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Comment by soheil | Hacker News Reader

This is such a stupid argument. This is about censorship to American citizens and a conversation about losing their rights as an authoritarian state's victims.

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American citizens can use the multitude of copy cat apps for their freedom of speech.

If it was about freedom of speech the gov would have requested all the apps to censor the topics, not banning one app.

It is about freedom of speech, the freedom of China's speech within USA.

Part of what constitutes freedom of speech is freedom to hear what someone has to state which is constitutionally protected. The fact that there might be other venues where someone can produce speech, does not mean that the right to hear what someone has to say has not been denied.

Yes, it absolutely does mean that, in this case.

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.

They don’t have enough bandwidth to compete with TikTok. There’s a network effect, like YouTube, iMessage, etc.

>multitude of copy cat apps for their freedom of speech.

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-...

You believe the famously pro-Israel 4chan /pol/ is under US Government control?

> have engaged in severe censorship on certain topics such as the Israel-Gaza conflict

Then how are you posting it here ? Isn't this a social media network as well.

If TikTok is the only place you can speak and there aren’t equivalent services then it sounds like it needs to be broken up on the basis of being a monopoly.

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.

You’ll find most of TikTok content on YouTube shorts or on Facebook. Content provider often don’t even bother getting rid of the TikTok watermark.

> 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?

I legitimately believe that classifying this as robbery is a lot closer to the truth than classifying it as censorship.

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

No American will be censored if TikTok is banned. They will simply use (or go back to using) one of the many other non-TikTok alternatives to talk about the same things.

If TikTok were the only game in town, sure, banning it would be censorship. But that's not the case, by a long shot.

This is clearly about censorship, as anyone living outside of the United States can see. It's actually pretty obvious that they're banning the one platform where US oligarchs have no say over what goes viral and what doesn't.

And instead you can get all the spoonfed Chinese propaganda, like all the pro-Hamas content...

a) Using TikTok is not a right.

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.

> This was a decision made by the US Congress. It is by definition not authoritarian.

Clearly the US Congress represents the will of the majority...

Not how US “democracy” works. The majority in Congress represent a minority of the population.

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...

The US Congress is not supposed to represent the will of the majority. It is supposed to represent "the will of the people," which is distinct, by design. The actual implementation might have imperfections but tries to reflect the "will of the people" as the framers interpreted it.

Either way, there is a large spectrum between whatever it is and "authoritarian."

The house represents the people. The Senate represents the powers that be in each state.

Thanks for clarifying, i understand my phrasing have hit a distinction in the american government bodies which I was not aware and willing to step on.

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.

> Removing the platform entirely is not censorship. Especially when everyone will just shift to Instagram, Youtube etc.

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-...

For anyone that has had even moderate experience with TikTok comment moderation, it becomes clear very quickly there's an incredible bias that seemingly disfavours Western interests. This includes calls towards extreme violence that should be banned per their own content policy. I don't think you need to have access to any secret documents to have a good deal of suspicion this platform is being used by foreign actors either directly or indirectly to shape attitudes in the West. If freedom of speech is at stake, protecting TikTok may actually be harmful to that cause.

I don't get why people keep asking for evidence of Chinese government-run influence campaigns on TikTok. It should be obvious that the Chinese government is using TikTok to influence the culture and politics of citizens of other countries. If they are not doing this, then they are wildly foolish and incompetent.

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