Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by hypeit on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @08:01PM
(#39686404)
I want to use TikTok as it exists today. Why should that right be taken away from me by the US government? This is going to have major political backlash from the millions of people happy with TikTok if they manage to pass it.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by paulryanrogers on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @08:29PM
(#39686610)
National security, hysteria, anything in between. The government is the people. We can agree to deny ourselves anything for any reason.
From what I've read I'd agree that TikTok should be more independent than it is from its current parent company. And other measures too, like some time limits on users under 18.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by otoburb on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @08:30PM
(#39686616)
How will this discontent manifest itself? It feels like voter apathy is widespread[1], so it would be amazing to me if any politican feels that this is the issue that causes TikTok voters to mobilize no matter what side of the aisle you're on.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by CommanderData on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @08:28AM
(#39690571)
The Israel-Palestine conflict is playing a huge part. Israel has had a hard time controlling the narrative on Tiktok as organic support has stemmed from videos from Gaza. Especially amoung teens.
Israel has even gone to lengths to purchase advertisement slots on major platforms showing high budget propaganada. Once it's under US ownership they wll no longer have this issue.
A lot of the claims in the videos were later denounced by the Israeli government i.e. Hamas beheaded 40 babies etc. To me theres plenty of signs towards a strong misinformation campaign. Unashamingly.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by VK538FY on Friday March 15, 2024 @04:11PM
(#39720189)
Since my comment, I have also found some supporting evidence. My God, the Anglo-Saxons are getting nervous about their land based aircraft carrier in the near east.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by isr on Thursday March 14, 2024 @02:36AM
(#39701103)
To back this up, here is a link to a leaked audio recording, showing the head of the ADL complaining that TikTok was (in his view) responsible for Israel's usual propaganda not gaining traction anymore:
Is TikTok just straight up lying in the their official press release or is this just hysteria by our legislators?
> We store all TikTok US user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law.
> Let us be very clear: TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked. Period.
> Our US moderation team, which is led out of California, reviews content for adherence to our US policies – just like other US companies in our space. We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government.
Like TikTok is bending over backwards here https://usds.tiktok.com/usds-about/ Facebook refused to do something similar to this for the EU because of the NSA and they're our allies! Is there literally anything they could say that would make people believe that being owned by a Chinese company is not the same as being puppeted by the CCP?
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by dontreact on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @08:54PM
(#39686817)
None of this is inconsistent with changing the level of amplification of certain topics in concordance with the preferences of the CCP, which is what the evidence appears to point to.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by Spivak on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @09:04PM
(#39686886)
Are you talking about that one "study" that claimed the TikTok algorithm aligned with CCP interests that was about as rigorous as a high school science fair project?
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by probably_satan on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @08:55PM
(#39686819)
What about Snapchat/Tencent? What about the military aged men crossing the border from Mexico? What about the Chinese owned businesses buying up land around military bases? Or the ones who own food manufacturers in the US? Or all the Chinese owned aviation companies operating in America? What about academia? What about Microsoft?
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by yogorenapan on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @09:03PM
(#39686870)
Banning TikTok wouldn’t be a dangerous precedent. Authoritarian countries do that all the time.
My concern is with forced sales. How do we ensure that the politicians’ incentives matches with ours and that they aren’t being paid behind our backs by the companies that are now able to acquire TikTok at a discount? Congress is notorious for (alleged) insider trading, they could very well profit from such a sale.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by Clubber on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @06:59AM
(#39690026)
>Banning TikTok wouldn’t be a dangerous precedent. Authoritarian countries do that all the time.
Wanting to live in a non-authoritarian country, I think you missed the point you just made, or were just being sarcastic and it went over my head.
There's a theory that this push for a Tik-Tok ban is being funded by Meta, who can't buy it like it bought other competition like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by anon373839 on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @07:59AM
(#39690399)
Agree on the citation to authoritarian regimes. Otherwise, though, I have no qualms about banning what may very well be a mass psyops machine run by a hostile foreign government.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by Clubber on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @08:44AM
(#39690700)
I agree. I think the government needs to block a whole lot of M&A than they do. I wonder if the ultimate plan is to break TikTok away from the CCP and allow it to be bought domestically. I recall Trump trying to do that with Larry Ellison of all people, but I think he ran into roadblocks.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by CommanderData on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @08:32AM
(#39690607)
I'm pretty sure the Israel-Palestine genocide has played a part in speeding up partial transfer to the US.
The support among teenagers who have witness the destruction and terrorism caused by Israel has cause organic support for Palestine in both the US and Europe. Exactly against the wishes of US/Israel gov.
US based companies already have a tight grip on what's allowed to be shared on social media - and there's frequent documented cases of censorship in the name of anti-Semitism etc. The Israeli govenment has a degree of control already through their cyber warfare arm to flag material but it's a far cry from modifying the algorithm at will and outright account bans.
Re:Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China
by janalsncm on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @10:50PM
(#39687607)
Singapore is in a politically interesting position. In the one hand, they’re an authoritarian state. They don’t recognize the level of freedom of speech, press, or protest that we do in America. And they frequently cane criminals and execute drug traffickers.
On the other hand, they’re ostensibly a democracy, albeit one where only one party has significant political power. (For a country with the level of economic success that they do, maybe it’s understandable.) Singapore has an extremely low level of corruption on international indexes, even lower than in the US, and it’s seen as very business friendly.
Another thing to note, as I am learning more about it, is the extensive surveillance framework that is already available. (I’m about halfway through Byron Tau’s Means of Control now.) Surveilling people’s whereabouts is trivial, and for a nation state like China or the US it’s often easier to just buy information on the open market than allocate an agency to the task.
My final thought on this is that we’ve heard for so long about how private platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate content how they see fit. There are two cases in front of SCOTUS about this now. While I think this is a comfortably simple point of view, it elevates the speech of fundamentally profit-seeking entities to the same level of protection as that of everyday people. Once we start to block companies based on national security, we need to consider the ownership of other companies as well. Nothing is to stop Elon Musk from taking a bribe from a foreign adversary in a moment of drug-fueled weakness, and that bribe from affecting Twitter’s ranking algorithm.
From what I've read I'd agree that TikTok should be more independent than it is from its current parent company. And other measures too, like some time limits on users under 18.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-i...
Israel has even gone to lengths to purchase advertisement slots on major platforms showing high budget propaganada. Once it's under US ownership they wll no longer have this issue.
There was a slew of Israeli propaganda via YouTube ads post Oct 7, here's an article. https://www.reuters.com/world/graphic-pro-israel-ads-make-th...
A lot of the claims in the videos were later denounced by the Israeli government i.e. Hamas beheaded 40 babies etc. To me theres plenty of signs towards a strong misinformation campaign. Unashamingly.
https://twitter.com/SweatieAngle/status/1725897178038595901?...
Lo and behold, now AIPAC's congress want to ban TikTok, effective immediately...
Is TikTok just straight up lying in the their official press release or is this just hysteria by our legislators?
> We store all TikTok US user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law.
> Let us be very clear: TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked. Period.
> Our US moderation team, which is led out of California, reviews content for adherence to our US policies – just like other US companies in our space. We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government.
Like TikTok is bending over backwards here https://usds.tiktok.com/usds-about/ Facebook refused to do something similar to this for the EU because of the NSA and they're our allies! Is there literally anything they could say that would make people believe that being owned by a Chinese company is not the same as being puppeted by the CCP?
Note the key word “removal”
Are you trying to make some criticism or suggest a todo list to someone? I genuinely can't tell.
My concern is with forced sales. How do we ensure that the politicians’ incentives matches with ours and that they aren’t being paid behind our backs by the companies that are now able to acquire TikTok at a discount? Congress is notorious for (alleged) insider trading, they could very well profit from such a sale.
Relevant: The American Trap by Frederic Pierucci
Wanting to live in a non-authoritarian country, I think you missed the point you just made, or were just being sarcastic and it went over my head.
There's a theory that this push for a Tik-Tok ban is being funded by Meta, who can't buy it like it bought other competition like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Monopolies are bad, mm kay.
I think that fits word-for-word for domestic companies minus the foreign part.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/tech/oracle-tiktok-us-china-i...
The support among teenagers who have witness the destruction and terrorism caused by Israel has cause organic support for Palestine in both the US and Europe. Exactly against the wishes of US/Israel gov.
US based companies already have a tight grip on what's allowed to be shared on social media - and there's frequent documented cases of censorship in the name of anti-Semitism etc. The Israeli govenment has a degree of control already through their cyber warfare arm to flag material but it's a far cry from modifying the algorithm at will and outright account bans.
On the other hand, they’re ostensibly a democracy, albeit one where only one party has significant political power. (For a country with the level of economic success that they do, maybe it’s understandable.) Singapore has an extremely low level of corruption on international indexes, even lower than in the US, and it’s seen as very business friendly.
Another thing to note, as I am learning more about it, is the extensive surveillance framework that is already available. (I’m about halfway through Byron Tau’s Means of Control now.) Surveilling people’s whereabouts is trivial, and for a nation state like China or the US it’s often easier to just buy information on the open market than allocate an agency to the task.
My final thought on this is that we’ve heard for so long about how private platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate content how they see fit. There are two cases in front of SCOTUS about this now. While I think this is a comfortably simple point of view, it elevates the speech of fundamentally profit-seeking entities to the same level of protection as that of everyday people. Once we start to block companies based on national security, we need to consider the ownership of other companies as well. Nothing is to stop Elon Musk from taking a bribe from a foreign adversary in a moment of drug-fueled weakness, and that bribe from affecting Twitter’s ranking algorithm.
"TikTok in talks to acquire steak in TruthSocial."