Honestly the genocide part of this meme bothers me. It’s not just one after all.
Uh 50 hr work week and $7.25/hr wage is where you lost me. Nobody is getting paid that minimum wage. That’s just bad faith.
It’s admittedly low, but not nobody – 1.3% of hourly workers from this report: https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/
Our two parties that refuse to address relevant problems:
Skill issue
They don’t actually want to get rid of tiktok. They just want it to be owned by a consortium of American billionaires so they can influence public policy more easily.
Part of me would rather have it with capitalistic sociopaths that want to extract my money rather than an authoritarian government that is provably responsible for (multiple?) genocide(s). Like, in a perfect world, there’s a better system, but at least our government still, in theory, can control the businesses within our country. They won’t though.
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an authoritarian government that is provably responsible for (multiple?) genocide(s)
Yes, US has a history of it. As a matter of fact, it was built on a genocide of the native population and is currently contributing to one in the middle ea
Whataboutism. One, in theory, I have a say for/against(in theory) another I don’t. It isn’t hard. But, yes, US bAd. Good job. Anything to actually add?
You don’t have to tell me about the murders of my ancestors.
Also, to follow up, the US government doesn’t control social media here, unlike wherever your bot farm is out of. Which is why your whataboutism really falls flat, cause one media company is controlled by an authoritarian government currently eradicating Uighurs and the other is owned by Zuck, who’s trying to idk honestly, drown in money?
I am not a synthetic bot, instead, I am a human being but yes, USA bad.
That, we’ll agree on.
The US government is controlled by the same interests and lobbbyists that control the government, so it’s similar although not the same thing. Just because their interests align at this moment because the billionaires don’t want competition and the government has a hard-on for Israel doesn’t mean their right.
And for the record, I don’t even use Tik Tok, and I personally think social media and shortform content is bad for young brains and probably causing a lot of ADHD and impairing my ability to read. But I find this whole bill very fake and performative and probably done for the wrong reasons. It’s weird that we finally got an international perspective unfiltered by US media companies that bow to AIPAC and of course it’s getting banned.
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This is my kind of thinking, it does seem as though the US sees TikTok as a possible use of propaganda, but if they own it, well then they can control the propaganda being pushed at least
That is a just cause in theory
Except billionaires aren’t loyal to any accepted borders
…and TikTok will still have horrible data privacy and domestic spying capabilities, it will just be owned by US Big Tech instead of Chinese Big Tech.
There’s no world where they sell to preserve 10% of their users
Glad we can keep Chinese billionaires from influencing politics for cheap, they will have to pay an American billionaire to do it like Russia does.
Usa invented the Online psyops/spy game with facebook/google. Now they pissed china beat them at there own game.
Wanting to ban a app/service that basically gives your biggest economic and political enemy direct conact to the local networks/brain of your population is understandable.
I mean those are the reasons why china banned Facebook/Google years ago.
Reality is more complicated tho, cause unless the usa is willing to build a chinese firewall for themself, it will be impossible to keep people from using TikTok via VPN.
If the usa would actually care for its citizen privacy they could just outlaw closed source software.
unless the usa is willing to build a chinese firewall for themself
Honestly, I feel like in the next decade we’re going to see a whole lot of great firewalls. Every other country wants to control everyone and get in people’s heads. We’re either going to invent some way to regulate this desire (unlikely, if you ask me) or end up with a lot of spying and/or fractured network 😞
willing to build a chinese firewall for themself, it will be impossible to keep people from using TikTok via VPN.
A majority of people probably won’t bother and just move on. A decent chunk, 30/40% maybe but that still leaves a 70/60% reduction and it’s influence permanently neutered so the gov will still see it as a win
It’s my understanding this is designed for TikTok to be sold off, not to ban it.
Anyway, yeah I agree with everything else. Anyone “defending China” here is ignoring the Chinese firewall, but also everyone “defending the US” must also agree the Chinese firewall has a useful purpose. The fact is this is just about control and/or greed. It’s not any more or less evil than all the other shit the governments do to control people. It’s not going to hurt anyone here, but it’s also probably not going to help them either.
I won’t touch TikTok anyway, so I really don’t care. It just seems like everyone is misunderstanding what’s going on and hypocritical with their stance, whichever position they hold.
Which is still an unprecedented power we’ve consistently called out other countries for doing. Also, targeting a single entity is unconstitutional, it’s a Bill of Attainder.
No. It isn’t charging them with a crime, which is what a bill of attainder is for. It’s only saying they won’t be allowed to do business in the US. I’m fairly confident it is absolutely legal and constitutional, and also it isn’t unprecedented either. For example, see Huawei.
You can argue ethics all you want. It won’t stop anything, nor does it really matter in this situation. Ethics aren’t in play, because this is about power. Regardless, it’s equally ethical for the US to do this as what China does to prevent western companies operating in China.
It imposes a punishment without trial. That’s a Bill of Attainder.
And being as ethical as China isn’t a line I want to stand on.
You’re missing a very key part of it, I assume on purpose. It imposes a punishment for a crime. No one is accusing them of a crime. I don’t know where you got this idea from, but they’re wrong. They may have said it very confidently, but it’s incorrect. Doing this to “protect national security” is perfectly fine. The intent is not to punish them.
Oh, that makes it okay then.
We’re going to pass a law that punishes a someone or a group, but it’s okay if we just don’t say, “they’re guilty of X.”
Somehow I don’t think the courts are going to share your interpretation. And in your own article they do not. Nowhere in the test does it state the bill must name a crime.
The last bullet for determining if it’s punishment: “Was that a congressional intent for the statute to further punitive goals.”
It fails that test. It isn’t any sort if punishment. It’s for “national security”.
The correct law is staring them in the face.
Sensitive country is defined by the following list, (xxx,xxx,xxx)
Any company that sells, or gives American data to a sensitive country; or cause their data to come into possession of a sensitive country shall cease operations in the US.
Any company allowing a sensitive country to manipulate their algorithm, examples of (but not exclusively) with targeted advertising, bots, or by manipulating the ranking of posts, shall cease operations in the US.
That achieves the mission and holds the entire industry accountable without unconstitutionally targeting a single company.
ok, to be fair. There have been recent investments into people generally in poverty, in regards to improving their financial situation, as a means to improve their overall health, it’s still in trial stages, and very new, but it IS happening, and it IS positively affecting people.
Also, “we” aren’t really witnessing a genocide, i’m assuming to this is referring to war, if not, I’ll take my leave.
There’s like 8 recent ‘genocide emergencies’ declared by Genocide Watch not including Palestine and Ukraine
While interesting most are far smaller. The Manipur one has 200 deaths. Which is bad but more of a war crime than full blown Genocide.
last i checked, there is a wiki page with a list of “serial killers” and if you sort by death count, you get like 180? Last i checked, similar situation there i imagine. Some dude apparently just woke up and decided that he needed to violence. Gotta love humanity.
Should have said while approving/enabling of a genocide.
The current administration has vetoed multiple UN drafts for a conflict resolution over Gaza as well as other UN resolutions proposed. We’re still sending the Israelis weapons. Neither congress nor the current administration care.
i suppose complacency is fair. Wouldn’t be america if we didn’t pretend shit wasn’t a problem half the time.
Whataboutism
No. I really do want my government to focus on governing instead of handing itself unprecedented and unconstitutional powers to force private sales.
Two genocides actually. The Russian and the Israeli one.
You forgot the Uighurs, that is still happening
Is Russia doing a race thing? I thought it was an imperialism thing, needed access to Crimea for the black sea and needs to get that pesky foreign government out of the way to ensure that access
One is doing conquest while the other is doing cleansing. We all know which of those is the most evil one
Russia has killed over 30000 civilians, they have abducted 20000 ukrainian children and assigned them to Russian families, they have destroyed Ukrainian museums, churches, and art. It’s just as much of a genocide.
It’s … It’s the cleansing, right? Or … Maybe, just don’t… Just don’t do wars?
Ukrainians have their own culture, language, religion, and ethnicity distinct from Russia. Russia is killing the native population to replace them with Russians, they are abducting Ukrainian children to raise them as Russian, and they are destroying Ukrainian art, museums, and churches. It is a genocide.
The Ukrainian thing is more of a cultural genocide with Putin having a plan on “integrating” all current Ukrainians into Russian society, but it checks out, because “integration” means “throwing away their own culture for the holy Mother Russia”.
“These are OUR slaves!”
People acting more terrified at the loss of tik tok from their lives than they did during covid, while losing people from their lives.
Tik tok might as well just change their name to empathy box, because they have convinced their users that the act of watching content on empathy box makes them more moral and politically aware than the rest of us.
At the end of the day, we have to be nervous when a foreign nation has content reach to 80℅ of Americans. This foreign nation is banning Americans from accusing it of genocide while allowing an economic incentive for Americans to accuse themselves and everybody else of doing it.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
Don’t use TikTok, don’t really care too much either way, but watching this whole thing unfold is starting to open my eyes to the ways these companies can shape public opinion.
They’re apparently sending notifications to people to contact their reps and it seems very likely that they’re promoting content that advocates against the ban.
I’m not a fan of censorship or blocking internet services but TikTok really seems to trying to make a good case for it.
My understanding is that while rights are inalienable, meaning we recognize that Chinese citizens have the inherent right of free speech as well, not just in our direction, I’m not sure we grant free speech to mean a foreign state gets to use its technology to determine our national conversation.
I’m sure there would be teenage trans kids who through confusion ended up pro hamas, but I think tik tok could almost be accused of creating and fostering a movement that is certainly close to that very thing.
Wait. Are you blaming China for the anti Israel movement in politics?
That’s… Impressive. Hilarious too but also impressive.
I never conflated a pro-hamas movement with an anti-israel one.
If there are leftists or vulnerable minorities who have become indoctrinated into pro-hamas rhetoric, yes, I clearly think tik tok is responsible because these kids certainly aren’t reading it on on storm front.
I am not interested in having a conversation where you pretend I am talking about the pro Palestine/anti Israeli government movements.
Sure and my racist uncle’s joke about drowning a random person totally isn’t just his black guy joke barely concealed.
The narrative has for months been that anyone who is critical of Israel is Pro Hamas. And now you want us to believe that’s changed when someone is defending the most breathtakingly xenophobic bill in modern times?
Lmao. No.
You aren’t talking to a narrative, but rather a human being. You understand that, yes?
My dude. No leftist is pro Hamas. Hamas wants to create a religious ethnostate just like Israel wants to create a religious ethnostate. We ARE pro Palestinian freedom. But Israel is the one who keeps making Hamas the dominant Palestinian political party, in order to use them as an excuse to continue their genocide.
Stop pretending to know what the left thinks when you’ve clearly never actually spoken to their members.
If something a person says that wasn’t personally directed at you doesn’t actually apply to you, they probably weren’t talking about you.
This isn’t the first time a company has done that. Uber famously used pop up ads to get people to vote for a ballot proposition. Enron went so hard on PR that everyone blamed the government for people losing the pension that had already been embezzled by the executives.
Yeah but that’s okay because they’re American, right?
If you’re gonna ban this speech, then you should ban all speech from foreign governments, including the propaganda Israel is filling our country with for their genocide.
But this same congress who is so ready to silence China is unwilling to silence Israel. And Israel is not our ally. Our allies don’t try to drag us into genocides.
So when are we shutting down Facebook for their 2016 targeted ad campaign specifically meant to fuck with an election?
I’m 100℅ in favor of breaking Facebook into 912 separate companies.
But not having the current political power to get that done doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it to tik tok while we still have the power to.
That’s not what they’re talking about doing. They want to sell TikTok to a US interest. Not 900 of them. This is literally a chance for Musk, Zuckerberg, Apple, and Alphabet to grab up the best short form video app for cheap.
That’s all it is. It is incredibly corrupt and the state department calls that out in other countries all the time.
China doesn’t allow US social media in their nation, specifically for this reason.
There is no reason two belligerent states shouldn’t be protecting their citizens from each other.
But I agree the citizens need to protected from their own governments as well.
How does us banning TikTok make us any better than China then? How does it make us any more free?
The whole point of freedom of speech is that everyone has it, even that speech you hate. The answer is more speech.
Lets see Biden grow a pair and go on new media and answer actual questions, not softballs. Then maybe people will start listening to him. And maybe he’ll learn what we’re actually concerned about.
Most companies in all industries should be broken up.
I am much less concerned about foreign news reaching the American people than the outright lies being spread in the American news without people batting an eye. And the fact that a foreign government (Israel) literally owns our government.
Oh so a chinese news source pointed this out to the youth? Good. It shows that we are so sick of not being able to trust OUR news that we’re looking elsewhere. Banning TikTok won’t fix that. I won’t go back to CNN or Fox if you take away that option. I’ll continue to look elsewhere
Who’s next? Al Jazerra? The hindustan times? The BBC?
Are you actually fucking insane? How does the Israeli government literally own the US government? That’s not even true figuratively. What the fuck are you saying
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=rlKmWa8p4UM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
?
AIPAC bragging about how they lobby (which we all know to mean bribe) every US leader. Doesn’t get more blatant than that.
A promotional video of a lobby organization says they’re doing a good job, therefore the Israeli government owns the US government?
We can all see the results where almost every politician on both sides fully support israel, even as they’re committing genocide.
So glad to see this argument here.
American social media companies are also controlled by foreign powers. I have no interests in common with the ultra wealthy and massive corporations that control this country. They are just as foreign to me as anyone in another country. I trust them less than I trust TikToc.
Right, but if you know all of them can’t be trusted than the only logical thing to do is leave them behind, all of them.
Have you done so?
Actually, yes. The only exception would be YouTube, but I don’t let the algorithm tell me what to watch. I have a handful of channels I follow, and sometimes look up a howto video.
you can subscribe to channels locally via newpipe or freetube, in case you want to degoogle.
As an Australian who gets bombarded by the US point of view and agenda from their tech companies - I think America could do with an outside influence undermining the government’s point of view.
As the post points out - the US government is doing an incredibly shitty job looking out for its citizens, and if they were afraid of a propaganda machine holding them accountable and creating civil unrest it might be for the best.
It’s just a shame the power that owns the means to do that happens to be china. I wonder if things will return to normal once the citizens pack away the guillotine
Undermining the US government’s point of view is one thing, but the argument could be made they are undermining your viewpoint more than the US government’s.
Oh for sure. I guess I despair because I don’t see a way out of the bullshit without civil unrest, but I think we have all grown weak and soft in the middle and are just willing to take it. I’m not sure it’s possible anymore and feel like the human race as a whole are just becoming slaves.
I used to think the USA at least had a semblance of justice and fairness especially compared to China, but I think it really is just every man for themselves now and greed is all that matters.
It’s not much better here in Australia either. There is no sense of community, or trying to build a better society. It’s almost applauded to be corrupt and selfish.
Can you recommend a remote area of Australia that’s not terribly prone to fires and has good Internet? I may have to join you in November.
The government does a shitty job, but it is representative. American culture is dominated by billionaire worship, consumerism, and greed. We shouldn’t be so surprised when our elected officials share our values.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
I disagreed with you up until this point. You’re exactly right about this.
The problem is that nobody should have this kind of power. But our government thinks this kind of power is just fine as long as it’s a US company they can control.
If nobody should have this power than nobody should have this power. Not China. Not Musk. Not Zuckerberg. NOBODY.
But we have a feckless, ineffective government written by racists 250 years ago and this is literally all they can do.
Isn’t Zoom supposed to be basically Chinese spyware too? Why are they trying to ban TikTok and not Zoom?
Rhetoical question. I know why. Zoom helps funnel more money to shareholders.
Because the bill lets them ban anything that they want, not just TikTok. All the have to do is assert “foreign influence” and they can block, censor, or force sale to “American interests”.
Basically these motherfuckers are doing their best to make it so you only see, hear, and read what they want. And if that’s not actually their intent, they’re leaving the door wide open for the next guy to do it.
And if the current guy doesn’t get his shit together, that next guy is going to be the former guy and then the entire world’s fucked.
Because the bill lets them ban anything that they want, not just TikTok. All the have to do is assert “foreign influence” and they can block, censor, or force sale to “American interests”.
How long until this is used against a Fediverse instance?
Not true. They have to show that the company is headquartered in or owned by the “sensitive country”.
Giant loophole for American Data vendors and marketers to sell data and targeted advertising to China. (Which is just an algorithm by a different name.)
The very concept of a state is the problem.
State - a group of people who claim they are allowed to use violence to get their way and that nobody else is allowed to protect themselves from this violence.
(Others may define “state” to be essentially synonymous with “government”. The above definition contains the only quality in common with every entity I am speaking of.)
There is no reality in which any state is not taken over by those willing to cause the harm necessary to do so.
This does not mean the best course of action is attempted immediate destruction of any state, that will cause the boot to stomp harder on us. The best course of action is minimize dependence on the economic system that state depends on. That is to say, growing some portion of your food is just about as radical as it gets.
Yeah that’s about right. What exactly is the point of this post?
Don’t forget this part
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Yep, this is McCarthyism and the Patriot Act all over again. We’re really naive if we believe this is just about Tik Tok.
