The world police is scared about the competition lmao, “only us should violate worldwide privacy!”
…TikTok would eventually be dropped from app stores in the US if its owner doesn’t sell. It also would lose access to US-based web hosting services.
Oh no. Where would children act out jokes they stole from old tweets?
So many out of touch people in every thread that mentions TikTok. The same shit we did on YouTube , FB , Twitter, vine, etc is the same concept on TikTok. Memes evolve or new ones are born, that is nothing new
It’s genuinely embarassing to see people here behaving this way. And disappointing.
Oh no… Someone that was told the opinion they should have about tiktok years ago never bothered to think about it for more that five seconds before repeating it
Did it hurt? Becoming a boomer.
I want my data to be centralized, profiled and used against me, but I want it by American corporations, dammit!
Many users called lawmakers’ offices to complain, congressional staffers told Politico. “It’s so so bad. Our phones have not stopped ringing. They’re teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app and we can’t take it away,” one House GOP staffer was quoted as saying.
and they still voted 50-0. really tells you something about how much these politicians are willing to listen to their constituents.
It also tells you something about all the supposed gridlock in Washington that can magically evaporate when there’s money and power to be gained from it.
From what I read, the calls actually evaporated opposition to the bill.
Which, I’m NGL, if you’re worried about an app being used by a foreign adversary to encourage anti-social behavior in your youth, a bunch of people calling in acting like drug addicts getting their drugs taken away is only going to erase doubts.
It doesn’t help that they’d even be more justified when it’s known that it was caused by users getting pushed notified by Tik Tok to do it.
Encouraging people to contact their representatives and demand action? Congress clearly can’t have this. How will they do their jobs if they are constantly forced to engage with their constituents?
Call to action from, say, activist groups is very different from call to action from a billion-dollar company. This does make me really worried about how much influencer TikTok has on people ngl
Ah yes let’s only allow political activism from the people who already has the power and influence rather than the common man
In my opinion, considering Tiktok’s algo they had the best circumstance to notify a mix of their users more aligned with the actual electorate. The fact they ended up with the worst representation of their user base when it came to confirming the suspicions of politicians says everything.
It was a 50-0 to pass the commission and then go to the House floor for a vote and then the Senate for a vote and finally signed into law by the president unless he vetoes it, which is possible imo.
Honestly, teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves, I might just call in to my local representative to voice my support of forced sale, operating restrictions, or even outright ban.
It’s not just teenagers and old people. That’s just some bullshit rhetoric that you ate right up without question. Because of course you did. Millennials/middle age folk are abundant on TikTok as well as young adults.
The audacity of some of you to jump into action just to spite “teenagers and old people” is shameful. So easily manipulated.
Right, sorry, it’s fine to let teenagers and old people be harmed as long as the company can continue to profit off consenting adults as well. /sarcasm
How are they being harmed? Why was it so easy for them to make you believe this? Also, who asked you to protect anyone with your one petty little email lmao
Yeah honestly if a bunch of addicted teens and old people were calling me screaming that I can’t take away their drug of choice when that’s not even what’s happening, and it’s not being taken away just moved to where there can be more control on quality… Then I would be really considering the damage this is doing to them.
I don’t know if supporting the junkies being taken advantage of is the altruistic take that these “absolute freedom” supporters think it is.
The fact that you guys just ate up that rhetoric without any hesitation… Like, you just happily believe it’s a bunch of “addicted old people and teenagers”? Is this reddit? Did I make a wrong turn at common sense and critical thinking?
Uh dude… I know people addicted that got the email to message their representative. They will stop talking in a conversation and pull out their phone and just scroll through a few videos.
I struggle to believe so many would be messaging just out of laziness but don’t question that being the age groups that would respond most to that kind of targeted messaging into action.
teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves
Please, big daddy government, protect me from the freedom of choice. I cannot be trusted to consume without your permission.
Me when I find out that it’s illegal to sell your organs for profit
LMAO pay attention in school, kid, you seem like the type who is going to need it.
They should really educate people about foreign threats like the CCP and Kremlin.
Now do Facebook.
Love to, I think the 5 Bn USD FTC fine was a little light considering no jailtime was given. I hope their recent lawsuits lead to breaking the company up again.
what are you even trying to say here? that it’s okay for politicians to ignore entire demographics? or that it’s only okay for them to ignore entire demographics if, ultimately, it’s left up to a different group of politicians to pass the law?
i don’t use tiktok or have any interest in the app itself, but it’s still very alarming to see a vote go through 50-0 despite a “nonstop” flood of calls opposing it.
Ignore them? Gosh no. Protect them. Literally what I said.
You’re not doing it to protect people. It’s ridiculous that you’d even pretend to be.
What other reason could I possibly have? You think there is some massive anti-tiktok cabal out there trying to profit by… uh… fucking how?
By banning anything except the few 'murican tech giants doing the exact same shit as TikTok. Even a blind person can see how cancerous american companies are, yet this does nothing to address that.
Actually, they’re not doing that at all, they’re forcing a compromised unethical American to sell to a different unethical American to do exactly the same thing. At no point was a ban even discussed. So, literally everything you just said was wrong.
“protect them from themselves” is what you said. which carries the connotation that they don’t know what’s best for themselves and aren’t qualified to make judgments about those things. this is different from simply “protecting them”.
Those things are exactly the same and it is indeed what I just said. Problem?
To be fair, a big part of a functioning society is a government with proper regulations in place so that people are not expected to be experts in literally every field before making a purchase or performing some kind of action. Obviously, calling it “protect[ing] them from themselves,” is dismissive and patronizing, but it’s pretty much why we need government in the first place.
For example, the EPA recently issued a recall for ground cinnamon from certain specific (dollar store) brands due to unacceptably high levels of lead. Without the career scientists (and yes, bureaucrats) working for that regulatory agency, millions of people would have continued consuming the product and feeding it to their kids (low-income folks too in this case, given the brands) literally indefinitely.
Without the EPA, every person who buys cinnamon is what, expected to use mass spectrometry to determine the exact molecular make-up of every spice (or in the case of the EPA, literally any food or prescription drugs you may ever consume) before using?
If they didn’t do their cinnamon research, then they deserved it, and the government should have no involvement? What happens in cases where companies hide dangerous issues in their products to avoid losing profits?
What if there’s literally no way for anyone but a scientist, with extensive lab access and at least 4+ years of university to know that there is an issue with a product (or a construction site, or a drug, or water treatment, etc)? They’re the only ones who should be able to properly avoid using a product that may kill them and their children? And even then, only when it’s a product they’re an expert in?
Not saying you’re a libertarian, just like pointing out the obvious things that make it so so stupid.
i agree with everything you’ve said here. and i liked the EPA example. sorry if what i said came across as libertarian, that was not my intention.
i was just trying to push back against the “young people don’t know what’s best for themselves” mentality in the other post.
although, to be clear, i think the current state of social media does have quite a few problems that need addressing, and more regulation on that would certainly be welcome.
Would love to see the science or other expert opinions that is being used to justify this ban then.
I haven’t heard anything except politicians making vague references to spying or other things we allow from domestic services.
It’s just politics.
TikTok Data Harvests: Report by AU Cybersecurity Firm or if you can’t be bothered to get past the paywall the news coverage of the event.
Misinformation on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpurol.2022.03.001
Adolescents more susceptible to product placement on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107723
Ok, sure. Show me what research you or they have done to justify “protecting them from themselves”. Already they’re telling lies by insinuating that only teenagers and old people are calling. And you all just believe it? Wild how biased people can be when presented with information they want to believe.
Nanny State.
“Mr. Legislator I am 84 and I need my Heroin but the federal government keeps cracking down on my supplier, please stop taking away all my Heroin Mr. Legislator. Also, force my bank to let me transfer 85,000 USD to India, it’s really important that I do that before the 27th.”
Yes. This is called Nanny State.
Rather than educate the populace, take away the tools. Of course, another tool will just rise to the surface but it will make a lot of people feel really good that they did something.
I do appreciate all of the reactionary statements. I don’t use TikTok but I do believe in freedom. Reducing freedoms, no matter how well intentioned does not solve societies problems.
You can’t educate dementia away. You can educate youth away, but that takes years, which would effectively be a ban for them. TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation and by extension their associated foreign dictatorship.
Absolute freedom should not extent to harming each other.
TikTok is one of hundreds of vectors to swindle the senile and I doubt it’s even in the top 10.
Grandpa needs to have someone else handling his finances. It’s not the governments job and let’s not pretend this bill is about keeping grandpas money safe.
TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation
That pretty much describes every corporation in existence.
Some of them provide utility and some don’t, which is why we don’t allow children to drink, smoke, or gamble. If a company providing those goods and services targets those demographics it gets political action.
Welcome to the nuance of society and the modern world.
Are they “taking it away” though? Do normal people care about who owns it? Are they just worried about an unlikely ban?
you’re taking it as a given that bytedance will sell the app if this law passes. there is a chance that they won’t want to sell and then the app will be banned. (but i think this unlikely.)
also, if i’m understanding things correctly, there’s the possibility that they do sell and the app still gets banned. the article says
An app would be allowed to stay in the US market after a divestiture if the president determines that the sale “would result in the relevant covered company no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”
depending on who the next president is, there’s no guarantee that they’ll say any sale will result in the company not being controlled by a foreign adversary. (although this past is just speculation.)
anyways. this bill will certainly raise the chances that the app will be banned in the US. (and it opens the door for other apps to get banned if the US doesn’t like the country they were developed in.)
I also just noticed in the article:
TikTok urged its users to protest the bill, sending a notification that said, “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok… Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
Also from a BBC article about the same thing:
Earlier, users of the app had received a notification urging them to act to “stop a TikTok shutdown.”
So they were literally sending out misleading notifications (because a forced sale is not a total ban), and then the users wrote to Congress based on that…
The probability that they will sell seems really high to me, as the same thing almost happened back in 2020.
There’s no guarantee that making the sale will prevent the ban.
Yeah but if they sell then it’s someone else stuck holding the bags so why wouldn’t they?
because its not in the corporation’s interest to incur the expense and organizational disruption if they’re still going to get banned anyway - profit is maximized by continuing with business as usual instead of spending resources attempting to reach compliance
They also claimed that it was only “old people and teenagers” who were calling in and objecting which wasn’t true. One rep stood up and straight up lied claiming that TikTok users were “forced” to call. How would that even work? TikTok possibly being banned isn’t a lie but all that other shit sure was. It was just a popup offering to help locate local reps to call and make their voices heard. The fact that any of you are pretending that people taking this democratic action is a bad thing is appalling and your bias is blatantly obvious. The absolute ego on all of you to act like you just know better than all of those other people because… Reasons? Ridiculous.
Do you have the full text of the notification that you could post here? Kinda hard discussing the specifics otherwise.
If it really contains the quote “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok”, I do consider that misleading.
People here are often making a lot of noise about disinformation campaigns on sites like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube (and that’s just from user-posted content that the sites fail to moderate, not posted by the sites themselves), so I don’t see why this would get a pass.
An app would be allowed to stay in the US market after a divestiture if the president determines that the sale “would result in the relevant covered company no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”
So apps can still be banned after divestiture, based on an arbitrary decision by one corrupt and potentially insane and/or senile person?
After all the talk of a “rules based order”, I’m disappointed - this isn’t a rule, its a leap of faith into the arms of serial liars.
Can they do that with a Chinese company?
Technically, they’re forcing the US Based shell company, which the Chinese were using, to sell out to some other American, or maybe just shut down.
Seems pointless.
Well in that case, no harm no foul. Let them be forced to sell.
Yeah I’m not bothered. I’ve got nothing to do with them and generally think they’re detrimental as a whole.
The free market economy for you
Never has been. 🧑🚀 🔫 🧑🚀
Tik tok is at the root of so many of the social issues we’re facing today. It’s absolutely worse than Facebook, although both need to be addressed.
How?..
It has a huge hold over our youth today, even folks up to 30. It’s so ubiquitous it’s used as a replacement for Google to find new information including political.
Problem is it’s absolutely chock full of misinformation and propaganda, which doesn’t just exist on the platform, but is actively pushed on American youth today.
It’s full of misinformation and propaganda unlike… You know… All those super reliable objective sources of information that you use?
Oh yes VERY unlike those. Anything that can be traced and verified, aren’t read to you by an AI voice or a white person claiming to be an American while trying very hard to suppress an Eastern European or East Asian accent. Another good trait to have would be anything that isn’t verifiably false.
You know the algorithm shows you what you interact with the most… Right?
Thanks for proving why that platform is just so damned dangerous. The ignorance it inspires is shocking.
Among other things.
If it only showed you what you interacted with the most it’d be less of an issue but that’s not how it works. Thats not even how it works on YouTube.
It sure does, but it doesn’t only show you what you interact with the most. It shows you lots of other stuff too. The exact algorithm of which neither you or I are privy to so don’t get too cocky thinking you have it all figured out. After all “interacting with” can be something as small as lingering on a video just a bit too long. One second longer than your usual average view time. That’s all it takes for an algorithm to decide it’s worth it to push more content like it at you. And given that it’s a priority goal for propaganda, bots, and misinformation posters to craft their video in a way to maximize your engagement, that’s a trivial thing to accomplish.
Algorithms are by design, a way to remove your agency in finding information for yourself, and instead give the platform control over the information you see. This is very handy and even innocent when you just want to see memes that you personally think are funny, but very dangerous when it’s used to mislead you or influence your behavior and thinking. And most people aren’t smart or tech savvy enough to know how any of this works, which makes them very easy to manipulate.
Well that and whatever will keep you addicted and hopefully spending money. Rage, bias confirmation, propaganda that hits the class or group you belong to. And the more you trust it the more they can use that trust.
Sorry but this is giving ‘old man yells at clouds’ energy. How is tiktok any worse than any other social media platform? They’re all echochambers filled with misinformation, it just what happens when you get a lot of people online.
That you’re trying to ‘they’re all the same’ bs shows how ignorant many people are on this. They’re not all the same, this one is especially bad and it’s not JUST because it turns you into a fucking retard when you use it.
Even if China has access to my data, that’s way less scary than Zuck, musk, Bezos or any other tech bro.
So NSA backdoors are mandatory but Chinese ones are bad.
I mean, it’s not one or the other. No interference from Congress means we get surveilled by China and the US. Congress can cut that number in half.
The former is more pressing than the latter.
Yes. 🤷
Nobody wants to be spied on by their perceived enemies. Also, how do you expect us to maintain an appropriate level of hypocrisy if we don’t constantly do hypocritical things?
I wish we would go after foreign investment, ownership, and political meddling as much as tiktok
You have a choice to not use tiktok, in this day and age you don’t really have a choice to not use a phone…
I would be more afraid of being spied on by the government of the country I live in than by a government from a foreign country. Who do you think is more capable of doing something to you?
being spied on by the government of the country I live in than by a government from a foreign country
Ha, that’s a decent point. I don’t really care for either. I think about these things among others:
- China has proved they are interested in conflict. They haven’t used any kinetic/traditional warfare against anyone lately, though they seriously want to with Tiwan.
- China has been using nonstop cyber related warfare to conduct espionage, steal trade secrets, position themselves for assisting kinetic warfare with cyber warfare, etc.
I am not a direct target of these, but China killing the power grid or disabling telecommunications does have the potential to have a huge impact on my life.
- The US government has used nonstop kinetic and cyber warfare over the last 20+ years.
The US playing world police doesn’t directly threaten my safety, but I definitely would be more worried about the US than China if I wasn’t a US citizen.
The US government spying on me:
- Super annoying mostly due to the principle of a lack of privacy, regardless of whether I do anything bad or not
- Becomes a serious problem if I was an active opponent of government policy and elected officials, and the government/leadership deems me a terrorist/insurrectionist/etc.
Their discretion of what’s my free speech and right to criticize the government vs leading insurrection would be more complicated if they were using the NSA to own my life and try to use any excuse to lock me up.
I guess I weigh what’s more likely to be a problem in my current/future life.
I don’t like either of these scenarios.
Both are bad but fuck Xi and the CCP 🖕
I’ve got you tagged as “CCP shill?”
Yes, governmental surveillance is always bad. But let’s not pretend being surveilled by NSA is as bad as being surveilled by the authoritarian government of China.
U.S. lawmakers can’t force anything on foreign corporations.
If the bill passes in the House and Senate and is signed into law by President Biden, TikTok would eventually be dropped from app stores in the US if its owner doesn’t sell. It also would lose access to US-based web-hosting services.
ByteDance would be banned from the U.S. market and lose it’s webhosting on U.S. servers.
Also, what’s with the “foreign adversary” status of China?
Actually a court in any country can prevent a company from doing something. When you do business in a country you have to abide by their laws.
That’s right, I totally came off wrong. I meant that U.S. lawmakers can’t force ByteDance to sell TikTok, as the headline implies.
Though possibly US operations could be sold off, whatever that would mean.
Also, what’s with the “foreign adversary” status of China?
China is attacking us by having a bigger economy
Lol yea. They also maintain control over their big corpos and that must be threatening to the 9 corporations in a trench coat that the U.S. calls a government. Still, the world doesn’t need any more adversarial relationships, thank you very much U.S.A.
Unironically, so much of US/China hostility boils down to corporate market share
Lemmy.world has horrible takes as usual when it comes to censorship of a platform lmao
Who knew the magical word was China to turn everyone here into a meta lapdog
The red menace has always been a winner.
In this case, my enemy’s enemy is also an enemy. Life ain’t easy for a poor righteous teacher.
I’m pretty confident in saying the majority of users here don’t like meta either – the userbase on lemmy is predominantly people trying to avoid corporate social media.
ByteDance and Meta both privacy nightmares, it’s just a question of what fucked up things they doing with the data.
That is true, and we can bemoan the privacy concerns of tiktok and meta and such but this right here isn’t a fix to privacy. It’s just a change in who is abusing it. In that case, Id like to keep it with the Chinese. They have less control over my life than America already does. Let’s spread it out a little bit lol.
High school nerds pay attention. This is how you can make some money and have an excuse to talk to the hot girls…by installing a vpn on their phones so they can still have their tik tok.
Get one popular girls phone set up and every girl in the school will be hitting you up within a week.
They won’t want TikTok once the chumps who follow them stop using it. They’ll have to do something other than dancing for strangers to bolster their self-esteem.
And why do you assume everyone including hot girls & popular girls aren’t already capable of installing their own VPNs? Unless of course you mean the high school nerd is going to pay for our VPN service, then come on over!
I’m sure some do. I haven’t talked to many high school girls lately.
If this goes through and this happened when I was in school…that’d be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’d probably never even think of it then. I’d probably luck into it by telling the rest of the nerd table at lunch, jock overheard, sell him my services, and then word of mouth from there.
That happening now…probably be the inspiration for the gen Z’s “American Pie”. Or “Superbad”.
Are you kidding? There isn’t a phone owning high schooler that doesn’t know how to vpn past their high school’s nanny software. You’re out of touch.
aren’t already capable
Anyone who can read and follow directions is capable
Most people can’t install a VPN, including hot or cold girls
This shit is like saying most people can’t connect to wifi. It’s not exactly rocket science.
Most people can’t install a VPN,
My guy, do YOU know how to set up a VPN?
It’s more like most people are unwilling to find or read directions. Most people can do most things nowadays. They’re just unwilling to try.
And the cycle of infantalizing women continues…
Everything will keep going as planned /s
Lemmy does draw a certain crowd unfortunately.
That’s mainly the internet, not just Lemmy
Highschooler here, everyone already uses vpn’s to bypass the school firewall to view blocked sites and stuff while on school wifi.
The kids are gonna be alright
Can the US Lawmakers do anything about the US companies harvesting my data and selling it off… please?
Can they? Completely wrong question.
“Will they” is what you wanted to ask but the answer is still firmly no
Honestly it might be “Can they” given how partisan issues like industry regulation are.
Yes, they can make more money from it.
I feel there’s a lot of China influence in this thread. I wonder why that is…
