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TikTok Facing Potential US Ban as Congress Passes Bill Requiring Sale
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Slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese American internment camps, genocide of Native Americans, genocide of Hawaiians, destabilizing/replacing foreign governments, remember Iraq? That's just the tip of the iceberg. America is soaked in blood and is morally no better than China on that front. China is also reprehensible.
Is China a democracy? As far as I know USA is still one and we have freedom of speech. Can you say the same about China?
And I wouldn't call the US a democracy, I would call it a mix of kleptocracy, plutocracy and corporatocracy. We have some features of democracy like a public voting system but the amount of change the public can actually make through that system is minimal compared to the amount of change (or lack of change) that can be effected by the wealthy and corporations.
Yeah, I think it’s mostly a lot of contrarians. But also makes me wonder if China has infiltrated even tech forums…
How many wars China had waged outside its borders since WW2?
Telegram is an equal opportunity offender. TikTok's mission is to soften the battlefield by ruining the minds of non-Chinese citizen youth.
I suspect it's a matter of degree. China's government appears unified, and tolerance for dissent very limited. By comparison, in the U.S. it seems like half the country is at (culture) war with the other half, public dissent (as long as it's legal and non-disruptive) is usually well tolerated, and the odds of a whistle blower outing abuses seems higher.
The level of control the Chinese government exerts via censorship appears well in excess of what the U.S. government does.
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If US lawmakers were so concerned about the misuse of social media platforms to surveille citizens, maybe they should have taken action on PRISM: NSA's program "that allows the [US] government to collect user data from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and others."
www.theverge.com
The calls are coming from inside the house.
Everything you need to know about PRISM
A cheat sheet for the NSA's unprecedented surveillance programs
www.theverge.com
The calls are coming from inside the house.
Another "conspiracist" website filled with imaginary numbers and allegations without any credible basis...damn! 🤦♂️
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I am against foreign adversaries having even the slightest opportunity to exert influence over the domestic population. As others have said, TikTok/ByteDance have demonstrated the ability and willingness to do so after displaying a screen in the app led to numerous calls to congresspeople.
I have no understanding what you're referring to here, so I can't respond.
Freedom of speech excludes inciting violence, threats against others, and encouraging illegal activity.
The danger is a foreign adversary using their platform to encourage any of those.
I'm in general sympathetic to the idea that using social media networks being used for propaganda is something that should be prevented, but I'm still a bit uneasy about the legislature simply declaring a company a national security threat without any further justification.
The bill already establishes criteria for companies to be covered and a mechanism through which the executive must make its case to Congress as to why a company is a national security threat, including both a public report and a classified annex.
By all means let the process play out, but targeting companies explicitly in law sets a bad precedent in my view.
The bill already establishes criteria for companies to be covered and a mechanism through which the executive must make its case to Congress as to why a company is a national security threat, including both a public report and a classified annex.
By all means let the process play out, but targeting companies explicitly in law sets a bad precedent in my view.
Agree with you, but if you read the proposed "ban" what is asking is for Tik-Tok owners (Chinese company) to get rid of it, and if they don't do it, then it will start a ban process which surely will be take long time, so plenty of outcomes still on the table before a full ban.
TiKTok is being used to foster sympathy for groups of Islamist terrorists, anti-American/Western ideologues, and open borders (for America only, of course). Now we have people in America chanting "Death to America" freely in foreign languages and in English.
TikTok is a virus. It grew in popularity and anti-Americanism during lockdowns created by viruses released from China.
The fascist left along with some on the right should be ashamed of themselves. Let’s ban something we can manipulate for our benefit.
The biden regime will do anything they can to suppress information.
The biden regime will do anything they can to suppress information.
Not arguing pro or against this, but just a thought: If ownership restrictions around nationality apply to “old” media, doesn’t make sense for the same restrictions to apply to “new” media too? There are more people in the US getting their news from TikTok than there are Fox News or CNN viewers (hyperbole), yet Chinese entities cannot own the majority stock of Fox News or CNN. In fact, ownership restrictions are quite common around the world. https://www.cullen-international.com/news/2022/01/Foreign-ownership-restrictions-for-TV-are-the-norm-in-the-Americas---except-Chile-.html
What did the screen say and what calls were they prompting people to make?
All of the TikTok opponents here act like all the content on the app is directly dictated by the Chinese government. More than anything it’s people looking to go viral with a hit dance or song or joke.
And then there is political content but that’s also not being dictated by the Chinese government, I can find plenty of anti-Chinese screeds on there.
This is conspiratorial nonsense. People are more than ever anti-American because they see not only our systems breaking down, but are learning exactly what this country stands for, patriarchal capitalist Christian white supremacy.
I can find content discussing this on any social network. I can also find it in academic books that study America from a critical lens. America is not worth defending.
The types of cultures and nations that apps like TikTok promote are full of hatred, bigotry, homophobia and misogyny, rampant patriarchal non-white supremacists (Islamist nations are the rush lately). People are not more "anti-American than ever", these apps are simply pushing people towards these mindsets.
America, more so than nations like China, Russia, Islamist nations, is worth defending. Feel sorry for the folks who buy into the rhetoric they consume. The alternatives are not very bright and peaceful, no matter what the radicals will promise you.
I can see certain groups like teenage girls and twenty-somethings who would benefit from a ban like that. Many currently exist in a very poor headspace and some of these apps share some of the responsibility for that. Not that I personally want to see these apps banned, but it’s an important aspect of this to consider in addition to the hostile foreign adversary with unfettered access to your personal data thing.
If you don’t like the US, you can move to China or Russia, maybe you will feel better there…