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Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

If it's not tiktok it'll be reels or shorts or perhaps a new app that will do basically the same.

That from a "tiktok is bad for you" perspective. From a security and economic perspective there's a big difference between the company behind it being Meta or bytedance.

Then again, if tiktok people flock to reels we'd sort of have a big concentration of the social media market in the hands of Meta. Concerning, looking into this, etc.

Ultimately I do believe the issue here is more of a "we don't want Americans using a Chinese app" than anything else. And from there they seek reasons to justify the ban.

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> That from a "tiktok is bad for you" perspective. From a security and economic perspective there's a big difference between the company behind it being Meta or bytedance.

No, not really, they have proven time and again that they can't be trusted. Maybe its time to instead of protecting US company's data collection, we instead just limit data collection...

That's right. People forget that iOS 16 beta (or maybe 15) introduced an orange dot to signify if any app was copying data from the clipboard. TikTok lit up like a lighthouse, performing a copy every 3 seconds.

This is missing the core of the bill. The bill isn't a ban of TikTok, the bill is a cease and desist of sending user data to China. It gives ByteDance the option to do so, but since that would defeat their entire purpose for existing they see it as a "total ban" on TikTok and that's what they're telling their addicted teenage audience.

It doesn't ask them to cease sending data to China, it asks them to completely completely divulge themselves of any Chinese ownership. It's like if Europe told Google they could only operate in Europe if no American citizens had any significant ownership stake in the company.

That's a very shortsighted take. We don't want americans to use a chinese app that could be used to do harm to america and americans. This is part if their strategy, the same way they're using fentanyly exports. They learned the tactic from the opium wars against China by the british and how opium strangled china's society.

I can't believe how small fellow americans' value of our country and understanding of its fragility is.

Most people really don’t seem to understand that social media is more powerful than nuclear weapons and can be used to wage war just as effectively. The US government has been completely asleep at the wheel in combatting this. I hope they’re starting to wake up.

> From a security and economic perspective there's a big difference between the company behind it being Meta or bytedance.

Only for Americans. Not much different for the remaining 96% of the world.

Yes, well, this is a story about American senators being contacted by their American constituents about an American bill that will affect how Americans interact with this app while in America. So it is a bit relevant here

True, but any US ban will have effects beyond just the US. It's also important to remind folks that what TikTok is doing is no different than what Meta (et.al.) is doing.

You are being downvoted but I share the same sentiment. America just does not want to share a slice of the private user data profit pie.

I don't trust Meta either.

Better reels than TikTok. We can actually control it.

The US government plausibly has the opportunity for stronger influence over domestic corporations, and I think there is some non-trivial amounts of evidence to support this theory.

Personally, I much prefer that China hosts this substantial propaganda platform, I believe it to offer a nice counterbalance to the domestic propaganda we are subjected to.

It's entirely fanciful, but I'd like a national law to preserve some days of the week as "no social media" days.

It could allow for 1:1 and n:m (small n, small m) messaging on these days, but nothing bigger. Email would be carved out as an exception.

If it were to be enforced, it'd have to be levied onto companies from the top. They'd be forced to engineer these time window blocks.

Maybe every other day would be a social media day.

I think about this occasionally. It would probably be good for all of us as a society. Totally impractical, would get tons of push back and would never happen, but a fun thought.

Seems to me that the only difference between what you're proposing and just self regulating your social media intake is FOMO.

No, the point is that I'd want this for _everybody_.

I want my friends off their phones too.

And you want it for me too. I don’t even know you. No thanks, I’ll live my life how I see fit.

My state finally lets me buy alcohol on Sundays. I don’t need the government limiting my freedoms. I’m not their kid, they aren’t my parents.

> And you want it for me too. I don’t even know you. No thanks, I’ll live my life how I see fit.

Oh, don't you worry. I totally agree with you. Freedom is perhaps the most important thing in the world. I don't want people making choices for myself or others. Complete freedom - of thoughts, of speech, of actions. (But consequences for those that abuse it - murder, etc.)

That said, I still really miss the world before all of this happened. Our world has never been the same since smartphones arrived.

We'll never be able to go back to the way things were before. That world is dead forever, and nobody -- not me, not you -- will ever be able to bring it back. Doesn't stop me from wishing it would all go away occasionally. At the same time, I'd never be willing to give up what we have now.

It's a complicated feeling.

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