TikTok Ban Bill Becomes Law, Gives TikTok 9 Months To Sell
TikTok Ban Bill Becomes Law, Gives TikTok 9 Months To Sell
President Biden signed a bill that states if TikTok doesn't cut ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance over the next nine months to a year, it will be banned in the U.S.
Just as a reminder, we have been 'fighting for 15' since 2012. But when it comes to leveraging foreign companies with bans to force them to sell to US oligarchs we can move at blazing speed through the least functional congrss in recent history. There are two very different Americas depending on how much money you have.
75I probably shouldnt be celebrating this but I am. I fucking despise Tiktok with a passion, I hate its users, its creators, I hate the short form content trend it started and its algorithm based content delivery systems that every other app copied but worse, I hate the sexualisation of minors and peddling that content to pedos, I hate the clout chasing in general, I hate tiktok trends and "challenged". and I hate the general brainrot it has caused.
31I have mixed feelings. Like I’m glad we’re funding Ukraine, angry we’re finding Israel, and mixed about TikTok. I dislike the app, but that’s no reason to ban something. I think all social media has the issues associated with it except one: a foreign country controls the algorithm. Also this is standard policy for foreign companies in China and turnabout is fair play.
19Weak, totalitarian strategy. If we’re worried about China taking over, becoming China is not the right way to fight that.
And pretending that forcing American ownership cuts out China’s influence is foolish.
15I think we're where China was in 2005--2010: a platform that can (and does) promote values that are against the interests of our nation(s) is popular with our youth. The real dilemma is "can we do better", and these days it seems not.
History suggests that the real solution to TikTok isn't banning it; China trying to block western sites did nothing save foment resentment and foster a VPN industry. Take the next step instead - make something that does TikTok better than TikTok, then push it hard. Either that or do what is being done to YouTube/Google - run it into the ground!
8Time for some wild conjecture!
Bytedance and the CPC both know how unlikely it is that TikTok will be allowed to continue operating in the US. Despite what they're saying, I don't think they actually believe they have any chance at winning that lawsuit.
They tried to stop the law from passing but now that it's been signed they're shifting strategies. They're going to go all in on using TikTok to paint the US as authoritarian and hypocritical. Their primary targets will be young people outside the US.
Looking around the world I expect this will have a lot of traction in developing countries. If you look at wonky foreign policy publication you'll see that the diplomacy nerds have spent the last decade or so worrying about developing nations realigning with China. That will probably accelerate.
They'll probably also have some success with younger Americans. Older American's will probably be unconvinced.
It obviously won't have any affect on China's ability to buy data on US citizens from any number of data brokers. I wouldn't be totally surprised if China has at least some access to data from Five Eyes.
Chinas ability to influence opinion probably won't change much either. We used to call that sort of tactic "information warfare" or "psychological warfare". Sending messages to an opponent, adversary or rival in order to confuse or demoralize them has been going on for millennia. Nations constantly work to develop new methods to do so. Tiktok isn't the first or last of such tools and any large nation has a host of other such options at their disposal.
6Tiktok helped my life for the better 😀.... LOL. Sure but it is also a Chinese company that can do things to turn your life and the life of everyone around you into living hell if the government do wishes to.
I think what I would want my relationship with the Chinese country to be like is just simple transactions... I give you this money and I buy that thing. Done, end of transaction. I would like that for all phone tech companies actually. None of this shit about updates because they sold me a shit phone. None of the here's 8 features, then an update leaves you with 3 features only.
4Reading through these comments... yikes guys. I use TikTok sometimes, and love the content it provides that YouTube does not provide. Seeing the straight up hate for the app, mixed with the misunderstanding of what the app CAN be if you actually use it, is chilling to say the least. If they were banning ALL social media apps, and their companies, I'd be all for this. As it is, I can not see why you would all be cheering so hard for TikTok to be sold to some American asshole, just for it to start getting enshittified, and then STILL sell your data to Russia, China, and anyone else who wants a slice. The fact you are all hating on TikTok so much, but not questioning our own American social media companies, and wanting them to be banned too, is frightening.
I've seen a few comments saying it is spyware. On iOS at least, there is an icon that pops up to let you know when an app is using your camera or microphone. Not only that, but when you start an app for the first time, it has to request to you the user if you want to allow it access to these things. I said no, of course, because when I first started using it, I fucking hated TikTok. Turns out, when you use it for like a week, it starts to get REALLY good at delivering content you want to see.
Anyway, it doesn't matter, as I'm sure plenty of you will disagree, complain, and then go on using your American owned social medias, that are still hoovering up and selling your data.
The only differences being that China wasn't making a cent out of me, nor do any of these equally shitty American social medias. Oh well, I guess we just really love our own little national narratives.
1Me, laughing as the idiot americans will be banned from the app, and only the pure VPN users will remain:
No but seriously this is pretty dogshit stupid. The only people happy about this are the omega boomers and pick mes that hated tiktok anyways for what are basically unrelated reasons. Otherwise they'd be equally calling for a larger set of privacy enforcements that encompass all social media sites, which I agree should happen. This seems, to me, to be pretty transparently a protectionist racket. Only we shall control the data of americans, only we shall track them.
And then there's also the people saying that any social media getting banned is kind of a net positive. Fuck you mate what the hell? You're on a pretty explicitly manipulative social media platform right now, it's just one that you're able to tailor to your own biases. Probably it's a net negative to have less propaganda from a variety of sources. Both sides my ass, I guess, fuck your corporate-state disinformation, I got mine.
I dunno. I watched this guy that makes sandwiches, back when I used tiktok. I thought he was pretty cool. I think it would be a shame to see his content get disappeared, which tiktok already has a pretty huge problem with.
The benefit of tiktok and short form content is that you can watch it anywhere, and almost anyone with a phone at this point can produce it. Those of you who hate vertical video content should understand that a phone is the optimal platform on which to consume it, and you should probably be happy for that, because it's not going to outright disappear from the internet otherwise, as we saw before all of this had started. You miss the forest for the trees when you call for heavy-handed outright bans of this stuff. The corporate influence, I can understand getting rid of that, but the platforms themselves, there's legitimately value there. Twitter as a microblogging platform has been used for actual reporting, and even as it exists now, it's being used for that. If you were to get rid of youtube, you would be eliminating a frankly staggering amount of information available out there that, sure, might exist in other places, but that both takes a large risk and relies on google MORE to feed you that correctly when you use a search engine, which as we've seen recently, hasn't been the case. You could do the same with reddit. Delete reddit, and you are deleting a metric fuck ton of information on some valuable stuff, you're deleting a fuck ton of internet culture. These platforms need to be disentangled from their corporate overlords and made more free to own, browse, and use, not outright destroyed.
-1The kids were using the platform to talk about how the boomers got everything wrong, especially Israel, and it threatened their view of themselves.
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