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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

> Driven by worries among U.S. lawmakers that China could access data on Americans or spy on them with the app,

There's an arguable national security angle. Potential surveillance, and, especially, manipulation and dumbing-down.

Earlier, I also heard complaints about TikTok implications for individual health. Which, when implying US Big Tech social media as an acceptable alternative, sounds like an abusive parent: "If anyone's going to beat up my kids, it'll be me!"

Sounds like US Big Tech might've decided on the complaint angle of "some other country could spy on people" -- since all the other valid complaints about TikTok, including intimate surveillance, also apply to TikTok's counterpart US Big Tech products.

Outlaw the irresponsible behaviors, not the competition.

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The other angle is war. Modern war is not necessarily bombing campaigns (even if we have 2 going on now). It's control of other countries citizens, even if through their own words.

For example if representational content of people falling in love with Osama Bin Laden is a total of 3 hours of content, and there are a billion hours of guitar playing good ole American BBQ content, TikTok can show the 3 Bid Laden hours to most people and 0.0000005% of the American BBQ content.

War through means we haven't figured out yet.

i never voted to be at war with China, i think most of this is fearmongering, and we managed to survive the entire cold war without banning foreign ownership of media outlets.

> we managed to survive the entire cold war without banning foreign ownership of media outlets

Because we did it in 1934 [1]. There were no Soviet TV channels.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/310

You aren't american. It's been established many times here by many people. What 'we' are you referring to?

We disagree on Taiwan’s independence [1].

I genuinely don’t care about where you’re from or your thoughts about me. Like, sure, I’m a sentient cheetah with an igloo on Antarctica.

But I am curious about your thoughts. If you’re open to engaging on that level, I’m actually curious.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40443429

Actually we didn’t. Licensure by foreign entities has always been restricted in the US. It happens in engineering business as well. I think it has something to do with the extent of juris on foreign entities without involving the department of state

Imagine you tune into something and it's just Bin Laden or related stuff. If you don't find it interesting it's not like you're going to just sit there for hours watching it. Most likely you'd just find a different site if they kept shoving it down your throat. And, in fact, even if you somehow had to sit there for hours watching it, it's not like it's ever going to convince you to decide to convert to his sect of Islam and go become a Jihadist. The point I make with this is that people can only really be significantly influenced on things they don't already have preformed opinions on. And even then it tends to be quite brief, because more natural opinions start to coalesce pretty quickly. See - basically every war the US has ever been involved when the other country is some place most people couldn't even find on a map, at first.

IMO the real threat the US perceives isn't TikTok manipulating information, but them not manipulating it. Look up information about the Gaza War on YouTube and you'll be inundated with various sources promoting a uniformly pro-Israel narrative. The relatively low views on these hits (no recommendation had more than 400k views) for such a hot topic, with premium placement in the search results, suggests it's not resonating or organic, to say the least. But that's because, again, I don't think the goal is to actually get people to watch this and suddenly start cheering on Israel or whatever. Rather, I think the idea is to encourage people to think that they hold a minority view, and motivate them to self censor their own views and opinions. And that's pretty hard to do when you have this massive 'uncontrolled' site openly allowing people to express their wrongthink, and it not being artificially downranked.

> Look up information about the Gaza War on YouTube and you'll be inundated with various sources promoting a uniformly pro-Israel narrative

I encourage everyone to try this out in a private tab to see how untrue this is.

Here is the search I'm using: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gaza+war

Most links are covering the recent Israel strike on the refugee camp in Rafah, where dozens of civilians were killed in a single strike. That happened after the UN's International Court of Justice specifically ordered Israel to halt their offensive in Rafah. I think hyperbolic responses to this would not only be expected, but perfectly appropriate. Instead I'm just getting a bunch of links to stuff that is repeating Israeli PR verbatim - it was a "tragic mistake", multiple senior Hamas killed, and so on. Are you getting something different? Opening up the link in multiple Tor windows I keep getting mostly the same sites: livenow fox, channel 4 news, TBN Israel, StudyIQ IAS, etc.

I get a couple videos from Democracy Now and Al-Jazeera as well, some from TRT World further down, not to mention the recommended Shorts. None of the videos are shying away from showing the harrowing aftermath of the strike, and they make sure to qualify any statement from the IDF or Netanyahu as being such.

Honest question:

If Hamas used a precision strike to destroy an Israeli school full of children do you think the coverage would be similar? Or would it be conveyed as an act of terrorism rather than an act of war?

The "national security" argument was BS in 2018, and it's BS now. The only difference is now it's a real thorn in the side of the establishment in the US, because it's the only source of news and videos of Gaza that is not actively censored in the United States.

We have Russia Today in the US. We have CGTN. Both are okay because their viewership isn't sufficient to challenge the pro-Israeli propaganda put out by the MSM.

Even Mitt Romney admitted a lot of the pressure to ban TikTok came from the pro-Israel lobbyists: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/tiktok-ban-china...

> We have Russia Today in the US. We have CGTN.

We’ll still have TikTok.com even if Bytedance refuses to sell.

And what's the next sentence you didn't quote?

Not necessarily. The bill [1] very much leaves room for the creation of the 'Great Firewall of America.' Two of the top things it prohibits are:

---

(A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.

(B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.

---

That is strongly suggestive of the creation of a national firewall, or a defacto national firewall where internet service providers have to abide a Federal censorship list or face legal consequences. This is one of the many things, like the Patriot Act, that people are going to look back in a decade wondering why they ever thought this was a good idea. Well actually they'll probably just convince themselves that they never supported it - much easier.

[1] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...

> strongly suggestive of the creation of a national firewall

Not really. It means TikTok can’t be distributed through app stores and that Oracle can fuck right off [1]. (“By means of a marketplace” and “hosting,” not accessing.)

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/19/23174775/tiktok-oracle-te...

> Both are okay because their viewership isn't sufficient to challenge the pro-Israeli propaganda put out by the MSM.

What pro-Israeli propaganda is the "MSM" putting out? Because all the pieces on the current invasion of Gaza I've been seeing have had a strong undercurrent of "what the fuck are you doing Israel?"

Since one of the most recent massacres a day or two ago, there has been a noticeable shift away from Israeli apologism. But the MSM has absolutely been staunchly Pro-Israel throughout the genocide.

All of the media I've been following have been consistently skeptical of Israel's actions since at least November. In particular, I've noticed that the IDF's press events at the big hospital they cleared out (multiple times!) have consistently fallen flat, with all the journalists expressing extreme skepticism of the military's claims in their articles about it.

I don't know what you've been reading/viewing, but every MSM outlet in the UK has been very obviously pro-Israel (as well as every story I've seen coming out the US, in the likes of the NYT etc) - to the point where it'd be comical, if what they were doing wasn't so deadly.

In their stories they usually have a tiny bit of criticism of Israel's actions, but even then always with caveats - I suspect this is to give the appearance of balance, and possibly to allow pro-Israelis to complain about how the press is against them. (to be clear, I'm not saying anything against yourself, it's a general observation!)

Bias more often hides in the news you don’t see, not the ones you do.

For example, many people have heard about 40 beheaded babies. How many have actually heard of Zaka? An ultra-right first responder volunteer group that made up this and several other stories that were plastered all over western media with zero attempt to verify it. Even Israeli media extensively reported on this group’s activities, but NYTimes and WSJ has been weirdly silent about all this up until very recently.

You all saw Nytimes’ investigation into hamas’ systematic use of rape. How many of you saw the news from NYTimes that both the parents and kibbutz of one of the central victims of the story said there was no sexual assault. And this also is a fabrication of Zaka.

Again, these facts are extensively reported in even Israeli media, several months ago. US media have recently started talking about this, and even now barely scratched the surface.

> Potential surveillance, and, especially, manipulation and dumbing-down.

I'm not a TikTok user, but over the long weekend was around people that clearly are. The things they discussed we so outlandish that I was confused on where they got their information. Of course it was a lot of TikTok and YouTube being used as sources.

Personally, I'm much less concerned by any potential surveillance tool. However, the especially part of your sentence is much more worrying to me.

> Outlaw the irresponsible behaviors,

By this do you mean people posting utter nonsense? At that point, you verge on censorship. I recognize that free speech includes speech I don't like, but holy shite batman!, I've never seen such an effective tool for the crazies to find not just a voice with a megaphone but a 30,000w sound system where ever they go. Oh, and they are monetarily rewarded for behaving that way.

So other than slippery slope reasons, I couldn't careless if TikTok were to no longer exist. The net negative of it existing is not worth it in my opinion.

would be better if you provided maybe a single example of the outlandish things discussed

did people not believe crazy things in the mid-20th century? i remember that polling suggests that a third of people believe they have literally spoken with the dead

Just this weekend, I was told that we were in WWIII, but in secret. Of course there's all of the big lie nonsense. There's still talk of which ever Kennedy coming back. Why should I be the one that as to point out specific issues with content being pushed. Are you denying that bullshit is being spread?

> did people not believe crazy things in the mid-20th century?

Why is that even a question? Of course the crazy was around. It was just much more difficult to spread it around. You had 'zines that were available. You had AM and shortwave radio programs. Just by telling someone you listened to AM/shortwave content already set people in the correct frame of mind of where the information was obtained. In modern times, it's everywhere on the socials. It just so happens the time the socials were gaining usage with people that specifically do not know critical thinking nor have been taught the ways to investigate sources.

The internet as been an equalizer for everyone doing anything. As much as it has done for retail, it has also been huge for not just the conspiracy theory sites but propaganda from anyone including foreign actors.

> Why should I be the one that as to point out specific issues with content being pushed. Are you denying that bullshit is being spread?

I'm not, I was actually curious what your examples were.

> It just so happens the time the socials were gaining usage with people that specifically do not know critical thinking nor have been taught the ways to investigate sources.

I would be curious about the rate of misunderstanding and how it has changed. My feeling is that kids today are generally smarter and better informed than kids of the past. I'm pretty skeptical of the notion that more people are misinformed today than in the past.

> My feeling is that kids today are generally smarter and better informed than kids of the past

wow, that's exactly the opposite of the way I see things today. They definitely have access to a lot more information much more easily than I did as a kid. However, my point to the whole ease of spreading disinformation is much more widely used. Also, most kids do not stray far from TikTok or whatever social platform of choice. So typically, a researched concept is only confirmed using another user from a social platform. So their confirmation bias is coming from an echo chamber. There's no deep dive into who actually runs the account whether its a bot or an actual human. If enough people are subscribing/liking, then it must be good seems to be the prevailing logic. "surely, someone wouldn't deliberately mislead someone, right" is an actual comment I was told. And Jesus wept.

Outlaw the irresponsible behaviors of the companies controlling the channels. (Not outlaw the speech of the citizens, of course.)

> since all the other valid complaints about TikTok, including intimate surveillance, also apply to TikTok's counterpart US Big Tech products

Big Tech aren’t Chinese. There is no public coalition civically engaged against Big Tech’s surveillance. There is a solid bloc concerned about China.

If you want to regulate surveillance capitalism—and I do—convince people to care about the issue (and call their electeds and vote).

> If you want to regulate surveillance capitalism—and I do—convince people to care about the issue (and call their electeds and vote).

But the people being targeted by the platform are all watching videos telling them how their votes don't count, the deep state, and other things to encourage people to believe the system does not work. It is the absolute ultimate anti-democratic tool I have ever seen.

> the people being targeted by the platform are all watching videos telling them how their votes don't count, the deep state, and other things to encourage people to believe the system does not work

Sure, but they have the right to self select out of the civic process (as well as to hear and repeat such things). I wouldn’t support this bill if TikTok.com were going to be blocked; the speech still has a right to the light of day.

TIL tiktok.com was a thing. I had assumed it was app only. <shrug>

> I wouldn’t support this bill if TikTok.com were going to be blocked

Do we have anything other than "it wasn't explicitly called out in the bill" to back this up? There are a lot of catchall clauses built into the bill which could easily cover the website as well.

> Do we have anything other than "it wasn't explicitly called out in the bill" to back this up

The specificity of the enforcement language, the First Amendment, how Trump’s attempts floundered, et cetera. The closest thing that could happen is the domain is seized and it winds up behind TikTok.cn.

> The specificity of the enforcement language, the First Amendment, how Trump’s attempts floundered, et cetera

All of which can be argued for the app as well. Frankly, I'd want something a bit more specific. Especially since the government has used vague laws and language to quite effectively nuke specific websites before.

The thing that could happen is TikTok being findable only at 205.251.194.210 or its ipv6 equivalent.

Would you support regulating or banning a conspiracy theory website, hosted in AWS US East 2?

I don't like the content, but I would NOT support banning it.

To me, there are things that a fun to play what if with for entertainment purposes and hanging out while puff-puff-passing, but only if there's a strong link to reality with the individual reading it. For those without that link and they conspiracy seems tangible that they accept that as their reality it is no longer entertainment.

With the dumbing down of critical thinking in education, things that get pushed on the interwebs become much more accepted as normal instead of being able to say maybe someone is pushing an agenda instead. The ability of someone being a shill and not know it is just a sad state of affairs.

So you'd support censorship if enough people took it seriously. It's a good thing the government has never lied and said something was a conspiracy theory when it was actually true. What was that guy's name? Snedword Owden?

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