If money wasn’t the point, then influence was. Congress is right to shut them down.
Foreign owned, FARA-unregistered influence operations have never been a facet of “free speech” in the USA.
They’d lose money in a sale as they’d lose their IP.
Money is still the point. There’s an entire world outside the US.
I mean, not on the surface. But lobby groups working for foreign governments operate in Washington to this day, and they’re ignored because Congress doesn’t want to shut the money tap off.
It’s pretty weird that they’d admit it.
The smart move would have been to sell it and take the L, and use the new money to build the next thing.
They would say that at this stage. They are still working on getting the law overturned by courts and threat of shutdown mobilizes people against the law in a way that selling it wouldn’t.
When the time comes to shut down they will probably do some paper work fuckery that technically makes it an Irish company but doesn’t change the people in the company.
Even better
First, negotiations are not yet over, so they’re hoping courts overturn the ban.
Second, TikTok is very popular outside the US too, though 40% of ad revenue is in the US. They’d survive.
Even if they do plan to sell they wouldn’t say it. If buyers think that a sale is inevitable they can offer less because they “don’t have a choice” but to sell. If they act as if their plan is to pull out the buyers need to not just make them an offer that is higher than the others, but also high enough to make them reconsider their whole position.
This is right on. The best PR right now is to say they’ll never sell. Take a hard line while they challenge the law in court. They can always have acquisition meetings in private, and announce it out of nowhere at the last second if they do find a buyer.
If the Chinese government is behind this, it’s a great play. Having Joe Biden be “the guy who banned tik tok” would severely undermine his election chances.
Why would China want Biden to lose?
Because Trump is equivalent to self destruction.
14 year olds don’t vote
14 year olds aren’t the only people who use Tik Tok
Lemmy really seems to generally think that TikTok isn’t massively overall popular. Lemmy would have someone thinking it’s a niche app only being used by teenagers.
Guess we’ll find out whether TikTok or reproductive freedom is more important…
TikTok or reproductive freedom
Both of those bans have happened during the Biden administration
Abortion ban happened because of Trump’s corrupt judges in the supreme court, yeah
Yes, we all know Biden was super excited about Dobs. -_-
They were 14 four years ago
They’d basically instantly be undermining literally every narrative they were trying to push about this by doing that lol
All those kids that were defending the shit TikTok pulls because “well American companies do it too!” are really gonna have to get that egg off their faces
I’m just baffled, why am I not free to install whatever crap I want onto my phone?
Let me ask you a question. How do you think they’re going to “ban” TikTok? Remove it from the app store on Google and apple? You’ll still be able to download the app and use it as long as you have the Internet.
True, I can go get it still from the aurora store.
Probably just need to use a VPN to access it at most, which Ironically might actually make the content contributions from Americans better since it’s only gonna be people willing to invest in a VPN who are on it lol
You have a point!
No need to guess, it’s all outlined in the bill:
- ByteDance has 270 days (+90 days at president discretion) to divest of TikTok and sell to an entity not affiliated with an “adversary country” (China, Iran, Russia, N. Korea).
- If they don’t sell, hosting providers of TikTok application (servers, storage, app store, etc) will be fined up to $500 times the number of users in the US if they continue to host the application
So basically, the law will impose a fine of US hosting providers of the app. If the app moves all services overseas to foreign entities, then the app presumably will continue to work even if banned if already installed (plus the website if hosted overseas).
ISPs and search engines are explicitly exempt from the bill so there is no mechanism to ban connections to TilTok servers or links to TikTok.
I see this as a win win
Of course you do. You’re all just the old man yelling at cloud meme and it’s honestly sad.
Oh, eat a Hello Kitty lunchbox full of dicks. There’s plenty of reasons to hate on TikTok (and Facebook, insta, YouTube, ad-infinitum/ad-nauseum). They’re a damn cancer on society.
So are places like Reddit and Lemmy but here you are.
Are you being intentionally daft? You realise there is no algorithm behind Lemmy, right? You aren’t being shoved controversial polarizing content subliminally here.
The worst of Lemmy is a certain instance… That I have never heard from after defederation.
You realise there is no algorithm behind Lemmy, right?
Of course there is. Even “sort by newest” is an algorithm, and the default view is more complicated than that.
You aren’t being shoved controversial polarizing content subliminally here.
Neither are you on TikTok, unless you actively go looking for it
Neither are you on TikTok, unless you actively go looking for it
That’s just genuine nonsense. The whole point of platforms like TikTok are the modern recommender systems that (simplified) lead to algorithmic radicalisation. Because these systems heavily optimise towards user engagement, they naturally spread misinformation and controversial content.
And because this kind of content statistically gets more user engagement as people commend on it and spend more time with it, it spreads quicker. This has also e.g. been confirmed by a leaked internal Facebook memo.And additionally, these systems are personalised, so when you start to interact with it, you get more and more similar content. This leads to a radicalisation pipeline in which the platforms normalises these positions in echo chambers to you.
You’re like the old people that yelled about rock music ruining the youth. But for the the internet lmao. What’s it feel like to become that? Is it sad? It seems sad.
No just tons of posts cheering on genocide and pushing nazi propaganda.
The worst of Lemmy is a certain instance… That I have never heard from after defederation.
Yeah, defederating from Beehaw was definitely a great decision. I’m so glad I don’t have to see those guys’ posts anymore.
You’re comparing assholes to oranges
So we’ll be taking care of those other companies any day now, right?
I wish.
Yet you celebrate when the government illegally passes legislation targeting only one company to the benefit of meta and YouTube lmao. Hypocrit.
Uhhh, dude - it’s not illegal. As others have mentioned, it’s a foreign (hostile) actor contributing to election interference efforts in violation of established law. It is essentially enforcing another law that’s already on place!
The complication with fb et al is that as US companies, there are other laws that protect their actions (and I’m not going to minimize the effects of powerful lobbyists).
I’d love to see any evidence of TikTok acting on behalf of any country (especially China) as a hostile actor, or even any evidence of legitimate election interference. If anything banning TikTok is a significantly more hostile response from the US since it silences another forum for free speech.
Social media is a cancer, but this ban is such obvious propaganda. The only reason TikTok was banned because the US government doesn’t have free reign to spy on its users like it does with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
If the US government truly cared about social media and it’s affects they would be regulating all of it. Instead they’re trying to ban TikTok while screaming their heads off about China every chance they get. And that’s before mentioning the extremely shady way they passed this; attaching it as a rider through a government ‘aid’ bill.
I find it amusing how people talk about things they read second hand without understanding.
The nominal reason they are banning TikTok is because of the data collection. Nothing to do with election security, but national security. The real reason is that they want to lock down the digital information space in preparation for WW3. TikTok is harder to control and there’s a lot of anti-government messaging on it.
It’s sort of like the Voter ID laws in GOP states. They pass laws for “election security” by making it so you need an ID to vote. The nominal reason is so that they prevent election fraud. The real reason is they’ve done statistical analysis and that law reduces black votes by a couple percent, and blacks tend to vote Democrat.
The real reason in both cases would be unconstitutional, so they come up with another.
And the mass of idiots online cheer on the deterioration of whatever legitimacy was left in American democratic institutions.
So you’re saying it’s for national security… and that’s unconstitutional?
In other to infringe the right to speech, you need a valid justification. It needs to be a) narrowly tailored and b) actually accomplish the aim of the legislation.
This is the same reason the judge stopped the Montana TikTok ban.
For a) 170 million Americans use TikTok. So the law has to be ironclad legally speaking to be considered narrowly tailored. It needs to be the bare minimum the government can possibly do to alleviate the ill it claims to address.
The fact is, this legislation does not actually result in a scenario where China loses access to data on Americans. They can just buy it - it’s an ocean of data out there and there’s no real way to stop them accessing it.
Unless you were to make large sweeping changes to the way we handle data, like the EU data laws. But that would affect all social media companies.
What I’m saying is it’s not actually for national security. It’s just that if they said the real purpose “ban content potentially manipulated by a specific group of people” then they would require a much higher burden of scrutiny which they could not meet.
There’s a difference legally speaking between “content-neutral” bans and “content-based”. Content neutral for example is national security and requires less scrutiny. You can’t just arbritarily ban content because of what it says. Note the specific text in the ban: because of data collection. Not the content itself.
Make sure to pay attention to the upcoming court case on this situation. It will be an important case. The CCP has signaled they will not approve a sale to an American company, so Bytedance essentially only has one option, and that is to fight this in court.
The fact is the federal government is playing games. They’re playing loosey goosey with the laws in an attempt to manipulate the digital media environment.
This isn’t something a democracy should be doing. It’s akin to banning foreign media. Like Israel banning Al Jazeera. Whole world is going nuts and we’re pretending it’s OK.
Dude, I was there for when Vine was born and for when it died, and Vine didn’t even get picked up for mass disinformation, and y’know what? Life moved on. If you think that makes me old and out of touch then fine.
I think it’s sad that you’re all just ok with this kind of blatant government overreach to protect corporate pockets tbh. You just go along with the disinformation thing without an ounce of critical thought because you didn’t like the app lol. I guess I just expected better of this community but I was wrong. I think lemmy just got the reddit boomers that are in denial about being boomers. It seems like it’s just an alternative retirement site to facebook for y’all. So have fun with that I guess.
I mean they’re literally just the guys who read about like, say, 4chan being bad, right, but then never actually use the site itself to see. I mean, yeah, if you go on /pol/ or /r9k/, and then scroll around for like 5 minutes, you can find some content that’s going to reinforce your bias that the site is kind of an ontologically evil fascist hellscape, but if you go on /mu/ it’s gonna be no more toxic than basically any other forum you could go on. It’s just people thoughtlessly parroting the narratives that they’ve heard from other people.
I don’t like tiktok, I don’t like lemmy, I kind of hate social media even though it’s like infested my life because I have no self control, but I’m not gonna be like. This is such an epic pog moment! I’m so pegged outta my gourd! when it gets banned. Because I’ve used it, thoroughly, not just first glance, and I actually understand the pros and cons of the platform. These guys don’t have that, they only have like, the white stale wonderbread and wood chips of social media usage, they only have reddit, and even more libbed up privacy reddit, i.e. the most obvious and in your face social media platforms of all time that give you (ostensibly, in practice, it’s the opposite) a very high amount of control over what they’re seeing. Of course they hate tiktok. On top of the brainrot privacy concerns they all probably have, they’re gonna discard it on the basis that they don’t have the self-control to use its platform, and project that onto everyone else. It’s like a puritan hating coffee, or cocaine, without understanding that it’s a great morning drink, or without understanding that it makes pro wrestling promos wayyyyy fucking better.
if you go on /mu/ it’s gonna be no more toxic than basically any other forum you could go on.
I used to go on /mu/, and yes, it’s unbelievably toxic. I’m glad I don’t use 4chan anymore.
And this was long before all the QAnon shit happened.
Really? I went on it like I wanna say two or three months ago and it wasn’t that bad. You had a couple troll threads, obviously, because (you)s and getting your thread bumped are what the platform incentivizes over anything else, but it didn’t seem that bad.
Which corporation’s profits do you think banning TikTok is intended to protect?
Also, “boomer” is a specific group of people and applying that term to everyone who doesn’t agree with you makes it pretty damn silly and meaningless.
YouTube and Instagram have features that are in direct competition with TikTok. YouTube has even been more aggressive in promoting themselves as the TikTok alternative. On top of that the US government has an incentive to keep them (Google and Meta) happy; since the US routinely spies on its own (and other countries) citizens through these companies.
One of the guys that wrote the bill invests heavily in meta and invested even more in March after putting forward the new bill that recently passed to ban it… But I’m sure that’s TOTALLY just a coincidence lmao. Mike McCaul. Not to mention google’s potential benefit for getting rid of a major competitor but they’d never meddle with our government right?
A boomer is someone that’s out of touch and hateful/distrustful of things they don’t understand. It’s a mentality. If you weren’t a boomer you’d know that
Oh fuck off ya prick.
If you weren’t a fucking fetus maybe you’d be intelligent enough not to offend everyone you interact with.
Am I a Reddit boomer when I’m 21 and like (some) Tiktok-esque kind of content?
I’ve never used TikTok, but not because I don’t get the idea of using audio as meme template or because I don’t like short videos. But just because that specific platform itself is so vile.
Not just talking about funding the Chinese government, TikTok e.g. reduces reach of neurodivergent people. Even worse, it censors information against China‘s authoritarianism and much more.Why can’t I be happy that this awful platform loses reach? The content itself will be kept, there are enough copycats.
Also, Lemmy is full of people that stopped using Reddit for ethical reasons. So it’s not surprising many are against TikTok as well tbh.
Yeah, definitely a boomer in vibes if not in age. Sorry. Everything you said is basically wrong. You’re just repeating what others have said without putting a single bit of effort into confirming anything but your own bias.
Ethical reasons lmao. You all just laughed while our government illegally targeted one company with legislation to get rid of competition for big corporations like meta/google. Don’t pretend to be doing any of this for any kind of moral high ground when you can’t even be bothered to look into something before arguing for it. You’re just useful tools happily guzzling their bs excuse of it being for our security because that’s what you want to believe.
I don’t get your point. I’m against tech monopolies and I hate Google. I want Facebook to be split up and think that the current tech companies are way to powerful, see this video by Last Week Tonight. I use duckduckgo and try to avoid google services.
Don’t pretend to be doing any of this for any kind of moral high ground when you can’t even be bothered to look into something before arguing for it.
Lmao. How would you get the thought I wouldn’t have “looked into this”. That sounds like antivax level of arguments.
Everything you said is basically wrong.
And this gives me the feeling I’m much better informed than you tbh.
Because no, what I wrote is factually correct, read for example this, this or this or just so many more articles, outlining detailed how TikTok censors content made by minorities, talking about the Uighur camps or so much more.I feel like you can’t grasp the thought that someone knows how bad many tech companies are and still can see that content behind TikTok is at least as terrible. And what I’m writing isn’t any more boomer-like than what you write, you even use the same talking points but are just ignoring any of TikTok’s flaws.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
[https://www.piped.video/watch?v=jXf04bhcjbg&pp=ygUPdGVjaCBtb25vcG9saWVz]](https://piped.video/watch?v=jXf04bhcjbg&pp=ygUPdGVjaCBtb25vcG9saWVz])
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Greed on Capitol Hill is not new and a huge problem. Big tech does need to get broken up. But are you trying to say TikTok and ByteDance and their backers are small corporations and mom and pop shops??
Scrutiny over ByteDance expanded further after the government took a 1% stake in its local subsidiary Beijing ByteDance Technology in 2019 that awarded the Chinese government a board seat at the subsidiary. https://www.inc.com/reuters/what-you-need-to-know-about-tiktoks-chinese-parent-company-bytedance.html
About 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group,"
Wiki stuff:
Carlyle Group The Carlyle Group Inc. is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management.
General Atlantic General Atlantic, legal main entity General Atlantic Service Company, L.P., is an American growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support for global growth companies, headquartered in New York, United States. The firm was founded in 1980 as the captive investment team for Atlantic Philanthropies, a philanthropic organization founded by Charles F. Feeney, the billionaire co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Ltd.
Susquehanna International Group The firm invested $5 million into ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, in 2012 when ByteDance was founded. As of 2020, its stake in ByteDance represented 15 percent of its fully-diluted capitalization table and was valued over $15 billion on paper.[9]
You should go back to school and learn not to behave like an obnoxious child.
Wow people get so upset when you take away their soft core child porn.
You really live up to your username.
Nah. I was wrong to come here though. Lemmy isn’t the next step forward. It’s the retirement site for people that got mad at reddit lmao.
I mean, you are disagreeing (even mocking), but not providing any argument. What did you expect?
Good 1 less spyware app
Y’all are dumb as hell for supporting this bill. It doesn’t just ban tiktok, it applies to any app with 20% or more ownership by any person/entity from a country that is a “foreign adversary”.
A lot of the users here are just butthurt anti social media people, not actually principled free speech or rule of law advocates. This ban is arguably unconstitutional and TikTok is being targeted for purely political reasons, not because of any credible threat to “national security.” This is some Patriot Act level overreach bullshit, but the clueless mainstream just clamors for it because CNN/Fox spends hours of airtime decrying the dangers of TikTok, and a fraction doing the same for Meta/X/Reddit.
TikTok is literally controlled directly by the Chinese government, which is officially considered a foreign adversary (for a good reason)
Source?
There are more than enough sources, just google “TikTok Chinese government influence”. Just a few examples:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2023/07/26/tiktok-chinese-propaganda-ads-europe/
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/11/tiktok-china-us-elections-influence
Also, just think about it: The CCP loves spreading propaganda. There’s a massive social media platform controlled by China, which is used by young people in foreign adversary nations. Why wouldn’t they leverage this platform to spread their lies and influence people? It’s literally the perfect opportunity.
Wow. How predictable. Nothing you posted has anything to do with the Chinese government “literally directly controlling” TikTok, despite those being the exact words you chose and used.
Instead, you posted one story about TikTok in Europe running ads by the CCP, and two about the CCP using accounts on TikTok.
It’s a well known fact that the CCP runs accounts on Reddit and other socials. TikTok accepting and running ads from the CCP in Europe is a European problem. Could be addressed by updated regulations around ads, idk, I’m not European. Meta could run ads from the CCP or Russia in Europe, perhaps? Or maybe TikTok broke European advertising regulations. Still, has nothing to do with the USA.
So again, you people are repeating US intelligence propaganda about the Chinese government “owning and controlling” TikTok and then posting “proof” that proves nothing.
Try again?
It’s painfully apparent you have a fundamental lack of understanding of how the CCP works in relation to companies in China. Or how they behave on the world stage outside of your ech chamber. If they operate in a critical sector, they are controlled by the CCP. I mean, you do accept that the CCP is an oppressive, authoritarian regime, right? If you don’t accept that, then we can’t carry on because you’re not in the same reality or arguing in bad faith.
And before the defense: “but they’re really capitalists” - yeah, so what? Errybody greedy. Still doesn’t change that the CCP is an authoritarian regime. I have the feeling that no matter what, you’re going to move the goalposts because, I dunno, America bad? (and yeah, we’ve got a lot to account for and I’m no 'merica cheerleader). And no amount of evidence will sway you.
May you have the day you deserve.
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That’s all platform agnostic. You think they didn’t have accounts and ads on every major service?
Im not making a stance on it but I read more to it.
It seems very focused on “social media” as in software that is about users sharing their own content with other users with 1,000,000 monthly active users.
Those that support it on tiktok likely would for other similar services.
The part that stands out to me is it mentions real time communication. So Telegram probably counts.
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Yes I paraphrased the actual bill. Its broad but not without limits.
It lists the foreign adversaries, they aren’t just made up on a whim. Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia.
Where is WhatsApp based?
WhatsApp is American owned. You may be thinking of WeChat?
Sorry why should I be against that?
China does the same.
So we should do whatever China does??? Are you ready for the firewall? lmfao
Ok…?
Not sure if you’ve been paying attention but citizens have no say over stuff like this. 99% of the politicians in office were placed there by rich people - they have the only true votes. The bill included money to Ukraine (great), and Israel (WTF), and Taiwan, and TikTok. It shouldn’t be legal to package all that stuff together, but it’s pretty standard. Anyway not sure who you’re talking to - there are like a few hundred politicians who supported this bill, most of them probably for other reasons, and none of them are on Lemmy.
Talking about the comments here.
I see, well Lemmy is a bunch of Reddit refugees for the most part. Probably happy to see social media corps dying no matter how?
…ok? You realize that actually makes it even better right?
Okay bye Felicia
I think this is a good move honestly, they want it to be an algo similar to meta which you know is terrible, meta is like mostly dudes saying gen Z men are AWAKE and hate LGBT people and tate clips. They seem to have much less success in the algorithm on tiktok
Leaving US in darkness
TikTok users are already in darkness, unless you think it’s a happy coincidence that their algorithm suppresses anti-China views, support for Hong Kong, and support for Taiwan. Just because you can’t notice you’re being deceived doesn’t mean you aren’t.
US should call their bluff. If Tiktok gets banned, people will complain for a little bit until people forget and move on to what’s next. Why doesn’t an American company make something that’s practically identical? People will be all desperate for their 5 second dopamine rush that they will download anything.
YouTube and Instagram already have identical features. Most US creators who post on Tik Tok also use those platforms already
They can’t, the algorithm is the best part about tiktok and none of the competitors come close.
That’s interesting, what’s so clever or original about its algorithm?
If I remember correctly from my rabbit hole, it tracks your viewing habits by a far wider list of variables and on a micromanaged scale. It can be annoying if you have someone sending you content you don’t like because viewing them will slot them into your feed immediately, but it’s just as quick to discard those things. I found it very easy to train for my interests in cooking, goblincore, and irrational humor.
Meanwhile, YT Shorts sees me watch one video then gives me nothing but that.
Personally I’ve not tried shorts, I don’t have any issues with it but I’ve only ever used YouTube for long form educational videos or horror fiction so it never has anything to offer me.
If you have to ask that question you definitely don’t use Tiktok it’s far far superior algorithmically than Reels and YT Shorts which are both absolute garbage.
Vine.co returns!
I think Elon might just do that based on what I’ve been reading.
As I recall, the guy who makes Pixelfed (dansup?) is also working on a vine clone called loops. It looks like the site is https://loops.video/ Doesn’t appear to be operational yet.
i never got to experience vine (and google+)
Dear god no
It would be his first good instinct. But bringing back the domain is t going to bring back the magic. Vine is dead and nothing Musked is going to be any fun.
India did this and Instagram reels is the main one that benefited. Probably be the same for US if it pulls through on this.
I do wonder if this is america being anti communist as history has shown before. Not to say China is actually communist but the economic system is hybrid socialist/capitalist and China is catching up or surpassing america so with this said what’s to say america starts using this tactic against more of chinas Chinese owned exports?
Beyond that america has meta which has done much the same as tiktok, targeting youth, furthering mental health issue, spying, anti trust and coverups yet they get a slap on the wrists.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/tiktok-bill-foreign-influence/677806/
It’s less about communism and more about authoritarianism. Even historically, communism was (IMO) just the trigger word associated with a slide into authoritarianism … which is what seemingly happened in countries that had a communist uprising to overthrow the government and broader “owning class.”
China seemed like they were on course to be a friendly communist country at one point, but they’ve slid back into authoritarianism under Xi.
I fully expect more hostility towards Chinese exports. Part of the reason for that is going to be that China is happy to use government money to subsidize certain industries to help gain dominance (Sherrod Brown - D Ohio) was recently speaking out about the risk Chinese subsidized EVs pose to the US auto industry domestically and internationally.
communism is not innately authoritarian same with libertarianism and capitalism instead its bad actors that make it so and once bad actors get involved then communism is not meeting its definition. china is a weird one where its communist in name alone with its hybrid economic system and repressive regime which goes against core principles of socialism/communism. i think the death of the USSR which had lead the revolution, as well as the many western embargoes on socialist countries have soured relations.
if your interested in podcasts id like to recommend you listen to blowback as it follows US hostilities against socialism/communism. i believe its on several platforms
It may be simplistic, but the short version of what you seem to be saying at the beginning is: “every ‘-ism’ is inherently neutral until people get involved.”
Which is why I believe no system that is conceived by humans will ever be not exploited.
This is very true, a knife isn’t inherently evil.
Though some systems are more susceptible to manipulation, dictatorships, free market capitalism and feudalism are some of the worst culprit’s.
Which is why I believe no system that is conceived by humans will ever be not exploited.
Sadly whilst we occupy the word in clusters of people we must have a system of governess
dictatorships, free market capitalism and feudalism are some of the worst culprit’s.
Agree. Thinking about it, the romantic in me wants to believe that the best system was probably the small indigenous tribal units. Collective social goals, group welfare, close-knit often matriarch families, conservation mindset…
A bit hard to pull off in the 21st century world though. :/
Sounds like primitive communism, its dreamy but wouldn’t take much for a few tribes to consolidate power leading to a form of feudalism and class issue between different tribes.
This is something democratic socialism tries to address
I was going to include the social democracies of northern/central Europe as another better path, but it was really late and I was tired,and now I lost my train of thought. The Nordic countries, the Netherlands… while no system is perfect and every country has its challenges, these seem to exceed most on the measures that should matter.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-public-education-system
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/quality-of-life
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/social-purpose
A part of me genuinely would like to see communism work.
Another part of my looks at the past century and sees the same pattern of well meaning revolution to communism, that results in a corrupt government that owns and controls everything.
I don’t think the Russian people that got the ball rolling for the USSR were stupid or evil, but I also don’t think it worked out like they wanted… and I think that’s true of every other case of communism that’s been tried in practice.
Part of the problem is without ownership, you don’t own the situation. Which house is taken better care of, the one that’s rented or the one that’s owned?
Another social mind game, are you better off getting into an accident with 1 person around to call for help or 20? It’s been shown that when people can put off responsibility/assume someone else is going to “own” the situation, they do.
I think capitalism with regulation to keep money out of politics, mixed with more social programs (particularly socializing the insurance industry) makes the most sense.
personally, communism in a capitalistic world is very hard.
Cuba wanted to break away from American capitalists and gangsters using Cuba to store money and exploit the Cubans for sugar plantations then the US sets embargoes, Cuba maintains its independence and manages to get its literacy level up to 1953—56% 1970—88% 1986—nearly 100% implemented free social health care with newly built hospitals and students had to work in small towns and villages for part of they’re doctorate. but American meddling was constant with the Cuban missile crises which laughable America clutched they’re purls whilst having setup nukes on the USSR’s doorstep as if that wasn’t threatening.
Cuba has sadly remained under the sanctions and is struggling to stay afloat.
its important to view economics outside of our place of living, while western life is so so although homelessness is forever on the rise but outside of these countries life is different and the people are very much exploited by capitalism whether through ford or amazon, this is why we live the way we do.
I agree with your last paragraph in particular, I think if we ever want to have a hope of capitalism, communism, or socialism it starts with teaching people “the cheapest option isn’t the best.”
I am fortunate to have a well paying job. I do not buy cheap third world or authoritarian made products unless I absolutely have to. I go out of my way to find products made in democracies that have stronger labor and environmental laws. A recent example, I could’ve gotten cheap placemats for my table or a cheap table off of Amazon or at a department store.
Instead, I paid local Amish carpenters to build me a table and bought placemats from a company in Indiana. I also encourage anyone and everyone who has the means to do the same. Try and look at the product beyond “what it does” and “what it costs you.” If nobody was willing to buy an iPhone made with slave labor, the gears at Apple would turn very very quickly.
Edit: And yes, it’s awful how we’ve treated our neighbors to the south.
I agree with your last paragraph in particular, I think if we ever want to have a hope of capitalism, communism, or socialism it starts with teaching people “the cheapest option isn’t the best.”
i am glad you can take something from that, sadly while your doing your part in society it still leave others to be exploited and a few smart consumers wont stop this. capitalism is by design repressive, while it exploits me and you some what the people in Afghanistan, China, South America to name a few beer the true brunt of it. suicide nets around Chinese factories, opium doubling in Afghanistan since us meddling as well as political in stability and South America is treated like a stopping ground for the rich where they’ll own holiday homes hotel pricing locals out or run plantations.
i campaign with the socialist party, help with protests and union action, eventually i hope for international reforms.
if you’d be interested in hearing more about socialism id be more than happy to talk.
Anti communist? With everything else we buy from China, this is the tipping point to be anti-communist? How about all the US social media platforms that China won’t let in? Is that “anti-capitalist?”
socialism has always been anti capitalism. socialism is based on principles like international revolution and a highly configured economic structures whereas capitalism is extraction of capital which western countries have been doing in china as much as china will allow but this isn’t what i am arguing.
something to keep in mind is that we don’t buy tiktok, similarly to meta and alphabet (google).
brief easy to read history of cold war activity.
Cuba and North Korea (the forgotten war) are both good to look in to. i hope the history can bring context to my previous statement as geopolitics is never as it seems.
While I appreciate the additional info, that really doesn’t add to the conversation about what the tipping point is for the parent comment.
i was not talking about a tipping point, i was focused on the geopolitics in my original comment.
Anti communist? With everything else we buy from China
would you argue America to be pro communist?
this is the tipping point to be anti-communist?
maybe but i’ll be honest, i dont know what you mean by this, the fight against communism has been a steady state of proxy wars, embargoes, surveillance and propaganda campaigns, so i would definitely say banning tiktok sits within embargo and propaganda.
How about all the US social media platforms that China won’t let in?
yea socialism is apposed/untrusting of capitalist products, usually seen as exploitive by the communist this is due in part to the never ending revolution.
Is that “anti-capitalist?”
100%
I didn’t argue that we are pro-communist.
The point of my observation was that the premise of the TikTok sale is “anti-communist” and that it’s being brought up at all against the background of all the existing, deep economic ties between the US and China. IOW the US putting its foot down on TikTok is anti-communist, but accepting everything else gets a pass?
Funny that you point out the mistrust of (in this context of social media) western products as being exploitative when the Chinese exploitation of data and use of algorithms to manipulate what we see on TikTok is exactly one of the reasons the US wants the sale.
you make a good point that Tiktok is doing some shady stuff but meta were court covertly collecting data from Snapchat through unknowing users devices.
should Facebook be banned or at least forced to sell? this is why the fiasco is coming across as anti-communist, an extension of cold war hostilities.
IOW the US putting its foot down on TikTok is anti-communist, but accepting everything else gets a pass
Tiktok offers no financial incentive to America unlike Chinese exports, apple are not about to pay a reasonable amount to create an iPhone in America, china is in a pretty good position with its fabrication and engineering, consumer products or even solar panels are far superior to what America can make on a similar budget.
Funny that you point out the mistrust of (in this context of social media) western products as being exploitative when the Chinese exploitation of data and use of algorithms to manipulate what we see on TikTok is exactly one of the reasons the US wants the sale.
this is because you view things through a capitalist scope, i am guilty of this too. Facebook as linked in the above article does the same.
They are not the same. One manipulates and exploits its own country’s citizens for profit, the other exploits and manipulates both its own and citizens of other countries for profit and government data collection.
While TikTok doesn’t offer financial incentive to any US corporation, it certainly offers incentives to the users of the platform.
Let’s not move the goalposts/butwhatabout to talking about minors using social media or Chinese manufacturing, that’s too much to get into and keep it focused on the communist/capitalist debate and why TikTok is being treated as it is.
Um yeah this is cold war type shit. It’s not a “tipping point”, just part of that broader context.
It’s America being "anti criticise Israel "
Let’s be honest, this is only their outlook until the courts make their decision. They’ll sell if that doesn’t go in their favour.
