Sketchy Chinese data brokers: 👎
Sketchy US data brokers:👍
Signed, Congress.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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The Chinese data brokers don’t “gift” congresspersons “campaign funds”.
They quite literally are. Just not enough to pay for the influence liability that Tik Tok is.
Does that mean it's just the Russian ones that do?
lol yep. we constantly talk about how horrible tik tok is but the US government who is, of course, a much bigger threat to US citizens is doing the exact same thing.
Yep but they're more powerful and more selfish.
Makes sense. They can control one and can't control the other.
They ~~can control~~ are controlled by these and can't control the other.
Fixed that for you
If China wants my private data they are going to have to buy it from a third party like everybody else!
Straight up using Chinese tactics of forcing a company to be majority domestic owned.
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Uncle Sam is upset that they can't spy on you. Uncle Sam wants you to use Instagram.
Uncle Sam wants to get his fingers into that sweet, sweet algorithm.
Israel (at least in large part) is why they're pushing the tiktok ban now. It is a little hard to connect the dots on this because the China-reasoning seems strong on the surface. I agree that China is bad, but there has not been any stellar evidence to show that China censors or otherwise manipulates users on the platform. You can easily go to tiktok and find videos discussing how awful the Chinese government is, information about tiananmen square, Winnie the Pooh jokes, etc. In comparison, the data that came out of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal was far more concrete, and Congress did nothing. Certainly there were not 81% of house members coming together to force Facebook to sell. Tiktok has even offered to make major concessions about data privacy.
Israel's war in Gaza is deeply unpopular and the fascists in Israel and here in the US are concerned that they are losing popularity. Tiktok has 100+ million active users in the US and the heaviest anti-Israel sentiment (the government and the US's relationship with the Israeli government, not the Israeli/Jewish people) is heaviest on Tiktok, which is dominated by young millennials and gen Z. This is leaked audio of the director of the anti-defamation league (a very pro-Israel organization) speaking about this. He basically tells his audience that they have a "major major major... problem" and specifically says that they have a "tiktok problem and a gen Z problem." Listen to the audio- you can agree or not with his reasoning, but he's essentially saying that the spread of ideas on tiktok is causing their polling issues.
People like this want to stop the spread of ideas on tiktok because young people are organizing, boycotting, and putting dents in the system. They do not like that young voters are having a larger and larger influence. These young people are also boycotting major companies like McDonalds and Starbucks who have taken pro-Israel stances, and these companies have lost profits from this. All this to say - I don't think there is any lack of motivation by people with lots of money to destroy the platform where these people are organizing.
It is incredible how much money Israel pumps into our politicians, both Democrats and Republicans. Joe Biden himself is the largest recipient of this money. There are anti-BDS laws (specifically for Israel) in 37 states. I don't think many people are aware of just how much influence Israel has in the US. It is surprising and disturbing, but I am equally surprised/disturbed at how little attention these topics have received on Lemmy of all places. I don't think it takes a genius to start making these connections and to start asking questions - maybe this isn't the full picture but there is a lot of stuff here to be skeptical about. That said, I absolutely do think this kind of information is suppressed on other platforms, and they want to suppress all of tiktok because it's dangerous to them.
can't believe people's insanely smug reaction to this. the government is banning an app that 100+ million americans use and presumably enjoy. that is insane, full stop.
This is how bad the trade war and propaganda has gotten.
I have no hope for this nation or the useful idiots that inhabit it.
The government also bans drugs, guns, alcohol, smoking, etc. They ban things that are perceived threats to health and safety. It's what they should be doing.
That being said, wasting their time on TikTok is fucking stupid.
Ah yes. Banning alcohol.
That went really well.
Ah yes. Banning drugs.
That's going really well.
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They aren't banning a thing, they are banning a kind of a thing.
If they were banning social media you may have a point, they aren't.
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Land of the free
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and wouldn't you know it, a former US government functionary is the head of a group ready to buy it!
This isn't about protecting people from propaganda and data mining, it's about making sure that only people in the pocket of the American establishment get to manipulate us.
EDIT: Since it seems like some people lost the plot of my comment, somehow…
TLDR: Government sector in USA has 81% of the people in charge agreeing to ban an app, while there are kids being told they are too poor to afford to eat at a building that is mandated by the government to be there.
People dying from overpriced medicine and care? Nothing we can do!
People starving from companies overpricing their shit quality food? Nothing we can do!
People paying more taxes than companies, while those same companies pay little to NO taxes, while raking in "record breaking profits!!!" Nothing we can do!
Some app that allows the people to talk to each other, and to band together, about how shitty our situation is? An app that allows people to voice their issues of our government, freely, while attaining thousands and millions of views with like-minded people who are also sick of their government fucking them every step they can? BAN IT! QUICKLY EVERYONE, BAN IT BEFORE THEY REALIZE WE'RE COMPLICIT WITH EACH OTHER IN CONSTANTLY FUCKING OVER THOSE STUPID PEASANTS!
Seriously, guys. Can you think of the last time we had 81% of our house actively working together to help the people? I sure can't.
The ban is a good thing because China is an autocracy. Freedom of thought is not acceptable there, otherwise you wouldn't know what I mean when I say the great firewall of China. Their influence is already vast.
The US isn't a beacon of democracy, but the distance between a flawed democracy and an authoritarian regime is massive. The US Congress is largely ineffective, but this is one thing they've gotten right.
TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines.
They have banned all US based social media, so honestly, why TF do we allow theirs? I get that it sounds xenophobic to an extent to ban an app because of the country it's based in, but I 1000% would not be surprised if China is using this to find kompromat on US citizens and playing the long game to recruit spies / gather sensitive information. The app has the most permissions of any social media app and they are gathering a shit ton of data.
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You had me until the conspiracy theory about them banning it because it allows people to talk to each. I mean, fuck, there are plenty of other ways for us to do that that are effectively equally as popular.
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There we go. China wants everything to themselves, and America follows suit. Global economy gets split up, and global gdp falls to the ground. But worry not, the aristocrats will only see themselves stay in power over the stagnant masses.
This they could agree on?!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The House on Wednesday passed a bill with broad bipartisan support that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner to either sell the hugely popular video app or be banned in the United States.
Republican leaders fast-tracked the bill through the House with limited debate, and it passed on a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting widespread backing for legislation that would take direct aim at China in an election year.
The action came despite TikTok’s efforts to mobilize its 170 million U.S. users against the measure, and amid the Biden administration’s push to persuade lawmakers that Chinese ownership of the platform poses grave national security risks to the United States.
When the bill was introduced, a National Security Council spokesman quickly called the legislation “an important and welcome step to address” the threat of technology that imperils Americans’ sensitive data.
The administration has repeatedly sent national security officials to Capitol Hill to privately make the case for the legislation and offer dire warnings on the risks of TikTok’s current ownership.
The latest bill has been viewed as something of a last stand against the company for Mr. Gallagher, who recently said he would not run for a fifth term because “the framers intended citizens to serve in Congress for a season and then return to their private lives.”
The original article contains 1,325 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I don't understand the argument that this limits free speech. Anything that people post on Tik Tok can also be posted on competing social media sites. How is free speech affected by this?
It's funny that the only app being banned, is the app that young people used to have a dramatic effect on American politics recently, first by blocking the red wave, then by tanking democratic polling thanks to their support for genocide.
It's funny that Twitter or Facebook, which is absolutely full of outside influence on America, isn't banned. The Russian and Chinese bot networks can live forever there, that's fine.
Silly of you to assume that that is about end user's free speech and not the "free speech" of a company to release a product to market.
In all seriousness, I think hostile foreign governments have an interest in destabilizing the public discourse of other countries. I get the memes comparing data collection between TikTok and American tech firms. But the fact remains that the US government can reign in foreign influence of domestic social media, where as it has absolutely no control over foreign social media. The fact that border protection never extended to the digital space is in hindsight kind of strange. It's also completely asinine to expect any sort of free speech on a platform subject to an authoritarian government.
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Why yes of course. Can't have people seeing whats going on in Palestine.
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