it would be one thing if they were actually going to ban it, but the plan is pretty plainly for deep state establishment to seize it so that the US government can do all the awful things that they’re accusing the Chinese government of doing. Remember y’all, the difference between information and propaganda is “Do I like the person who is currently speaking?” and nothing more.
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I didn’t say anything was made up or that China was doing anything good. You put the phrase “made up” in quotes. Find it in my original comment if you’re quoting me.
What I did say was that the US government is angling to steal China’s propaganda apparatus to use for itself and pretending that it’s protecting us.
Read better.
If it truly was a “free speech platform” the ownership wouldn’t matter either way, right?
swing and a miss
the point is that they’re trying to pretend they’re protecting us from propaganda by seizing the propaganda platform and operating it themselves. you don’t trust the CCP and neither do I. Let’s take that as read. do you trust the US government? if this is dangerous, why not shut it down? hell, why not go a step further and make it illegal for anyone to do?
Man people really set up the strawmen here. Congress has literally said it’s about foreign influence, not about protecting children. It has absolutely nothing to do with kids. It has to do with China influencing the citizens of the United States to do things that are beneficial to China, against the interests of the US government.
It’s not a ban, if China gives up control of the app to a United States entity then there’s no problem. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children.
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it’s adults, that’s almost more insulting, they think we don’t deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction. We may as well dispense with free expression entirely at that point because the government can just say “you’re too stupid to read this and we’re worried you’ll be influenced, so you can only read the books we’ve pre-approved for you”
It is every American’s right to think freely, to speak those thoughts to others, and to have others have the opportunity to hear those thoughts whether or not they are “good influences” according to govt. It is wild how easily people are willing to throw that right away for fears of “foreign influence”. What’s next, banning TV shows from foreign countries because they might “corrupt our culture”? Banning books with subversive topics because they will “give people bad ideas”?. This is how the road to fascism begins.
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it’s adults, that’s almost more insulting, they think we don’t deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction.
Yeah fam, you and me are definitely way too smart to ever be manipulated by military units whose sole job is to effectively manipulate large swaths of the population.
The answer is everyone. They’re worried about anyone and everyone, because they do it also.
The problem that many people have with this argument that “China is going to influence us” isn’t that we are immune to influence, its that the argument sounds extremely hallow when our own native social media manipulates the absolute shit out of us already… like what is China going to do that our own country isn’t already doing.
This is the argument you hear from people on tiktok about why they don’t care about the governments concern.
Well that and how its kind of disgusting how completely unified the house is in this bill, but couldn’t give a shit about wealth inequality, corporate ownership of residential housing, rampant inflation, rising homelessness, school shootings.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Good point. We are all vulnerable to manipulation and should only read content that is approved by the US Govt. Anybody who breaks this rule should go to jail. That is for our safety ✅
Except that’s not my point, but you already knew that didn’t you? It’s pretty obvious you’re not actually here for a conversation.
Yeah they’re clearly here because they think they have no chance of getting manipulated, that they’re better than others, or even that they think this is some sort of free speech thing. Sorry bud, that’s not how it works. The government routinely bans things that cause foreign influence, it’s just usually not at this scale and not something people are addicted to and use as their news.
Literally Huawei and ZTE are banned from imports and sale in America for the exact same reasons. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-bans-equipment-sales-imports-zte-huawei-over-national-security-risk-2022-11-25/
They’re here because they’re one of the ones doing the manipulating.
Lemmy.ml is a tankie instance.
Is there any chance that the fact you’re lemmy.ml user might be an indication that you’re not looking at this completely objectionally? I’m not for the ban either but that doesn’t mean I can’t be honest about the reasons for it.
I joined this instance at random, look at my history if you think I’m a tankie.
You shouldn’t have to personally defend yourself or this post. They want to censor your speech the same way the government wants to censor Tik Tok. So much for liberal personal freedoms.
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We are all vulnerable to manipulation and should only read content that is approved by the US Govt.
Blocking another country’s possible influence is not the same as ONLY being fed whatever the Government approves.
TIktok, due to the nature of the company’s ownership and board directors WILL have Chinese Government influence. And they’ve already proven that they’re willing to influence the internet to the point of controlling it 99% for their own citizens. China is the latter of the above statement. The USA and most other countries are barely even doing the former.
You are asking if banning books is the next thing. Isnt it already happening in the schools in some parts of USA?
Yep. Unfortunately both the left and right in the US seem to have free speech in their crosshairs one way or another. The right with “don’t say gay”, their book bans, and war on drag, the left with the TikTok ban, wanting the government to be able to define and regulate “misinformation” on social media, etc. The long-term protectors of free speech like the ACLU have even done a pivot away from free speech cases because they perceive them as unpopular.
Maybe what you think is the left, isn’t really all that left.
Congress has literally said it’s about foreign influence
Which is also a lie. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and Google are just as beholden to foreign governments such as the fascist regimes of India, Israel, Myanmar and others. They pay the people in Congress a lot more in legal bribes, though, so they can basically get away with anything.
It’s not a ban, if China gives up control of the app to a United States entity then there’s no problem.
Imagine the uproar if China demanded that Google stopped being a US military contractor…
What the whole thing is about is empty symbolic rhetoric and xenophobia in an election year and oppressive measures to go with it.
Google was blocked in China in 2014 for refusing to censor search results. Now search results are censored and must go through their Hong Kong subsiduary. The last part is what the US Government is asking for TikTok to do right?
China already bans and censors loads of apps and websites already so I don’t think looking at what they do in this instance is a good idea.
China did that. We criticized them for it. Now we’re turning around and doing it. “We should get to do it because insert dictator here does it” isn’t a great argument.
So it’s okay for me to rob you because someone else was robbed by a thief?
Okay. Which part of what I written makes you think that? I thought my second paragraph was enough to say China doing things is not a reason to do things.
Imagine the uproar if China demanded that Google stopped being a US military contractor.
China is actively demanding that all Chinese companies excise American hardware and software from their technology stacks. They know that they can’t divorce a US tech company headquartered in the US from the US intelligence agencies, so it is the next best option. This is colloquially known in China as “Delete A” or “Delete America”. Who is being xenophobic again?
Ok, China is a bad example, except as what not to do.
As you pointed out yourself, this bill is Congress acting like the oppressive Chinese government rather than the liberal democracy the US likes to pretend to be.
Preventing an oppressive government from exerting undue influence on another sovereign nation’s citizenry is an oppressive act itself?
Dude. Tiktok is a social media platform that happens to be owned by a company with Chinese government connections.
It’s not a nefarious conspiracy to control Americans. That would be Facebook and the Republican party platform
Agreed on the Republican party bit.
If Facebook could be considered a nefarious conspiracy (or at least subservient to the powers engaging in said conspiracy), why is it unbelievable that TikTok could also be?
Because Facebook has been PROVEN to knowingly allow widespread coordinated election tampering (Cambridge Analytica, for example) and steering users towards far right pages and groups,
Tiktok is only SUSPECTED based on association with China and furthermore has a much smaller user base and therefore less impact if they DO run election influence campaigns like Facebook does.
The difference being that this is about protecting sensitive data like trade secrets, in a complex ecosystem that is impossible to fully oversee. Many western governments have banned Huawei from 5g network components for the same reason and that is solid reasoning.
But with TikTok it is a very different story. Nobody needs to use it. People are using it voluntarily. In regards to steering people to bad content through its algorithm, it is no different from Facebook or Instagram. The argument @Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world made is valid.
It is not about preventing foreign or private influence that his harmful to the citizens. It is about controling that influence.
It is not about preventing foreign or private influence that his harmful to the citizens. It is about controling that influence.
No, it is about preventing foreign influence on citizens. The fact that some level of control (or more accurately accountability) can be exerted by the US government on companies like Meta is true but unrelated. If ByteDance was a company in the EU we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
So what you’re saying is that 'murica is no better than China
Nope that’s not what i’m saying, try again.
It never was.
Americans are so racist that they can’t accept the fact that non-American companies can be successful.
1
So the goal is to make laws like China does?
Short answer: No
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooo
Its worth adding, TikTok in China (it’s called something else, I’m blanking) is entirely controlled on the state and there is absolutely no way that it would be permitted to host any political discussion or advocate mass action not approved by the state. Their “Hey call your congressman” stunt was the most idiotic PR move ever, because they demonstrated that this company is willing and able to leverage the userbase in the US in ways that would never be permitted in “West Taiwan”.
I was with you until you childishly suggested that the rightful rulers of China are an imperial dynasty rather than the will of the people. It’s like calling America West England and claiming Charles is the rightful ruler because you disagree with the Vietnam War.
But yeah china would never allow free expression on their version of tiktok but let’s ban free expression because china does is a bad argument. Let’s make choices based entirely on merit and circumstance.
calling America West England
But there is part of America that basically is West England. That’s called Canada.
But yeah china would never allow free expression on their version of tiktok but let’s ban free expression because china does is a bad argument.
What you post on Tiktok is free speech. How it get manipulated and shared to everyone else by an algorithm controlled by a Country that has everything to gain from the downfall of the USA is not free speech.
China beat America at capitalism and now America big sad. 😢
According to that logic we should ban Instagram and Facebook
China doesn’t claim to be liberal, so no
No. But that’s not the point. America’s government allows foreign aid interests to buy land and other property in America. Should they ban all of it, even if it crashes the economy?
Damn straight they should. No foreign entity should own any American land. Same goes for Canada too, with the obvious problem being their housing crisis caused by foreign real estate investment.
Congratulations, we have just destroyed global capitalism. Let’s go.
So we’re no different? Is that your argument? If so we’re saying the same thing. This paves the way for more bans in the future.
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Your phone is 100% CIA spyware either way.
Besides, I’d much rather have the CCP collect my data than the US, simply cause the CCP doesn’t care about you if you don’t go to China, but the US could hand over stuff to your government.
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How did you suddenly go from spyware to propaganda and are even accusing me of beeing fooled by them? I don’t even have Tiktok on my phone, I just fiddled with the algorithm in a containerised emulator.
All I said is that I’d rather have China have my data than the US cause China is a much smaller potential threat to anyone outside their country.
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Guys, have you ever been screwed by chinese seller on Aliexpress? Or missleaded by chinese ad? Lie and cheating is a part of chinese culture. So I think, that China is really a security threat.
Are you shitposting, I can’t tell
Easy on the casual racism my dude.
I’ve had very little issues with chinese sellers personally. The two times I did they quickly resolved the issue to my satisfaction. That’s more than I can say for all the times I had issues with American sellers.
That’s because Aliexpress refund system works good. But some time ago, several chinese seller tried to fool me in direct messaging saying “close the appelation and I’ll return money to your PayPal”. Also I had bad expirience with chinese software. It’s always proprietary, contain bugs and rarely get fixes.
All of that stuff happens in international retail with any country, and with software coming from any country.
I think you’re just being bigoted.
But some time ago, several chinese seller tried to fool me in direct messaging saying “close the appelation and I’ll return money to your PayPal”
I’ve had American sellers do the same thing on Amazon. I’ve had them lie about a product being new on their listing and refuse to correct the mistake only to try to bribe me to take my bad review of them down (even then their offer wasn’t sufficient to fix my problem). It’s not about nationality, it’s just scumbags being scumbags and those come from all nations.
Same. I’ve had several refunds. No request to return. Just full money back.
I don’t think people recognize how often a purchase made to Amazon or some similar seller platform is actually coming straight from China; always with a 2x or more mark up.
I’ve taken to always searching on ali to see if I can get the same thing for 1/10 the price. They don’t try to hide the shipping information like Amazon does. Where as Amazon won’t report anything until it’s in country and passed customs.
This is incredibly racist. So I really hope this is a troll post.
Tiktok was caught spying on American journalists. Where is the racism here?
You taking your experience with a few AliExpress sellers & Tiktok owners and generalizing it to Chinese culture is the definition of racism.
I have been screwed a time or two, but honestly, most of the time I’ve had a pretty good experience dealing with Chinese sellers. Of course that’s partly because I choose who I buy from carefully, as yeah there are a lot of scanners out there. I’ve also been scammed by local people and I think it’s important to not immediately judge people based on where they are from.
I’m pretty sure the reason there are so many scammers in china, is because of the amount of poor and desperate people there, and the fact that the situation has been like that for so long, is the reason it seems to have now been ingrained in their culture. There’s a huge amount of scammers in other poor countries like india as well.
Edit: typos
Why does AliExpress and Chinese ads signify all of Chinese culture? They have the second largest population in the world. You’ve chosen scams run by fractions of a percent of the population of China and decided that the entire culture is defined by lying and cheating?
“Can you do something so that any given incel can’t shoot 30 of us while we hide under our desk.” - kids
“Literally go fuck yourself also no tik tok because it could be dangerous.” - government
Relax nobody is taking away your TikToks
It’s because Epstein’s island is a honeypot </tinfoil-hat>
A honeypot trap that’s never used as a trap is just free honey.
Of course the island was a honeypot trap. How else did Epstein create all his compact discs with handwritten labels including: “‘Young [Name] + [Name],’
“What about the people on epsteins list” is gotta be the most generic strawman.
Cna you believe that they haven’t arrested every single person who ever made social contact with epstein and arrested them for rape, despite a lack of any supporting evidence that they committed a crime?
Virginia Giuffre, Prince Andrew’s accuser, disagrees.
Can you believe no other single person has been arrested?
Can you believe Ghislaine was only convicted of supplying girls to a dead man so that no-one else need be prosecuted.
I mean i am sure that rich people get away with lots of stuff that normal people wont. But this whole “pedophile elite” thing smells very similar to the “elite jews control everything” and is simplistic bs at best. I am not even sure what people are on about. I would be happy if we finally fought for more equality and better distrubution of wealth but that seems “too simple” to most or something.
In other countries the connection is power, not Judaism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/05/the-main-allegations-against-ted-heath
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/16/westminster-paedophile-ring-innuendo-evidence
This is what a lot of power does to humans, it corrupts, makes one view those with less power as less of a human being. There shouldnt be any absurdly powerful people.
An alternative is that corrupt people seek power.
But Black Dynamite, we’re on Epstein’s list.
🎵DYNAMITE DYNAMITE🎵
- Are different, unrelated things
- Involve different parts of government
- Involve different people in charge
- Is smoothbrain understanding of criminal investigations
- Is smoothbrain understanding of due process
I’m starting to fly down some ‘conspiracy hole’ about this shit: I can’t trust or even hope that the avalanche of memes like these aren’t Chinese (or Russian? they love stirring our shit up for the lulz) in origin. This paranoia reinforces itself in a loop
TikTok isn’t your “right”, and if you say that banning tiktok is talking away your rights, TikTok’s taking away people’s lives
This is fucking retarded
If the “protect children” politician does nothing about school shootings, you know they’re a PoS.
Let’s ban TikTok while our kids are dying because of guns. It’s like they’re doing everything they can to lose an election.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
I dunno - don’t underestimate just how jaw-dropping shockingly unintelligent many of them are.
And giant cats it seems.
Also wtf is going on with drugs since 2019. Is this all fentanyl?
Well, it ain’t the marijuana that still hasn’t been decriminalized.
You betcha
The only way to stop a bad Tik Tok, is a good Tik Tok with a gun.
Let’s ban TikTok while our kids are dying because of guns.
TBF… That spike in “poisoning” could easily be attributed to dumb shit like the “tide pod” challenge.
Lol. Without looking up anything I can tell you not more than 50 kids have died from laundry detergent digestion in the last 5 years. I’d love to be proven wrong about this. And even among those some will be actual accidents since children ate detergents long before TikTok. That spike in poisoning is probably due to fentanyl since this data includes people younger than 19. Drug use has increased a lot in teenagers in the last few years. So stop antagonizing a fucking app to support censorship and start seeing the real problems out there.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2790949
“New data show relatively low use of illicit substances, yet overdose death rates among teens have risen in recent years”
Without looking up anything I can tell you not more than 50 kids have died from laundry detergent digestion in the last 5 years.
“Dumb shit like”… Not that Tide pods are 100% of.
poisoning is probably due to fentanyl
Huh, wonder where that’s coming from!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/world/asia/us-china-fentanyl.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-china-fentanyl-crisis-talks-rcna136345
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-role-in-the-fentanyl-crisis/
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/16/1213588974/the-us-and-china-agree-to-curb-fentanyl-will-it-workOops. But right! China Good!
So stop antagonizing a fucking app to support censorship and start seeing the real problems out there.
I don’t need to antagonize anything. The USA (or ANY sovereign nation) has the right to limit another government’s/country’s holdings within it’s own borders. That’s it. Tiktok is operating here in the USA… The USA can kick them out if they will not divest their Chinese stakes. There’s nothing to antagonize here. I don’t actually care about the argument that this graph claims to make, just pointing out that Tiktok definitely has SOME percentage of a representation on the graph as well.
Considering that the Chinese Government only owns 1% stake in Bytedance, it’s interesting that the Chinese government has a board seat on the company isn’t it? https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/beijing-takes-stake-board-seat-in-bytedances-key-china-entity-the-information-2021-08-16
Usually you need to get voted in, and need to be a larger stakeholder than simply 1%… This alone is enough to claim there’s foul play. Yet you all are screaming from the top of your lungs “My rights”… As if you couldn’t post whatever the fuck you want literally ANYWHERE else.
and start seeing the real problems out there.
I see a common feature of BOTH problems. Do you? And it’s not racism for me to call that out regardless of what bullshit you concoct in your head.
Holy shit America is crazy. How do you get to the point where more kids are dying of guns than cars in a country with too many cars. And why has poisoning gone up so much?
It’s poisoning and drug overdose. I can only assume fentanyl is the reason for a huge spike in that area.
And Tide pods, of course 😛
No, it’s all the porn. Edging is poisoning our youth.
When you actually do the calculations… Even just taking a rough “6 kids per 100,000” killed with firearms, doesn’t sound too bad no?
That’s about 20,000 KIDS killed per year
TWENTY FUCKIN THOUSAND
Christ on a bike
I may have missed something in civics class, but since when is access to a crappy social media site a right?
That slope is very slippery.
Since when is reading newspapers your government doesn’t agree with a right? Since when is communicating with people your government doesn’t like a right? Since when is publishing whatever you want a right? Since approximately 1776. It’s such an important right that it’s literally the first one in the constitution. Because our ability to speak freely and criticize the government is one of the rights that underpins all others. The medium shouldn’t matter, speech is speech whether it’s an app, website, chat server, newspaper, bulletin board, code, painting, drawing, whatever. If the government can just shut down any medium or venue they don’t like because “it’s propaganda”, that basically closes the door to any open criticism of the government.
We’ve tried not having those rights for the sake of convenience, expediency, or social pleasantness. Tends to not end well. Ask people in Russia or Iran how that “government gets to dictate where and how you speak” thing is going for them. Insane bootlicking going on in this thread.
I mean I’m not saying that this is being gone about the right way or for the right reasons, but when an adversarial nation-state is working to undermine US economic interests within its borders is there really anything wrong with punching back? I personally don’t think so, but I’m fully aware that I’m probably in the minority on this here.
https://twitter.com/lizalinwsj/status/1765615508357779477
(paywalled article from author above https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-technology-software-delete-america-2b8ea89f)
The govt can do anything it wants to punch back so long as it’s not infringing on the rights of its citizens. Our plan to stop China from “influencing us” is to… become more like China?
If China is going prevent US companies from doing profitable business within its economic borders I don’t see why the US should allow Chinese companies to engage in profitable businesses ventures within its country.
Blocking a company from doing business in the US is not the same as the US Government infringing on citizens rights. The better way to do it imo would be to toss ByteDance on the Sanctioned Entities list and block any US financial institution from servicing their US subsidiary. ByteDance wouldn’t stay in the US market for long if they couldn’t get any ad revenue, then it’s their choice to pull out instead of the US Government kicking them out.
It’s really not an infringement of rights either way though.
If China is going prevent US companies from doing profitable business within its economic borders I don’t see why the US should allow Chinese companies to engage in profitable businesses ventures within its country.
- They get to do whatever they want because they’re a dicatorship. Saying the US government should be allowed to do something “because China does it” is a real slippery slope. 2. We aren’t talking about oil extraction or car sales here, we’re talking about something which is explicitly a speech platform. They are different.
It’s not just a “company” being banned, it’s the government telling you that you can’t use that companies services for your speech. Imaging the US government banning the The Guardian because it’s not owned by US citizens. That’s the same thing as banning TikTok because it’s not owned by US Citizens. The government has no right to ban newspapers or websites which are otherwise engaging in legally-protected speech. You have a right to hear what they have to say.
Jesus christ bro you’re insufferable.
They get to do whatever they want because they’re a dicatorship. Saying the US government should be allowed to do something “because China does it” is a real slippery slope.
It’s a weird blend of trade war and cyber warfare, but for all intents and purposes it’s a trade war right now. No one was complaining that the US is blocking the sale of H100s in China are they? No.
We aren’t talking about oil extraction or car sales here, we’re talking about something which is explicitly a speech platform. They are different.
Except it’s not, it’s an ad platform.
It’s not just a “company” being banned, it’s the government telling you that you can’t use that companies services for your speech.
Nope, absolutely incorrect, it is indeed just a company being banned. I don’t think you fully understand what “speech” is, or really who the Constitution applies to. You do realize that the First Amendment means that the government may not jail, fine, or impose civil liability on people or organizations based on what they say or write, right? You also realize that preventing a company from doing business in the US because they’re beholden to an openly antagonistic nation-state is decidedly not the same as banning a company from doing business in the US because of its speech right?
Freedom of speech and the press has literally nothing at all to do with this.
Except it’s not, it’s an ad platform.
Right. So if they sell ads on it, it’s not a speech platform right? Reddit, not a speech platform? The Washington Post? The Guardian? Lemmy, when lemmy instances start running ads, Not a speech platform? Gmail? Not a speech platform?
Nope, absolutely incorrect, it is indeed just a company being banned.
It’s not. This isn’t a company that sells cars, they provide an online speech platform. It’s my ability to use the speech platform that gets banned in the process. They can ban TikTok from being able to “do business” in the US, that is different from pulling it from the app store or installing a great firewall to prevent US citizens from accessing their site. And frankly, “doing business” has been an inherent part of speech platforms for decades, selling advertising on speech platforms is how they can exist, all the way back to the days of newspapers and radio.
Fuck TikTok, but I’m sick of hearing “BUT THE KIDS!!!” As an excuse for constantly trampling everyone’s freedoms
The fact that we have to baby proof the internet because someone is too lazy to do basic parenting is crazy
