I have yet to see a convincing argument for banning Tik Tok. It's no worse then any US social media company.
What you are suggesting is a malicious, technocratic conspiracy theory that is racist adjacent.
Tik-tok operating in the US just isnt in the US's interests. It's as simple as that. They don't need to pass your purity test nor prove anything to you.
> What you are suggesting is a malicious, technocratic conspiracy theory that is racist adjacent.
This is laughable. How is it 'racist adjacent?'
The "proper" (ie. snowball's chance in hell) way to fight the problem would be to introduce laws around the tracking, gathering, storing, analysing, packaging, selling, and buying of individual / user profile data.
Tell you what though, if the Fed wants employment figures to go down, such a law would certainly have that effect, lots of companies (that I wouldn't shed a tear over) would be hitting the skids real fast.
The US economy is too dependent upon it though. Gross.
That is exactly what the law is doing but adding laws around "control by a foreign adversarial govt."
The US government has detained or killed many more people like me than China has. I don't think that's brainwashing, that's just the reality.
> Why did China hack OPM (every personal data on every fed employee),equifax (credit on all americans) and every major company being hit by their hackers?
Probably the same reason the NSA grabs all that data.
Like what?
Yea it is and it isn't a freaking competition. A chinese agent will not harm you unless there is a reason and even in the west they harm their own dissidents.
Julian ans that guy were harmed because they took the fight against the US, are you planning on doing the same? I dare you to go to hong kong and speak up and fight for the liberty if hong kong.
And show me just exactly how HK is more free and has a government that will respect your rights more than the US. You talk like China and the US are even comparable.
Honestly, you people can downvote me all you want but your naivette is putting me and of course yourself un serious harms way.
You stand now enjoying liberty and peace that was hard won and don't consider the stakes.
WTF are you talking about? Neither of the people I mentioned ever went to the US. Assange put information that embarrassed the US on the internet, something you and I do about China all the time.
> And show me just exactly how HK is more free and has a government that will respect your rights more than the US. You talk like China and the US are even comparable.
I just have; HK and China do not get nonresident noncitizens in my country imprisoned or killed; the US does.
You say embarrassed the US says stolen as in espionage. And the majority of americans support the sentiment against him,snowden,etc...
Try publishing shit china hates and find out. Sony made a movie that embarrased NK and had their corporate network nuked. Show me one person that did that and got away with it.
> just have; HK and China do not get nonresident noncitizens in my country imprisoned or killed; the US does.
Apples and oranges, if China had similar power and interests you have no reason to believe the same or likely worse won't happen to you. What you don't get is this whole topic is about preventing china from becoming such a threat to you. The US has your media and politicians by the the throat that's why things are the current way and you are seriously saying China is better somehow you will be treated better than their own people
They got hacked, sure. Did anyone get imprisoned? For years?
> What you don't get is this whole topic is about preventing china from becoming such a threat to you. The US has your media and politicians by the the throat
And I'm supposed to be happy about that? Again, if I'm no freer now than I would be under Chinese hegemony then why should I care whose flag is on the pole?
I don't want Europe bending the knee to China either. But right now America is the bigger threat.
Are Uyghurs included in your count of people China has detained or killed?
That doesn’t excuse any government from being terrible but “enemy” is definitely a relative term here.
Which is why it's so arbitrary to ban a Chinese app that's doing the same thing as all the US big tech apps.
It brings into stark relief the attitude of "it's been ok for us for the past decade, but not ok for you at all ever".
I'd rather them say "it's not ok for anyone", but that would risk lifestyle funding.
Some kind of irony hey? (which may be more related to "how the West dies")
To be perfectly clear: I'd rather be living under US rule than Chinese, not that it should matter to this discussion.
Anyway, I'm sad that the Tik Tok issue is being discussed like the only danger is the CCP having access to our stupid videos or the same data the other social media giants have (But what about Google and Facebook!? Well they suck too, let's discuss them after we sort this, or legislate to fix the lot all at once)
TikTok is a way to collect personality profiles, and a way to push adversarial content to take advantage of these profiles. It can be used as a radicalization machine with very little way of detecting it with counterintelligence.
Now, whether China ever intends to use it this way is another question, as are the appropriate limits of freedom of speech for foreign actors. But the main reason they want to ban it is: it’s a weapon.
As for the current consensus reality split in the US and other parts of the world I think that issue has been present and rotting at the center of mass media long before TikTok came around. There's also a big observational bias in our current issues where everything is easily documented and distributed we're able to know about all our neighbor's crazy beliefs and the same for people around the world, so maybe our consensus has always been a lot looser than we imagined we just see the crazies more these days (and the crazies see more of each other of course letting them build a wonderful little alt-reality bubble).
I will agree it's definitely much easier for kooks and grifters willing to indulge them to make a buck to find each other these days which has hypercharged the issue.
^- the prevailing, unhinged tone that hobgoblins of the uninformed American mind invent and their politicians exploit.
X = [fluoridation, TikTok, missing IKEA parts]
Imagine a basketball game where one team is getting away with fouls. If the other team starts doing it and gets called on it, they can't say "well I know we're doing it, but so is the other team." That exemplifies your point.
Now consider "free" trade. There is no referee. There are no rules akin to the rules of basketball that each team agrees to. It is just two parties that are deciding what is in their own best interest. When one party feels like they have been cheated, why should they carry on as if nothing happened? How is that in their best interest? There are no overarching rules or governance which both parties are subject to. So "not stooping to their level" isn't going to be commended or rewarded by some party.
It's like if you were playing basketball at the park and your opponent repeatedly fouled you but insisted fouls are legal. If you want to perform well, either you find a different team to play against or you start fouling back.
The US seems to be trying very hard to win the race to the bottom these days though.
Tiktok is getting banned because USA is afraid, that China is gonna use it against USA the same way.
Most top websites are already banned in China. There isn't much American allowed in China except:
- Apple
- Skype
- Zoom
- Bing
- American Standard plumbing fixtures
2. It is not about data collection.
3. It is about an enemy govt. having access to US population's data.
#3 is a valid thing and the US govt should act on it.
This is the same kind of logic that people spout to justify Chinese police stations in the US (The US has police stations in the US why can't China have Chinese police stations in the US? The answer to Chinese police on US soil is not a blanket restriction on all police.)
Therefore, we ban it so only US companies can spy on US citizens.
If we do ban the web page, on what grounds? If we claim that the web page collects too much data and is a national security threat, then doesn't that same argument apply to all of the millions of web pages out there?
Or do we just skip all pretense and start strengthening the national firewall?
Imagine you work at Goldman Sachs, along with 50,000 other people. Like a lot of your colleagues, you use TikTok. You often open the app at work. Maybe you have something embarrassing in your search history. China uses location data, wifi matching, or even a list of names to figure out that you work at Goldman and they know you might be susceptible to blackmail.
And then they get you to check in some malicious code that damages the financial sector.
That's why the US is going to ban TikTok. It's also why the US forced the sale of Grindr.
And before we argue about whether or not Tik-tok can access this data, consider that we can be certain that they can't access it if they're banned. There is no obligation to prove that China is exploiting the US in order to justify a ban of Tik-tok.
It’s all politics, grandstanding, and power. If you want to ban something and have the ability to make it happen, why let the lack of a convincing argument stand in your way?
Tik-tok is not in the US's interests. I agree that social media is toxic in general. I would argue Tik-tok is even more so (by means of their algorithm and short attention span videos). But that's besides the point. It offer's China a potential strategic advantage. There doesn't really need to be any more reason that that.
I think that's a pretty solid argument ...
The situation that is most likely is that the government will make it so that nobody really wants to use TikTok anymore, or possibly, that TikTok can't afford to operate in the states.
This sort of stuff the us does all the time (cryptocurrency exchanges, online gambling, porn sites, e.g.).
The us also has a history of redomiciling companies. For example that one time the US redomiciled the entire us operations of a pharma company that was, you know, supporting a genocide.
If some politician wanted to be clever, all they would have to do is say if any company more than 10% owned by a state or with any state employees in management positions sells arms to Russia or Russian countries, then all companies more than 10% owned by that state or with that state's state employees in management positions is subject to sanctions. Kill two birds with one stone.
have you read the bill?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
edit: Looks like he thought they should be legal.
The fact that is Chinese is a huge help thanks to the anti China sentiment being fueled for the past few years.
If this was true you'd be right, but it is mostly fear mongering and incorrect. It is just a typical app, running in a sandbox, collecting the data you give it permission to collect.
Roughly 50% of the American population is using TikTok. Folks ought to chew on that thought for a moment.