If China / TikTok hadn’t overplayed the hand, they wouldn’t lose this weapon. Now they likely will (good thing)
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/7/24093308/tiktok-congress-b...
> "Most of these push notifications went to minor children, and these minor children were flooding our offices with phone calls," Krishnamoorthi told CBS News. "Basically they pick up the phone, call the office and say, 'What is a congressman? What is Congress?' They had no idea what was going on."
> The congressman said these concerns and the app's access to young children's data are driving factors creating the bipartisan support of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," a bill he co-sponsored. The bill calls for ByteDance to divest from TikTok or the app will face restrictions.
> "This is exactly the reason why so many of our colleagues voted for the bill. They don't want a foreign adversary controlling social media apps using geolocation to target minor children to call members of Congress or interfere in our elections. This is exactly the reason why this particular legislation is necessary now," Krishnamoorthi said.
I mentioned something about a SCOTUS opinion and he was very surprised that the court published its opinions. We delved a bit further and he also didn't realize that you could read bills or laws or executive orders.
I have never been more alarmed or scared about the future of our democracy.
Like you I would classify most of these people as intelligent, and although literally qualified, (possession of university degrees at various levels), they are actually completely uneducated.
Between that and daily life being a grind for most people, it is very understandable for someone to not know that the SCOTUS does these things.
Honestly, while everyone (myself included) should be more aware and involved in government, this blissful ignorance is a testament to the stability and freedoms offered by our government.
The youth vote would skyrocket.
It was a fairly big story last month: https://www.axios.com/2024/03/07/tiktok-ban-congress-phone-c...
There are other chinese apps. This doesn’t ban them.
It’s also snuck into an aid bill. A completely reprehensible act if ever there was one.
> U.K. Moves to Bar Foreign State Ownership of Newspapers, a Blow to Telegraph Bid
> https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/business/media/jeff-zucker-telegraph-delay.html
as well as:
> https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/68072
(Of course, you might be thinking "Oh, social media is not newspaper or broadcast station"... well, the interpretation of law can be a spectrum sometimes. Also, now days people are reading (algorithmically recommended) news on those platforms instead of buying newspaper/radio)
It's quite funny. As a Chinese myself, I'm actually a little sympathetic towards TikTok in that IF they can survive outside the Communist Party umbrella, it will show the rest of Chinese entrepreneurs that pledging to the party is not essential. But, I guess apparently these entrepreneur needs to pick the right industry first.
It's one of the ways they keep track of what their voters care about.
This was from a friend who interned there 20 years ago, things may have changed.
The rep isn't going to listen to you specifically - you get a form letter back (sometimes years later), and the only thing that matters is the issue and whether you're yay or nay. But because so few people call in, it makes your opinion (on that issue, at least) weight much more highly than the average voter.
The dynamics are different with proportional representation. You care more about keeping your core supporters happy, because the random people opposing something loudly will probably vote someone else anyway.
I'm sure they were real annoyed receiving phone calls from normal people instead of just businesses trying to set up meetings for ~~bribes~~ campaign donations.
What a huge self-own.
It's not banned if they simply sell it.
Let's see if the same volume of users mobilize to call tiktok HQ to please sell it, because they want to keep using it