Senate Bill to Ban TikTok
congress.gov
congress.gov
For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. I make a decent chunk of income in USD and this terrifies me... but this. This move saddens me.
There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm when they're being influenced every day by how they might get shot up in math class? Come on (wo)man. This shit is fucking stupid.
It's just sad to me, sad to watch the country I grew up in, the one I went to war for ... do this level of stupid shit.
That's my 2 bucks, spend it how you want it.
This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew made that clear. The narrative of child safety, for example the story about the kid who commit suicide because of their "for you" page, is being used as a kind of legal "pretext" so they can ban TikTok.
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
Dialing up things to cause unrest, dialing down stuff critical of the CCP. It’s not an issue about data, or even an issue about speech, it’s an issue of ownership of a media company by an adversary that will weaponize it against you.
Who controls and owns media companies is a reasonable national security question. The CCP knows this risk, they don’t play fair.
China. Yeah, except that any business can just buy that information. I can buy your day-to-day movements for dirt cheap. I own a non-American company (though I'm still an American citizen, but that isn't a factor), and it is insanely cheap to get information about any American you want. Hell, BingBot will tell you all about me, what I do for a living and where I live.
This is about China, but it is a stupid and pointless zero-point game. This bill would get shot down in 30s for being unconstitutional, especially if the company has an American LLC or corporation (making it a legal entity protected by the constitution). Further, you'd think congress would have learned from prohibition that banning something ... hmm, doesn't work? At all? How would you even enforce something like this, stop people randomly to violate their privacy further and search their phone? Will this be another thing to get arrested for when you have a 'broken tailight'?
This overlooks the "possibility" that those platforms have an "agreement" of sorts with the US Government. The Twitter Files have gone into some of that, but be careful: it is possible for things to exist that each individual/civilian may not have knowledge of, even though most people seem to be strongly under the impression that this is impossible, perhaps because it could be considered (or, has been marketed as) [only] a conspiracy theory.
> This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew made that clear. The narrative of child safety, for example the story about the kid who commit suicide because of their "for you" page, is being used as a kind of legal "pretext" so they can ban TikTok.
It is plausible that there are certain ideas that they would not like the minds of the American Public exposed to, certain conversations they would prefer they do not have, etc. There is a surprising amount of detail to reality, but we miss out on most of it (and often do not realize it), for a variety of reasons.
The thinking on these sorts of matters one reads in this thread is rather eye opening....I suspect a lot of the styles of logic that are perfectly acceptable in threads on this topic would be very unwelcome when writing software.
However, this is not about the arguments presented. Those are merely talking points as a way to get an upper hand on China. That is it. It is annoying, because there is actually a dire need to make children a little less addicted to screens ( not to mention the chance to get some privacy ).
Politicsgirl makes the case this is about shutting down marginalized voices, among other things. I’m no TikTok user myself but the argument holds water.
Do they? My Impression is a bit different here. TikTok is much more focused on the automatically selected content, and has fewer options for letting users make their own choices. The format itself (video) also strongly boosts the connection between people. And both combined let TikTok-Trends move much faster and ingrain deeper in the minds of people. It was quite interesting to see how fast and deep the brainwashing on TikTok was spreading after the CEOs appearance in senat, and also kinda concerning.
> US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew made that clear.
But isn't that legit concern of any country regarding other countries with even less security than you have yourself? I mean in Europe we also have strong concerns against the USA and their poor handling of data.
Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our free and open internet against our own people. Regardless of the fact that our kids are most vulnerable, China's seemingly made a point of outsourcing their most polarizing algorithmic decisions to the rest of the world but not to their own population, which is essentially a tacit admission of their awareness of the dangers of social media to their own people.
At this point, I'd venture that politicians in the US are trying to grasp at whatever they can to mitigate the risk while still maintaining their election chances. Easier to "blame China" and get re-elected than it is to dump on their own constituents for not monitoring their kids' social media habits.
And frankly, I'm okay with that. Even if a parent does their best, there'll be second-hand influences through all the kids raised irresponsibly through their parents, and nothing can be done about that aside from homeschooling or going off-grid, which is unsustainable for nearly everyone.
I'm fine with a combination of the bill introduced + bills like the one passed in Utah placing curfews on kids since parents have proven to be so bad at parenting their own kids as to present the nation with an emergent aggregate risk to national security.
Exactly. We're a decade into the social media experiment now, and it's absolutely clear that it in its current form it doesn't make us smarter, it doesn't make us happier, and it doesn't bring us closer. If anything, it makes people sick and it weakens the social fabric. The proposed solution of "more free speech better" is clearly not working in the face of organized, AI-fueled, nation-state manipulation efforts.
Hacker News is made up of people with a birds-eye view of social media technology. Most of us understand how it works and who operates it. I think it's important to know what an incredible position this is to be in, and to remember that most people aren't like us. Most people can't just say, "screw it, I'll get my information elsewhere."
I think we'll improve over time, but we're at least a generation away from any kind of widespread media literacy. What do we do in the meantime?
Exactly how most social media execs handle it with respect to their own kids.
And it kinda signals to other countries they really should put critical effort in lowering dependence on the US and chalenging the dominance if they ever intend to thrive.
> Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our free and open internet against our own people.
Do you think that we should ban all the Chinese apps and also all the American apps?
The way you weaponize the network against a populace is by censoring it. In this regard, Congress is the one doing that.
Pathos-heavy comments like this one with no real meat disappoint me. Surely we can do better.
I increasingly think interesting geopolitics are a trap for a certain type of brain. When I was in high school I followed that sort of thing closely, and felt very smart. But it all had no connection to me, and it didn't matter to me at all. I realized I prefered geopolitics to domestic news because I could feel detached from the tradgedy.
Sorry, I'm calling bullshit on this. Look at every single thread that discusses cryptocurrency. If you haven't noticed the Redditification of Hacker News, then I envy you.
Do you think banning Huawei from owning US telecommunications infrastructure is also a sign of the end times (Parent comment)?
Not that the US spying agencies cant do the same with US companies. They surely do. But it's a strong argument for banning technology coming from an adversarial government.
In 2022, there were ~25.1 million teens[1], of whom ~67% used TikTok[2], for a total of ~16.8 million on TikTok (totally ignoring anyone under 12 or over 17).
I know the numbers are hacky because the first group includes younger children and the second group doesn't (and 1/3 of TikTok's users could be under 14[3]), but I was trying to get a sense of scale for each category. Assume the TikTok user count is probably an underestimate.
My hacky numbers come up with a bit over 40x more teens being first-hand infuenced by tiktok. To make the numbers even more hypothetical, the next step of deciding how many times worse you think being enrolled at a school that has a shooting is for students and plugging that in to get how much more attention/resources should be used on shootings is left as an exercise for the reader.
[0] https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings [1] https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underag...
The fact that school shootings have been so normalized that we’re sitting here and discussing the math around whether they’re worse than social media is… so profoundly sad it’s hard to describe.
The total number of children who should die in school shootings should always be 0.
It's not even particularly hard. Practically every country in the world manages to achieve that target.
The raw footage has changed substantially in recent years.
I watched recent senate hearings and, instead of bringing expert witnesses to educate senators to help them better do their job, it seems hearings (and basically any other chance at being in front of a camera) is an opportunity to PWN the “other side” in a series of 30s sound bites.
Senators yell at each other, talk past each other and their guests, fall back on their pre-written “serious burn!” scripts no matter where the conversation goes, and insult the guests they invite in to speak. Everyone is freaking out about whether or not everything was shared with “their side” prior to the hearing because they need to have pre written burns to score more “points” than the other side.
You see these 30s clips floating around the internet and wonder how they can all come from the same hearing. It’s because they are all rapid firing a bunch of pre-written dribble optimized for 30s sound bites.
I don’t know how we come back from this.
That's not how Congress works. We're taught in school that Congress debates bills one at a time, but the reality is that all the real debate and drafting and work happens behind the scenes, massively parallelized.
Time spent during a session of Congress is mostly just the very end of the process, discovering where the votes fall and some last-minute negotiations. Also grandstanding.
There are lots of factors that have been making Congress less "productive" in recent history, depending on how you view it, but the total hours available per year isn't really one of them.
b) There is zero appetite from the GOP for gun control. Until that changes the status quo persists.
c) Information about US citizens (which can be used to manipulate them) being handed over to the Chinese government is something that the government should be concerned about.
There have been many years of Democratic control where they didn't prioritize gun control. The status quo persists for some other reasons, not just the GOP bogeyman.
There are people who look at data to determine how likely they were to die from covid vs. the risk and effectiveness of a vaccine authorized for emergency use, and there are people who watch the news.
You can't have a good argument with people who watch the news because they get convinced of their position emotionally through anecdotes that the news focuses on, not data. You end up arguing with that person's emotional reaction to anecdotes. It's never a good idea to criticize another person's emotions if you expect to remain friends with them or not get flagged on HN.
not only that but you have media outfits literally called "Infowars" operating inside the country basically supporting treasonous activities. I find it absolutely hilarious that imaginary threats from TikTok, for which even the US government cannot find genuine evidence, somehow are more relevant than existing domestic ones. Some of the largest news channels in the country openly publish the kind of propaganda that TikTok is allegedly supposed to boost.
From the outside over the last two decades it honestly looks like 9/11 just broke the US flat out. Ever since then it's been a spiral into paranoia and insecurity with 'foreign adversaries' being blamed for absolutely every self-inflicted stupidity.
Yes, in the supposed Great Game this is simply a mole being whacked, a performative exercise that does nothing to solve any of the problems and shoddily disguises these in puerile emnity.
Yet and all, The US Senate is still and nonetheless one of the most powerful and wayward legislative bodies in our species' history. You have a direct part in your Senate, albeit at the length of another's arm, and so you still have this power.
I'm at risk of rambling, but you are still a citizen of one of the greatest nations, and you should have more than hope. I take your two bucks and give it to a beggar, as their need is greater than either of ours.
Please, if you are willing and brave, and as you have served your country we know you are willing and brave, get into Politics. Good people working together is the best way of making things better
In reality, you take for granted the freedom that you enjoy here, protected by the US military, constitution and rule of law. People in many other countries would go to great lengths to just have what you have.
I agree that gun control is a serious issue, but this TikTok thing can easily cause many more suicides among teenagers if we don't ban it, the scale of harm is much higher than school shootings.
That's my 2 cents.
Not that it isn't at least a little reasonable to be wary of adversaries having access to a data collection platform, but the problem also gets meaningfully less substantial in general if you put meaningful limits on these companies' capacity to grow and eat each other in the name of building empires of surveillance capitalism.
Meta in particular is pushing hard on that angle while hand-waving away the fact that Facebook has a history of treating society as a large-scale experiment. It's manipulated users' mental health on purpose, meddled in elections by selling users' data directly to campaigners, and furthered incitements of everything from genocides abroad to the attack on the Capitol. They're feeding into attacks that single out TikTok specifically, as part of a broader pattern that Facebook and Zuckerberg personally have exhibited of trying to buy or clone nearly anything that represents competition. They bought Instagram. They bought WhatsApp. They tried to buy Snapchat. They've lifted the primary functionality of several large competitors, ranging from disappearing messages to basically all of Reels.
Instead of just taking the blunt-instrument approach of banning social media platforms from within the borders of specific foreign countries, we arguably should be having an entirely different conversation about banning the business practices that make TikTok a problem.
On the kids' manipulation -- even though that's not the main intent and American social media co's influence kids as well -- I'd still argue it's significant. A foreign adversary can control how your population thinks... it almost speaks for itself.
I mean, at least China might actually criticize American government and policy, which is something America's so-called "free press" is no longer capable of. I say give Americans a healthy dose of propaganda from all sides and let the market decide!
I expected it to get downvoted to oblivion but the whole thing made me sad and no one else seemed to feel that way, so I made this comment.
What do you think causes kids to shoot up their math class?
The sentiment against assamge, patriot act, even the iraq war was popular at the time.
Now I have tried to make a rational argument for this ban but all I got was downvotes even bots/people downvoting every unrelated thing I post probably including this post.
You need to engage in polite discourse with others and change their minds not complain about the government.
And believe me when I say, having seen how things are in other countries, as bad as things are in the US I wouldn't trade it for any other country.
You've all chosen to whine in your bubbles instead of a healthy debate. Enjoy the result.
Apathy, learned helplessness, inaction, cult-like fervor, magical thinking, pan-colonial ambitions, and inability to fund or defend itself lead a society to ruin.
The thing is that every 8-12 generations (250+-50 years), a civilization must rework or recommit itself or it slides into decline and decay.
No rampant conservative moral panic crusade, violent upheaval, civil war, or totalitarian junta can rebuild what divides left or right, or rebalances fewer haves and many more have nots.
I agree with you that there are more important things, but we do lots at once. Honestly if shooting up congresspeople, kindergartners, and kindergartners shooting teachers hasn't changed anything in regards to guns... I don't know what will.
This isn't really about protecting kids anyway though, it's mostly fearmongering about China, which is one of the rare things most of our legislature agrees on these days.
Tiktok ban is purely political nothing else.
Some other country created something we couldn’t: a social media app that appeals to Gen-Z. Our domestic industry tried and failed to clone it. So we banned it.
Call US government whatever you want in another conversation, but China has a direct line to every user of Tiktok, and we don't know they plan to leverage that against US interests. Their hail mary with Tiktok could cause a social collapse if they engineered it like how the Russians engineered English social media for the last 7 years.
You’re stance on this is actually “I don’t believe that the CCP would try to harm the US population”. I can tell that is your stance because if it wasn’t then you are effectively saying “I believe the CCP may potentially feed the US population mental-illness-inducing content via targeted algorithms, but I don’t think it’s worth caring about and we should be mad that lawmakers are even trying to do anything about it.”
I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about something meaningless here. If you believe that there is a chance of the CCP doing something nefarious with their Golden Shares power, then that’s a pretty big deal.
not inclusive enough, your opinion is invalid /s
yieldcrv explains the substantive nature of this joke: OP believes that people have their priorities wrong in the face of surprise death matters, pointing out opinionated gender inclusion logic that also has not permeated universally outside of the US would be another example of prioritizing in the face of surprise death matters
China is putting itself on a direct 'war footing' path with respect to Taiwan and the likelihood of conflict is worriesome. That conflict will make Ukraine look like a side show, and will involve Japan, Korea, Philippines, Australia, US - and incidentally Vietnam, Singapore, Canada - and everyone will be affected.
For example the CCP has made deep inroads in influencing Canadian politics along a number of vectors.
Xi's stated policy (and what we can infer from actual behaviour) is that 'all assets are geared towards state objectives) and that will 100% include TikTok - to varying degrees.
Even from purely a 'trade parity' perspective, outside countries would simply not be allowed to have the kinds of influence in China that they somehow expect in other states and that there are bunch of conflating factors there as well.
And most of that applies to pretty much all Western nations, and frankly, a bunch of others that would be powerless to do anything anyhow.
I think the only reasonable solution would be to have TikTok sold off and run separately, from Singapore, US, or any place with commercial, regulatory, judicial transparency etc..
It was hilarious to watch clueless clowns in Congress, but I think that was mostly a populist display for the general population so that the 'creator furor' is tempered to some extent by the headlines they read on CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc..
Then you no longer know the place. According to media the US is nothing but school shootings and government censorship.
I still have family there and still visit for nearly a month out of the year. The number of people running red lights has gone up significantly the last few visits. To the point where I feel like I’m driving in Bali and not the US. People are more rude now than they used to be, and scared.
It took months after moving here to brush off the fear you have living in the US. Fear of the government taking your kid because your neighbor gets pissed off, fear of car accidents, fear of getting pulled over, fear of getting stabbed/shot while walking down the street, fear of seeing someone else getting stabbed/shot, fear of getting fired for no reason, fear of going to the hospital or getting seriously sick because even if you survive, you’re going to be broke af.
I’ve had cops plant evidence in my car, I’ve been hit by trucks running red lights, I’ve gotten in a knife fight with a hobo, I’ve been shot at on the highway, I’ve been fired for no reason, I’ve gotten in a motorcycle accident that fucked me over seven ways to Sunday.
I haven’t had to worry about any of those things since leaving. Not a one.
To us, this was a funny question, to my sister-in-law ... she was like 'wtaf.' I can't imagine having my son worried about that kind of stuff and I can't imagine the internal stress. That's why I said 'might' because it 'might' be normalized to the point that it's just background noise; a joke. Until it isn't.
My son and his friends run around in the streets like when I was a kid; they don't stop until the street lights come on. I could never take that away from him, and I feel like if we were to move back to the US, I would be doing that.
That this is auxiliary to US goals to antagonize China is the sugar. The real goal is to continue the progress made when when breakaway Trump-supporting networks like Parler were directly attacked by Congress, and app stores informally threatened if they wouldn't ban them. Twitter is being continuously threatened by Congress just because they changed ownership from movement Democrats to an "independent" rich guy.
TikTok will be the precedent. It's obviously just racist to attack TikTok alone; in order to retroactively make it not racist, it's important to attack companies that amplify Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Palestinian messages, the alt-left, the alt-right, or anyone that might inspire disloyalty to the homeland. Which is why Homeland Security will be overseeing social media.
> they might get shot up in math class?
The safest place that a child is at all day is at school (home and family are far more dangerous), and more people die in a day in Ukraine or (until fairly recently) Yemen, or because asthma inhalers were re-patented in the US through active corruption and their price went from $5 to $75, than have ever died in a school shooting. Middle class paranoia is being exploited by dragging the discussion of 6 deaths in this suburb, 10 deaths in that suburb, over years, with public wailing and gnashing of teeth, energetic and aggressive shaming of dissenters (with state support), and constant press releases from an industry that relies on advocacy for income.
Upper-middle class liberals can only be focused on issues that affect them directly, which is why gun control (and gun rights, classical liberals are liberals too) is an easy way to manipulate them. I wish they could be pushed back to important things, like our failed healthcare system that will ruthlessly bankrupt them with the slightest provocation.
Gun control pandering is just Republican law & order pandering in a Democratic style. It's pretending that there's some magical incantation that will make desperate people both not violent, and also not easy targets for violence and exploitation. The solution is systemic infrastructure, rather than distraction. I'd take a school shooting that kills 6 every week in exchange for a compassionate, functional healthcare system. It's 300 lives versus hundreds of thousands of lives.
edit: Americans live in a country that shut down most public mental health care from 2008-2010.
It would be wrong for the US to do nothing.
It's reddit/HN who have never traveled or lived outside US that has jaded your view of US.
You know which country released chatGPT? or NVIDIA A100 or made a huge step towards Quantum Computing / Nuclear Fusion?
I'd rather congress focus on irrelevant details, while startups solve / tackle important issues. When it really comes to it, Congress will get their act together, but anything before is pure meddling in one of the greatest systems that is producing unbelievable innovations at an alarming rate.
I have some jaded views. Perhaps my jading moment was when my unit was used as a political pawn by Obama to get re-elected. That pissed me off to no end and broke my rose colored glasses.
I sincerely miss US startups sometimes. I work at a startup here and they actually (somehow) have a work/life balance, 20 days paid vacation, and other perks with no gimmicks, like a chef who cooks us lunch every day, but no shenanigans (like “unlimited” vacations that aren’t actually unlimited).
I (sometimes) miss working weekends and impossible deadlines while devouring cheap pizza and passing out on the couch. But there’s a good chance even US startups have evolved in the last ten years… but the last US startup I worked at in the early teens was like that. My then-girlfriend-now-wife would come hang out with us nerds for dinner before we got back to work. Hell, I fixed a rare database issue on my honeymoon because everyone else was asleep and I wasn’t while my new wife cussed out my CEO on the phone. He ordered us a really nice bottle wine from the hotel, so I can’t complain…
Meh, maybe I don’t miss it, but you make some valuable points.
That's a shortsighted and very optimistic viewpoint, dripping with typical American pride.
You're underestimating just how much damage foreign propaganda and misinformation can do and has done to your great country. Trump getting to power, and still being a strong contender for 2024, mass delusion and rising popularity of conspiracy theories (QAnon, pizzagate, etc.), record-high social unrest and division, racial tensions, protests, marches, insurrections, etc.
And this is just starting to unravel.
The ironic thing is that all that great technology built by the US, allowing everyone to join, connecting the world and whatnot, has been the perfect weapon of information warfare. You've essentially built the weapons, and handed them to your enemies, and are somehow still debating if that's the case, and what to do about it. This confused state is indicative of the effects of psyops, where the afflicted adversary doesn't understand the situation they're in, or how they got there. An ex-KGB agent explained this well way back in 1985[1].
The East certainly has an advantage, considering they've been doing this for decades now, and Western influence on their own population is close to zero, because of their isolation from the internet.
Banning TikTok is a good defensive measure, but it's too little, too late, to reverse the damage already done, and to stop the bleeding. The US would have to do a major shakeup and banning of foreign accounts across all social media sites, and judging by the reactions on this well educated forum alone, that wouldn't fly with the general population, who perceive this as an infringement on free speech.
EDIT: Ah, it seems the bill is broader than just banning TikTok. Good, it might be the only playable move. Unfortunately, it requires more government oversight at the expense of some civil liberties, and I can already see how unpopular this will be.
Buckle up, it's going to get even bumpier. I suspect the US in its current dominant position won't last more than a couple of decades, at most. Funny that with all its untouchable military power, it's completely defenseless against this type of attack.
It's a red herring.
This is the Patriot Act for the Internet. Ironically they're copying the CCP playbook and want the same level of sweeping control with the implementation of a Great Firewall. It's extremely broad and includes everything connected to the internet that has >1M users in a year period.
Edit: If you don't want to read it, Louis Rossmann does a good flyover here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xudlYSLFls8
It's also good practice because it prevents TikTok from just making a new company that is exactly the same.
Edit: changed illegal to unconstitutional because someone below was confused.
> A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of people, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial. As with attainder resulting from the normal judicial process, the effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person's civil rights, most notably the right to own property (and thus pass it on to heirs), the right to a title of nobility, and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself.
Within the US...
> In 2011, the House voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler called that vote a bill of attainder, saying it was unconstitutional as such because the legislation was targeting a specific group.
With that in mind, calling out a specific company gets dicy.
Thus, they are instead written as:
(3) COVERED HOLDING.—The term “covered holding”—
(A) means, regardless of how or when such holding was or will be obtained or otherwise come to have been held, a controlling holding held, directly or indirectly, in an ICTS covered holding entity by—
(i) a foreign adversary;
(ii) an entity subject to the jurisdiction of, or organized under the laws of, a foreign adversary; or
(iii) an entity owned, directed, or controlled by an entity described in subparagraphs (i) or (ii); and
(B) includes any other holding, the structure of which is designed or intended to evade or circumvent the application of this Act, subject to regulations prescribed by the Secretary.
...
(10) ICTS COVERED HOLDING ENTITY.—The term “ICTS covered holding entity” means any entity that—
(A) owns, controls, or manages information and communications technology products or services; and
(B) (i) has not less than 1,000,000 United States-based annual active users at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President; or
(ii) for which more than 1,000,000 units have been sold to persons in the United States before the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President.
I understand that any bill can be abused. But IMO this bill reads like common sense.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
>(2) INAPPLICABILITY OF FOIA.—Any information submitted to the Federal Government by a party to a covered transaction in accordance with this Act, as well as any information the Federal Government may create relating to review of the covered transaction, is exempt from disclosure under section 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the “Freedom of Information Act”).
Not all records are required to be released under the FOIA. Congress established nine exemptions from disclosure for certain categories of information to protect against certain harms, such as an invasion of personal privacy, or harm to law enforcement investigations. The FOIA authorizes agencies to withhold information when they reasonably foresee that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of these nine exemptions.
Exemption 1: Information that is classified to protect national security.
Exemption 2: Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.
Exemption 3: Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law.
Exemption 4: Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged.
Exemption 5: Privileged communications within or between agencies, including those protected by the:
Deliberative Process Privilege (provided the records were created less than 25 years before the date on which they were requested)
Attorney-Work Product Privilege
Attorney-Client Privilege
Exemption 6: Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual’s personal privacy.
Exemption 7: Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that:
7(A). Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings
7(B). Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication
7(C). Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy
7(D). Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source
7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law
7(F). Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual
Exemption 8: Information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions.
Exemption 9: Geological information on wells.
The same level ?
Here's the full text of 4a, see for yourself:
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
There are no exceptions in there for air travel! It's incredibly firmly worded, and is obviously deliberately meant to be very restrictive on government power.
They don't have probable cause to search every single person, let alone a warrant to do so. And their holding people's freedom to travel hostage to do so, and conditioning Americans to a lack of rights that were supposedly enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
The notion that they need to search every single person flying is not remotely "reasonable". It's one more step towards a police state. It's a shame that the 4th amendment isn't defended as strongly as the 1st & 2nd. The patriot act is the reason why flying sucks now when it used to be fantastical.
There is a Senate bill[1] called "S.85 - No TikTok on United States Devices Act", which is very short and seems to only do one thing, and that's ban TikTok. This bill is in committee.
There is another Senate bill[2], called "S.686 - RESTRICT Act", which is the one linked in this submission and is the one everyone is - imo rightly - quite concerned about, because a bunch of stuff seemingly unrelated to TikTok is getting the Department of Homeland Security treatment. TikTok isn't even mentioned in the text of the act. This bill is also in committee.
I'm honestly left wondering if the RESTRICT Act is being intentionally amplified as "The Bill to Ban TikTok", because of how shitty it is, to give people the means to say "no we shouldn't pass this if the cost of banning TikTok is Patriot Act Part Deux", when in reality we shouldn't pass this bill anyway because it sucks.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/85/...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
2. (I) A group, subgroup, or other association or organization whether or not organized for profit. [like an OSS project on github?]
3. (1) IN GENERAL.—It shall be unlawful for a person to violate, attempt to violate, conspire to violate, or cause a violation of any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under this Act, including any of the unlawful acts described in paragraph (2).
4. SEC. 5. Considerations. [the star of the show - read it]
Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are definitely touching more than 1M personal records and/or providing "communication". They are all subject to this bill. All their "transactions" are now subject to approval of Secretary of Commerce.
For example:
"State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (powered by the open source Signal Protocol) keeps your conversations secure. We can't read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either. Privacy isn’t an optional mode — it’s just the way that Signal works. Every message, every call, every time."
Isn't Signal also subject to this bill? Or better, who isn't subject to this bill?
Will starting/contributing to an OSS project in any of the Sec. 5 areas require consulting an attorney?
That's half the point. A lot of people here are saying "Facebook will just sell your data to China".
Here's the line saying they can't.
Because that would make it a bill of attainder which is unconstitutional.
1. Games, social media, or other personal apps on government devices is a terrible idea. They shouldn't be there to begin with.
2. Making a big deal of banning them from US government devices is a symbolic anti-China move.
3. Banning US consumers from using a particular transnational app. How exactly would that be enforced? How would it not run afoul of the 1st a.? Will the US gov get into the business of banning apps, books, games, and any particular media it doesn't approve of because it didn't happen to originate in America?
4. Forcing a transnational app to either move its data to the US or sell to a US owner. Russia did this and now they're an international pariah. How exactly does this square with laissez-faire free trade?
It's quite simple - the US and China don't get along.
It's never been about privacy nor internal (to the US) security. It's very openly about cross pacific adversaries. Only meta-tech commentators have tried to apply some weird narrative of privacy.
1. This is a way of getting memes to the masses that we (the US political establishment) can't fully control.
2. Meta and others are getting their asses kicked revenue-wise by Tik Tok. Like any business, they'd use anything they could to fight back. Turns out they can use China fear mongering, so they are.
3. (Added) Believe it or not, there's nationalistic pride here. There is a reluctance to admit that an app from "the other side" (China) is more appealing to the masses than _our_ social media apps. Surprising then that we don't ban Hondas and Toyotas, even though they're far superior to American cars (but at least they're made by Asians who are _allies_ I guess).
No matter that banning an app is completely against the principles we claim, such as freedom for individuals, competition in a free market, and freedom of information.
This is going to be one of those things Americans look back at, like the PATRIOT act, and wonder how the hell they allowed it to happen all because of one app/event.
I’m finding the wording strange because the US arguably has more cross-Pacific allies than adversaries.
It's not that simple. The commitee can change the definition of "foreign adversary" under SEC. 2. (8) (B) at their will.
https://rollcall.com/2023/02/02/lawmakers-stumble-on-data-pr...
The politicians don't want to touch privacy or security laws since that would negatively impact their benefactors as opposed to actually doing their jobs for their constituents.
Its a power grab, hopefully it won't get passed because of the loose undefined wording that could apply to anything they so choose like in ways described in Ayn Rand.
I get that it is not appropriate on government phones in case they manage to leverage a zeroday but for the average Joe I'm not seeing the risk of TikTok being any greater than the rest of the social media world - the same info is shared/available.
One party is largely in favor of stronger privacy laws, but with enough dissenters that when that party is the majority party they still would need help from the other party.
The other party is largely against stronger privacy laws, without enough dissenters to overcome the more pro-privacy party dissenters when the more pro-privacy party has the majority.
So nothing passes.
Facebook and TikTok are of similar sizes and have both violated the privacy of its users and since FB has paid a giant billion dollar fine to the FTC, it already makes sense to also fine TikTok on similar grounds including overseas access to US data by specifically targeting US journalists.
Could potentially apply to VPNs - Sec 2-3-(B) - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
General leeway for The Secretary of Commerce to classify things as they see fit. Chevron Deference, the idea that courts defer to executive branch agency interpretations of the law, might go away so this hedges against that - Sec 3-(a)-1-2 - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
Judicial Review in Section 12. I think this is the section most resembling what we think of with respect to The Patriot Act. Basically feels like it will be very hard to challenge decisions made under this law. I don't read these things often tho so perhaps I am way off base. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
> (B) includes any other holding, the structure of which is designed or intended to evade or circumvent the application of this Act, subject to regulations prescribed by the Secretary.
This is referring to intermediary holding companies intended to disguise an ownership stake by foreign nationals (like a shell company). Nothing to do with VPN or any other technology.
China doesn't allow FB, Insta, Twitter, etc to operate in its market, but its companies can provide such a service to US customers? Is that not protectionism?
If we're afraid that China will use TikTok to push their propaganda in the US, we should be appropriately concerned that banning a platform to stop targeted speech is in conflict with our own norms around free speech. But instead insisting that TikTok can only operate in the US if FB/Snap/Twitter can operate in China on equal terms seems like it would be more in line with our rhetoric around wanting a rules-based international order, and freedom of both trade and speech under most circumstances.
If western social media companies were able to offer their services in China, their fear of our propaganda would be much worse than our fear of theirs.
> If western social media companies were able to offer their services in China
I've seen this meme floating around a lot recently and feel the need to add in some relevant history.
Between the mid and late aughts Google, Facebook, and Twitter were all operating in China. Around this time the Chinese government got very serious about content filtering and imposed new restrictions on what could be shown/uploaded. There was a very strong backlash from the US side that American companies might be helping to build the Great Firewall. Many Americans were outraged and US politicians warned the companies not to build infrastructure that could be used for censorship. So the American companies acquiesced and either left the market or were banned (Twitter).
I remember the outrage back then. It's like what I see now but with the facts reversed! Back then the concern was that American tech companies would export infrastructure that could be used by China for social control. Now it's "China won't allow American tech companies!".
"We've always/never been at war with EastAsia."
Kind of disturbing stuff. Watch the congressional hearing of the TikTok CEO and tell me that the powers who are pushing this care about facts.
China on the other hand, not only had their domestic market entirely for their own domestic giants, creating their own expertise and talent pool, they also didn’t even had to think on what to do, as they could just copy US apps “with Chinese characteristics”, making A LOT of money too.
There was a lot of talk about technology transfer, but you right, the narrative 100% changed from helping the CCP to “China bad”, but how bad they really are when they allowed America to make a true empire on the www without the Chinese companies as competitors?
How America is reacting to its very first Chinese competitor says a lot about America true sportsmanship on the market, it’s very childish and lame if you ask me.
So companies that refuse to build tools for compliance with China's unique censorship/control policies are not allowed in the country. Most American tech companies opted to leave voluntarily rather than implement these controls, and at least one that did not implement the controls or voluntarily leave was instead forcibly banned.
I see the point you're making here, but at the same time, I think the situation as explained here can still be viewed as China not allowing American tech companies to operate in China the way those companies want to do business.
Has the US provided ByteDance with an opportunity to become compliant with this country's requirements that it has opted against? That would seem very similar to what transpired with Twitter in China.
I also think it is quite reasonable that American tech companies should be allowed to operate in China and uphold American values in China if TikTok is allowed to operate in the US. I don't see a contradiction. The entire point of letting China into the WTO and allowing China to help Walmart and Amazon acquire inventory to offer "low prices" was to bring freedom to China by opening the country up to capitalism (this was stated more or less openly by western neoliberal policy makers at the time). It definitely wasn't to strengthen the CCP and weaken the USA but that's what the actual result of 2 decades of "free trade" with China has been.
It's not all that different from how US restaurant chains cannot operate in the UAE unless they take things off the menu that violate Islamic dietary rules. So Wendy's in Dubai does not sell The Baconator.
So there's nothing really to pursue via the WTO. It's not a protectionism issue when domestic and foreign companies have to obey the same or similar restrictions, even if those restrictions are onerous.
They'd have sided with China who on their official books says "they can come back they just have to follow our laws", while in practice continuing to ban and restrict these companies regardless.
In a democracy you get the types of discussions that we've been seeing about TikTok, so that door's shut now. This sort of "trickery" only really works for authoritarian countries, where the discourse is exclusively behind doors.
It's no secret that apps collect data. It's how they exist! Each American with it installed has made the decision to give the app creators their data, which means that anyone that wants the data can get it from the app creators.
Why are we blaming China for the deciduous of individuals?
If you read the bill, it's very transparent that it's not about market access, and that it's not specific to China. It explicitly names five other countries and also authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to include any country that they feel is an adversary to "national security" interests.
Forward to today, somehow TikTok operating in US while compliant to US laws managed outcompeted US platforms. At this point even putting the finger down on some sort of joint venture like Oracle proposal, like how icloud in PRC is under domestic management (a very PRC solution) isn't enough to tip scales back to domestic incumbents. Hence bill to ban, or divest, which to be clear, even PRC hasn't resorted to because they already had regulations to limit influence / scope of US platforms. Playing "fair" is not viable anymore because TikToks is too big, as is the associated risk, so nothing left but nuclear option because TikTok won playing fair.
No, it's nothing like the US. PRC actively censors all social media in China (the social media companies do it themselves based on keywords provided by the government).
> it's not PRC's fault FB/Google employees killed efforts to move back into PRC, or that the SV was drunk on free speech (cheap moderation) until western society realized (but won't admit) PRC regulators were prescient
Moderation on Western platforms is nothing like the censorship that takes place on PRC platforms, and equating them is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. Not to mention that government censorship is much more problematic even than company defacto cenorship (where if you don't like Twitter you can move to Mastodon) since gov censorship is absolute.
I'm so cynical, I bet even that is a lie.
Diving in, the list of "foreign adversaries" is amusing. China and Russia have to be on there. Iran and North Korea I guess. Cuba and specifically a Maduro led Venezuela are a stretch.
What this bill actually seems to do is allow the Secretary of Commerce to review any communication technology, including both apps and hardware, used by a million Americans, and then suggest the president punish it if it poses an "unacceptable risk" of stealing IP, damaging infrastructure, interfering with elections, extorts a person in power, or just "otherwise poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety of United States persons."
Then it discusses what penalties the President can enact, which are banning the thing, confiscating their assets, and confiscating their collected data (and code? not 100% on this.)
Next, how to designate a communication device needing review or foreign adversary, basically someone high up says so. Then how to remove a foreign adversary, which seems much more difficult though it may just have more possible methods.
The rest seems to deal with the minutia of enforcement. I also can't be bothered to read this once, let alone twice, but it also means I'm not quite sure what investigative powers the Secretary of Commerce has without getting a warrant.
So it's called a bill to ban TikTok, but it seems to give the government a fairly clear path to banning any foreign communication technology widely used. The adversary part doesn't even seem necessary, the only time the foreign adversary comes up is if they are undermining the democratic process. Which means Russia can't interfere in elections, Israel and Saudi Arabia can.
1. Apple adds easy support for non-Apple app stores and side-loading to iOS to comply with the recent EU regulations that require opening things up in 2024, and then people can download TikTok from outside the US and install it?
2. TikTok users switch to using the TikTok website instead of the app?
It looks like the main thing the app gives you that the website can't is a convenient way to film short video and edit it and add music all on your phone and then post that. Surely someone could write a social network agnostic app just for filming, editing, and adding music that can upload that short video to any of your social media accounts (TikTok, YouTube shorts, and whatever other ones allow video). The destinations could be entirely user configurable and support any social network that provides a halfway decent upload API.
What's the US going to do? Try to make a US equivalent of China's Great Firewall? I don't think that would work here, because our free speech laws make it too easy to circulate circumvention information.
If I was a company that does mobile apps I'd be seriously looking right now into making that general short video maker/uploader app. If the US does successfully cut off TikTok all those users aren't going to just stop wanting to post and read the kind of things they are now doing there. They are going to try to move to other platforms. Done right, maybe my app would be something they use as part of that.
"Hence anyone using a VPN to access TikTok would be in trouble—specifically, subject to up to $1 million in fines, 20 years in prison, or both."[1]
[1]https://reason.com/2023/03/29/could-the-restrict-act-crimina...
In what way? Explain that, and let readers decide if it is horrific.
Wrote some brief thoughts about it here: https://concernedsoftwareuser.github.io/software-freedom/
(10) ICTS COVERED HOLDING ENTITY.—The term “ICTS covered holding entity” means any entity that—
(A) owns, controls, or manages information and communications technology products or services; and
(B) (i) has not less than 1,000,000 United States-based annual active users at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President; or
(ii) for which more than 1,000,000 units have been sold to persons in the United States before the date on which the covered holding is referred to the President.
(11) INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS OR SERVICES.—The term “information and communications technology products or services” means any hardware, software, or other product or service primarily intended to fulfill or enable the function of information or data processing, storage, retrieval, or communication by electronic means, including transmission, storage, and display.
Domestic tech companies shamelessly sold access to American users for manipulation by "foreign adversaries" for years, made billions, suffered no lasting consequences. Then Chinese Vine walks in, smokes everybody else in ~24 months, the mad South African buys and destroys Twitter, and Mark toddles off the cliff of irrelevance with a social network in each pocket and an Oculus strapped to his face.
I guess it was fun while it lasted.
This bill literally references parts of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, and the Controlled Substances Act. It's beyond absurd. A good video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xudlYSLFls8
Why nothing about US media companies pushing advertising based on data that really should be protected by privacy laws?
Why nothing about the material released from Twitter by Matt Taibi, et. al.? Very concerning stuff for a country talking the talk about democracy.
Why not enforce limits on what kids can watch and for how long, as China does? While I am all for free speech and liberty for adults, I think it is necessary for parents to put some guardrails on their kids.
There is a lot more at stake here: the USA (my country) is struggling to maintain the dollar hegemony, has some severe looming economic problems, and has the same general problems shared by all countries. The USA has been very successful by carrying a big stick and hitting other countries with it. But, what was once a successful strategy is, I think, now a very poor strategy. An Empire like ours should sometimes orchestrate a graceful exit, on terms best for our country. Now when I say best for our country, I mean best for people, and not what is best for Wall Street, Our Military Industrial Complex, etc.
This is the parent's job. Kids can't even play in the front yard without CPS being called, and adding more complexities like this sounds like an even worse nightmare.
Privacy is not the major concern here.
> Why nothing about the material released from Twitter by Matt Taibi, et. al.? Very concerning stuff for a country talking the talk about democracy.
Twitter is subject to the US courts and legal system and while there are issue we can work to resolve them.
> Why not enforce limits on what kids can watch and for how long, as China does? While I am all for free speech and liberty for adults, I think it is necessary for parents to put some guardrails on their kids.
Again not the issue.
Seriously, read at-least the start of the bill it makes it very very clear the main concern is limiting foreign powers ability to mass influence the general USA population.
Carefully selected to keep the ship distinctly itself, but still ever so slightly different each time.
(I just like the irony of plagiarising policy from China as a parallel to their plagiarising IP from the US - and likely elsewhere).
Back in the previous administration, I figured this was all a temper-tantrum being thrown by an executive who got embarrassed when outsmarted by a bunch of kids. It may have started like that, but somehow in D.C. everyone's been convinced of the danger a foreign-owned social-media network poses. I'm still not sure I get it...
This is not something you have to speculate about, they clearly outline the process for law enforcement to get information: https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/global/law-enforcement/en
Of course they can. Bytedance is keeping American TikTok data in the U.S. The problem is that it's also filtering out to China.
Even if the data is valuable, as far as I know there are no backdoors available to tiktok that aren't available to other apps (e.g any tencent game). The security model at the os level seems to be the proper place to ensure privacy, and the witch hunt against tik tok seems to only exist because it is popular.
Are there any examples of ByteDance refusing to hand over data in response to a warrant?
The only way this ends: They keep tipping until they fall off.
If you’ve read it and you still support it (as a US citizen) I’m going to be so heartbroken by today’s tech community.
This is authoritarianism in the name of protecting our children.
I understand, TikTok is projected to overtake Alphabet’s and Meta’s video ad revenue [0] and it won’t surprise me if they even lobbied for it. I just see it as a shortsighted move by these companies not to strongly come against this bill.
[0] https://www.fiercevideo.com/advertising/2027-tiktok-video-ad...
As a Network/Security engineer, I personally trust American companies as little or less than anything Chinese, but I know nothing good comes from anything connecting to or from there for 99% of everything most of my non-international customers of mine or I do. They simply do not play by ours or any rules but their own. Given my druthers or by request with a capable firewall with geolocation, I gladly block anything to/from China and most anything outside the the US, particularly SLED/FED or regionally local to US only businesses. Not that I endorse isolationism, but as a practical engineer, it would likely save our incumbent non-security-savvy sheeple (or simply lazy businesses) from more blatant direct attacks and siphoning of data at least from the less tricky foreign villains without their own domestic botnets.
If later I actually do need to send something to/from blocked geolocations, there will be an exception policy for it that shall be documented.
But moreover, laws should be about behavior. You don’t ban Philip Morris, you ban selling tobacco to kids and smoking indoors.
Unfortunately, the bill’s official one-line summary (“To authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes”) and title (“Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act”) are also misleading, though perhaps not clickbait (they are more to discourage looking inside by making it seem bland than to encourage attention.)
The summary is factually misleading, because the Secretary of Commerce isn’t authorized to prohibit anything by the bill, the President is, and the bill specifically prohibits delegating except to the Attorney-General, and that only for litigation purposes, and it is an obscurant because it is vague about what kind of transactions and why. And the title is basically word salad to fit a forced acronym, though it does hint about the business domain of concern.
I don't think you guys understand here how important a bill like this is, and how much of a threat China is to us. This bill could be modified to restrict its usage more, and that would be good, but at the end of the day we must take action against the fact that China has such a massive social and cultural entry point into our culture, because China has spent the last 10 decades ensuring that they are protected from any social exchange from us to them.
They will use that tool against us. It is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, and it's probably already happening.
Do not hand our people's minds to a country that would destroy us. Pay attention to what Russia was able to do with nothing but a couple of troll farms. China won't just have that, they'll have the entire platform and the algorithm which determines everything you see every day.
This cannot be allowed to continue.
Luckily I live in a small country now and shouldn't care much about us politics
I remember the trump days. the same democrats pushing for a ban where calling trump racist for his anti-china policies. what a 180 from all our enlightened benefactors and democrats thinkers
It seems silly to legislate "thou shalt not do really scare thing #1 if name == TikTok" or "thou shalt not allow any third party to have really scare access if name == China". Just leave out the if clauses.
Don't target China or Russia or Iran or North Korea. Don't exempt Virginia or Maryland or any three letter acronym. If it is dangerous for the Chinese government to do it, it is dangerous for the U.S. government to do it and for the sales department of Amazon to do it.
> The term “transaction” means any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and communications technology product or service, including ongoing activities such as managed services, data transmission, software updates, repairs, or the provision of data hosting services, or a class of such transactions.
> includes, unless removed by the Secretary pursuant to section 6—
(i) the People’s Republic of China, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Macao Special Administrative Region;
(ii) the Republic of Cuba;
(iii) the Islamic Republic of Iran;
(iv) the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea;
At no point has anyone actually done anything about this, even though it significantly affects peoples views in a negative way through false truths, voting etc.
What about kids with social media and how bad it is for them? Evident through the fact that most people who work at social media companies ban or severely limit their kids from having phones and/or social media. Nope, let it slide.
But the China war with Tiktok? Of course this gets focus. How about they care about the country they actually live in by looking after the people that live in it rather than only focusing on external country threats.
It's sad living outside of the US and watching it fall apart by their own doing. If they cared, they'd focus on their employment rate, homelessness, free quality healthcare, gun control (yes), clean streets, and better education. If they can't solve it with their Military, they don't care.
Was TikTok a net good to American society? Depends on who you ask, but if anything I think most people would agree that it only exaggerated the decline of the average attention span. This moves with the larger movement to commodify clicks, quick ads and lowers the threshold towards late stage capitalism. In short, this speeds cultural decline ("I said what I said").
Would I support an American TikTok? No, see above.
Should TikTok be banned by the US congress? When is the last time you ever saw a ban of something that didn't include any overt pocket lining or omnibus-style overreach? Read the bill, the language is broad and sweeping; certainly kin to the CFAA and COPPA.
So what then? Well we're certainly at an impasse here, right? We can't rely on tech businesses to turn their shoulders to cold hard cash. We can't rely on our elected officials to "Do the right thing" without lining their pockets and sharpening their knives. Truly a conundrum with no good solution.
The mental health impact of kids, parents, and teachers having to worry about STAYING THE FUCK ALIVE IN SCHOOL EVERYDAY cannot be understated.
Yes, of course, gun safety must be addressed, and the government should have resources to do this concurrently, but the foreign influence issue is an existential threat to your nation, and should be the highest priority.
Sounds like a problem with the media then. Ban coverage of shootings if people can’t behave rationally about risks.
Children are 1000x more likely to die in a car crash than a school shooting.
The reason for banning it is simple: it can be used as a first-strike weapon to influence an entire generation (or two) of Americans in a conflict with China that is almost certain to happen. Keeping it under Chinese control is a bad idea.
China has the option to sell it to an American company, take the money and build more guns to shoot at us. Honestly, it's a win-win.
Seems like there's... a LOT of calve-outs for due process / checks-and-balances? or is that fairly normal and i'm mis-interpreting in my ignorance?
Can’t the administration or a governmental agency (such as but not limited to FTC, FCC etc.) ban it?
I think that’s how it works in many other countries.
The reverse, where government agencies ban things without Congress, is the unusual thing from a Constitutional perspective.
How are so many people (especially on HN) fine with this? Haven't we criticized "The Great Firewall of China" for literally decades? How is this not the start of that? Genuine question. This ban seems to set horrible precedent to me. Bet everyones "coolness" with it makes me think I'm not understanding something.
Banning TikTok based on alleged "Chinese influence" sets a dangerous precedent for censorship, jeopardizing freedom of expression and access to global platforms. Instead, focus on enforcing data privacy regulations, strengthening cybersecurity, and promoting transparency to protect user interests without infringing on individual rights.
Open dialogue and collaboration are more productive than outright bans.
2) This is embarrassing. You don't like TikTok? Man up and compete. Don't ban it.
3) The complexity in this bills makes it reak of corruption. There will be winners and losers in this bill. The losers we can bet are 99% of the population.
However, I do agree about point 3, wholeheartedly. This makes it seem like envy, where our government is salivating at the prospect of doing this themselves under the guise of protecting us from foreign powers.
Re: 3, can't argue there.
That's gotta be taking a huge chunk of time away from playing Xbox/PlayStation/PC games.
This bill primarily aims to safeguard national security by regulating and mitigating risks associated with foreign investments in U.S. information and communications technology companies. It outlines the processes and authority of the Secretary of Commerce and the President to identify, review, and take necessary actions against transactions that pose a threat to national security. The major and minor intentions of this bill can be summarized as follows:
Major intentions:
Define "covered transactions" and "interests" that warrant scrutiny for national security purposes.
Establish a process for the Secretary of Commerce to review covered transactions and interests.
Allow the President to take action against transactions that pose a threat to national security.
Outline the penalties for violating the regulations set forth in this Act.
Provide a framework for judicial review of actions taken under this Act.
Establish the protection of sensitive information during the review process and any subsequent legal proceedings.
Clarify the relationship between this Act and other existing laws and authorities, such as the Defense Production Act of 1950 and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Specify the transition process for implementing this Act, including the continuation of actions taken under Executive Order 13873 and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The broad scope of the bill's language may allow for an expansive interpretation of "national security risks," which could lead to a greater number of transactions being scrutinized and potentially restricted.
The bill might deter foreign investment in the U.S. information and communications technology sector, which could impact innovation, competition, and economic growth.
The exclusion of certain administrative and judicial review processes might limit transparency and accountability in the implementation of the Act.
The protection of sensitive information and the limitations on access to classified and unclassified information in legal proceedings may hinder the ability of affected parties to challenge actions taken under this Act effectively.
That’s how most bills die for _years_.
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
It's authorizing the President to ban certain classes of transactions. Not behavior let alone speech.
Not that I agree that it is actually an immediate threat to US national security, but anti-TikTok pundits claim it is and can spin their argument that way. Its not unreasonable following that premise.
TLDR: The bill doesn't ban TikTok, it gives the executive branch the power to ban companies like Tiktok. IMO this is an entirely reasonable measure.
As someone with strong libertarian leanings, I am generally opposed to the trend of the executive branch gaining arbitrary legislative authority but this bill appears entirely reasonable to me despite some concerns of vagueness.
It gives the Secretary of commerce the responsibility of consulting with agencies to determine if software companies from "foreign adversaries" pose a national security threat. If the secretary seems it does then it gives the president the authority to ban the company.
My initial reading of the text was that it gives the executive branch the right to force companies from a selected list of "foreign adversaries" to divest if it deems it a threat to national security.
I personally believe thats entirely reasonable both from a national security and trade-relations point of view but upon further research this bill looks like an extension of the Patriot Act giving the executive branch
Heres the new information regarding the vagueness that changed my mind: - It punishes citizens for using the "banned" product. - It gives way more arbitrary power to the secretary of commerce to decide whats a threat to national security than I initially realised. - It allows the government to regulate VPN, essentially removing our write to privacy.
As a side note, this is exactly why many people like me have trust issues with the government and other institutions. I don't understand how these smart lawyer types don't realise the immense damage they are doing to public trust.
I think this probably the first time they are recognised as such in an official capacity in recent times.
Also, probably, Alibaba, AliExpress, and Yandex.
There's a bunch of 18-28 year olds who are going to be super pissed off.
If you want to point the finger at anyone, Google might be a better bet. Google has been very good at keeping out of the public eye, like successfully arguing "it's the algorithm" about search results to gloss over the human element in that.
But there are several aspects to this that have varying levels of validity:
1. China doesn't provide reciprocal access to their market to US companies like FB, IG and Youtube. To me, this alone is justification to ban Chinese companies. You need go no further than this;
2. Data protection is a real issue. Having data within US jurisdiction is a valid concern but as many have pointed out, this would better be served by a Federal data protection law, which will never happen. Tiktok has been singled out here;
3. As much as the US government can gain access to data on FB, IG, etc, there is still a rule of law. Even FISA courts have a process. There is not even a pretense of separation between Chinese companies and the Chinese state;
4. Influence by any company through the algorithm is a valid concern. This is more of a concern with a foreign adversary but is still an issue with US companies. We've seen how quickly misinformation can spread (and affect elections) since at least 2016;
5. Some point out you can just get this data from data brokers. Data brokers sell audiences. In some cases you can tie that back to an individual but the platform has way more data than any broker would. I can't go to a broker and get WSJ journalist DMs. The platform owner obviously can;
6. The risk of a foreign government targeting individuals with 0-days and the like is a real one. We've seen Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian governments target journalists. It's a valid concern.
But instead of a nuanced conversation we get reactionary "China = bad" antics from some of the dumbest people (in Congress) I've ever witnessed.
(just in case you were curious)
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
Also a terrible message for foreign companies investing in the US, you can get banned if you don't give up ownership/control of your own company if you become too big..
And at least they finally did something.
The second-order effect of this is interesting to ponder about as it creates an asymmetrical situation. Those countries get the "good" parts of social media (as in, good for their government) whilst we get the bad parts of every app ever.
My main point is that these bad parts should not be underestimated. Misinformation campaigns, election interference, calls for violence, addiction, mental health issues, radicalization, polarization, dysfunction, the normalization of degenerate behavior, a cultural breakdown, mob justice, the list is long.
If in China Tiktok users get a cap of 2 hours of usage in which only productive/interesting (science) content is shown whilst in the US teenagers use it for 5-7 hours leading to a mental health crisis, then we're talking about radically different outcomes.
This doesn't mean that social media is only bad, nor does it mean we should ban it. I'm just saying that we should stop seeing it as an unimportant toy. It potentially is a weapon of mass destruction.
All of these claims are heavily debatable. But more importantly, none of this is remotely relevant to the bill. The policy question is whether or not Congress should allow 150 million Americans to be influenced by a platform controlled (directly or indirectly) by the Chinese Communist Party.
I want to someone to actually make the case for why allowing TikTok in the U.S. is better for America than banning Tiktok (unless it divests from Chinese control). Someone needs to argue that:
- Allowing TikTok is better for American national security than banning it
- Allowing TikTok is better for the health of americans than banning it
- Or, there is some substantial harm from banning it that outweighs those benefits.
And it's surprising to me that people still doubt that manipulating social media can cause societal-level effects. Back in 2014 Facebook published a study where they can increase or decrease levels of anxiety and depression by manipulating the emotional content of the news feed [1]. Back in 2012, academics estimated that 314,000 additional Americans voted in the 2010 congressional election because a they implemented a popup reminding people that "Today is election day."
As it stands, the Chinese government absolutely can use TikTok to manipulate the mental health of Americans, by influencing the content that is shown. The Chinese government can manipulate results of an election by preferentially showing a reminder voters of to one party or the other. Are they doing this already? The U.S. has no way to know, and no defense against this sort of manipulation. TikTok is absolutely a national security issue, and it's within Congress's purview to legislate around it.