Reciprocity is key. Google and Facebook and most Western web services are blocked in China.
If that is the case, then there should be no complaint with blocking Bytedance/other Chinese apps in the West.
If that is the case, then there should be no complaint with blocking Bytedance/other Chinese apps in the West.
Geroge Orwell - Proposed preface to Animal Farm, first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Lets see what the next chapter is; as you said reciprocity is key ...
If you want true reciprocity there, China would either need to stop subsidizing their carmakers, or the US would need to add heavy tariffs to their cars to level the playing field.
The better analogy would be disrupting the Taliban's opium supply routes, but allowing allied warlords to continue selling it freely to finance their operations.
Nothing in this world is black and white.
Edit: for those downvoting me, Google literally shut down their China operations because they were unwilling to comply with censorship requirements. Conversely, Google and other US companies seem completely willing to comply with national security letters that compel them to spy on non-US persons, which should make other countries where US companies operate equally uneasy.
The issue here is probably caused by the requirement for an ICP recordal which requires removal of violating user-generated content within 15 minutes, which is probably a very tight deadline, probably coupled with a strong false positive rate which is why said companies are also hesitant to introduce automation.
It could also be argued that Tiktok is not completely value-aligned with US interests, although this has not been provably shown and whatever we have thus far is speculative.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
Microsoft Bing has been merrily operating in China for a very long time: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-03-07/microsoft...
And the reason behind that? Copy from other comments, "So China can't spy on Americans and astroturf propaganda", swap China/America
The Chinese versions of these services are walled off from the rest of the world (otherwise the ICP license probably ends up applying to the worldwide service), so this is not even a plausible explanation.
Further, asserting that the requirements imposed by the ICP recordal as being equivalent to following laws in other democracies is laughable; since most democracies make considerations towards good faith motives towards following a law even though there might be misses otherwise, not to mention the kind of content being censored.
Even one that just scrapes Yahoo or something.
These platforms certainly do censor content. They have large teams globally that do just that.
You are spreading the misinformation. Google can't keep up with the censorship shit and gave up as stated in their official blog
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
> a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results
> We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn
People seem to forget Google had a notorious record a terrible customer service. And China always demand more.
(As I heard it, the legend is mostly attributed to Sergey pushing for it, and every time I've heard Eric talk about it it felt there was some disdain there, so I would agree with you that Larry was probably convinced also, otherwise Sergey alone wouldn't have pulled it off.)
Bad things happen when the state controls everything.
You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness.
As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy.
Can you explain this better without the assumption that it is self-evident?
It feels like a tautology because the opposing viewpoint is a very simple hypocrisy. If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
Tiktok is not banning certain topics, as other platforms do
The elephant in the room, is that content on Tiktok is served algorithmicaly, so if majority of population prefer to watch brainwash content, it's due to their choice, not algorithm's
Oh but they do, or at the very least carefully steer what you see by demoting certain subjects; don't forget that only in 2020 their internal moderator policies were leaked, telling them to suppress posts by ugly, poor and disabled people [0], or suppress streams that "harmed national order" or "defamed civil servants". Sure, this was the Chinese branch of tiktok, and the US / EU based version has distanced themselves from it - already mostly being its own platform. But this is where they came from barely four years ago.
[0] https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...
Did you ever saw on TikTok videos about Tiananmen Square, pro-democracy protest before covid or generally videos from handicapped people?
> content on Tiktok is served algorithmicaly, ... due to their choice, not algorithm's Mixed, no production algorithm is without fingers on the scale.
Also, Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about.
If you can show evidence of that you should give it to the U.S. government, because it has repeatedly said there is no evidence of such and any threat remains hypothetical.
Tens of millions of teenage Americans are addicted to it is the evidence. Chinese don't allow their kids to waste all day long on stupid douyin, Americans don't have such luxuries, as tons of red necks are going to jump up and label it as anti free speech if you want something similar. As a result, you see Chinese kids spend time on STEM subjects, building toy robots and learning how to code AI stuff while American kids are all dreaming to be the most popular influencer on social media.
The whole system is an algorithm carefully designed. Let's just be honest. btw, Chinese national posting from China here, you'd be seeing me protesting in the Tiananmen Square if some American social media apps manage to waste Chinese teens time while being carefully restricted in the US for their own kids. It is just shocking to see it takes almost a decade for the US to actually start doing something concrete.
So it's Chinas fault that the US doesn't have the same laws restricting social media content and screentime for children? Or, if it is the red necks fault, then how does 'TikTok is spreading CCP propaganda' follow from 'US red necks oppose laws that are anti free speech'? It seems you're skipping some steps to get to that conclusion.
https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-...
Not sure how creditable their research is, but I’d place it above random news articles.
So instead of arguing the U.S. social media has an anti-China bias, they argued that it's the evidence of TikTok being more pro-China.
Using American social media as the control group for neutrality on China is absolutely insane.
The most likely cause is that TikTok is just a lot less political and more international than YT and Instagram.
For rest of the world, people do not automatically associate words like "Xinjiang" to "Chinese government oppression", the fact that they expect that to be the top result can be argued that American media is the one manipulating information.
On TickTock, views to likes ratio for anti China content was 87% lower despite higher upvotes on TickTock anti China content. Read page 4 suppression on anti China content.
That alone shows the algorithmic alone isn’t selecting results and they are instead engaging in propaganda. The credibility question in my mind is in regards to how they are classifying videos and other bits you don’t see, but that’s a deeper question than the methodology.
That wholly depends on what are the other platforms. Meta's platforms for example are pretty heavy handed in their censorship:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
And Youtube is not that much better.
To be fair, some of the same voices that get censored on US platforms are also getting censored on TikTok (though I currently cannot find the posts or articles that highlighted the issue)
Except the whole reason for the TikTok bill is that information/speech will be under Chinese government control on TikTok and that can be weaponized.
So make up your mind, if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed.
If you say it's not about information suppression, then you can't use the "Chinese propaganda" argument, which is used by pretty much all ban supporters.
>This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
That's exactly what it is.
Eliminating weaponized propaganda is not even a little bit close to suppressing freedom of speech. Your argument falls apart there, like completely.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-...
I don't think you know what the First Amendment is. Not only does it guarantee freedom of expression, but also freedom to receive other's expression and speech.
The U.S. government is not allowed to ban any foreign books, movies, or even propaganda.
I really wish people like you do a little bit research before making such a confident statement like that.
Not really, which is the whole point of censoring TikTok.
As a Russian people from the West saying how it's total censorship and totalitarianism amuse me.
And I see how totalitarian and censored regimes are using of the lack of censorship with great success.
That's the arguments right wingers make about why flag burning should be a crime as there are other ways to express displeasure with the country it represents. IIRC, Robert Bork was a proponent of this line of thinking.
>This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control
This is literally like this, and done precisely due to the lack of control due to the illegality of overt/direct speech regulation, and the fears that China would elevate content that isn't in the interest of the US in the broadest sense, but that is still legal according to the 1st amendment. The US Government has tremendously more influence on the local/western platforms, and on people who work there. (There is already an appeals court decision about Biden administration overstepping in communicating with online platforms about what content they don't like). The logic goes "We can't regulate speech like we want to, order what we like and what we don't like, but at least we can remove/censor individual owner-editors that we suspect might harbor some harmful intentions. That means no owners from 'evil' countries". That's about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversar...
It's censorship and also import controls and also turning off one propaganda faucet.
> On December 6, 2024, a panel of judges on the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's claims about the constitutionality of the law and upheld it.
Let's see whether SCOTUS barks at it.
My take is that the elite was shocked the American youth is vaning in their Israel support and that they want algorithmic feeds that are sionist. Simple as that.
I think some sort of 'bias' is the term. Narrative bias? Opportunity bias?
'China' was the main reason but Gaza tipped the scale, I would say.
Anyway, I don't think this is the reason for the tiktok ban. The zionists have lost control of the narrative on American platforms too, they know it, and they have no actionable plan for getting it back. I think the tiktok ban is instead motivated by concerns for what a PRC controlled tiktok could do to military recruitment. Military recruitment hinges on appealing to teenagers, making tiktok a particular threat to the American government. Sending teenagers videos of drones dropping grenades on helpless wounded soldiers can't be canceled out by flying cool military jets over sportsball games.
To me it seems that every time a congress critter gets briefed behind closed doors they come out resolved to ban TikTok. Therefore, most likely, the Chinese probably have some insidious goal like profiling every American to ever post online.
There is plenty of other platforms where you will still be able to say whatever you want.
I'm not a fan of it, but I can understand the argument for it.
This is it, and it's so laughably simple that anyone who doesn't get it should check CO levels in their home before arguing.
Either you knew that already and you're making a bad faith argument, or you don't understand the concept of censorship.
They're banning app/news delivery app managed by enemy government
It is not like they're blocking internet, wikipedia
they're banning stupid, memes/brainrot app
The hypocrisy is pretending it was all for "openess" and pointing fingers when other countries did exactly the same for their apps/social media.
If we were even more on the same page generally, then the US would put its undesirable ethnic minorities in reeducation camps.
You don't. This is not a legally protected right in any US jurisdiction. Period.
> This isn't about freedom of speech
Correct, because this isn't speech and "freedom of speech" does not mean what you think it does. The right to freedom of speech enumerated in the US constitution is generally interpreted to mean that the government cannot punish its citizens for speaking out against the government. That's really all you're guaranteed. This has nothing to do with censorship, and in fact censorship in general is quite accepted in US law. You quite plainly do not have the right to unrestricted access to any information you want. No law even suggests that. Just for starters, we regularly ban books at the state level. In some places, you can be arrested for possessing certain materials. Perfectly constitutional.
Freedom of speech does not mean you can say or print anything with no consequences. See libel.
Freedom of speech does not mean you can read or posses any information you want. See classified materials, state secrets, illegal materials such as CSAM.
Freedom of speech means that the government can't put three generations of your family in a concentration camp because you tweeted once that the president sucks.
The problem is people switch between this definition of freedom of speech and the the more general version found in "on liberty" and other philosophical works. If youre talking about what the government is allowed to do sure use the first definition but this conversation started by talking about the second. By subtlety switching from "is this something that is good to do" to "is this something the government is allowed to do" youve derailed the conversation.
Philosophical freedom of speech is much more than what is enumerated in the constitution.
"Just for starters, we regularly ban books at the state level."
We really do not. We sometimes ban them from public school libraries, more usually at the local than state level. A bookstore can sell you any book you care to read including those with written depictions of child sexual abuse, with the limited exception that a locality might try to declare things obscene as being contrary to local standards of decency (but in practice in modern America rarely does).
"See libel."
Libel of public figures requires knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth and even then is a civil offense. There are vestigial criminal libel laws but it's doubtful they're constitutional and no one gets convicted. You can't go to jail for it and no one gets in trouble for reading it.
"See classified materials"
Unless you have a security clearance, you can read all the classified material you want if it's published. You can be punished for disclosing it if you have legal access to it, but not in practice for publishing it in peacetime (see the Pentagon Papers) and you cannot be restrained from publishing it before the fact unless doing so presents a clear and present danger to American public, a standard almost impossible to meet in peacetime.
"illegal materials such as CSAM"
In general you can read all the CSAM you want. You can't look at pictures or video.
Anyway, there's ways and means around getting tiktok from the app stores - especially thanks to efforts in European law that force both Apple and Android to open up their platforms so that consumers can do what they want with their devices.
Do not equate whatever perceived limits the US has with China's limits on free expression.
Imagine same rhetoric by CCP adressing Facebook or YouTube.
This is so revisionist that it's funny. I vividly recall Facebook management celebrating their role in toppling regimes around the world for example the "Arab Spring": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_A... https://www.thewrap.com/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-finding-jo...
I dare you find direct evidence of such quality that Tiktok is trying to do the same in the US.
There is some influence of course but it's not like their existence is at the blessing of the President.
Reuter reported this: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
U.S. social media absolutely are controlled by the U.S. government, and we can, and have been able to get any user data we want from them.
Also a government of a country can change. Being raised in a communist Poland I was quite used to all government officials treating you quite famously badly. This was still pretty much in full swing around 2004 (many years after the all of Communism) when I emigrated to the UK. Then I went back, full time around 2019. Imagine my surprise when I had one of my first dealings with a tax office (I was registering my company for Vat online and I put in a wrong start date) and it wasn't through registered mail requesting I attend in person at so and so time (to wait 3 hours) and be told I'll be getting a fine. Nope, they rang me, on my phone, and asked if I can please amend it. So I thought, wow, they must have employed a new person who hasn't learned how to put people down properly yet. But then in the course of my business I dealt with social services and such and the same pattern repeated. Now, it is not all dancing cats and roses, the juidiciary is still pretty bad I'm told, but it's not so much about corruption these days, more about ineptitude, slowness and doing their own interpretation of the laws, which they aren't allowed to do in non-precedents system(they can continue mainly because of their independence - can't force people to actually obey the law if they are the law without turning it into a dictatorship, so waiting for them to retire seems to be the only option). So things are bit more nuanced than "all government is equally bad".
Not saying this like China is perfect, i just don't understand why people who seemingly aren't professional propagandists seem to have this "everything china does is bad" narrative in their heads. Like any great country, many horrible _and_ wonderful things have been done there but in the US we only talk about the horrible things and it warps everyone's view
Countries pay Gazprom and Ukraine charges Gazprom for transit.
Life is not black and white.
See also https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now/
https://youtu.be/YcVSgYz5SJ8?t=7765
Maritime order (basically a trade alliance, if you join you have more chance to influence it, win-win) and the continental order (buffer zone, extractive/authoritarian, negative-sum).
Of course as the competition is getting fierce one seems to borrow from the other. (Russia is funding itself and its war from trade. And China sold market access in exchange for technology.) And the US is now transitioning from soft-power to pay up or you are out. (Balance of trade, NATO contributions, etc.)
there is a cost for maintaining the US hegemony, Taiwan is being used as an excuse to maximize such cost for the US - China gets to choose when and how to increase tensions, the US has to react accordingly and spend more and more borrowed resources as responses. that is the official policy, a smart one.
The claimed story is that Taiwan is worried if they abandon the "one warring China" policy and openly state they are Independent, that will aggravate China and cause them to push their claim harder, and maybe lead to war.
Taiwan having such a policy is directly because that's the policy China wants everyone else to claim. Notably, Taiwan has taken zero effort to produce a military capable of doing any over-water invasions, which would be absolutely necessary if they actually wanted to do that. Unless you think Taiwan would rely on the USA to invade China for it, which I do not think the US ever wants to do. Our explicit strategy is to own all the islands around China (including Taiwan) and basically blockade China in all but name.
China meanwhile DOES build a military to take over Taiwan, explicitly, including systems designed to sink our carriers and practice targets in the desert. Strictly speaking I'm not concerned about China wanting a viable means to sink our Navy, as China doesn't want to starve to death if we could blockade them, but the buildup around the capability to take Taiwan betrays that it is not a defensive posture.
No it really isn't, and it's certainly not hilarious. Taiwan's position is historic. The government of Taiwan literally used to be the government of the mainland.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-spy-agency-tapped-g...
Of course one has to differentiate between "friendly" and subordinate semi-protectorates.
Sorry can you point out where they are doing this? because banning tiktok certainly is not doing those things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare
I mean that last one doesn't mention any "legally prohibited" whatnots, but if you were suspected of being a commie because of for example being known to read the wrong thing by the House Un-American Activities Committee you'd be in trouble. Definitely chilling effects.
China's level of internet control and censorship does seem to rise to the level of mistreatment (in that they control and shape access to information, in ways that further the interests of state propaganda), but denying Chinese companies (and the Chinese government) market access to American consumers in some spheres seems fine. It's never been a two-way street with China, and I think we should be engaging in a bit of protectionism when it comes to allowing or not allowing Chinese companies to operate here.
If the US government were suppressing particular views or discussion of some topics (as the Chinese government does to their own citizens), then I would be alarmed. But that's not what's happening here; if the TikTok ban goes through, US citizens' free speech rights will not be meaningfully impacted, as there are other platforms that can and will carry the same content.
Banning a foreign company from doing business in your country isn't automatically censorship. There's nuance.
(And beyond all this, I do worry about the Chinese government using TikTok as a platform to influence Western citizens' thought, culture, and politics, for their own purposes. If they're not doing it already, I'd be astonished.)
As someone mentioned above, several officials openly admittted the "ban" is related to palestine-related matirials on TikTok's platform, as opposed to some other platforms.
How many popular revolutions happened during Arab spring that long term lead to more democratic societies? Saudi Arabia learned to just get government employees hired to moderate twitter, and then had their wealth fund help Musk buy it outright.
There's been a lot of change since 2012 in fact.
We have had multiple studies at this point and not a single one concluded that there's any kind of particular manipulation on Tik Tok. Not one. They all conclude that the bias is not different from other platforms.
HBO run a segment on the ban and goes a bit more in depth:
See https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/briefing/tiktok-ban-bill-...
Content about something like Hong-Kong protests or the Tiananmen square are suppressed.
Even the data is often self contradicting.
All we see is that there's much less political discourse on TikTok than ig.
If there's manipulation, the only thing that this study shows is that the manipulation goes towards avoiding politics in general.
Not only that, but the study itself may show the reverse to be true: that IG pushes some narratives more than others.
In fact, the same result can be used to interpret as "strong traces of anti-China manipulation on American social medias".
But teaching people to ask critical questions risks unraveling the fabric of American capitalism ("Hey why is it that the government spends more on healthcare per capita than any other OECD country but with markedly worse outcomes?", "How can we call ourselves the greatest nation on Earth when we are simultaneously the wealthiest nation on the planet and still have such poor health, education and quality of life indicators?"), so we can't have that can we?
We should do that, but reforming our education system will take years or decades. And in any event, any solution that requires everyone to learn or do something or act in a particular way is doomed to fail. Humans just don't work like that.
And even with robust critical thinking skills, people are still susceptible to psychological manipulation. That's never going to change.
How long will it take to do it on a meaningful scale, all while “free-thinkers” (read Chinese and Russian bots) beat the drum of “they’re brainwashing you”?
However, that requires an education system that can be easily updated, and widely rolled out, without being shotgunned by anyone who has already lost their critical thinking ability, who may be in a position in government.
Name a few Chinese tech companies doing the same in the US? Maybe you are suggesting that Chinese should ban Tesla, Apple and Microsoft as well?
I mean if Tiktok did the same thing in the US there probably would be less of an issue, but they are unwilling to allow the same restrictions / oversight as the US companies are subjecting themselves to in China.
do you mean "tit for tat" or something similar?
Sure, but how are you gonna enforce it? Proprietary codebases usually stay...proprietary. Even Telegrams open client doesn't prove shit when it comes to server-side decryption keys and logs. And this, from a black box systems perspective, is a hard thing to make transparent.
Given the history of cryptography we can't even rely on that anymore and have to assume a compromise in the future due to how those elliptic curves (and their seeds) are created.
Even just assuming that Qualcomm doesn't track you with their two GPS domains that are constantly pinged is very naive. And we've also uncovered a history of abuse in CPU backdoors (looking at you, Intel).
So where does transparency have to start? My theory is that without solving capitalism as the bug of democracy we can't have transparency. As long as there is financial incentives, there will be no transparency.
My understanding is that private citizens are still legally allowed to use TikTok if they want, but TikTok isn't allowed to market their product directly to US consumers via App stores. That seems pretty reasonable given China's position on US internet products.
Free trade and openness only works if all parties agree on the rules. If one party is open while the other exploits that openness by selectively opening up only when it benefits them then undermines the principles you believe in.
If we want China to be more open we have to ensure they're playing by the rules and they're not going to do that if we continue to allow them to exploit us.
because TikTok is the epitome of openness? Has never censored any opinion?
This is such a silly strawman. A better example would be that reciprocity would say that if China mistreated our civilians then we should mistreat theirs. Reciprocity doesn't mean "we do whatever China does".
> You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness.
It's not censorship so this also doesn't make sense. They are being forced to be sold. TikTok can exist just fine, just not under control of ByteDance which is de facto under control of the CCP. The basic point here is that the CCP will not be allowed to control a major media arm in the US which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda. If you want to prevent CCP from owning a major media channel which can freely spread CCP propaganda, this is a completely rational means of doing that stands up perfectly to "cursory thought".
> As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy.
I hate violence but sometimes violence is required (see WWII). I don't think we (the US) became the enemy in WWII for engaging in violence.
Good example, and thank god that is unconstitutional.
For example China can arrest American citizens in China without dual process. But we cannot arrest Chinese citizens, or anyone here in the U.S. and just put them to prison without dual process.
Americans in China have no freedom of speech. Should we ban Chinese citizens in the U.S. from speaking freely as well? Again, that is unconstitutional. U.S. constitution protects anyone within the U.S. not just U.S. citizens. Otherwise we can just send someone with a green card to jail without trial.
So your example only serves the counter-argument, which is that reciprocity is not something you should aim for when it comes to human rights.
> which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda.
Since not even the U.S. government has been able to provide any such evidence, and have admitted that the threat is hypothetical, if you have any such evidence you should present it.
There is literally no basis for this belief. Do you have a realistic solution to the gish gallop? Have internet comments proven to follow the most well reasoned with it's own uncertainties or the most rhetorically convincing?
Anyway while I do agree with your statement about censorship vs openness, I do think in the broader sense things need to be done about social media - that is, Tiktok is specifically singled out for being Chinese, but its target audience, addictiveness, usefulness as a propaganda tool, is very much not unique on the market. It was only after Zuckerberg and presumably the SV tech lobbyists raised the issue of Tiktok with Trump and the government that they pulled on the brakes.
But this is where the reciprocity argument comes in; US based services in China are under strict regulations and requirements, to the point where at best they can have a subsidiary in China under Chinese management. But while it's not trivial as a foreign entity to have a presence in the US either (e.g. you need to have or be a US company to be able to sell your software there), it seems more accessible and less restrictive than operating in China; in a sense this move levels the playing field.
Targeted addictive misinformation.
Blocking that source of misinformation is the only logical response.
Reciprocity means that we are not required to allow Chinese propaganda into our children's bedrooms.
We are at war with China and Russia, and we are fighting it with both hands tied behind our backs.
If it was about freedom of speech the gov would have requested all the apps to censor the topics, not banning one app.
Sure, if finding and joining another platform was a difficult thing, that would be a problem. If no other platforms will host your speech, that's a problem. If your audience is significantly reduced in size, then that's a problem.
But none of that will be the case if TikTok is banned.
Except they can't. All of the other apps are under U.S. government control and have engaged in severe censorship on certain topics such as the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Even the politicians who voted for the bill have openly admitted that making Israel looking bad is the reason they are banning TikTok.
This ban effort regained momentum after October 7th, 2023: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-...
Then how are you posting it here ? Isn't this a social media network as well.
As there are other services and the only thing being targeted is foreign ownership by members of a country that blocks our services, then no, I don’t think it’s about censorship.
This wasn’t even a ban on TikTok, bytedance could have sold to an American owner but have refused.
So, you mean this wasn't even a ban, it was just robbery?
Not that I’d fully agree with that vis a vis how international relations between China and the USA work, but it’s definitely a more accurate description
If TikTok were the only game in town, sure, banning it would be censorship. But that's not the case, by a long shot.
b) Removing the platform entirely is not censorship. Especially when everyone will just shift to Instagram, Youtube etc.
c) This was a decision made by the US Congress. It is by definition not authoritarian.
It is, because politicians voted for the bill have openly admitted the Israel-Gaza content is what pushed them to vote for the ban. Instagram, YT, etc are under U.S. control and engage in sufficient self-censorship when it comes the Israel-Gaza conflict in order to make Israel look good.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-...
Clearly the US Congress represents the will of the majority...
Either way, there is a large spectrum between whatever it is and "authoritarian."
The essence of my sentence was to be ironinc about any government institution not really doing what is best for the people but what is best for buisness and power.
Montana has one member of the house per 540,000 people. Delaware has one per 990,000 people. Source: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-ba...