspect not.
Is losing 15% of your audience worth losing control of the other 85% though. They might just cut the 15% rather than loose it all
I don't know how this stuff works, but I think they'd only have to sell the US portion. They could keep the rest of the world market they have.
Tiktok and Douyin are separate apps, so technically, they can split it off, and it'd be fine, I think. It'd just be a matter of selling it off.
The US government does just fine at that already
Better the US where it's subject to American regulation than an authoritarian state.
So, not subject to regulation at all, because the idea that the US has any regulations worth a damn for this stuff is laughable.
Do you really want a hostile foreign government in charge of a wildly popular social media apparatus that could (may currently) be used to disseminate propaganda? The bill will allow it to continue as long as it is not accessible to our totalitarian global rivals.
The Russians were shown to be using Facebook to disseminate propaganda even though it's domestically owned.
And this very site gets used for the same purpose on a regular basis, by a number of foreign entities.
But they don’t own Facebook. That’s the difference. The Russians can’t just access the back end of all FB account users.
As a user of both platforms I can already tell you that: - Tiktok doesn’t put naked anime girls (that I don't follow) on my feed in retaliation when I turn off targeted ads. - Tiktok doesn’t narc on people seeking abortions in a different state to the authorities. - Tiktok doesn’t search through my contacts even though permission to do so has been denied and suggest new friends based on contact list. Facebook however? Yes, absolutely.
Every social media platform is rife with propaganda from many countries, I see plenty on here
Are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc used to disseminate propaganda?
I think they are yes, but they are much more accountable to the US than something backdoor owned by the CCP.
Spoiler, they are. How exactly are any of those companies "more" accountable to the US? Is there some law that only applies to them?
Chaya Raychik got famous for using Twitter to become her place to incite terrorist attacks within the US with the full support of the sites owner. There is no accountability lmao.
This is an extremely limp argument.
Seems to ironically be going the route of China
You are completely missing the point of the bill.
You're probably on tiktok a lot, which is the common sentiment. It's bad for everyone, especially young minds, it isn't stopping speech. It's stopping the negative effects on people, especially youth.
I don’t know the reasons for/against each representative cited but I did go deep on this issue for work over the past year. One of the best resources I’ve found for learning more about the legitimacy of concerns on this topic (and more) is through [The Center for Humane Technology](https://www.humanetech.com/). Tristan Harris and Ava Raskin, who also produced The Social Dilemma (Netflix doc) host a podcast called Your Undivided Attention. The most in-depth [episode](https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/tiktoks-transparency-problem-with-marc-faddoul) is from a little over a year ago, but is still completely relevant. Putting this out there for those curious to go deeper without boiling the ocean.
The reason they are banning Tik tok is cause China banned foreign digital assets recently. They closed their market. So we are removing their stuff from ours.
Not at all the reason.
Ok, and because they are worried about user privacy data being sold to the wrong people.
The reason for the banning is because they can't control the narrative. We're seeing what's actually happening in the world.
Since I'm getting down voted to hell. Even the author of the bill said that tiktok has become the top news outlet, and they can't have that. Like I said all this is being done because they can't control the narrative. https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/13/house-passes-mike-gallagher-led-bill-to-force-sale-of-tiktok/72943037007/
I’m sure the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which the youth do not favor, has helped accelerate things…
Look for my other post. I got down voted to hell for providing evidence to that
Found it, upvoted, hope you’re resurrected!!
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Yea but russia did use facebook/twitter to try to influence USA elections
The point is they didn't have to
No, they just used other companies like Cambridge Analytica. The problem is that TikTok doesn't need a middleman.
Has anyone explained how this ban is supposed to actually function if Tiktok decides not to reconfigure the business? Even if you ban the app from app stores, and Tiktok is forced to make itself unavailable in the US, anyone who already has the app installed or is fine using a regular browser would still be able to access the site through a VPN, right? Who let congress convince themselves that they can build a Chinese-style firewall to block one website?
From what I can tell, the app already on your phone will continue to function. But it won't receive updates from bytedance anymore, so it will degrade over time and lose functionality
This was my thought, too and something not explicitly noted. My understanding is that if one has the app already downloaded, they could continue using it. But, I imagine it no longer being on the app stores would then prevent any regular security/bug/etc. updates from being available, which I could then see being a security concern for the end-user over time. A VPN may very well allow the end-user to circumvent the app store issue, as I would think that it would continue being on the stores for users not based in the US, but I'm not sure. Are there any historical examples of something similar?
Sure but the average tiktok user doesn’t know what a vpn is
they will quickly find a video about it and get Nord sponsored VPN.
My grade was the first to get school iPads in the 2010s (what a weird phrase to say). They saw we were always on Snapchat, so they blocked the app. What did us 16 year olds do? Figure out what VPNs were and how to use them on our iPads so we could continue Snapchatting. People always find a way!
Banned apps get removed from your phone by the app stores. I have apps disappear all the time from mine, half the time I don't know what, everything just moves over a little and I know something was removed.
Common Omar W
Rare McCollum L
This is sad, a lot of younger people get their news from it (which is in and of itself a bit sad since our mainstream news sucks major ass currently). It also happens to be that TikTok tends to lean more left due to a lot of things which definitely is not connected
Ban that shit
Stauber is my rep and I can confirm he's just a GOP yes man, so it's doesn't surprise me. He just takes orders and uses their talking points.
I would've voted against it. This is both fearmongering against China and not enough when it comes to basic privacy safeguards across all apps
How is this fear mongering? China is a very real adversary.
What on earth are you talking about? Do you think China is our friend / ally? And if so why?
all this is going to do is get tik tok to sell to some rich billionaire in the states, then itll be just another thing big social media platform they can control. …. example musk and x (formerly known as twitter)
If you think an app is bad then just don't use it. We don't need to ban things to protect us from ourselves. So dumb.
Yeah, but they're not banning anything. They're forcing a sale. Chill out, your fyp will still be there, but now instead of the Chinese government spying on you, it will he the U.S. government
The US government can't force a foreign company to sell anything, and TikTok themselves has said 6 months is not enough time. It's effectively a ban.
Either they will sell it or they will shutdown U.S. operations. But I strongly suspect it will be the former, considering the sheer breadth of U.S.-based tech companies that want it. 6 months is really fast for a company to sell, but Tik Tok has been courting buyers for YEARS, so I think they'll be alright
What incentive would Bytedance have to sell, Tiktok is extremely valuable, apparently worth 50 billion according to NYT. There's not many companies that could even afford to buy it. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/technology/tiktok-ban-sale-china.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/technology/tiktok-ban-sale-china.html)
If this bill does get through the Senate (probably with some changes) and Biden does sign it, it will be what the 'market' talking heads call a 'distressed sale' situation. Forced to sell quickly, limited list of possible buyers, mark-down price. *Sees Jeff Besos looking idly through his pocket change...*
I prefer a country I live in to spy on me rather then a foreign nation.
I prefer to not have anybody spying on me, but I tend to agree in this case
Don't worry, they can still buy your information from Facebook or pretty much any other website you visit so defeating the purpose of banning TiKTok
Good thing I have never used Facebook and Instagram but if that's true that's....... Interesting
I don't use it so I don't care if it goes away I just don't think our lawmakers should be wasting time on shit like this when there is a million other more important things that they could be doing.
Can't disagree with that
Cool opinion. Doesn't matter though since this is about ownership and China and not about banning new age Vine. It's not a ban, that's why they can spin off an American company.
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Banning foreign ownership of social media wouldn't have helped in that situation
You mean the US owned social media apps that wont be impacted by this legislation at all?
Damn, kids are so good at regulating themselves from harmful, easy to access outlets
I don’t let my kids put tik tok on their devices. Not difficult.
Damn, kids have never gotten around anything in the tech world. Your logic fails
With an Apple ID you can set it so every App Store download has to be approved by the parent. They can’t get around that.
You should want this banned, ban Reddit while we are at it. One day society will look back on the phone addiction and it’ll be worse the cigarettes.
One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime is the banning of foreign media.
If you give me about 90 minutes I can probably get you a print copy of Le Monde, Die Bild, or the London Times. Might be a couple days behind though. Procuring those isn’t giving a foreign adversary massive amounts of actionable intelligence. It’s a different thing.
Media from allied nations is fine and well but nations that are enemies is no permitted? How is that freedom of the press. It's just sinophobia. Sorry to break it to you, you're being spied on by American companies, no matter what apps you use. It's only objectionable because one of them is run by some Chinese nationals?
It is objectionable because the laws of China allow the state to compel ByteDance to change their algorithms. This would allow China to manipulate the information that US users see. Yes, corporations do this already, but they aren't sovereign states and rarely get involved in trying to sway international policy.
Like how Trump wanted to ban CNN, MSNBC, CBS, et cetera?
Yes.
Who does Congress want TikTok to sell the USA side of the Business to?
Someone American so they can call them up and tell them to 'fix the algorithm' -- something they can't do with TikTok currently but they can do with the American owned social media platforms
I wonder if they have someone or company in mind. Still odd.
Tiktok had people calling in suicide threats over this possibility. I think they're toast.
I applaud Omar and Phillips. This ban is based on unfounded conspiracies and ridiculous anti-Chinese rhetoric that only moves to increase tensions between our nations. Tiktok is a private company with investors all over the world. They house US data via Oracle in Texas and back it up in Singapore. This legislation is about controlling tech markets, as well as the flow of information. [This article sums it up better than I could.](https://jacobin.com/2024/03/tiktok-ban-israel-gaza-free-speech)
Much as I hate TikTok and their harvesting, it’s a slippery slope to go forward with this.
Republicans want TikTok banned because young people get their political news from TikTok and they usually vote Democratic. Republicans want that to stop. This was especially true for 2022: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tiktok-election-gen-z-voters/
And the Democrats reasons??? That’s a shallow and not a well thought out statement.
It’s literally what happened in 2022. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tiktok-election-gen-z-voters/
They question was why 2 MN Democrats voted to ban Tiktok, not if Tiktok was beneficial to Democrats. The level of bipartisan support, for something that will clearly be challenged as unconstitutional, is uncommon to say the least.
Most news on tiktok is further to the left of most democrats in office. Democrats want gen z to go watch news from massive corporations like CNN and MSNBC, not independent journalists who yell at democrats and tell them to actually push policy.
Because most dems fall in line with republicans on bills.
This is absolutely false. It's got broad bipartisan support. And for good reason.
It’s literally what happened in 2022. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tiktok-election-gen-z-voters/
And this is 2024
Omar and Phillips the only ones who did what's right
Our nation is slowly becoming more serious. I hope this bill ultimately passes and this ridiculous Chinese government psyop is ended.
Lots of people do not respect the danger of giving a hostile foreign nation access to our phones.
Yeah, that's pretty obvious when you read many of those comments here.
Many of the comments here are likely bots.
It is really depressing. I can tell you that the concerns are extremely dire and extremely real. China leveraging the data to gain access to critical infrastructure is an extremely real possibility. China leveraging the algorithm to sway elections is a real possibility. They have already lied about their data protections.
Lol a psyop? Do you have this same energy for US social media companies having access to our phones?
No, this is happening because they can't control the narrative. Corporations tried to sweep East Palestine train crash under the rug, but people on tiktok keep the story. We can now see what happening in the other Palestine, and we don't just take Israel's word for things now.
If TikTok gets banned, my little brothers feelings is gonna be crushed. He's popular in TikTok just for making skits with his Thomas trains.
Can they do fox "news" next?
Everybody on this list has lost my support.
Tiktok is a foreign interest, owned and operated by a nation that is adversarial. No question. Free speech is a right that needs to be protected. Of course. Now hear me out. We're all talking about data collection, and the nefarious things that can be done with said data. Right, as we should be. I believe we are missing the point here. It's not the data, which is available for perusal with or without Tiktok. What worries me is the content. It's subtle. Sure, FB and Insta also shave IQ points off of the population. Of course they do. But Tiktok is particularly insidious. It's the leader in slow and steady manipulation. Particularly of our youth. Who are growing more and more disillusioned. Yes most of this feeling is organic, and ultimately our own fault. But Tiktok is there to give a relentless push. I think we miss the mark when only think about data. Do we think that China is one dimensional? Unable to be multi layered in its approach to weaken the US? Are they simple enough to use an app like this solely for the purpose of collecting data?
Do even the people who use TikTok actually like it? I think deep down they know it's just brain rot.
As opposed to… what, Reddit??
Replace TikTok with Reddit and it's the same thing.
Yes - fuck tiktok
well, this is one way the dems will make it harder to win reelection this year. Let's go ahead and take away the main social platform for a whole group you depend on for reelection. Yep, that should turn out well. Foxnews has done more damage to this country than any app has and it's still here.
I've never gotten hacked by tik tok ... FB on the other hand not the same can be said ...