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Comment by MuffinFlavored | Hacker News Reader

Somebody more in the know, will this actually pass?

Almost certainly not, at least in this iteration - but Meta's stock is up ~6%, so it's not nothing

This makes me wonder how much Meta is financing any lobbying effort to get this passed?

Probably a lot, but it's also not an absurd policy direction. Folks from all over have floated the vague notion that Tiktok is bad, independent of Meta. Rs tried to do it a few years ago, but implementation as a disaster.

I'd imagine the lobbying effort would be less "briefcase full of cash" and more "can we hire smart people to think through policy mechanisms, in a way that's productive for both Rs & Ds"

Though there's probably also a couple briefcases lmao

>but it's also not an absurd policy direction.

It is when you forget where the collected data ends up, and just focus on the hoovering of the data. FB is the OG of this realm, but because they are US based instead of Chinese based, they get a pass?

In the evils of data hoovering, I'm much more perturbed what theZuck knows about me much more than caring what winnie the pooh knows about me. All politics are local. If I lived in Beijing, then I'd have those concerns flipped.

I imagine this kind of dialogue "Hey, you like jobs right? They get you elected and all. Well if you ban tiktok we'll make some jobs, watcha think?"

Huh? How does banning tiktok make jobs? Are you assuming a US based company will spring up with a clone? You really believe that? Isn't it much more likely Meta will use it's power to gobble up any upstart to avoid the competition?

I mean Meta could argue that getting a bigger part of the cake would allow them to make more jobs

But Meta already has people employed now building their version of tiktok. How many more jobs would Meta need if there was an influx of users because of no tiktok? The recent round of layoffs implies they think they can do it with fewer and not more.

Just playing the tape all the way to the end.

And lose access to the Chinese market?

Meta doesn't operate in China.

Meta makes about $5 billion a year from China.

If they are, this could backfire spectacularly. Planting the idea that social media can be manipulated by the owners to persuade a population moves social media closer to traditional media companies and further away from mere "platforms" eligible for section 230 protection.

Only the evilEmpire would do something untoward with that data. You can trust a US company implicitly. /s

Much of the market is up, presumably because of the good CPI report.

The market is flat now, with Meta still up 4%.

They should extend to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. unless they’re prepared to be open and interoperable.

Not a chance. This is the time of the election cycle when all sorts of weird shit gets proposed with no consequences. It's theater.

I see teenagers overthrowing the US government as more likely than this bill passing. Cats out of the bag - the only possible course is mandating the physical location of the data and preventing it's transmission to china...but good luck with that.

If the bill passes, we might get both.

The kids will be on a new app by the end of the week.

Well, I would rather follow the money. Ad budgets for the next year might consider this possibility and TikTok revenue will suffer.

Kind of a tangent question but what's worst case scenario on what TikTok can do with the level of data they have?

Let's say I'm the average TikTok user and I grant it all permissions on my phone that the iOS app store approval process has allowed them to do.

How... predatory are those?

They know who I am, where I live, who my friends are, where I go, my "habits/interests". Worst case scenario my job, my wealth level.

What can China/the Chinese government/Bytedance go with this information that is so "scary"?

Say Meta + Bytedance have the same information on me. One company is American, one company is Chinese. Why is the Chinese one having that level of information bad?

Can China force Bytedance to do something with the app's algorithm to influence millions of people to think a certain way? Are people just puppets that don't think for themselves? It's ok if Meta influences us but not Bytedance? Why are we assuming we're easily influenced and need to be protected from... ourselves?

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