TikTok Facing U.S. Ban on January 19 After Supreme Court Upholds Law

[drrich2]

Western world really should use TikTok to set an example and sent a strong message to Chinese government: you banned all of our services, time for us to ban yours.

The problem is that would have no good persuasive impact on China whatsoever. It would come across as pushy, an effort to dictate to them how to run their country, etc... More importantly, they value social control way beyond one company having a social media platform in the U.S. And when we do the same thing, it makes their practice look more legit, less like an autocratic government keeping their people ignorant of outside ideas to maintain power - after all, the Americans are doing it! I know it's not the same thing when you get into the details, but the headline version 'America bans foreign-owned social media platform loved by citizens, to combat potential foreign influence the government doesn't like' sounds like the same thing.

What's funny is that now that the U.S. has straight up publicly referred to China as a 'foreign adversary,' scads of things around my home and yard basically have this stamped on the bottom:

Made in a Foreign Adversary​

Wow. And how many things labeled 'Made in America' are made with Chinese parts?

 

[Expos of 1969]

The China issue is certainly disturbing but another key issue that many choose to ignore is that these type of social platforms have greatly contributed to the short attention spans of young people. They watch a few seconds of something then madly scroll to the next clip and on and on. They have been reduced to basically lab animals pressing the button to get the next treat. Sadly, these are your children. I was going to add our future leaders but that is incorrect as the leaders will be the oligarchs who own and control these tools.

 

[transmaster]

The problem is that would have no good persuasive impact on China whatsoever. It would come across as pushy, an effort to dictate to them how to run their country, etc... More importantly, they value social control way beyond one company having a social media platform in the U.S. And when we do the same thing, it makes their practice look more legit, less like an autocratic government keeping their people ignorant of outside ideas to maintain power - after all, the Americans are doing it! I know it's not the same thing when you get into the details, but the headline version 'America bans foreign-owned social media platform loved by citizens, to combat potential foreign influence the government doesn't like' sounds like the same thing.

What's funny is that now that the U.S. has straight up publicly referred to China as a 'foreign adversary,' scads of things around my home and yard basically have this stamped on the bottom:

Made in a Foreign Adversary​

Wow. And how many things labeled 'Made in America' are made with Chinese parts?

You should follow what happening in China. The outside tech companies are leaving. Samsung is gone, Foxconn is pulling out of China and many others have moved or are in the process of moving. My Apple Watch Ultra 2 was made in Vietnam. Millions of Chinese have been laid off. Once thriving cities full of foreign workers are ghost towns. It will take a while but less and less will be coming out of China. The US should do what Japan has done. They put forward a substantial subsidy for Japanese-based companies to leave China, either return to Japan or move elsewhere, 100's have done so. If the US did this just think how many Americans would be put to work.

 

[dannyyankou]

What if they had no evidence of this happening in the bar, and just said “trust us”

EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists — Forbes

ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location using their IP addresses, as first reported by Forbes in October.

apple.news

EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists

“ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location using their IP addresses, as first reported by Forbes in October.”

I think the company admitting they spied counts as evidence!

 

[rafark]

I mean they’ve refused so far to sell an app that would net them hundreds of billions of dollars, which, if a truly independent company exists to make money, is a pretty good indication that it’s an intelligence op the CCP is unwilling to give up. Imagine if the Soviet Union owned NBC in 1955. It’s the same idea and we’re not the only ones banning the app.

Huh? Why would they sell it if they don’t want to? It’s no different than someone trying to force you to sell your house. “Sell me your house or you’re a communist” my god the conspiracy theorists are something else.

Tiktok has over a billion users, the us only represents around 10% of its user base.

 

[transmaster]

Huh? Why would they sell it if they don’t want to? It’s no different than someone trying to force you to sell your house. “Sell me your house or you’re a communist” my god the conspiracy theorists are something else.

Tiktok has over a billion users, the us only represents around 10% of its user base.

Yes but who is China looking for to blackmail into stealing US Technology? They sure are not watching African Bushman. The CCP is especially looking for recent Chinese immigrants working at tech companies. The CCP makes no distinction between Chinese born abroad or those born in China they are all fair game.

 

[8281]

Huh? Why would they sell it if they don’t want to? It’s no different than someone trying to force you to sell your house. “Sell me your house or you’re a communist” my god the conspiracy theorists are something else.

Tiktok has over a billion users, the us only represents around 10% of its user base.

Don’t think this is the best analogy. I think it takes a greater leap of faith to believe that a government like China would be totally hands-off with their tech platforms. We already know that’s not true.

 

[8281]

But they will sell the same data to anyone, including “totalitarian foreign adversaries”. So it is functionally equivalent.

These companies are not typically just selling raw user data, since they’d lose competitive advantages over other platforms. They build profiles for advertisers that they sell. Maybe I’m misunderstanding how all that works, but to flatly say that a company operating at the behest of a foreign government and a private company in the US are functionally the same seems inaccurate.

 

[wigby]

For the longest time, I had issues with a TikTok ban from a first amendment perspective. But I thought of an analogy that kinda made me change my mind.

Let’s say there was a bar in the United States, and a lot of people hang out at this bar with friends and socialize and have a good time. But then, you find out this bar is owned and operated by China. On top of that, you find out this bar is filled with Chinese spies who are eavesdropping on you and collecting your information.

The US government would have a right to shut this bar down. Right?

You didn't finish your analogy. The bar customers don't care that they're being spied on and some might even prefer to be spied on by China rather than the US. They might even go so far as to claim that this bar and the socialization that occurs there is part of their basic freedom of speech and expression.

 

[Naraxus]

Adults fighting over Pokémon cards at Costco

Apparently they’re collector items and scalpers have been buying them all up and reselling them for 3 and 4x online.

The guy in this video that elbows the man in the green vest, actually stole two boxes out of the guys hands. Guy wearing the hat had multiple police complaints filed against him for that. The green vest guy was there to get a box for his kid, which he got one box… damaged.

I weep for humanity.....

 

[DELLsFan]

You should follow what happening in China. The outside tech companies are leaving. Samsung is gone, Foxconn is pulling out of China and many others have moved or are in the process of moving. My Apple Watch Ultra 2 was made in Vietnam. Millions of Chinese have been laid off. Once thriving cities full of foreign workers are ghost towns. It will take a while but less and less will be coming out of China. The US should do what Japan has done. They put forward a substantial subsidy for Japanese-based companies to leave China, either return to Japan or move elsewhere, 100's have done so. If the US did this just think how many Americans would be put to work.

That is exciting. But since China holds a significant amount of the United States' debt and the current U.S. trade deficit with China significantly favors China, I can't imagine this excitement lasting very long.

 

[drrich2]

You should follow what happening in China.

Thanks for the update! I suspect much of it is a matter of not wanting to have all their eggs in one basket. If U.S.-China relations go south in a big way, you don't want the entirety of iPhone manufacturing to be based there. Fortunately cheap foreign labor is available elsewhere.

The US should do what Japan has done. They put forward a substantial subsidy for Japanese-based companies to leave China, either return to Japan or move elsewhere, 100's have done so. If the US did this just think how many Americans would be put to work.

Unfortunately not as many as one might hope. Someone reported in another thread Obama once asked Steve Jobs about bringing jobs back here and Jobs told him those jobs aren't coming back. In another discussion about bringing Apple's foreign manufacturing jobs to the U.S., the point was made that the kind of expertise needed in terms of designing the machinery was much more available in China than in the U.S. Never mind what U.S. labor/wage laws would do to end product pricing.

Speaking of which, the cruise industry shows how important that last point is. A great deal of cruising operates out of Florida, but you'll find those ships are flagged under foreign nations and staffing is heavily majority non-American...due to cost.

People will talk 'living wage,' talk about raising the minimum wage and disdain 'sweat shops' all day long, but like those low prices when we make our Walmart run (which aren't low enough to suit us in light of inflation).

EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists

“ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location using their IP addresses, as first reported by Forbes in October.”

I think the company admitting they spied counts as evidence!

Interesting, but if I understand correctly, there was an investigation about this and firings, including very high level, and ByteDance expressed disappointment and concern trust would be undermined. So it sounds like some people within the company chose to do this, and were gotten rid of. My point is there may be more nuance to the issue.

 

[EM2013]

Yeah, they’re finding Pokémon cards at Costco and having fistfights over it.

Idk what’s worse the scalpers or the people that overpay said scalpers

 

[SteveLV702]

Stinks I’m not even in the US and still somehow part of the US Ban. I live in Lima, Peru…. This stinks….

 

[Krizoitz]

Bitbance's whole argument was centered on the 1st Amendment and free speech. The Supreme Court correctly ruled the First Amendment does not apply to a foreign-owned company.

That’s not what the Supreme Court ruled at all. They ruled that the governments action had nothing to do with the first amendment and free speech so the first amendment didn’t apply.

 

[Stiksi]

For the longest time, I had issues with a TikTok ban from a first amendment perspective. But I thought of an analogy that kinda made me change my mind.

Let’s say there was a bar in the United States, and a lot of people hang out at this bar with friends and socialize and have a good time. But then, you find out this bar is owned and operated by China. On top of that, you find out this bar is filled with Chinese spies who are eavesdropping on you and collecting your information.

The US government would have a right to shut this bar down. Right?

They can still get the data, it’s freely purchaseable from the US competition.

I fear this may be a hostile takeover attempt. There are only a couple American players in the field who would be viable to purchase TT – Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and a couple tech companies. For Musk and Zuckerberg, this was a win-win – either they get the rising star of social media for a bargain price or they get their market share by default when the app gets banned.

The scare campaign made points that have merit, but all the points apply to all the players. What the ban does is inflate the value of TT’s competitors, so money flows to the US instrad of China. You might see that as a positive, but it’s a government banning competition to give the edge to a domestic product. Not a great precedent to set.

I think there are probably people behind the ban who are doing it for financial reasons and people who honestly believe the campaign message. I have no idea which ones are in control or if it even matters.

 

[Krizoitz]

They can still get the data, it’s freely purchaseable from the US competition.

No, it’s really not.

 

[drrich2]

No, it’s really not.

I think it depends on which data. I don't expect they can easily purchase data to track an individual's location during a specified time period. On the other hand, the kind of aggregate data you might hope to get from a marketing consultation firm (e.g.: how many teens and young adult Americans like cute cat videos), it might be more hassle to get but they can get it.

And whether via hacking or having a 'mole' well-placed in an American social media company, there are other ways.

If they want to get propaganda out, they can do that on American company-owned social media platforms.