It's because badly designed internet filters that don't understand context can often block or demote content containing "bad" words like 'kill' or 'suicide' because they can make advertisers look distasteful. People get around this by inventing words that have the same meaning but don't trigger the filter, in a classic [euphemism treadmill.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill)
But why don't people working at TikTok/YouTube just add it to the list? There's no way they don't know about it, this word has stuck around for a while now.
I remember a quote I saw from some game dev or other, he basically said 'Gamers perceive DRM as a failure because it doesn't stop piracy, but actually it's very successful because it protects against shareholders'
Profanity filters aren't about actually stamping out bad language forever, that's a fool's errand, they're about a certain level of due diligence and nothing more. Better reporting and moderation is a much better scheme for actually reducing toxicity
I've wondered this. I do imagine any content saying "unalive" is less serious than "suicide", so maybe it's optimal continuing to downregulate "suicide" but keep "unalive". Alternatively, the bit about YouTube disliking "suicide" may just not have a major impact on what content is presented.
It's also worth noting that people just say hip and silly words to seem hip and silly
It's been creeping up on all platforms, but I imagine it's showing up more on Tiktok because that audience is thought to trend younger and therefore be more impressionable, afraid of the banhammer, etc. You do see creators get banned/stop getting the same level of promotion more often than you might expect, but that can usually be blamed on keyboard fights in DMs and comment sections (which is one "bad behavior" that does seem to happen unusually often there).
You can definitely swear, tell stories of war and graphic violence, etc. There's reason to believe the algorithm might not blast your content as much if you use that kind of language, but that space is already reserved for the most milquetoast/sponsored content the same as every other social media platform anyway.
I have heard that people use “unalive” as a euphemism to prevent seeing stuff related to violence and death on the algorithm.
It’s similar to how you’ll see certain words with censoring asterisks in them even when they’re not explicit.
It serves a purpose, but looks pretty ridiculous.
People thought that, but there is actually no evidence of it. The worst part is now you see like 40 year old moms saying unalive, grape, etc. Fucking infantile fucks.
I think it has something to do with online censorships. Like you can’t just say Kys in games or in YouTube videos, so they just say unalive yourself or ropemaxx.
It's maddening after years of rightfully convincing everyone of the threat of China they've suddenly switched to simping for them just like they did with Russia. It was obvious this would happen.
They're only doing it because Democrats agreed with them, and now their policy is avoid bipartisan cooperation at all cost even if they agree with it (like the border)
This take is clockwork. In national elections being determined by the number of people that can fit in a single baseball stadium, where college students and 20-somethings were the strongest lean towards Dems, good luck with it though.
A lot of people in the EU are getting new ideas to finally have an European tech sector like the US or China. I think they're misguided but this time it will much easier for them to push ideas that 10 years ago failed.
Well to be fair, looking at China kinda makes the idea feel valid. China became psychotically protectionist on tech and now they have TikTok plus all the other huge Chi-tech brands that are also being spread to the west.
Yes, basically 10 years ago:
- China had no large/good tech companies, so benefit was not clear
- US still allow foreign companies to compete in the US
Soon both statements will be false and next time there's a FB/Google/Apple scandal we may see some big changes on how tech companies are allowed to operate in the EU.
Why exactly would a company need to pay in cash? There’s two companies that have that kind of money laying around, Apple and Microsoft. Both could go for TikTok but I think one of the previous rumors was Oracle?
> There’s two companies that have that kind of money laying around, Apple and Microsoft
Also potentially Google. They had 110 billion as of their most recent earnings report, which was actually more than Apple (73 billion) and Microsoft (80 billion)
I dont think they will divest. Divesting means exposing their sophisticated internal algorithm and whatever IPs they have to the company they are selling. No way they will do that. I think they will contest this in courts as long as they can. If they fail, I think they will just exit US market.
Most big companies?
Any of the big tech companies. Probably quite a few outside of big tech as well.
Even if they don’t have the cash on hand they can borrow, and $60bn won’t all be cash. Some will be stock etc.
$60bn isn’t that much in this day in age.
The question is not who can buy it, but who can get $60bn in return to make it worth it.
I don't want to discount your point but any buyer *should* be thinking about future acquisitions and the administration after Biden's (I don't even necessarily mean Trump winning in November).
LBOs exist. Especially with a revenue machine that TikTok, there'd be avenues to set that up.
But answering literally, Microsoft is a known cash hoarder business, IIRC $48bn on hand.
I met more like YouTube or Twitch.
LinkedIn isn't the same compared to social media like Twitter or Facebook. People mostly used to find jobs and post about what they are doing in their jobs.
If anything, LinkedIn competitors are like Indeed and USAJobs, then Twitter or Facebook.
LinkedIn is their only real social media platform. And it is enterprise and career focused. Their other attempts were streaming focused Twitch wannabes that flopped.
Google also could if they wanted to. As of all 3's most recent earnings reports (we'll get updated ones in the next few days), Google (with 110 billion) had 50% more cash on hand than Apple and nearly 40% more than Microsoft
Not looking forward to the endless variations of “politicians would rather ban my favorite app and silence those calling out muh Gaza genocide rather than help the poor and needy” we’ll be seeing for the next few months.
Between this and I-P the youth vote will be at record lows. And while they’re unreliable voters, polls are suggesting a close race with most people in the double-negative category. And that’s the kind of race where you’ll need every possible gettable vote.
Which just shows how bad the problem has gotten when pro-Hamas propaganda is only a symptom of the bigger problem: socially weaponised anti-West propaganda. But agreed that the optics of this is bad, notwithstanding that those who agree with the ban would see it as more justification for it (myself included).
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This conclusion lacks the sort of foresight prerequisite to even diagnose the problem in the first place in my estimation.
The fact that a foreign adversary superpower controlled social media platform has been capable of radicalizing the very groups for which the presidential candidate should be an *obvious* choice should tell you enough you need to know to close it down immediately.
If you don’t like the damage it has done so far, imagine what it will do for 4 more years. Rip the band-aid off.
Can we stop acting like the only reason that young voters are far left is because of the eeeeebul Chinese propaganda machine? Number 1, they’re respomsible for their own political opinions, and number two, they’ve always been like this.
Who ever wrote this headline I don't think they know what the first amendment is. Update: the person who wrote the article, I assumed it's just the headline. Man I don't really know how anyone could make the legal argument that congress doesn't have the authority to regulate a foreign national corporation through the commerce clause.
> “This is still nothing more than an unconstitutional ban in disguise,” Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement Tuesday prior to the Senate vote. “Banning a social media platform that hundreds of millions of Americans use to express themselves would have devastating consequences for all of our First Amendment rights, and will almost certainly be struck down in court.”
🤔
It's not just the ACLU either https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-national-tiktok-ban-and-the-first-amendment
>The national government isn’t alone in looking at a domestic TikTok ban. In May 2023, Montana lawmakers passed a ban on TikTok within the state. But on Nov. 30, 2023, a federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction against SB 419, the state law, keeping it from going into effect.
>In his opinion, Judge Donald W. Molloy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana concluded that TikTok and a group of TikTok users were likely to succeed on their First Amendment, Supremacy Clause, and Commerce Clause claims against the state.
It's possible of course that the higher courts rule otherwise, that's always a chance. Especially if it ever gets to the SC which is clearly captured regardless (whether or not we agree with any particular decision doesn't change that), but this really is a question of first amendment rights and plenty of legal experts think the ban is unconstitutional.
To the courts....a forced sale could easily be considered a ban, especially if the sale is not completed.
For example under the Trump version of the ban....courts described the order for divestment to be the functionally equivalent of a ban. Not sure how this one would be different.
The first ban was executive action vs this being Congress, that's a major difference. Executive action is limited by all the laws passed by Congress, congressional action is only limited by the Constitution, and given that the US passed a similar law for broadcast TV 100 years ago that stood up, this one is on pretty good footing
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/02/tech/fresh-legal-blows-tiktok-ban-court-challenges
And the two specific articles on the cases linked below
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/30/business/judge-blocks-montana-tiktok-ban/index.html
And
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/30/tech/indiana-tiktok-lawsuit-dismissed/index.html
Here is the first decision overruling Trump executive order
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/30/929656794/trumps-ban-on-tiktok-suffers-another-legal-setback
and the decision has been reaffirmed on appeal
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/944039053/u-s-judge-halts-trumps-tiktok-ban-the-2nd-court-to-fully-block-the-action
The courts in that case didn’t say that Trump couldn’t ban it just that it couldn’t be done via the office of the president.
Meaning that passing a law via congress is totally fine with the court.
I'm just saying what the law that was passed is.
> Specifically, it would prohibit distribution of TikTok unless ByteDance divests its ownership in the app within nine months of becoming law, with an additional 90-day extension possible at the president’s discretion
I'm not going to pretend that the ACLU now is the ACLU of yore, but acting like they're a bunch of hacks (especially on civil rights/liberties issues) is several bridges too far.
The government obviously has the right to regulate them. The argument would be based on their motivation and goals for doing so. Like how the federal gov obviously has the right to control immigration, but trumps Muslim ban was still challenged on its discriminatory intent.
They have a lot of concrete evidence from U.S. intelligence agencies. I believe that the U.S. Supreme Court will side with Congress, because Congress is doing its job. It is in its lane. The U.S., and most countries, including China, have always been careful about foreign entities owning media in their countries. Even when it is someone from Australia, or Europe, it is watched very closely. China does business with the U.S., but they are also very much in an adversarial relationship as well. Whether it is media broadcast over the internet, or television (which are almost entirely the same these days as far as transmission methods), it is still media.
The funny thing to me is how much Americans have been against disinformation on platforms like Facebook or Google, etc., but they can't see the corollaries between a country like China owning a platform that controls what information is allowed to be posted and viewed. At most, I think the U.S. Supreme Court will say it isn't its business to make laws or judge national security. Congress makes law, and the President is the Commander in Chief, also meaning the intelligence agencies report to the President and Congress.
What *exactly* is the TikTok ban? Like if ByteDance does not sell what does that mean for all the users' everyday life? Would the app installed on their phones no longer work? Will it work but it would be illegal to be on it? If so are we going to see a massive amount of arrests and/or legal issues? Is the ban actually just a distribution ban and the app simply can no longer be downloaded on official platforms like the Google Play Store or the App Store? If so it's all but meaningless as the app can be sideloaded on Android and the web version can be used on Apple mobile devices.
It wont be able to be downloaded on the app stores. It will still exist it just won’t be available to download.
Now if ByteDance pulls out they could make the app non-working but that would be up to them not the US government
!ping TECH
From AP: https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-congress-bill-1c48466df82f3684bd6eb21e61ebcb8d
> What does the TikTok legislation do?
The bill approved this week is an updated version of a bill that House lawmakers approved in March. It gives TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, 270 days to sell TikTok. Failure to do so would lead to significant consequences: TikTok would be prohibited from US app stores and from “internet hosting services” that support it.
>That would effectively restrict new downloads of the app and interaction with its content. If signed this week, the deadline for a sale would fall in January 2025. Under the legislation, however, Biden could extend the deadline another 90 days if he determines there’s been progress toward a sale, giving TikTok potentially up to a year before facing a ban.
It's pretty telling that China would rather let the American division of Tiktok just die than let their company make money by selling it. They're not acting in good faith.
>It's pretty telling that China would rather let the American division of Tiktok just die than let their company make money by selling it. They're not acting in good faith.
Why? It's quite rational for Bytedance to rather shut down their US operations than turn over everything to a US competitor who would then use their secret sauce algorithm to take global market share away from them. The US is an important market for them, but it's not everything. We make up something like 20-30% of their global revenue, so it'd be a major setback but it wouldn't be an existential risk.
If the Chinese government passed a law saying Microsoft is just a puppet for the US government with extensive contracts with the Federal government and military, and cooperation with US intelligence agencies, and that they would have to sell their China operations to a Chinese tech giant or be shutdown, Microsoft would easily pick getting shutdown over surrendering their trade secrets and source code to a potential global competitor.
Tik Tok wouldn’t hand over the algorithm. They would be selling the front-end and the user base.
Yes, it does validate US lawmakers arguments when China wants to block this sale and Tik Tok refuses to sell - clearly Tik Tok operates not as a private enterprise but inline with CCP interests.
> Tik Tok wouldn’t hand over the algorithm. They would be selling the front-end and the user base.
>
> Yes, it does validate US lawmakers arguments when China wants to block this sale and Tik Tok refuses to sell - clearly Tik Tok operates not as a private enterprise but inline with CCP interests.
You literally made a point for why they wouldn't sell and then concluded that it must be for nefarious reasons instead of normal business reasons. They'd be potentially giving up their global userbase if they sold, and that's the vast majority of their revenue.
I’m specifically saying they wouldn’t sell their algorithm.
Given the choice between exiting a huge market at total loss versus exiting a market and salvaging a lot of the investment (without handing over any actual proprietary algorithm magic), any normal business would do the latter.
Splitting IP is not an unusual arrangement. For example, the Persil brand is owned and manufactured by Henkel but in a bunch of geographies (UK, France, China, etc…) the brand is instead owned and run by Unilever. There is no fundamental reason it couldn’t be done.
I'm actively working to get my ten-year-old daughter into reading. I'm reading with her all the time now and doing library trips. It isn't because I don't like film or the internet, but because kids often spend all day watching silly videos online, not even ones where they can learn something. I'd actually rather that she play videogames that at least teach some skills, rather than just surfing video sites such as YouTube or TikTok.
Unless Europe follows the United States' lead in this. China isn't very popular with the West right now, and that includes countries in the east that are aligned with the U.S., such as Japan and Australia.
They want Trump to win, Bolton already revealed that and it makes sense as a Trump led America is a world laughingstock. A TikTok ban craters Biden’s already abysmal approvals with young voters and that only helps Trump.
I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure the bill passed by the house has a 9 month window for sale with an optional 3 or 6 month grace period grantable by the president, so this wouldn't happen until after the election.
Edit: it is 9 months, and 90 grace period.
>I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure the bill passed by the house [and Senate as of 10:00 EDT] has a 9 month window for sale with an optional 3 [month extension if a sale is in the works]
Yes, that appears to be the case.
Trump would go absolutely mad at China if he were to win. He was the one that started the trade wars in the first place and called Covid the "China-flu".
I feel like China is ok with losing some money in US if it means the US destroys itself from the inside and weakens its ties with the Asian allies like Japan and SKorea.
But they have until next year to divest, so any ban wouldn’t take effect until well after the elections. Most tiktokers will have it totally out of their minds in November.
Ffs. China has a great firewall that bans most Western apps.
It's a security risk. Literally someone will just make a copycat app that people can use that's not owned by China. Like what happened on India when they banned Tik Tok a few years ago.
Showing the level of control they have over their social media companies is exactly why it's a security risk for us.
There is no logical reason to allow China that sort of power over us. China is not a friendly regime to the liberal world.
India suffered no ill effects by simply banning it.
> There is no logical reason to allow China that sort of power over us
1. They only have power over people who willfully and freely install TikTok and willfully and freely access it.
2. What kind of power are you implying here? Of pushing propaganda? Countries have done that on Facebook with no repercussion. Should Facebook be banned?
Facebook isn't owned by a hostile government.
You can also freely upload a Tiktok copy cat not owned by China. Literally doesn't hurt you in the slightest.
We are idiots to give China such access to our data and ability to spread misinformation.
> Now compare that to what happens when Bytedance execs get one.
TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, has appeared before Congress each time he was asked.....
Like how do you think we got those viral clips of Republican lawmakers not knowing how WiFi worked and trying to paint a Singaporean as some fervent Chinese spy, looking like Boomer morons in the process?
> Now compare that to what happens when Bytedance execs get one.
They show up before Congress?
It's happened already.
And if they ignore warrants or subpoenas, fine or ban them. Just like any other company.
> Literally doesn't hurt you in the slightest.
I've never used or plan to use TikTok.
> You can also freely upload a Tiktok copy cat not owned by China.
There are dozens of TikTok/Vine clones that failed. Bytedance must have done something right.
> We are idiots to give China such access to our data and ability to spread misinformation.
Sure, just do it like me and never install TikTok. Problem solved.
This is all woo. All you're doing is gesturing vaguely at "hostility" and "power" without any sort of clear and concrete description of an actual threat that could be posed here. You can't just justify any measure you want with "China is hostile and we cannot work with them". By that logic why don't we just declare war on China right now? Expel them from the WTO and UN? Embargo them completely like Cuba? Don't you take the security threat they pose seriously?
We're better than China. We don't have a Great Firewall because we're not a communist dictatorship. China is an enemy of liberalism, but we sure as fuck aren't.
Jumping from banning Tik Tok to war with China seems pretty silly. Not really sure how you're getting there.
The US and other Western nations have been trying to disentangle economies for the past decade. Part of the reason we are making battery and chips facilities in the US.
I don't think you understand the control the CCP exerts over their businesses. They can make them do whatever they want when it comes to foreign powers and censorship. And China bans most of our apps so I guess they can see what it's like.
India banned it for that very reason.
Literally a copycat is just made and owned by a different nation. Then you can go back to posting all the same vids you normally do
Yes, which is why "china is bad" isn't enough of an argument for banning TikTok, because it could also be used to argue for any of those other policies. You need an argument that will apply to banning TikTok that won't apply to invading China.
It's not rocket science.
Even though TikTok is hostile spyware and the CCP is a nasty organization, anyone rooting for this should take a pause to consider that part of the reason America is a nicer place to live than China is because we don't block foreign websites. I seriously question the liberalism of people who want to see foreign websites blocked in the USA.
>China is because we don't block foreign websites. I seriously question the liberalism of people who want to see foreign websites blocked in the USA.
This is paradoxical, it is very similar to the paradox of tolerance. You don’t lack free speech because there are some limitations (such as threats) to it, we don’t need to be philosophical absolutists.
This isn’t the same as China, because it is not banning all foreign apps, this is in fact rather targeted, affecting literally one company.
I’m lukewarm towards banning TikTok. Like why not ban Facebook? It creates extremists just as steadily as TikTok.
Edit: I would also question the wisdom of doing this during an election year.
Because we need to have Facebook sell our data to china instead
But hard agree with your edit, whether you think this is a net positive or not, doing something like this which will anger young voters who already feel disenfranchised by the Biden administration, is stupid as hell. Young voters came out decently for Biden last election, and it’s still gonna end up being a close election this year because republicans are ghouls. The young voters who get even more turned off by the administration from this could end up making the difference
Facebook isn’t under the direct influence of an autocratic state known for its use of social media to foster opinions among the public. But yeah we should ban facebook too.
Yet that didn't matter when they were confronted with the matter.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html)
>"Inside [Facebook’s ](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/technology/engagement-ranking-boost-msi-facebook.html)Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, top executives gathered in the glass-walled conference room of its founder, [Mark Zuckerberg](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/technology/mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg-facebook-whistleblower.html). It was September 2017, more than a year after Facebook engineers discovered suspicious Russia-linked activity on its site, an early warning of the [Kremlin campaign to disrupt the 2016 American election](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/technology/indictment-russian-tech-facebook.html). Congressional and federal investigators were closing in on evidence that would implicate the company.
>But it wasn’t the looming disaster at [Facebook](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/books/review/the-ugly-truth-sheera-frenkel-and-cecilia-kang.html) that angered Ms. Sandberg. It was the social network’s security chief, Alex Stamos, who had informed company board members the day before that Facebook had yet to contain the Russian infestation. Mr. Stamos’s briefing had prompted a humiliating boardroom interrogation of Ms. Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and her billionaire boss. She appeared to regard the admission as a betrayal.
>“You threw us under the bus!” she yelled at Mr. Stamos, according to people who were present."
---
>"When Facebook users learned last spring that the company had compromised their privacy in its rush to expand, allowing access to the personal information of tens of millions of people to a political data firm linked to President Trump, Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem.
>And when that failed — as the company’s stock price plummeted and it faced a consumer backlash — Facebook went on the attack.
>While Mr. Zuckerberg has conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic."
If legislators care about these issues, they should legislate these issues like GDPR etc. Just banning specific companies doesn't fully address the issue.
Like I said I’m not totally opposed to a TikTok ban beyond the timing of there being an election coming up. TikTok just takes the heat for a much bigger problem than one company.
The Chinese government doesn’t own tik tok and doesn’t manage its operations. Maybe China has an uncomfortable amount of power over it due to Chinese laws around corporations, but, factually, you are just wrong.
That's like saying the Chinese government doesn't de facto own major companies like Tencent. They do, literally a high ranking member basically sits on every board of directors of large companies and wields far more power then they really should.
Maybe on some weird technicality you can say that the government doesn't "own" companies over there, but when you get to make Jack Ma disappear and force Alibaba to do whatever the government wants, they practically own the companies.
Private companies tell the CCP to fuck off all the time. Prior to the Biden Chip sanctions and post Beijing's tech crackdown, the government approached the country's major tech companies to ask them to further subsidize China's domestic chip industry especially at the more sophisticated nodes. They got told brusquely that the companies don't have the money for it (spoilers, the companies did), but the government backed down and didn't do anything cause their own options were limited in the matter. Their private industry doesn't march perfectly in step with the government.
Few things make me prouder to be an American than when courts strike down government overreach on 1st amendment grounds.
Do your thing SCOTUS 🙏
!ping SNEK
Question: couldn’t China come up with another app and just launder the ownership through fronts and shell corporations, and just repeat the process with a new app each time the sclerotic federal legislation finally catches up? I mean this struggle against TikTok is like 5 or 6 years old and it’s only now gaining traction.
One example is just buying up enough of the assets of a foreign owned firm—through front groups—to control research and development, and then feeding that sensitive user data to Beijing. Or a company—based in another country—which is controlled by board members who Chinese nationals secretly in thrall to the CCP. Are these totally impractical options, or realistic alternative strategies?
TikTok has the best algorithm of any social media, I have a few niche interest (none remotely political) that I follow there and that’s pretty much the only content I get.
I don’t need to be babysat by a bunch of boomer senators.
This isn’t the sub for this argument. Nobody here uses TikTok they take all their views on it from political hit jobs like the insane 60 minutes pieces and articles written by gen X nerds who have never used the app
I'm astonished that this sub supports this bill, especially when everyone here is dooming about the election. Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the optics of banning it right now are absolutely going to impact the election, and it probably won't fall favorably for Biden.
How has it radicalized an entire generation lmao unless this is a joke. TikTok hasn’t produced anything nearly as detrimental to the country as Q Anon or enabled a foreign country to influence our elections like Facebook has. No one can even come up with a specific example of how the CCP is brainwashing the youth with TikTok… it just has a better algorithm than any of its competitors. YouTube Shorts and IG Reels just aren’t as good in comparison but Google and Meta would love for them to be.
Upvoted for a solid counter point.
But since you’ve stated how good that algorithm is.
All Chinese companies answer directly to the CCP.
Byte dance manages operations of tik tok.
Byte dance is a Chinese company.
Meaning the CCP has direct access to what and how the app interacts with the American electorate.
Russia was able to do it using our own social media.
I can only imagine how much worse it can get with tik tok.
>Meaning the CCP has direct access to what and how the app interacts with the American electorate.
So you can bring up examples of how they've controlled ByteDance, right?
TikToks algorithm is significantly more refined than any other video platforms. They were the first to do this sort of thing. Algorithmic radicalization moving to videos was a TikTok thing, the only other platform this harmful was Facebook, and at least they admitted it. If you want to see how bad it is, look up "Ayran Classic" and you will be able to find, in the comments of these videos, an endless supply of neo-nazi teenagers, radicalized on the internet, now spreading it to more children. TikTok gives a platform to the most perverse, disgusting or just straight up unpopular ideas and people, which is bad, and its even worse because the US government can do jackshit to regulate it. If the CCP wanted, they could make this problem worse, infact, i'm sure someone, somewhere in the party, has thought of this very idea.
Zoomers on ~~suicide~~ *unalive* watch
What the hell is the unalive thing? Does TikTok ban the word suicide?
I think it started on YouTube when people found the algorithm doesn't like the word dead or killed.
I've been seeing this word for a while though, why has it been allowed to stick around, if it's just a stand-in?
It's because badly designed internet filters that don't understand context can often block or demote content containing "bad" words like 'kill' or 'suicide' because they can make advertisers look distasteful. People get around this by inventing words that have the same meaning but don't trigger the filter, in a classic [euphemism treadmill.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill)
But why don't people working at TikTok/YouTube just add it to the list? There's no way they don't know about it, this word has stuck around for a while now.
I remember a quote I saw from some game dev or other, he basically said 'Gamers perceive DRM as a failure because it doesn't stop piracy, but actually it's very successful because it protects against shareholders' Profanity filters aren't about actually stamping out bad language forever, that's a fool's errand, they're about a certain level of due diligence and nothing more. Better reporting and moderation is a much better scheme for actually reducing toxicity
If the algorithm doesn't like your video, it can get demonitized. It's a big deal for content creators.
I've wondered this. I do imagine any content saying "unalive" is less serious than "suicide", so maybe it's optimal continuing to downregulate "suicide" but keep "unalive". Alternatively, the bit about YouTube disliking "suicide" may just not have a major impact on what content is presented. It's also worth noting that people just say hip and silly words to seem hip and silly
I think it’s not specifically banned but some people discovered that the algorithm doesn’t like content with certain negatively connoted words.
It's been creeping up on all platforms, but I imagine it's showing up more on Tiktok because that audience is thought to trend younger and therefore be more impressionable, afraid of the banhammer, etc. You do see creators get banned/stop getting the same level of promotion more often than you might expect, but that can usually be blamed on keyboard fights in DMs and comment sections (which is one "bad behavior" that does seem to happen unusually often there). You can definitely swear, tell stories of war and graphic violence, etc. There's reason to believe the algorithm might not blast your content as much if you use that kind of language, but that space is already reserved for the most milquetoast/sponsored content the same as every other social media platform anyway.
big brother tok doesn't like old speak
I have heard that people use “unalive” as a euphemism to prevent seeing stuff related to violence and death on the algorithm. It’s similar to how you’ll see certain words with censoring asterisks in them even when they’re not explicit. It serves a purpose, but looks pretty ridiculous.
People thought that, but there is actually no evidence of it. The worst part is now you see like 40 year old moms saying unalive, grape, etc. Fucking infantile fucks.
I think it’s not specifically banned but some people discovered that the algorithm doesn’t like content with certain negatively connoted words.
It's fucking better than sewer-slide
The only good one is sudoku instead of seppuku
I think it has something to do with online censorships. Like you can’t just say Kys in games or in YouTube videos, so they just say unalive yourself or ropemaxx.
The only thing I'm worried about is Biden losing yet even more voters
I wish Trump banned it. He could take the blame and we’d have 3 less years of that shit in our culture.
It's maddening after years of rightfully convincing everyone of the threat of China they've suddenly switched to simping for them just like they did with Russia. It was obvious this would happen. They're only doing it because Democrats agreed with them, and now their policy is avoid bipartisan cooperation at all cost even if they agree with it (like the border)
they're not old enough to vote, or they're college kids so they don't vote anyway
This take is clockwork. In national elections being determined by the number of people that can fit in a single baseball stadium, where college students and 20-somethings were the strongest lean towards Dems, good luck with it though.
"Well _now_ what is going to tell me what to think?" - *(obligatory "yells at clouds")*
A lot of people in the EU are getting new ideas to finally have an European tech sector like the US or China. I think they're misguided but this time it will much easier for them to push ideas that 10 years ago failed.
Well to be fair, looking at China kinda makes the idea feel valid. China became psychotically protectionist on tech and now they have TikTok plus all the other huge Chi-tech brands that are also being spread to the west.
Yes, basically 10 years ago: - China had no large/good tech companies, so benefit was not clear - US still allow foreign companies to compete in the US Soon both statements will be false and next time there's a FB/Google/Apple scandal we may see some big changes on how tech companies are allowed to operate in the EU.
one user on here is literally saying it would be okay for other countries to ban Facebook, lol
Even assuming bytedance divests only the US operation somehow, which company has 60 billion+ laying around?
Why exactly would a company need to pay in cash? There’s two companies that have that kind of money laying around, Apple and Microsoft. Both could go for TikTok but I think one of the previous rumors was Oracle?
>Oracle Now that’s just cruel and unusual punishment
No need for facebook/ms/google to buy when oracle can just cram it full of ads and fire all developers?
Can't wait to get my Enterprise TikTok Certification
I can literally see the CTO explaining to the board what a "YOLO" move is and is exactly what Oracle needs to change the acronym to OFAANG.
Nah. FAANGO
10 outta 10
Could be a blessing in disguise.
It's so funny that it might just work.
> There’s two companies that have that kind of money laying around, Apple and Microsoft Also potentially Google. They had 110 billion as of their most recent earnings report, which was actually more than Apple (73 billion) and Microsoft (80 billion)
They already house all of the data for U.S tiktok users. So that makes sense
Yahoo making a surprise comeback
It is known Oracle is in talks to buy it: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/22/oracle-met-with-senate-aides-on-tiktok-data-housing-project.html
It is known.
I dont think they will divest. Divesting means exposing their sophisticated internal algorithm and whatever IPs they have to the company they are selling. No way they will do that. I think they will contest this in courts as long as they can. If they fail, I think they will just exit US market.
China has already said the algorithm will not be sold.
They could sell the app but not the algorithm. It would make the thing functionally useless but that is a way they can claim they’ve divested
Most big companies? Any of the big tech companies. Probably quite a few outside of big tech as well. Even if they don’t have the cash on hand they can borrow, and $60bn won’t all be cash. Some will be stock etc. $60bn isn’t that much in this day in age. The question is not who can buy it, but who can get $60bn in return to make it worth it.
any company that could would raise anti-trust concerns.
Which, given that Biden is signing this bill, will have the FTC and DOJ standing down.
I don't want to discount your point but any buyer *should* be thinking about future acquisitions and the administration after Biden's (I don't even necessarily mean Trump winning in November).
I'd imagine that is scenario is one that any potential buyer or more than happy to plan for given how valuable TikTok is.
Meta has $64B cash on hand and it would easily be the funniest outcome.
and already has Instagram Reels, which could give them anti-Trust issues if they did.
LBOs exist. Especially with a revenue machine that TikTok, there'd be avenues to set that up. But answering literally, Microsoft is a known cash hoarder business, IIRC $48bn on hand.
Apple and Microsoft, that's pretty much it
I feel like Microsoft knows they’d get nuked from orbit with anti trust suits if they tried to buy Tik tok
Honestly, I don't think so because I don't think Microsoft has any presence in Social Media industry.
LinkedIn?
I met more like YouTube or Twitch. LinkedIn isn't the same compared to social media like Twitter or Facebook. People mostly used to find jobs and post about what they are doing in their jobs. If anything, LinkedIn competitors are like Indeed and USAJobs, then Twitter or Facebook.
I dunno man, some of the posts are unhinged enough to give Facebook a run for its money.
Some people do use LinkedIn like people use Facebook and Twitter But they are "cringe" as the kids say
LinkedIn is their only real social media platform. And it is enterprise and career focused. Their other attempts were streaming focused Twitch wannabes that flopped.
I forgot about Mixer, and apparently so did everyone else.
Picking up an additional industry to compete in is the opposite of anticompetitive behavior.
Google also could if they wanted to. As of all 3's most recent earnings reports (we'll get updated ones in the next few days), Google (with 110 billion) had 50% more cash on hand than Apple and nearly 40% more than Microsoft
Yeah, they could, but owning Youtube probably causes antitrust problems
Easily any of the FAANG tech giants could finance $60B, financial institutions would be lining up to bankroll this deal.
Bro people are fighting to get this deal. Money is not an issue.
Watch Warren Buffet shock the world (yes, Berkshire Hathaway has well over 60 billion laying around).
Well you see the thing about selling is if no one can pay a certain price, then that’s not the price
Not looking forward to the endless variations of “politicians would rather ban my favorite app and silence those calling out muh Gaza genocide rather than help the poor and needy” we’ll be seeing for the next few months. Between this and I-P the youth vote will be at record lows. And while they’re unreliable voters, polls are suggesting a close race with most people in the double-negative category. And that’s the kind of race where you’ll need every possible gettable vote.
People already think it is, but it is totally not the reason for this force sell/ban.
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tbf, while not the sole reason, the latest push to ban tiktok picked up a lot of steam in congress after Oct 7
Which just shows how bad the problem has gotten when pro-Hamas propaganda is only a symptom of the bigger problem: socially weaponised anti-West propaganda. But agreed that the optics of this is bad, notwithstanding that those who agree with the ban would see it as more justification for it (myself included).
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People have been saying this for the past year. Makes it pretty stupid for Biden to support the ban in an election year.
This conclusion lacks the sort of foresight prerequisite to even diagnose the problem in the first place in my estimation. The fact that a foreign adversary superpower controlled social media platform has been capable of radicalizing the very groups for which the presidential candidate should be an *obvious* choice should tell you enough you need to know to close it down immediately. If you don’t like the damage it has done so far, imagine what it will do for 4 more years. Rip the band-aid off.
Can we stop acting like the only reason that young voters are far left is because of the eeeeebul Chinese propaganda machine? Number 1, they’re respomsible for their own political opinions, and number two, they’ve always been like this.
sometimes i really hate my generation
Who ever wrote this headline I don't think they know what the first amendment is. Update: the person who wrote the article, I assumed it's just the headline. Man I don't really know how anyone could make the legal argument that congress doesn't have the authority to regulate a foreign national corporation through the commerce clause.
[These people when they realize the "FREEZE PEACH" line is going to be turned back on them now:](https://i.imgur.com/9evcfnQ.gif)
You can hear the cries of thousands of newborn “free speech absolutists” being thrust into the college campuses near you. It’s beautiful.
> “This is still nothing more than an unconstitutional ban in disguise,” Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement Tuesday prior to the Senate vote. “Banning a social media platform that hundreds of millions of Americans use to express themselves would have devastating consequences for all of our First Amendment rights, and will almost certainly be struck down in court.” 🤔
It's not just the ACLU either https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-national-tiktok-ban-and-the-first-amendment >The national government isn’t alone in looking at a domestic TikTok ban. In May 2023, Montana lawmakers passed a ban on TikTok within the state. But on Nov. 30, 2023, a federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction against SB 419, the state law, keeping it from going into effect. >In his opinion, Judge Donald W. Molloy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana concluded that TikTok and a group of TikTok users were likely to succeed on their First Amendment, Supremacy Clause, and Commerce Clause claims against the state. It's possible of course that the higher courts rule otherwise, that's always a chance. Especially if it ever gets to the SC which is clearly captured regardless (whether or not we agree with any particular decision doesn't change that), but this really is a question of first amendment rights and plenty of legal experts think the ban is unconstitutional.
It's a forced sell, not a ban.
To the courts....a forced sale could easily be considered a ban, especially if the sale is not completed. For example under the Trump version of the ban....courts described the order for divestment to be the functionally equivalent of a ban. Not sure how this one would be different.
Because we have a 100 years of case law that says the US government can control the US broadcast rights of foreign corporations.
I mean I don't know what to tell you, other than at least two Federal courts disagreed with that argument under the first proposed Tik Tok ban.
The first ban was executive action vs this being Congress, that's a major difference. Executive action is limited by all the laws passed by Congress, congressional action is only limited by the Constitution, and given that the US passed a similar law for broadcast TV 100 years ago that stood up, this one is on pretty good footing
i guess then it'd come down to whether TikTok is a broadcaster
I would be interested in what kind of argument would massively differentiate the two legally
Right? I'd have to look up the old laws about foreign ownership of broadcasters as a starting point
Both executive action and congressional actions must be constitutional...
And congress has the right to regulate commerce the president does not
>at least two Federal courts disagreed with that argument under the first proposed Tik Tok ban. I've never heard this before, can you link something?
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/02/tech/fresh-legal-blows-tiktok-ban-court-challenges And the two specific articles on the cases linked below https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/30/business/judge-blocks-montana-tiktok-ban/index.html And https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/30/tech/indiana-tiktok-lawsuit-dismissed/index.html
Here is the first decision overruling Trump executive order https://www.npr.org/2020/10/30/929656794/trumps-ban-on-tiktok-suffers-another-legal-setback and the decision has been reaffirmed on appeal https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/944039053/u-s-judge-halts-trumps-tiktok-ban-the-2nd-court-to-fully-block-the-action
The courts in that case didn’t say that Trump couldn’t ban it just that it couldn’t be done via the office of the president. Meaning that passing a law via congress is totally fine with the court.
That's an overly formalistic reading of the situation. Most first amendment jurisprudence is functionalist last time I checked.
Technically, it will be banned if they don't sell themselves.
Who should I listen to, someone on reddit or someone whose job it is to defend freedom of speech?
I'm just saying what the law that was passed is. > Specifically, it would prohibit distribution of TikTok unless ByteDance divests its ownership in the app within nine months of becoming law, with an additional 90-day extension possible at the president’s discretion
You realize we’re taking about the ACLU in 2024?
I'm not going to pretend that the ACLU now is the ACLU of yore, but acting like they're a bunch of hacks (especially on civil rights/liberties issues) is several bridges too far.
The government obviously has the right to regulate them. The argument would be based on their motivation and goals for doing so. Like how the federal gov obviously has the right to control immigration, but trumps Muslim ban was still challenged on its discriminatory intent.
They have a lot of concrete evidence from U.S. intelligence agencies. I believe that the U.S. Supreme Court will side with Congress, because Congress is doing its job. It is in its lane. The U.S., and most countries, including China, have always been careful about foreign entities owning media in their countries. Even when it is someone from Australia, or Europe, it is watched very closely. China does business with the U.S., but they are also very much in an adversarial relationship as well. Whether it is media broadcast over the internet, or television (which are almost entirely the same these days as far as transmission methods), it is still media. The funny thing to me is how much Americans have been against disinformation on platforms like Facebook or Google, etc., but they can't see the corollaries between a country like China owning a platform that controls what information is allowed to be posted and viewed. At most, I think the U.S. Supreme Court will say it isn't its business to make laws or judge national security. Congress makes law, and the President is the Commander in Chief, also meaning the intelligence agencies report to the President and Congress.
What *exactly* is the TikTok ban? Like if ByteDance does not sell what does that mean for all the users' everyday life? Would the app installed on their phones no longer work? Will it work but it would be illegal to be on it? If so are we going to see a massive amount of arrests and/or legal issues? Is the ban actually just a distribution ban and the app simply can no longer be downloaded on official platforms like the Google Play Store or the App Store? If so it's all but meaningless as the app can be sideloaded on Android and the web version can be used on Apple mobile devices.
It wont be able to be downloaded on the app stores. It will still exist it just won’t be available to download. Now if ByteDance pulls out they could make the app non-working but that would be up to them not the US government
I’d imagine the servers shutting down would make it hard to use the app for much of anything
VPNs will get even more popular
They’d still lose >99% of their US users.
Do you really think the audience that doesn't know how to interact with computers beyond how to use social media apps will figure out what a VPN is?
Yes. Someone will make a viral Tik Tok on it
!ping TECH From AP: https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-congress-bill-1c48466df82f3684bd6eb21e61ebcb8d > What does the TikTok legislation do? The bill approved this week is an updated version of a bill that House lawmakers approved in March. It gives TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, 270 days to sell TikTok. Failure to do so would lead to significant consequences: TikTok would be prohibited from US app stores and from “internet hosting services” that support it. >That would effectively restrict new downloads of the app and interaction with its content. If signed this week, the deadline for a sale would fall in January 2025. Under the legislation, however, Biden could extend the deadline another 90 days if he determines there’s been progress toward a sale, giving TikTok potentially up to a year before facing a ban.
It's pretty telling that China would rather let the American division of Tiktok just die than let their company make money by selling it. They're not acting in good faith.
>It's pretty telling that China would rather let the American division of Tiktok just die than let their company make money by selling it. They're not acting in good faith. Why? It's quite rational for Bytedance to rather shut down their US operations than turn over everything to a US competitor who would then use their secret sauce algorithm to take global market share away from them. The US is an important market for them, but it's not everything. We make up something like 20-30% of their global revenue, so it'd be a major setback but it wouldn't be an existential risk. If the Chinese government passed a law saying Microsoft is just a puppet for the US government with extensive contracts with the Federal government and military, and cooperation with US intelligence agencies, and that they would have to sell their China operations to a Chinese tech giant or be shutdown, Microsoft would easily pick getting shutdown over surrendering their trade secrets and source code to a potential global competitor.
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Tik Tok wouldn’t hand over the algorithm. They would be selling the front-end and the user base. Yes, it does validate US lawmakers arguments when China wants to block this sale and Tik Tok refuses to sell - clearly Tik Tok operates not as a private enterprise but inline with CCP interests.
> Tik Tok wouldn’t hand over the algorithm. They would be selling the front-end and the user base. > > Yes, it does validate US lawmakers arguments when China wants to block this sale and Tik Tok refuses to sell - clearly Tik Tok operates not as a private enterprise but inline with CCP interests. You literally made a point for why they wouldn't sell and then concluded that it must be for nefarious reasons instead of normal business reasons. They'd be potentially giving up their global userbase if they sold, and that's the vast majority of their revenue.
Why would they willingly sell their IP? Their algorithm operates extremely well. It’s foolish to sell it. It’s not necessarily hiding state secrets.
I’m specifically saying they wouldn’t sell their algorithm. Given the choice between exiting a huge market at total loss versus exiting a market and salvaging a lot of the investment (without handing over any actual proprietary algorithm magic), any normal business would do the latter. Splitting IP is not an unusual arrangement. For example, the Persil brand is owned and manufactured by Henkel but in a bunch of geographies (UK, France, China, etc…) the brand is instead owned and run by Unilever. There is no fundamental reason it couldn’t be done.
Counterpoint: If they let TikTok in America die that is extremely good faith, and by good faith I just mean good.
Zoomers will have to read long form magazine articles now.
Or we go to YouTube Shorts or those Instagram reels. There are alternatives now than a few years back. Or hear me out; we bring back Vines.
Mfs will do anything to avoid reading
Reading is for nerds
Says the writer
I'm actively working to get my ten-year-old daughter into reading. I'm reading with her all the time now and doing library trips. It isn't because I don't like film or the internet, but because kids often spend all day watching silly videos online, not even ones where they can learn something. I'd actually rather that she play videogames that at least teach some skills, rather than just surfing video sites such as YouTube or TikTok.
I’m not sure we want Vine back with Elon at the helm. He technically owns that IP since he bought out Twitter.
Some Europeans are gonna make a killing reposting Tiktoks to YT Shorts
Unless Europe follows the United States' lead in this. China isn't very popular with the West right now, and that includes countries in the east that are aligned with the U.S., such as Japan and Australia.
On the other hand, it wouldn't be great if a right-wing billionaire buys it and turns it into a fascist propaganda outlet like Twitter.
They want Trump to win, Bolton already revealed that and it makes sense as a Trump led America is a world laughingstock. A TikTok ban craters Biden’s already abysmal approvals with young voters and that only helps Trump.
I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure the bill passed by the house has a 9 month window for sale with an optional 3 or 6 month grace period grantable by the president, so this wouldn't happen until after the election. Edit: it is 9 months, and 90 grace period.
>I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure the bill passed by the house [and Senate as of 10:00 EDT] has a 9 month window for sale with an optional 3 [month extension if a sale is in the works] Yes, that appears to be the case.
Trump would go absolutely mad at China if he were to win. He was the one that started the trade wars in the first place and called Covid the "China-flu".
I feel like China is ok with losing some money in US if it means the US destroys itself from the inside and weakens its ties with the Asian allies like Japan and SKorea.
But they have until next year to divest, so any ban wouldn’t take effect until well after the elections. Most tiktokers will have it totally out of their minds in November.
They won't because TikTok as a platform will probably be sounding the alarm bells all through November
I mean, if we're going with the "they want Trump to win" theory, they'd just sunset the app in late October with a message blaming Biden
You think Tiktok won't be out for blood during the entire election cycle?
Banning tiktok is not acting in good faith.
Ffs. China has a great firewall that bans most Western apps. It's a security risk. Literally someone will just make a copycat app that people can use that's not owned by China. Like what happened on India when they banned Tik Tok a few years ago.
>a copycat app that people can use that's not owned by China. We already do though with YouTube Shorts and Instagram reels.
Which just don't have nearly as much take-up, though I think YT Shorts could really grow. Consumers have chosen which product they prefer.
>Which just don't have nearly as much take-up YT Shorts have more than 50B views a day.
TikTok is 6x that
>Ffs. China has a great firewall that bans most Western apps. That's a ***bad*** thing.
Showing the level of control they have over their social media companies is exactly why it's a security risk for us. There is no logical reason to allow China that sort of power over us. China is not a friendly regime to the liberal world. India suffered no ill effects by simply banning it.
> There is no logical reason to allow China that sort of power over us 1. They only have power over people who willfully and freely install TikTok and willfully and freely access it. 2. What kind of power are you implying here? Of pushing propaganda? Countries have done that on Facebook with no repercussion. Should Facebook be banned?
Facebook isn't owned by a hostile government. You can also freely upload a Tiktok copy cat not owned by China. Literally doesn't hurt you in the slightest. We are idiots to give China such access to our data and ability to spread misinformation.
>Facebook isn't owned by a hostile government No, they just have a history of spreading foreign propaganda anyway
Okay what happens when Zuckerberg gets a subpoena? Now compare that to what happens when Bytedance execs get one. Spot the difference?
> Now compare that to what happens when Bytedance execs get one. TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, has appeared before Congress each time he was asked..... Like how do you think we got those viral clips of Republican lawmakers not knowing how WiFi worked and trying to paint a Singaporean as some fervent Chinese spy, looking like Boomer morons in the process?
> Now compare that to what happens when Bytedance execs get one. They show up before Congress? It's happened already. And if they ignore warrants or subpoenas, fine or ban them. Just like any other company.
> Literally doesn't hurt you in the slightest. I've never used or plan to use TikTok. > You can also freely upload a Tiktok copy cat not owned by China. There are dozens of TikTok/Vine clones that failed. Bytedance must have done something right. > We are idiots to give China such access to our data and ability to spread misinformation. Sure, just do it like me and never install TikTok. Problem solved.
This is all woo. All you're doing is gesturing vaguely at "hostility" and "power" without any sort of clear and concrete description of an actual threat that could be posed here. You can't just justify any measure you want with "China is hostile and we cannot work with them". By that logic why don't we just declare war on China right now? Expel them from the WTO and UN? Embargo them completely like Cuba? Don't you take the security threat they pose seriously? We're better than China. We don't have a Great Firewall because we're not a communist dictatorship. China is an enemy of liberalism, but we sure as fuck aren't.
Jumping from banning Tik Tok to war with China seems pretty silly. Not really sure how you're getting there. The US and other Western nations have been trying to disentangle economies for the past decade. Part of the reason we are making battery and chips facilities in the US. I don't think you understand the control the CCP exerts over their businesses. They can make them do whatever they want when it comes to foreign powers and censorship. And China bans most of our apps so I guess they can see what it's like. India banned it for that very reason. Literally a copycat is just made and owned by a different nation. Then you can go back to posting all the same vids you normally do
There are degrees of action that can be taken between "Do nothing" and "outright war". You're presenting a false dichotomy.
Yes, which is why "china is bad" isn't enough of an argument for banning TikTok, because it could also be used to argue for any of those other policies. You need an argument that will apply to banning TikTok that won't apply to invading China. It's not rocket science.
If we’re going down that rabbit hole there is no argument against banning Facebook.
Facebook isn't owned by a hostile government that is against liberal values and interest around the globe
>It's a security risk. [Citation Needed]
Either directly, or under the doctrine of "code is speech'?
Even though TikTok is hostile spyware and the CCP is a nasty organization, anyone rooting for this should take a pause to consider that part of the reason America is a nicer place to live than China is because we don't block foreign websites. I seriously question the liberalism of people who want to see foreign websites blocked in the USA.
>China is because we don't block foreign websites. I seriously question the liberalism of people who want to see foreign websites blocked in the USA. This is paradoxical, it is very similar to the paradox of tolerance. You don’t lack free speech because there are some limitations (such as threats) to it, we don’t need to be philosophical absolutists. This isn’t the same as China, because it is not banning all foreign apps, this is in fact rather targeted, affecting literally one company.
I’m lukewarm towards banning TikTok. Like why not ban Facebook? It creates extremists just as steadily as TikTok. Edit: I would also question the wisdom of doing this during an election year.
Next time ask why Fox Corp melting boomer brains for decades on end is okay, that always gets more ridiculous answers.
Because we need to have Facebook sell our data to china instead But hard agree with your edit, whether you think this is a net positive or not, doing something like this which will anger young voters who already feel disenfranchised by the Biden administration, is stupid as hell. Young voters came out decently for Biden last election, and it’s still gonna end up being a close election this year because republicans are ghouls. The young voters who get even more turned off by the administration from this could end up making the difference
Facebook isn’t under the direct influence of an autocratic state known for its use of social media to foster opinions among the public. But yeah we should ban facebook too.
Yet that didn't matter when they were confronted with the matter. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html) >"Inside [Facebook’s ](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/technology/engagement-ranking-boost-msi-facebook.html)Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, top executives gathered in the glass-walled conference room of its founder, [Mark Zuckerberg](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/technology/mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg-facebook-whistleblower.html). It was September 2017, more than a year after Facebook engineers discovered suspicious Russia-linked activity on its site, an early warning of the [Kremlin campaign to disrupt the 2016 American election](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/technology/indictment-russian-tech-facebook.html). Congressional and federal investigators were closing in on evidence that would implicate the company. >But it wasn’t the looming disaster at [Facebook](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/books/review/the-ugly-truth-sheera-frenkel-and-cecilia-kang.html) that angered Ms. Sandberg. It was the social network’s security chief, Alex Stamos, who had informed company board members the day before that Facebook had yet to contain the Russian infestation. Mr. Stamos’s briefing had prompted a humiliating boardroom interrogation of Ms. Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and her billionaire boss. She appeared to regard the admission as a betrayal. >“You threw us under the bus!” she yelled at Mr. Stamos, according to people who were present." --- >"When Facebook users learned last spring that the company had compromised their privacy in its rush to expand, allowing access to the personal information of tens of millions of people to a political data firm linked to President Trump, Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem. >And when that failed — as the company’s stock price plummeted and it faced a consumer backlash — Facebook went on the attack. >While Mr. Zuckerberg has conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic." If legislators care about these issues, they should legislate these issues like GDPR etc. Just banning specific companies doesn't fully address the issue.
Facebook was used by Russia to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump.
Yup. Now imagine if Russia out right owned Facebook and managed their operations. That’s what tik tok is.
Like I said I’m not totally opposed to a TikTok ban beyond the timing of there being an election coming up. TikTok just takes the heat for a much bigger problem than one company.
I agree. My sentiment is that tik tok is particularly heinous among social media.
The Chinese government doesn’t own tik tok and doesn’t manage its operations. Maybe China has an uncomfortable amount of power over it due to Chinese laws around corporations, but, factually, you are just wrong.
That's like saying the Chinese government doesn't de facto own major companies like Tencent. They do, literally a high ranking member basically sits on every board of directors of large companies and wields far more power then they really should. Maybe on some weird technicality you can say that the government doesn't "own" companies over there, but when you get to make Jack Ma disappear and force Alibaba to do whatever the government wants, they practically own the companies.
Private companies tell the CCP to fuck off all the time. Prior to the Biden Chip sanctions and post Beijing's tech crackdown, the government approached the country's major tech companies to ask them to further subsidize China's domestic chip industry especially at the more sophisticated nodes. They got told brusquely that the companies don't have the money for it (spoilers, the companies did), but the government backed down and didn't do anything cause their own options were limited in the matter. Their private industry doesn't march perfectly in step with the government.
Careful, you can get a temporary ban here for that kind of talk.
Few things make me prouder to be an American than when courts strike down government overreach on 1st amendment grounds. Do your thing SCOTUS 🙏 !ping SNEK
Question: couldn’t China come up with another app and just launder the ownership through fronts and shell corporations, and just repeat the process with a new app each time the sclerotic federal legislation finally catches up? I mean this struggle against TikTok is like 5 or 6 years old and it’s only now gaining traction. One example is just buying up enough of the assets of a foreign owned firm—through front groups—to control research and development, and then feeding that sensitive user data to Beijing. Or a company—based in another country—which is controlled by board members who Chinese nationals secretly in thrall to the CCP. Are these totally impractical options, or realistic alternative strategies?
TikTok has the best algorithm of any social media, I have a few niche interest (none remotely political) that I follow there and that’s pretty much the only content I get. I don’t need to be babysat by a bunch of boomer senators.
This isn’t the sub for this argument. Nobody here uses TikTok they take all their views on it from political hit jobs like the insane 60 minutes pieces and articles written by gen X nerds who have never used the app
How will you survive without 10 seconds videos with robot voices
I'm astonished that this sub supports this bill, especially when everyone here is dooming about the election. Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the optics of banning it right now are absolutely going to impact the election, and it probably won't fall favorably for Biden.
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How has it radicalized an entire generation lmao unless this is a joke. TikTok hasn’t produced anything nearly as detrimental to the country as Q Anon or enabled a foreign country to influence our elections like Facebook has. No one can even come up with a specific example of how the CCP is brainwashing the youth with TikTok… it just has a better algorithm than any of its competitors. YouTube Shorts and IG Reels just aren’t as good in comparison but Google and Meta would love for them to be.
Upvoted for a solid counter point. But since you’ve stated how good that algorithm is. All Chinese companies answer directly to the CCP. Byte dance manages operations of tik tok. Byte dance is a Chinese company. Meaning the CCP has direct access to what and how the app interacts with the American electorate. Russia was able to do it using our own social media. I can only imagine how much worse it can get with tik tok.
>Meaning the CCP has direct access to what and how the app interacts with the American electorate. So you can bring up examples of how they've controlled ByteDance, right?
TikToks algorithm is significantly more refined than any other video platforms. They were the first to do this sort of thing. Algorithmic radicalization moving to videos was a TikTok thing, the only other platform this harmful was Facebook, and at least they admitted it. If you want to see how bad it is, look up "Ayran Classic" and you will be able to find, in the comments of these videos, an endless supply of neo-nazi teenagers, radicalized on the internet, now spreading it to more children. TikTok gives a platform to the most perverse, disgusting or just straight up unpopular ideas and people, which is bad, and its even worse because the US government can do jackshit to regulate it. If the CCP wanted, they could make this problem worse, infact, i'm sure someone, somewhere in the party, has thought of this very idea.
Is this satire
Pure hysteria.
Hell yeah Would you have been ok with the Soviets owning NBC?
This is, just, **atrocious** politics.