Hacker News Reader

Comment by segasaturn | Hacker News Reader

99% Invisible recently introduced me to the political concept of Noticeably Improving People's Lives (abbreviated as NIPL), which refers to how politicians get votes by making visible, positive improvements to people's lives. Not only is this bill bad policy (does nothing to protect people from foreign surveillance and violates free speech), its shit politics. All it's going to do is make the 150m Americans who use TikTok angry. So I am pretty baffled by US politicians insistence to go down this route.

View on HN

My girlfriend not zombifying herself for 3 hours a day noticeably improves her life and my life

She will just do it on Instagram reels now. I wish They were banning all short format video platforms and black box algorithmic suggestions. But obviously they aren't.

Sounds like she's the problem, not TikTok.

...but is that among the likely outcomes of this?

If she is so zombified by TikTok, won't she just continue to use it? Why would she comply with the ban?

Moreover, even if she does, there are many other nearly identical sources of zombification. Won't she use fall prey to those instead?

exactly. Nothing changes if TikTok is sold, and even if it ends up banned in the US, she would be zombified by Instagram or whatever else people flock to

Yeah - interpreting this as a "People can't use tiktok anymore" bill is wrong. It's a "Bytedance can't own tiktok" bill.

All the analysts I've seen discussing this have stated that "China is highly unlikely to allow this", so it is being treated as effectively a ban.

...but even if Bytedance turns their nose up at this (which they won't, because they want to be in good imperial standing), why would users care?

They'll take 20 seconds to install one app to route around the ban, and then forget about it.

Much better to do it on HN instead.

You claim that this bill "violates free speech". Can you expand on that? That's... quite the claim to just throw out there without any references.

US version of "free speech" is that the congress cannot make a law that prevents someone from speaking. It was an example of extreme freedom (i don't have the English translation, but basically a freedom that supersede other freedoms, its philosophy 101 or close to that)

It's less true now, starting from when the mafia used this freedom to threaten judges and jury (Basically, when 80% of people think "full freedom of speech is stupid in this particular case", the US government will effectively suppress it).

I've talked with someone who argued that it effectively never truly existed, and gave me a lot of pre-prohibition examples i can't remember, and even a few from pre-civil war era, that targeted white people (which was surprising because most of the other did not), but i don't know if i trust him, and don't really know US history well, so if you're interested, you should research it yourself and not trust what i just wrote (which is basically, "Yes, No, It's complicated and i don't really know". I'm such a helpful person :/)

[edit] Not saying if it's good or bad btw, extreme freedoms are a cultural foundation of the US, and in my opinion define the country.

Today's issue of Platformer explains it as the following:

>The Supreme Court has previously held that Congress can’t ban foreign propaganda, including propaganda from China. In Lamont vs. Postmaster General, the court considered a law that required the postmaster general to detain “communist political propaganda” sent through the mail. The Post Office was then required to send the addressee a card asking whether they wanted the propaganda to be delivered, in what the court ultimately ruled had an unconstitutional chilling effect on speech.

https://www.platformer.news/tiktok-ban-bill-senate-legal-cha...

It’s obviously not the same situation so blindly assuming that precedent means the same outcome is wrong.

In particular TikTok is not being “banned” based on content, so it’s likely strict scrutiny will not apply.

the single most explanatory fact about america's political behavior, generally over the last 20 years and most acutely today, is this graph:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fszq_PSWIAUwaWw?format=jpg&name=...

the average age of a congress person (house and senate) has gone up by one year, per year, for roughly 20 years.

that tells you that the "normal" organic churn of the past simply stopped dead in its tracks. we have been ruled over by nearly the exact same set of 50 somethings as they have slowly turned into 70 somethings. one very narrow cohort has held onto power so long they personally turned us into a gerontocracy.

this is why the tiktok ban is such a priority despite the fact that it has no constituency at all in the electorate. they don't really represent today's electorate, they represent 20 years ago's electorate that's finally had enough of this internet bullshit.

congress is supposed to be a lagging indicator of popular will by design, its just that for the last 20 years we've been increasing the incremental amount of lag by roughly one year per year, so we've been effectively in stasis.

Well, you probably voted in a congressman who voted in favour of this... And while there is a vocal segment of a population who might oppose it, there also plenty of comments in this very thread who support it. How do you know this isn't an enactment of the popular will here?

Apparently there are 150 million users in the US. If even a small part of the non-users oppose a ban, that's about half the population (especially since we can exclude small children).

This is one of many reasons why we need congressional term limits. Three terms in the House, two in the Senate, then go live under the laws you made.

I’m kind of in favor of term limits (though I would make them a bit longer) but there are surely some downsides, like increasing campaign spending and this the influence of money in politics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com