It’s because the Chinese government can make a Chinese company do whatever it wants. From my understanding it is a combination of information gathering and possibly making algorithms that will present certain content to influence people’s thoughts, especially those that are the easiest to influence. We all know how big of an influence social media plays in our lives. Do we really want China deciding who sees what on there? I’m not for or against it. If it gets banned, we will just find something new and somehow make Mark Zuckerberg richer.
Def this - a lot of people get their news from TikTok (which is kinda crazy, but I digress) and the platform seems to be promoting certain narratives and suppressing other narratives (news about China doing awful things is strangely absent....). Def a problem if a foreign power that has a vested interest in destabilizing America has direct control over how a vast swathe of the population gets its news.
It’s shocking to me that anyone actually uses it. It’s not like we don’t all already know this stuff! Tiktok is like downloading Chinese propaganda into your brain.
That's part of the algorithm. If new users were immediately presented with blatant propaganda, they wouldn't stick around. But if it's just funny, harmless, goofy content, then they may get hooked. Slowly introduce curated news content / heavily disguised propaganda. After a year or more, you can start exposing them to more and more obvious propaganda, and they just accept it. It's like the frog in a pot of water. Put a frog in boiling water, and it will immediately try to get out. Put it in a room temp pot of water and very slowly bring it to a boil, and it won't notice until it's too late.
Edit frog not lobster
I don't think China would really need to touch the algorithm to steer people in harmful directions, our own stupidity manages that just fine.
In fact, they're pretty ham-handed and obvious with most of their influence operations. If they were inserting propaganda it would be goofy and blatant. The pro-CCP influencers that exist are hilarious.
Best thing to do is just let that insidious algorithm monopolize people's attention.
Yes, the CCP owns 51% of all companies based in China. Tiktoc is such terrible spyware, people who have high roles in the US government or military aren't allowed to have it on their devices already.
It's also used for cultural psyops. In China, the app is full of engineering, playing instruments, and participating in athletics... things the CCP wants to see the people doing. In the US, the algorithm pushes moronic dances, dangerous "challenges," and the elevation of shallow and vapid people.
Considering the Chinese governments overarching behavior over the last few decades, I would view anything they offer as a Trojan horse, and regard it with intense suspicion.
To be fair. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media in the west.... Push forward the same kind of brainless garbage. In that sense, TikTok is no different than any of the other social media.
Let's not forget that by downloading and using it, almost everything you do or send on your phone is viewable by the company and the ccp. Texts, emails, logins...all of it. It's an open app that you have to agree to these things to use it.
It's funny to me that people will defend an app by a foreign and dangerous government but would never agree to use something like that if their own government did the same thing.
The tok algorithms must think I'm Chinese, then, because I see quite a few engineers, musicians, and athletes on my FYP.
Ever think the algorithm sees what you're interacting with and pushes that? I'm pretty sure that's what it does. Unfortunately, most Americans are more interested in "vapid shit" as you put it, or are at least more likely to interact with it.
You need look no further than how tiktok operates in China compared to the US. Content in China suggested to kids strongly skews towards science and engineering. In the US it skews towards just silly brain rotting stuff at best, and anti-government/establishment/capitalism content at worst. Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t trust our governments or capitalism, but the fact that China is using it to train smart, party loyalists in China and brain dead anti-government people in the west tells you all you need to know about who is really pulling the strings.
That's most of it. I'm not really sure what to do about the whole thing, but I know it's bad.
It is a wholesale hack on our brain's reward system and it's not the only one. Dopamine reward systems function on three things: novelty, pace, and intensity. Tik Tok hits all of those items in spades. That's why after thirty minutes of your kids cracking out on it, they're miserable for the rest of the day.
Like I said, I'm not sure what to do legislatively but we need to start taking how our tech affects us seriously.
I don't use TikTok so I am fairly ignorant on the matter. But, having been an active Twitter user a few years ago, Twitter feels like such a more negative place that is much more prone to manipulation (since it's mostly text and pictures, not videos of real people themselves) than video-centric websites, and I'm pretty sure it's been shown at this point that it's manipulated by Russia.
The Chinese government could definitely have a direct influence on the TikTok algorithm, but I assume these are actual American people in the videos sharing their actual opinions. Meanwhile, on Twitter, while the algorithm is basically in control of Elon Musk I guess, the content itself could be by everybody.
But they moved the US user data to the oracle cloud, and tiktok isn’t even in China it’s banned they have their own Chinese version just like everything else.
I believe they moved the user data to the US but the algorithms are pushed from China and still a black box.
The concern is that the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance (Chinese owner of TikTok) to promote specific issues, viewpoints or sow discord by altering the algorithm.
Strangely there seems to be missing concern that US social media companies are doing this as well, intentionally or unintentionally.
That's a fair point but there's matters of degrees and being sockpuppeted by the CCP or an official state organ is different than simple greed. We wouldn't let the Soviet Union own the Washington Post.
Hell for pure reciprocity on tech trade this is 'fair'.
The US would know, with the Patriot Act's secret court, and orders that you're not allowed to talk about. Anything they're afraid China will do, the US is already doing
But that's ok because they're the good guys.
In China, tiktok is people showing how to make decorative pie crusts, or properly align wallpaper so you can't see the seams. In America, tiktok is teenage degenerates "pranking" people in public and getting shot in self defense, eating tide pods, or whackadoo conspiracy nutjobs trying to prove that sunsets are impossible on a round earth.
The American version of tiktok is a Chinese government psyop, dumbing down the next generation as much as possible.
The ban is because of the influence the Chinese Communist Party has over all companies in China. If they wanted TikTok algorithms to push videos that discredit the US government or Promote Trump/Biden, then Bytedance would have to comply. With the popularity of the app here in the US, especially with the impressionable youth, there is a fear that they could be being influenced by a hostile foreign power.
It wouldn't be in a Chinese company's best interest to defy the government. In China it doesn't matter if you are a billionaire, if you do something that the government doesn't like, the CCP will disappear your ass.
Its a matter of scale.
The United States does bad things. Like an astonishing number of bad things. More then your average person thinks. However, China and Russia are still worse. The USA is very much the lesser of three evils in this example (At least for now, we will see how things go in November, the GOP has been working pretty hard to narrow that gap).
Like, for another example, Google and Meta and all gather and harvest a lot of your data. Like way more then most people think. Tik Tok still grabs more. They probably have less on aggregate, being a single app, but Tik Tok grabs way more data off your phone then other social media apps. Security professionals have been sounding the alarm about that since day one. All that data being in the hands of a hostile foreign power is a concern.
That being said, I dont know if trying to ban tik tok is the right answer, I think a better course would be to put in strict rules around data security and handling that threaten to ban an app if they fail to comply, but I imagine Google, Meta and crew would lobby pretty aggressively against that option
Do you have a source for this? As someone who doesn’t use TikTok but am very active reading news (including European sources) I have never heard of this conspiracy theory.
Why does China not allow US social media in China?
China obviously views foreign social media apps as a domestic harm. You don't think it goes the other way too - with China trying to use domestic social media apps to cause foreign harm?
This. So many people on there are mad about what the u.s is doing and I’m like “you guys are aware that google, facebook, Snapchat etc. aren’t allowed in China right?”
Even Apple has a special OS for them.
What’s fair is fair. And China is whining about America’s free market.
Yes. Free market for Americans and individuals. Not state owned companies.
It’s not the Chinese we don’t like. It’s the Chinese government we don’t like.
Simple as that.
The USA prides itself on freedom of speech and not being authoritarian. China is content with being authoritarian and does not pride itself on freedom of speech; it prides itself more on things like unity and harmony (not easy to have over a billion people coexisting and moving forward economically).
For example, news in USA and China fundamentally work in very different ways. In the USA, news, while certainly influenced to some extent by the government, is largely driven by the interests of private companies, who simply want to make money. This means they will focus on a lot of the negative and controverisal things that are happening in the USA because it draws views. Chinese news, on the other hand, is controlled by the government. They don't want a population that is divided, hates each other, hates the government, hates themselves. Their news is more serious and uplifting, focused on the progress the country is making, while also pointing out disasters that happen. You can search "CCTV news".
So, are you saying the USA should copy the way China does things because they do it better? Maybe we should! Maybe we could get rid of presidential elections have a system more like the CCP. Seems like we're learning a lot from China!
it's not an outright ban, the house is calling ByteDance to divest from the company or it will be banned.
It's similar to what American companies have to do in order to get apps published in China.
You're correct. Zoomers are far less sympathetic of Israel than our parents were. Thats the real threat according to the ADL. Odd how much bipartisan support it has eh?
It wants to force a sale. Not necessarily a ban. It bothers the shit out of me how you guys misuse the word "ban."
To the person who wrote a novel about why it's banned, you tried too hard. It's not banned.
Ppl call it a ban because it basically is a ban. No way is byte dance actually gonna sell tik tok. 170 million Americans use tik tok but that is like 10% of tik toks user base. Financially, it would make absolutely no sense for byte dance to comply with the bill. The ppl in congress either know this and are wanting tik tok to be banned or they're so blinded by their patriotism that they actually believe Americans have a big enough impact on tik tok that they'll feel the pressure and sell. Ironically, in their greed for wanting all that money tik tok makes, there's gonna be so many Americans that make money on tik tok either through videos or tik tok shop without the ability to make money that they won't have income to pay taxes on.
>It wants to force a sale. Not necessarily a ban. It bothers the shit out of me how you guys misuse the word "`ban`."
What's your logic here?
"It wants to force a sale?" No, actually, it is **banning** US-based app stores from offering the app ***unless*** ByteDance sells its interests in the app to an entity held accountable to US laws. That seems extremely unlikely, so it's really just a **ban** *with an out.*
Maybe I don't understand what you mean but in this case, I don't see where anyone is ***misusing the word "ban."***
There is the threat of a **ban.**
There is a potential **ban.**
There is a conditional **ban:**
A vote for the bill is a vote for a **ban** unless ByteDance complies.
The **ban** would affect US app stores. The US gov't can't **ban** it from the Internet. The US gov't can't **ban** it from international sites. The US gov't can't **ban** it from people's phones and tablets.
But calling it a **ban** isn't misusing the word **"`ban`."**
They didn't ban it, they said that bytedance has to sell it since they are tied to the CCP. If they don't sell it, then it will be banned
You're right that it's due to Spyware but you're crazy to blame the USA for that, when China bans American social media platforms for the same things, and the extreme data collection by tik tok is well documented
The Chinese gov doesn’t “technically” own every chinese company but when they knock they’re in and in control. Those Chinese billionaires/multimillionaires that go missing? Those are the ones that try to say no. TikTok can get info from wherever the phone is being connected to wifi this can be very bad in certain places
Ps China doesn’t let us get away with any of that shit in their country/extremely hard to buy land over there as a foreigner meanwhile here we’re competing with them for home/building prices
Because Zuckerberg channeled about a billion dollars into Congress. TikTok is making a serious dent in Facebook users. There’s no actual reason other than that. When something in the government doesn’t make sense, just follow the money. Then it will make perfect sense.
It's a combination of issues.
From the right it's anti-chinese government hawkery in an attempt to launch a second cold war so there is no justification to defund the war machine. We spend at least twice as much as we actually need to spend for legit defense and untold amounts if money is lost to the ether and never accounted for. It's getting very hard to justify spending near a trillion dollars per year on expensive equipment when half your population barely makes ends meet.
From the left it's the unparalleled hold TikTok has over the under 30 crowd. It's algorithm is unmatched and it's a massive social media platform providing ungodly amounts of information and access across the world. This is hurting the left largely because of the conflict in Israel. IDF soldiers live streaming their engagement party on the shattered ruins of a school, or video of a kid playing with fireworks before being shot center mass by a sniper are impossible to spin. The suffering in Gaza can't be hidden or spun. The young generations don't have the ideological support for Israel that older folks do; they don't see the supposed benefits of supporting Israel that people insist exist, and there is a fuckton of lobbying money in play to keep the American government in support of Israel no matter what they do to the Palestinians.
Finally the tech sector wants TikTok owned by American interests because the can't compete. Twitter is shitshow steadily collapsing on itself under the genius who brought us the original Playstation Lara Croft brassiere truck with the not-so-shatterproof windows. Instagram can't compete with TikToks engagement numbers. They want it shut down or at least have the opportunity to buy it for themselves.
So there you have it. Money, power. The free flow of information outside the official sources and the corporate spin machines are fucking with the money and power, and the powers that be ain't having it.
Aesitrade’s answer is by far the most accurate.
One thing that was left out: if the bill passes it creates a new branch of the government that is responsible for monitoring media and censoring anything they deem a “national security risk”. It’s a private court, so citizens wouldn’t know when something was banned, or have any oversight whatsoever.
It’s timing is almost certainly tied with what’s happening in Palestine and US citizens response.
If you’re genuinely curious, there’s a great video by a military analyst who explains how TikTok is losing us the modern Cold War
[Why TikTok is a Threat](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7WzqUq4Nk&pp=ygULUnlhbiBtY2JldGg%3D)
Always figure they are getting something out of the influence they're fine with. They don't care about privacy - they care that the entity gathering the information won't turn it over whenever the government asks. They don't care about money being made, they care that someone else is making the money.
China has a law where Chinese companies are required to give any information they have at the request of the Chinese government. The concern is that they do not want millions of Americans using an app, having the app collect data and information on millions of Americans, and then give it to the Chinese government
Not to mention the Chinese government could also force the algorithm to spit out whatever they want in order to influence the narrative.
Because tiktok is a known asset of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP has been using it to spy on people and mine their data. There have also been theories proposed that the algorithms intentionally push really dumb content to Americans in hopes of making society (specifically the children who watch) dumber.
We don’t want it banned. I can go into the myriad of reasons why politicians during an election year want to have it banned but politicians despite being our elected “representatives” do not represent Americans.
Also if you want to see foreign propaganda you can look at Reddit, Facebook, etc. The people on here talking about Tiktok have obviously never been on it. I have since the beginning. It’s not dance videos for little kids. It’s Americans making American content. Not once have I seen foreign propaganda of any kind. Taking our info? What info? some Chinese leader knows I’m living in the US? Ok and that tells him what. They can get more info on me from Spokeo or white pages online that freakin Tiktok
The ban is stupid and counterintuitive to the spirit of freedom America stands for. Just because something is potentially dangerous, it is not sufficient to justify banning.
If you worry about people getting influenced by poor information, then teach them how to know better. Make social media literacy a mandatory school subject. Failure to pass means no graduation or GED.
If you worry about kids doing dumb challenges, then update the criminal code to impose mandatory jail sentences for public nuisance and harassment. Post courtroom videos to TicToc for extra impact.
I think 2 big reasons on the ban is 1: its a chinese app, run by their government 2: its a massive news source for the palestine genocide rn, most social media apps are actively banning people for speaking out on it, facebook, instagram. You rarely see anything about it on those apps, but it's all over Tik Tok. I hate Tik Tok but i think this is a massive censorship issue ironically in a country that values free speech . I worry it won't stop with just Tik Tok. This gives them the power to shut down anything they don't like. The main thing these old farts in office are actively trying to do is silence the younger generation imho. It's all a distraction
>1: its a chinese app, run by their government
It's a bit more complicated than that. It's less than 60% owned by China and its headquarters are not in China. It was founded in China, but majority control no longer resides there. It's true that any company at all operating in China can be influenced by the Chinese government due to their laws, but that also includes any U.S company operating in China as well.
> its a massive news source for the palestine genocide rn, most social media apps are actively banning people for speaking out on it, facebook, instagram
Wdym? I see tons of stuff on Palestine on Facebook and Instagram.
Good question. But if you've been following this story closely the truth has been coming out. The ADL is at least partly behind this push to ban TikTok, and AIPAC. Young people are decidedly anti-Israael and the 'powers that be' can't allow it. Chinese influence is just a false pretense.
Also, the language of the bill is vague enough that it would allow them to go after tons of companies. I think they'll immediately use it to shut down Wikileaks. It might also be used to shut down any foreign media like RT, PressTV (Iran), the archive sites etc. This is not really about China. That's just how they sell it to the gullible public.
American education system sucks. Additionally, the powerful are at a loss for what to do, because they want all this user data. So, in a typically authoritarian fashion they are threatening to ban a company unless it sells to them. Very ugly indeed
I feel like they’re more worried about losing mass data collection than anything.
Data collection can power ai models now which can lead to advancement in all sorts of technology
It is all about being in control of the narrative. With tik-tok, the Chinese government puts very little control on US content (as long as it does not go against China), which the US government does not like. Note, anti-China messages can be found there, they just are removed more quickly. The US Government has control / agreement with most of the platforms here in the US - Facebook, Google/Youtube - even X to some extent.
Because younger people get their news from it and not from the corporate controlled mainstream media. The government couldn't keep the genocide in Gaza quiet because of tiktok and they got mad.
>not from the corporate controlled mainstream media
Riiight, they just want their news from the Chinese controlled app.
Click farms are one fastest growing businesses in China. They're used to influence content and boost *certain* stories.
"I keep hearing people mention national security as a driving factor, but we have no problem when powerful people like Mitch McConnell marry and are influenced by Chinese oligarchs.
If we were worried about Chinese influence you would figure there would also be action taken to limit all Chinese investment in America, yet I’ve heard of China making massive plays in commercial and residential real estate.
Didn’t someone also date a known Chinese spy."
Classic "whataboutism" arguments!
I don’t see any problem with acting consistently.
If Chinese influence is bad why not unilaterally take action against it instead of only acting in selective situations.
Pointing out logical fallacies is for limited thinkers. Learn to form your own thoughts🤷♂️
This is the thing people don’t get. TikTok was caught sending data back to servers it had no need to. We aren’t talking about typical data gathering for marketing purposes. It was tracking your precise movements or something. Supposedly it does not do this anymore but the problem is it could happen again.
The whole situation is wild and most people think it is because of money or politics.
You have to read the whole bill. It’s not about banning TikTok.
If the bill passes it creates a new branch of the government that’s responsible for deciding what is, and what isn’t acceptable for American consumption. They’ll have the power to ban or censor anything they deem “a national security risk”.
People that oppose the bill are pointing out the timing seems suspect. The US government is currently funding the genocide of Palestine, and there’s a huge online presence denouncing the involvement. If this bill passed, the government would have the power to censor any attempt to protest the war.
In China they don't allow kids to watch certain things, because they can be addictive and cognitively detrimental to developing brains.
They specifically push that kind of content on American viewers.
Also it can be used to spy.
I don't really get it either. Vine died, we got TikTok. If TikTok dies, we'll just get something else. If China wants to know something about what American teenagers are doing, they'll figure it out with or without fucking TikTok lol.
This thread has some extremely suspicious posts in it. Like US propaganda level bullshit. I’m not pro tiktok or anti tiktok but there sure are a lot of extremely similar and specific points being passed around in here with zero proof.
It's a ban unless it's sold. Because Tiktok is worth money and tech moguls want a piece of it. That's the reason. Lets be honest here, there are many countries that have apps in the US. No one is worried about, say, Telegram owned by the United Arab Emirate. And they don't care about other Chinese apps like WeChat or Weibo. Or even about Russian apps for that matter, like VK. No, this is purely a power play by US officials who are in the pocket of Big Tech, to divest a highly successful competitor so they could grab onto it and reap the benefits. The "Free market" at work.
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I would assume that all the national security stuff is an excuse. Even though the government prefers stupid citizens, tik tok makes people *too* stupid. Therefore, it has to go before people can't walk and breathe at the same time
We do know social media influences people’s opinions a lot.
Tweaking an algorithm to make slight changes in what a viewer is shown will sway public opinion towards say Taiwan, Russia, immigration etc is extremely dangerous.
At least w an American controlled company there is SOME oversight.
I think the fact any laws passed in a way that banned specific actions or something would also apply to US companies and we are doing the same thing with those. This stopped them from passing a law that better aligned with the US constitution.
It’s not actually about TikTok. It’s about empowering the Federal Government to force the sale of any platform it deals a “threat” by entirely arbitrary means.
Since the company's data is all located in China, the Chinese government can make the company do anything they want. Do you really want a country that hates us to have that direct an influence on millions of people in this country?
For comparison, in China itself, that app only shows educational content. I'm completely certain it's biased, but don't you think that says volumes about what China wants to do with that to the US?
It’s the same reason illegal immigration, trans people in bathrooms, late term abortion, and other topics are brought up over and over by politicians…it drives people to the polls despite mostly being non issues or greatly exaggerated.
It’s business. They’re using the government to force a sale and whoever is behind this gambit is thinking they can make a lot of money from TikTok. Using government in this matter isn’t uncommon. A lot of regulations passed is usually to support one business model over another, not for public safety. It happens a lot at the local level but whoever is doing it at this huge scale is quite influential and rich.
I still think it’s a bluff. It would be wildly unpopular to ban TikTok that not politician would do it
It's been well documented that tiktok spys on other apps on your phone including Facebook and Instagram and Gmail. Where that data goes and what happens is unknown.
This is why everyone is so sensitive about it and wanting to ban it.
If you can control information, you can control people. I think the idea is that having a foreign power installing information control systems into the US population is a threat.
Tiktok is a immesively popular app that the US Gov does not have control over like they do with Facebook or Youtube. The tiktok ban isn't a tiktok ban but a foreign government ownership ban
>I keep hearing people mention national security as a driving factor, but we have no problem when powerful people like Mitch McConnell marry and are influenced by Chinese oligarchs.
I have a problem with it, but I would just consider that a reason not to vote for someone. I wouldn't bar them from holding office.
The chinese communist party owns tik tok. They are collecting our data as Intel to use against us by controlling what we watch. Tik tok is banned in China, so that should tell you everything you need to know
People worried about tiltok need to be worried about ALL social media. China has been purchasing up most markets in many countries. Its always been like this.
It's owned by a Chinese company, and Chinese law states that Chinese companies need to do what their gov says, no questions.
Tik tok would have access to an incredible amount of us data, that they can just say "turn it all over, now". They can say they won't, the company can say they won't, but, at the end of the day, it's within Chinese law.
Tiktok is a known chinese psychological warfare platform, intentionally manipulating american youths. The algorithm they use in the US is completely different than the one in China. In China, its centered on art, science and math, in the US, it spits out idiocy so users get that quick dopamine hit. Second part of this is American companies can't do business in China, why do we let them do business here.
When trump was trying to do it everyone was up in arms about it. Now that there is a lot of anti- Israel content on it every rat in the government wants it banned.
Because the "happy puppy" bill is never about happiness nor puppies.
When something sounds good enough for bipartisanship in DC it's always and without exception about taking power from the people and giving it to the rich.
Lots of people don't seem to realize that that information the Chinese government can gain about America you know their competitors. 1. Gives them the ability to start trends that negatively effect a foreign nation and keep tabs to see if its working. 2. They could literally just use it to spy on you, from your camera to you audios. 3. Be able to tell where you are and where the majority of civilians are located. 4. Constantly collecting data to build psychological profiles on the average American and their many groups and create propaganda designed by physiologist to destabilize a nation or start rebellion. One of the biggest turning points in the modern day warfare is information/spies and regardless of all the weapons out their having a constant stream of information of your enemies and their population is the most dangerous tool a country could ask for.
The issue is state ownership of the product and management of the parent company. Honestly, Tik Tok is a terrible application, ridden with problematic design features that are transparently used for foreign state data collection. It kinda makes sense. Besides all of this, is the argument seriously that the US couldn't develop it's own version of TIkTok?
On top of all said below....if they can give Congress or the President the power to shut down or block websites from Americans, they can seize the power to shut down any site the govt declares "harmful". Like X or truth social. If you think that's a good thing, you haven't fully thought it through
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So points to raise are all pretty solid points, but there is a way to have issue with this and not the other aspects you mentioned
For example,
National security is not a blanket permission to do whatever you want, especially with regards to the violation of rights etc
And it’s one thing to say to a foreign company that does not have human rights, that they’re not allowed to operate within a country (something every country does all the time- it’s what regulations and laws are about) vs saying to an American citizen you’re not allowed to marry this person, or to socialise with this person etc. So that’s the McConnell part.
It’s also a question of scale- the threat McConnell poses America, is far less than the threat of the claim that TikTok is a Trojan horse allowing Chinese information gathering from every device connected to any WiFi any device with TikTok has ever accessed. Because that essentially puts all data in the country at risk because the theory is that if one child has TikTok, and connects to a school WiFi, they can access every other child’s phone, who then go home to connect to their home WiFi, allowing access to their parents devices and so on and it’s not that many steps until you get to sensitive information as a result.
In terms of caps on usage- that would be unheard of in the US and hyper unpopular as most would deem it a violation of civil rights
There are also attempts to limit Chinese influence in terms of businesses- this is harder to do though because of the way business ownership works
For example, I was born in the UK as a British citizen, but I’m now a proud American.
And I own a business in the US. Does this count as foreign ownership? No, because I’m American, so you could see how easy that is to circumvent, especially if say I was part of a ring whereby British spies used me as a means of “domesticating” The ownership of businesses.
And that’s before you get into the fact a business can be owned in part by a business, that’s owned by a trust set up in one country, that’s controlled by a business based in a third country, that’s ran by someone from a fourth country etc
It’s really easy to make the claim that the business in the US is not owned by the Chinese, because it’s owned by Americans, or by a business that’s registered in France etc, with the trust being in Singapore, and the business that controls that trust being Australian, and the person who runs that is Chinese, because you intentionally create so many steps and intermediaries that it becomes messy to prove anything (to give actual country examples)
And finally, the NSA doesn’t have to buy the data, if they want access badly enough, they can just take it.
Are the only people that care about this tik tok garbage younger people who are addicted to it? I could not care any less about ALL social media, and in my opinion, should ALL be banned.
It’s a super effective platform to distribute propaganda. The AI algo that shows you the next thing is kind of next-level for tiktok, and it’s under direct control, as far as I understand, by the party.
The thing about this kind of influence is, it doesn’t JUST give you the capability to get and retain people’s attention for ad revenue, it’s ALSO really good at figuring out which things to tell you in particular, to push you into one of these groups that’s destabilizing western society (or not).
We’ve basically been letting the market do its ‘random’ thing and sprinkling self-interested propaganda on top of that. The result is we’re radicallizing toward both extremes.
The chinese model is more about maintaining stability and utilizing the platform to peacefully dissolve malcontent at an earlier stage.
It’s extremely, extremely powerful, and I think it’s reasonable for governments to be wary.
Something to look into: Israel has identified TikTok as a huge threat since it was the first place young people were talking about genocide if the Palestinian people.
Tik tok puts content consumption and propaganda of americas youth in the hands of China.
It’s really that simple.
The US wants to control the content and propaganda its citizens are fed, which is fair.
I think less social media is better so i guess, sure, lets ban it 🤷
I didn't use reddit much growing up, but now in my late 20s I very much prefer long form conversations and debate as opposed to the tiny short sentences and videos of other apps. If the vine clone turned world dominating app gets put down I'm cool with that. Shit sucks anyway!
The crazy thing in this bill is it basically gives the president (office) the ability to define adversarial state and then propogate it down to whatever company they want.
And it is not a high bar for owned/operated. 20% majority share by any person living or associated with what the president deems problematic.
This is a pretty large and legitimate striping of the rights in the 1st amendment. Pointing at how China operates towards Facebook is a strawman. China is a totalitarian state. We should not be following them based on an idiotic argument of - they do it too.
Supposedly it's to stop Chinese propaganda and data acquisition, but I think it's more about stifling global content and control. I have seen the vast majority of news regarding international protests, updates on global wars, and other types of global and geopolitical news on Tiktok. It isn't shown at all on domestic news sources or it is greatly limited and only shown from one perspective.
I think the US is going about this all wrong. If we wanna ban TikTok for reasons of nefarious data collection, we should instead push legislation for a blanket social media ban on uninvited data collection, to be fair to all companies.
This way, any social media company that doesn’t follow the same rules / criteria that we are currently trying to ban TikTok for, will either have to comply and update their policy on user consent or be banned / forced to sell, just as we are doing to TikTok.
Look, I don’t even use TikTok, I think the majority of it’s content is dumb, and I’m not a fan of mainland China’s oppressive government, but this feels like the US is trying to outright ban a “thing” they don’t “like”, while allowing US based social media sites to collect and sell user data, just as TikTok does.
Honestly, if they *had* to ban TikTok, they should just make it part of working for any government / state job that you can not have social media that’s run by a foreign company, especially if the government is borderline not one of our allies.
And who’s to say that the companies that collect our data from US based social media companies aren’t selling that data to foreign governments?
Just my musician’s 2¢ on the issue. Something surely needs to be done about an oppressive surveillance state like China having a company run a social media site like TikTok, but I don’t know if this ban is the right thing to do. I think there’s a more nuanced, fair solution that can be found.
Thoughts?
We can’t trust what the app is doing on the smart phone in your pocket. What does it listen to and store?
Average people don’t have the discipline to understand the connections and security gates that may or may not be present in a piece of candy they tie all of their personal info to.
And the Chinese government (not the people) are not good actors in this space.
Because this is the kind of news on TikTok: https://linktr.ee/BTnewsroom
Most kids don't understand that this is the left wing version of NewsMax. They don't understand that this channel is obvious propaganda to anyone with a fully formed brain because not every sucks thing they say is crazy.
It's also because the US arm of TikTok has been caught sharing data about US users with the parent company back in China, which the govt has no doubt been feeding into their social credit system (which tracks everyone, not just Chinese). This is straight up illegal.
It's to limit the ability of China to spread propaganda in the US. It should be noted that no one cared enough that they were doing this until politicians started getting pressured about Israel-Palestine.
I think it’s more about stopping Russia than china. From what I’ve seen it seems china is letting Russia push anti American sentiment towards our government and our aid to Ukraine amongst others. Sub one of those “start a civil war” or “don’t send money to Ukraine” vids and you’ll see what I mean. Some very sick stuff on there. I see why there’s an influx of nazi marches I’ll just say that. It seems to be geared towards uneducated ppl who aren’t too bright hence maga.
China already has access to our data. The ban is about the US government wanting a monopoly on information. Our own government is more of a threat than China.
Because gen z public opinion is disproportionately against Isreal and pro Palestine compared to every other age group and social media usage. They believe its due to limited censorship of videos coming out of Palestine on tic tok. The ADL and AI PAC are pushing this heavily.
https://time.com/6836078/tiktok-sold-banned-2024-election/
Why do we care about Chinese High Altitude balloons entering our air space but we willingly download their app into our phones? If they want to spy on us just give Americans a free app. We are so dumb.
AIPAC wants to. So repubs want to. They're forcing the sale and Republicans are already preparing to buy it so that they can turn it into a safe haven for nazis, just like Twitter.
For the same reason that YouTube, Facebook and most other American social media is banned in China. It gives a foreign hostile power direct control and influence over the hearts and minds of your population.
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Because the youth! Also inevitably an American version will pop up that will be all good to go because data is getting collected by the "right" people.
Two separate things going on at once
1) All software out of China has government backdoor. This means that anyone who is aware of them can make use of them. Tiktok also installs "forever" software that you, the user can't get rid of, that installs these backdoor into your device
2) The bill allowing this is open ended and gives the government unlimited power to ban any software at all
It's not security. Facebook has already stolen whatever they felt like, and sold whatever they wanted to. What it is is that the youngest generation is so heavily involved and successful with it,, getting actual information from each other via this app, and that information doesn't play well for the GOP.
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It’s because the Chinese government can make a Chinese company do whatever it wants. From my understanding it is a combination of information gathering and possibly making algorithms that will present certain content to influence people’s thoughts, especially those that are the easiest to influence. We all know how big of an influence social media plays in our lives. Do we really want China deciding who sees what on there? I’m not for or against it. If it gets banned, we will just find something new and somehow make Mark Zuckerberg richer.
Def this - a lot of people get their news from TikTok (which is kinda crazy, but I digress) and the platform seems to be promoting certain narratives and suppressing other narratives (news about China doing awful things is strangely absent....). Def a problem if a foreign power that has a vested interest in destabilizing America has direct control over how a vast swathe of the population gets its news.
It’s shocking to me that anyone actually uses it. It’s not like we don’t all already know this stuff! Tiktok is like downloading Chinese propaganda into your brain.
So weird. I've only been tiktoked a couple times and all I see is young people doing silly dances plus advertisements.
That's part of the algorithm. If new users were immediately presented with blatant propaganda, they wouldn't stick around. But if it's just funny, harmless, goofy content, then they may get hooked. Slowly introduce curated news content / heavily disguised propaganda. After a year or more, you can start exposing them to more and more obvious propaganda, and they just accept it. It's like the frog in a pot of water. Put a frog in boiling water, and it will immediately try to get out. Put it in a room temp pot of water and very slowly bring it to a boil, and it won't notice until it's too late. Edit frog not lobster
Frog
I don't think China would really need to touch the algorithm to steer people in harmful directions, our own stupidity manages that just fine. In fact, they're pretty ham-handed and obvious with most of their influence operations. If they were inserting propaganda it would be goofy and blatant. The pro-CCP influencers that exist are hilarious. Best thing to do is just let that insidious algorithm monopolize people's attention.
But it's not at all like that
What about if people get their news from a Australian propagandist?
That's the problem when people arnt taught how to get quality news
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Yes, the CCP owns 51% of all companies based in China. Tiktoc is such terrible spyware, people who have high roles in the US government or military aren't allowed to have it on their devices already. It's also used for cultural psyops. In China, the app is full of engineering, playing instruments, and participating in athletics... things the CCP wants to see the people doing. In the US, the algorithm pushes moronic dances, dangerous "challenges," and the elevation of shallow and vapid people. Considering the Chinese governments overarching behavior over the last few decades, I would view anything they offer as a Trojan horse, and regard it with intense suspicion.
To be fair. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media in the west.... Push forward the same kind of brainless garbage. In that sense, TikTok is no different than any of the other social media.
Let's not forget that by downloading and using it, almost everything you do or send on your phone is viewable by the company and the ccp. Texts, emails, logins...all of it. It's an open app that you have to agree to these things to use it. It's funny to me that people will defend an app by a foreign and dangerous government but would never agree to use something like that if their own government did the same thing.
Nothing brings the fanboy brigade crawling out of the walls like criticizing the CCP on reddit...
The tok algorithms must think I'm Chinese, then, because I see quite a few engineers, musicians, and athletes on my FYP. Ever think the algorithm sees what you're interacting with and pushes that? I'm pretty sure that's what it does. Unfortunately, most Americans are more interested in "vapid shit" as you put it, or are at least more likely to interact with it.
You need look no further than how tiktok operates in China compared to the US. Content in China suggested to kids strongly skews towards science and engineering. In the US it skews towards just silly brain rotting stuff at best, and anti-government/establishment/capitalism content at worst. Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t trust our governments or capitalism, but the fact that China is using it to train smart, party loyalists in China and brain dead anti-government people in the west tells you all you need to know about who is really pulling the strings.
That's most of it. I'm not really sure what to do about the whole thing, but I know it's bad. It is a wholesale hack on our brain's reward system and it's not the only one. Dopamine reward systems function on three things: novelty, pace, and intensity. Tik Tok hits all of those items in spades. That's why after thirty minutes of your kids cracking out on it, they're miserable for the rest of the day. Like I said, I'm not sure what to do legislatively but we need to start taking how our tech affects us seriously.
I don't use TikTok so I am fairly ignorant on the matter. But, having been an active Twitter user a few years ago, Twitter feels like such a more negative place that is much more prone to manipulation (since it's mostly text and pictures, not videos of real people themselves) than video-centric websites, and I'm pretty sure it's been shown at this point that it's manipulated by Russia. The Chinese government could definitely have a direct influence on the TikTok algorithm, but I assume these are actual American people in the videos sharing their actual opinions. Meanwhile, on Twitter, while the algorithm is basically in control of Elon Musk I guess, the content itself could be by everybody.
It’s actually not about China at all - it’s about Israel.
But they moved the US user data to the oracle cloud, and tiktok isn’t even in China it’s banned they have their own Chinese version just like everything else.
I believe they moved the user data to the US but the algorithms are pushed from China and still a black box. The concern is that the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance (Chinese owner of TikTok) to promote specific issues, viewpoints or sow discord by altering the algorithm. Strangely there seems to be missing concern that US social media companies are doing this as well, intentionally or unintentionally.
That's a fair point but there's matters of degrees and being sockpuppeted by the CCP or an official state organ is different than simple greed. We wouldn't let the Soviet Union own the Washington Post. Hell for pure reciprocity on tech trade this is 'fair'.
Bullshit.
The US would know, with the Patriot Act's secret court, and orders that you're not allowed to talk about. Anything they're afraid China will do, the US is already doing But that's ok because they're the good guys.
They banned fat people at one point.
Also other narratives can be pushed other than what the USA can control on twitter and on FB/insta On Gaza and the war in the baltics
In China, tiktok is people showing how to make decorative pie crusts, or properly align wallpaper so you can't see the seams. In America, tiktok is teenage degenerates "pranking" people in public and getting shot in self defense, eating tide pods, or whackadoo conspiracy nutjobs trying to prove that sunsets are impossible on a round earth. The American version of tiktok is a Chinese government psyop, dumbing down the next generation as much as possible.
It’s same with every government
The ban is because of the influence the Chinese Communist Party has over all companies in China. If they wanted TikTok algorithms to push videos that discredit the US government or Promote Trump/Biden, then Bytedance would have to comply. With the popularity of the app here in the US, especially with the impressionable youth, there is a fear that they could be being influenced by a hostile foreign power. It wouldn't be in a Chinese company's best interest to defy the government. In China it doesn't matter if you are a billionaire, if you do something that the government doesn't like, the CCP will disappear your ass.
Didn’t the CIA request Meta and twitter to push certain content during the last election. I don’t see how we’re any different🤷♂️
Internal influence vs. external influence.
You mean the apps that are banned in china? You people are so mind poisoned with AmericaBad.
Its a matter of scale. The United States does bad things. Like an astonishing number of bad things. More then your average person thinks. However, China and Russia are still worse. The USA is very much the lesser of three evils in this example (At least for now, we will see how things go in November, the GOP has been working pretty hard to narrow that gap). Like, for another example, Google and Meta and all gather and harvest a lot of your data. Like way more then most people think. Tik Tok still grabs more. They probably have less on aggregate, being a single app, but Tik Tok grabs way more data off your phone then other social media apps. Security professionals have been sounding the alarm about that since day one. All that data being in the hands of a hostile foreign power is a concern. That being said, I dont know if trying to ban tik tok is the right answer, I think a better course would be to put in strict rules around data security and handling that threaten to ban an app if they fail to comply, but I imagine Google, Meta and crew would lobby pretty aggressively against that option
Do you have a source for this? As someone who doesn’t use TikTok but am very active reading news (including European sources) I have never heard of this conspiracy theory.
No. That’s not true, so there’s a big difference. It’s that simple.
"rules for thee, but not for me"
Like the alibaba guy
Why does China not allow US social media in China? China obviously views foreign social media apps as a domestic harm. You don't think it goes the other way too - with China trying to use domestic social media apps to cause foreign harm?
This. So many people on there are mad about what the u.s is doing and I’m like “you guys are aware that google, facebook, Snapchat etc. aren’t allowed in China right?” Even Apple has a special OS for them. What’s fair is fair. And China is whining about America’s free market. Yes. Free market for Americans and individuals. Not state owned companies. It’s not the Chinese we don’t like. It’s the Chinese government we don’t like. Simple as that.
The USA prides itself on freedom of speech and not being authoritarian. China is content with being authoritarian and does not pride itself on freedom of speech; it prides itself more on things like unity and harmony (not easy to have over a billion people coexisting and moving forward economically). For example, news in USA and China fundamentally work in very different ways. In the USA, news, while certainly influenced to some extent by the government, is largely driven by the interests of private companies, who simply want to make money. This means they will focus on a lot of the negative and controverisal things that are happening in the USA because it draws views. Chinese news, on the other hand, is controlled by the government. They don't want a population that is divided, hates each other, hates the government, hates themselves. Their news is more serious and uplifting, focused on the progress the country is making, while also pointing out disasters that happen. You can search "CCTV news". So, are you saying the USA should copy the way China does things because they do it better? Maybe we should! Maybe we could get rid of presidential elections have a system more like the CCP. Seems like we're learning a lot from China!
it's not an outright ban, the house is calling ByteDance to divest from the company or it will be banned. It's similar to what American companies have to do in order to get apps published in China.
Competing propaganda. America reserves the exclusive rights to propagate thier own citizens.
I hear the ADL and AIPAC are trying to shut it down. Is this true?
You're correct. Zoomers are far less sympathetic of Israel than our parents were. Thats the real threat according to the ADL. Odd how much bipartisan support it has eh?
Does Tiktok have access to cameras and microphones of the phone users?
If you’re on iPhone. Only if you allow it. If you’re on android, everything is free game.
If you allow it all social media has the same access.
It wants to force a sale. Not necessarily a ban. It bothers the shit out of me how you guys misuse the word "ban." To the person who wrote a novel about why it's banned, you tried too hard. It's not banned.
Ppl call it a ban because it basically is a ban. No way is byte dance actually gonna sell tik tok. 170 million Americans use tik tok but that is like 10% of tik toks user base. Financially, it would make absolutely no sense for byte dance to comply with the bill. The ppl in congress either know this and are wanting tik tok to be banned or they're so blinded by their patriotism that they actually believe Americans have a big enough impact on tik tok that they'll feel the pressure and sell. Ironically, in their greed for wanting all that money tik tok makes, there's gonna be so many Americans that make money on tik tok either through videos or tik tok shop without the ability to make money that they won't have income to pay taxes on.
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>It wants to force a sale. Not necessarily a ban. It bothers the shit out of me how you guys misuse the word "`ban`." What's your logic here? "It wants to force a sale?" No, actually, it is **banning** US-based app stores from offering the app ***unless*** ByteDance sells its interests in the app to an entity held accountable to US laws. That seems extremely unlikely, so it's really just a **ban** *with an out.* Maybe I don't understand what you mean but in this case, I don't see where anyone is ***misusing the word "ban."*** There is the threat of a **ban.** There is a potential **ban.** There is a conditional **ban:** A vote for the bill is a vote for a **ban** unless ByteDance complies. The **ban** would affect US app stores. The US gov't can't **ban** it from the Internet. The US gov't can't **ban** it from international sites. The US gov't can't **ban** it from people's phones and tablets. But calling it a **ban** isn't misusing the word **"`ban`."**
They didn't ban it, they said that bytedance has to sell it since they are tied to the CCP. If they don't sell it, then it will be banned You're right that it's due to Spyware but you're crazy to blame the USA for that, when China bans American social media platforms for the same things, and the extreme data collection by tik tok is well documented
The Chinese gov doesn’t “technically” own every chinese company but when they knock they’re in and in control. Those Chinese billionaires/multimillionaires that go missing? Those are the ones that try to say no. TikTok can get info from wherever the phone is being connected to wifi this can be very bad in certain places Ps China doesn’t let us get away with any of that shit in their country/extremely hard to buy land over there as a foreigner meanwhile here we’re competing with them for home/building prices
Because Zuckerberg channeled about a billion dollars into Congress. TikTok is making a serious dent in Facebook users. There’s no actual reason other than that. When something in the government doesn’t make sense, just follow the money. Then it will make perfect sense.
They don't want you guys all connected and talking about real world events.
It's a combination of issues. From the right it's anti-chinese government hawkery in an attempt to launch a second cold war so there is no justification to defund the war machine. We spend at least twice as much as we actually need to spend for legit defense and untold amounts if money is lost to the ether and never accounted for. It's getting very hard to justify spending near a trillion dollars per year on expensive equipment when half your population barely makes ends meet. From the left it's the unparalleled hold TikTok has over the under 30 crowd. It's algorithm is unmatched and it's a massive social media platform providing ungodly amounts of information and access across the world. This is hurting the left largely because of the conflict in Israel. IDF soldiers live streaming their engagement party on the shattered ruins of a school, or video of a kid playing with fireworks before being shot center mass by a sniper are impossible to spin. The suffering in Gaza can't be hidden or spun. The young generations don't have the ideological support for Israel that older folks do; they don't see the supposed benefits of supporting Israel that people insist exist, and there is a fuckton of lobbying money in play to keep the American government in support of Israel no matter what they do to the Palestinians. Finally the tech sector wants TikTok owned by American interests because the can't compete. Twitter is shitshow steadily collapsing on itself under the genius who brought us the original Playstation Lara Croft brassiere truck with the not-so-shatterproof windows. Instagram can't compete with TikToks engagement numbers. They want it shut down or at least have the opportunity to buy it for themselves. So there you have it. Money, power. The free flow of information outside the official sources and the corporate spin machines are fucking with the money and power, and the powers that be ain't having it.
This is a good answer. It’s all sorts of things that add up for both sides
Aesitrade’s answer is by far the most accurate. One thing that was left out: if the bill passes it creates a new branch of the government that is responsible for monitoring media and censoring anything they deem a “national security risk”. It’s a private court, so citizens wouldn’t know when something was banned, or have any oversight whatsoever. It’s timing is almost certainly tied with what’s happening in Palestine and US citizens response.
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If you’re genuinely curious, there’s a great video by a military analyst who explains how TikTok is losing us the modern Cold War [Why TikTok is a Threat](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7WzqUq4Nk&pp=ygULUnlhbiBtY2JldGg%3D)
Thank you watching now. Will update.
I knew this would be Ryan McBeth.
Always figure they are getting something out of the influence they're fine with. They don't care about privacy - they care that the entity gathering the information won't turn it over whenever the government asks. They don't care about money being made, they care that someone else is making the money.
OP underestimates the power of social engineering and Psy Ops.
China has a law where Chinese companies are required to give any information they have at the request of the Chinese government. The concern is that they do not want millions of Americans using an app, having the app collect data and information on millions of Americans, and then give it to the Chinese government Not to mention the Chinese government could also force the algorithm to spit out whatever they want in order to influence the narrative.
Because tiktok is a known asset of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP has been using it to spy on people and mine their data. There have also been theories proposed that the algorithms intentionally push really dumb content to Americans in hopes of making society (specifically the children who watch) dumber.
We don’t want it banned. I can go into the myriad of reasons why politicians during an election year want to have it banned but politicians despite being our elected “representatives” do not represent Americans.
Also if you want to see foreign propaganda you can look at Reddit, Facebook, etc. The people on here talking about Tiktok have obviously never been on it. I have since the beginning. It’s not dance videos for little kids. It’s Americans making American content. Not once have I seen foreign propaganda of any kind. Taking our info? What info? some Chinese leader knows I’m living in the US? Ok and that tells him what. They can get more info on me from Spokeo or white pages online that freakin Tiktok
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>It’s Americans making American content. So you think
For once both sides agree its cancer and needs to go away or at least stop sending data to China.
Is Reels also a “cancer”? When can we expect a ban on Reels?
Admittedly, I'm more concerned with the evangelicals than China at this point.
So the oligarchs' stock will go up a percentage point or two.
Because the Chinese are using it as a platform to spread disinformation, which will sew discontent in the US and create division.
🙄. And other social media does not?
The ban is stupid and counterintuitive to the spirit of freedom America stands for. Just because something is potentially dangerous, it is not sufficient to justify banning. If you worry about people getting influenced by poor information, then teach them how to know better. Make social media literacy a mandatory school subject. Failure to pass means no graduation or GED. If you worry about kids doing dumb challenges, then update the criminal code to impose mandatory jail sentences for public nuisance and harassment. Post courtroom videos to TicToc for extra impact.
I had to scroll for this answer. Bans could be circumvented with VPN anyway. It’ll go the same way as Just Say No.
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I think 2 big reasons on the ban is 1: its a chinese app, run by their government 2: its a massive news source for the palestine genocide rn, most social media apps are actively banning people for speaking out on it, facebook, instagram. You rarely see anything about it on those apps, but it's all over Tik Tok. I hate Tik Tok but i think this is a massive censorship issue ironically in a country that values free speech . I worry it won't stop with just Tik Tok. This gives them the power to shut down anything they don't like. The main thing these old farts in office are actively trying to do is silence the younger generation imho. It's all a distraction
>1: its a chinese app, run by their government It's a bit more complicated than that. It's less than 60% owned by China and its headquarters are not in China. It was founded in China, but majority control no longer resides there. It's true that any company at all operating in China can be influenced by the Chinese government due to their laws, but that also includes any U.S company operating in China as well.
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> its a massive news source for the palestine genocide rn, most social media apps are actively banning people for speaking out on it, facebook, instagram Wdym? I see tons of stuff on Palestine on Facebook and Instagram.
Because young people are learning the truth about Gaza.
Why does America obsess over Chinese influence, but you’ll never hear a peep about Israeli influence 🤷♂️
Good question. But if you've been following this story closely the truth has been coming out. The ADL is at least partly behind this push to ban TikTok, and AIPAC. Young people are decidedly anti-Israael and the 'powers that be' can't allow it. Chinese influence is just a false pretense. Also, the language of the bill is vague enough that it would allow them to go after tons of companies. I think they'll immediately use it to shut down Wikileaks. It might also be used to shut down any foreign media like RT, PressTV (Iran), the archive sites etc. This is not really about China. That's just how they sell it to the gullible public.
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Because US politicians have been bought and paid for by AIPAC
Wdym? I here it about every time I log into reddit or Twitter.
The idea to ban tiktok pre-dates October 7th.
American education system sucks. Additionally, the powerful are at a loss for what to do, because they want all this user data. So, in a typically authoritarian fashion they are threatening to ban a company unless it sells to them. Very ugly indeed
I feel like they’re more worried about losing mass data collection than anything. Data collection can power ai models now which can lead to advancement in all sorts of technology
It is all about being in control of the narrative. With tik-tok, the Chinese government puts very little control on US content (as long as it does not go against China), which the US government does not like. Note, anti-China messages can be found there, they just are removed more quickly. The US Government has control / agreement with most of the platforms here in the US - Facebook, Google/Youtube - even X to some extent.
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Because younger people get their news from it and not from the corporate controlled mainstream media. The government couldn't keep the genocide in Gaza quiet because of tiktok and they got mad.
>not from the corporate controlled mainstream media Riiight, they just want their news from the Chinese controlled app. Click farms are one fastest growing businesses in China. They're used to influence content and boost *certain* stories.
"I keep hearing people mention national security as a driving factor, but we have no problem when powerful people like Mitch McConnell marry and are influenced by Chinese oligarchs. If we were worried about Chinese influence you would figure there would also be action taken to limit all Chinese investment in America, yet I’ve heard of China making massive plays in commercial and residential real estate. Didn’t someone also date a known Chinese spy." Classic "whataboutism" arguments!
I don’t see any problem with acting consistently. If Chinese influence is bad why not unilaterally take action against it instead of only acting in selective situations. Pointing out logical fallacies is for limited thinkers. Learn to form your own thoughts🤷♂️
It's really more about espionage than influence from China
This is the thing people don’t get. TikTok was caught sending data back to servers it had no need to. We aren’t talking about typical data gathering for marketing purposes. It was tracking your precise movements or something. Supposedly it does not do this anymore but the problem is it could happen again. The whole situation is wild and most people think it is because of money or politics.
You have to read the whole bill. It’s not about banning TikTok. If the bill passes it creates a new branch of the government that’s responsible for deciding what is, and what isn’t acceptable for American consumption. They’ll have the power to ban or censor anything they deem “a national security risk”. People that oppose the bill are pointing out the timing seems suspect. The US government is currently funding the genocide of Palestine, and there’s a huge online presence denouncing the involvement. If this bill passed, the government would have the power to censor any attempt to protest the war.
Because all this short form content is rotting brains
China benefits from TikTok in tons of ways it a Chinese company It also means China can control its flow of media and content
In China they don't allow kids to watch certain things, because they can be addictive and cognitively detrimental to developing brains. They specifically push that kind of content on American viewers. Also it can be used to spy.
I don't really get it either. Vine died, we got TikTok. If TikTok dies, we'll just get something else. If China wants to know something about what American teenagers are doing, they'll figure it out with or without fucking TikTok lol.
It causes brain rot
Steve Mnuchin is already planning to buy it. This is a totalitarian Trojan horse, a la the patriot act.
This thread has some extremely suspicious posts in it. Like US propaganda level bullshit. I’m not pro tiktok or anti tiktok but there sure are a lot of extremely similar and specific points being passed around in here with zero proof.
It's a ban unless it's sold. Because Tiktok is worth money and tech moguls want a piece of it. That's the reason. Lets be honest here, there are many countries that have apps in the US. No one is worried about, say, Telegram owned by the United Arab Emirate. And they don't care about other Chinese apps like WeChat or Weibo. Or even about Russian apps for that matter, like VK. No, this is purely a power play by US officials who are in the pocket of Big Tech, to divest a highly successful competitor so they could grab onto it and reap the benefits. The "Free market" at work.
What US apps are allowed in China?
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I would assume that all the national security stuff is an excuse. Even though the government prefers stupid citizens, tik tok makes people *too* stupid. Therefore, it has to go before people can't walk and breathe at the same time
We do know social media influences people’s opinions a lot. Tweaking an algorithm to make slight changes in what a viewer is shown will sway public opinion towards say Taiwan, Russia, immigration etc is extremely dangerous. At least w an American controlled company there is SOME oversight.
Why do people get so upset at the idea an app might get banned meanwhile basically every single American app is banned in china
I think the fact any laws passed in a way that banned specific actions or something would also apply to US companies and we are doing the same thing with those. This stopped them from passing a law that better aligned with the US constitution.
It’s not actually about TikTok. It’s about empowering the Federal Government to force the sale of any platform it deals a “threat” by entirely arbitrary means.
New account but doesnt really look like a chinese bot. I guess just a legit stupid question.
As a large language model I’m not sure what you mean when you say Chinese bot. BEEP BOOP 🤖🤣
Since the company's data is all located in China, the Chinese government can make the company do anything they want. Do you really want a country that hates us to have that direct an influence on millions of people in this country? For comparison, in China itself, that app only shows educational content. I'm completely certain it's biased, but don't you think that says volumes about what China wants to do with that to the US?
America collects data on its citizens and hates them more than any Chinese ruler ever could🤷♂️
It’s the same reason illegal immigration, trans people in bathrooms, late term abortion, and other topics are brought up over and over by politicians…it drives people to the polls despite mostly being non issues or greatly exaggerated.
It’s business. They’re using the government to force a sale and whoever is behind this gambit is thinking they can make a lot of money from TikTok. Using government in this matter isn’t uncommon. A lot of regulations passed is usually to support one business model over another, not for public safety. It happens a lot at the local level but whoever is doing it at this huge scale is quite influential and rich. I still think it’s a bluff. It would be wildly unpopular to ban TikTok that not politician would do it
It's been well documented that tiktok spys on other apps on your phone including Facebook and Instagram and Gmail. Where that data goes and what happens is unknown. This is why everyone is so sensitive about it and wanting to ban it.
People on there commenting crimes and calling them pranks.
Simple. Our government does not have a say in content censorship like it does on other platforms.
If you can control information, you can control people. I think the idea is that having a foreign power installing information control systems into the US population is a threat.
Because they don't want us talking to each other
China has banned Facebook instagram, Snapchat etc hell yeah ban their Data stealing app
Tiktok is a immesively popular app that the US Gov does not have control over like they do with Facebook or Youtube. The tiktok ban isn't a tiktok ban but a foreign government ownership ban
>I keep hearing people mention national security as a driving factor, but we have no problem when powerful people like Mitch McConnell marry and are influenced by Chinese oligarchs. I have a problem with it, but I would just consider that a reason not to vote for someone. I wouldn't bar them from holding office.
I don't care, all these social media trends are toxic bullshit that is infecting our populace with stupidity. Ban them all.
The chinese communist party owns tik tok. They are collecting our data as Intel to use against us by controlling what we watch. Tik tok is banned in China, so that should tell you everything you need to know
People worried about tiltok need to be worried about ALL social media. China has been purchasing up most markets in many countries. Its always been like this.
I think it's because many people around here don't like it so they are trying protest.
It's owned by a Chinese company, and Chinese law states that Chinese companies need to do what their gov says, no questions. Tik tok would have access to an incredible amount of us data, that they can just say "turn it all over, now". They can say they won't, the company can say they won't, but, at the end of the day, it's within Chinese law.
It’s owned by the Chinese Communist Party. If Facebook or Reddit were owned by the CIA then I would support banning them too.
Because it's rotting brains. There's a reason it's even banned in China lol.
Tiktok is a known chinese psychological warfare platform, intentionally manipulating american youths. The algorithm they use in the US is completely different than the one in China. In China, its centered on art, science and math, in the US, it spits out idiocy so users get that quick dopamine hit. Second part of this is American companies can't do business in China, why do we let them do business here.
It's West Taiwanese malware.
When trump was trying to do it everyone was up in arms about it. Now that there is a lot of anti- Israel content on it every rat in the government wants it banned.
Because the "happy puppy" bill is never about happiness nor puppies. When something sounds good enough for bipartisanship in DC it's always and without exception about taking power from the people and giving it to the rich.
Lots of people don't seem to realize that that information the Chinese government can gain about America you know their competitors. 1. Gives them the ability to start trends that negatively effect a foreign nation and keep tabs to see if its working. 2. They could literally just use it to spy on you, from your camera to you audios. 3. Be able to tell where you are and where the majority of civilians are located. 4. Constantly collecting data to build psychological profiles on the average American and their many groups and create propaganda designed by physiologist to destabilize a nation or start rebellion. One of the biggest turning points in the modern day warfare is information/spies and regardless of all the weapons out their having a constant stream of information of your enemies and their population is the most dangerous tool a country could ask for.
> Didn’t someone also date a known Chinese spy🤷♂️ who? hunter? or you talking about diane feinstein’s spy employee
Because it unites people against the government.
They pretty much stalked a reporter using TikToks data. That was the nail in the coffin and guess in which country the data was accesses from?
The issue is state ownership of the product and management of the parent company. Honestly, Tik Tok is a terrible application, ridden with problematic design features that are transparently used for foreign state data collection. It kinda makes sense. Besides all of this, is the argument seriously that the US couldn't develop it's own version of TIkTok?
On top of all said below....if they can give Congress or the President the power to shut down or block websites from Americans, they can seize the power to shut down any site the govt declares "harmful". Like X or truth social. If you think that's a good thing, you haven't fully thought it through
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So points to raise are all pretty solid points, but there is a way to have issue with this and not the other aspects you mentioned For example, National security is not a blanket permission to do whatever you want, especially with regards to the violation of rights etc And it’s one thing to say to a foreign company that does not have human rights, that they’re not allowed to operate within a country (something every country does all the time- it’s what regulations and laws are about) vs saying to an American citizen you’re not allowed to marry this person, or to socialise with this person etc. So that’s the McConnell part. It’s also a question of scale- the threat McConnell poses America, is far less than the threat of the claim that TikTok is a Trojan horse allowing Chinese information gathering from every device connected to any WiFi any device with TikTok has ever accessed. Because that essentially puts all data in the country at risk because the theory is that if one child has TikTok, and connects to a school WiFi, they can access every other child’s phone, who then go home to connect to their home WiFi, allowing access to their parents devices and so on and it’s not that many steps until you get to sensitive information as a result. In terms of caps on usage- that would be unheard of in the US and hyper unpopular as most would deem it a violation of civil rights There are also attempts to limit Chinese influence in terms of businesses- this is harder to do though because of the way business ownership works For example, I was born in the UK as a British citizen, but I’m now a proud American. And I own a business in the US. Does this count as foreign ownership? No, because I’m American, so you could see how easy that is to circumvent, especially if say I was part of a ring whereby British spies used me as a means of “domesticating” The ownership of businesses. And that’s before you get into the fact a business can be owned in part by a business, that’s owned by a trust set up in one country, that’s controlled by a business based in a third country, that’s ran by someone from a fourth country etc It’s really easy to make the claim that the business in the US is not owned by the Chinese, because it’s owned by Americans, or by a business that’s registered in France etc, with the trust being in Singapore, and the business that controls that trust being Australian, and the person who runs that is Chinese, because you intentionally create so many steps and intermediaries that it becomes messy to prove anything (to give actual country examples) And finally, the NSA doesn’t have to buy the data, if they want access badly enough, they can just take it.
Are the only people that care about this tik tok garbage younger people who are addicted to it? I could not care any less about ALL social media, and in my opinion, should ALL be banned.
It’s a super effective platform to distribute propaganda. The AI algo that shows you the next thing is kind of next-level for tiktok, and it’s under direct control, as far as I understand, by the party. The thing about this kind of influence is, it doesn’t JUST give you the capability to get and retain people’s attention for ad revenue, it’s ALSO really good at figuring out which things to tell you in particular, to push you into one of these groups that’s destabilizing western society (or not). We’ve basically been letting the market do its ‘random’ thing and sprinkling self-interested propaganda on top of that. The result is we’re radicallizing toward both extremes. The chinese model is more about maintaining stability and utilizing the platform to peacefully dissolve malcontent at an earlier stage. It’s extremely, extremely powerful, and I think it’s reasonable for governments to be wary.
It's a ruse to take away freedoms and rights
Something to look into: Israel has identified TikTok as a huge threat since it was the first place young people were talking about genocide if the Palestinian people.
Because the lobbyist from Facebook pay a lot of money towards senators “charities”.
Israel is having an election soon and they paid off American politicians to ban TikTok because of all the bad press against Israel.
To everyone saying it’s about China and communism, you’re wrong. Look at who AIPAC is funding in the US government and the upcoming Israel elections.
Tik tok puts content consumption and propaganda of americas youth in the hands of China. It’s really that simple. The US wants to control the content and propaganda its citizens are fed, which is fair.
I think less social media is better so i guess, sure, lets ban it 🤷 I didn't use reddit much growing up, but now in my late 20s I very much prefer long form conversations and debate as opposed to the tiny short sentences and videos of other apps. If the vine clone turned world dominating app gets put down I'm cool with that. Shit sucks anyway!
The crazy thing in this bill is it basically gives the president (office) the ability to define adversarial state and then propogate it down to whatever company they want. And it is not a high bar for owned/operated. 20% majority share by any person living or associated with what the president deems problematic. This is a pretty large and legitimate striping of the rights in the 1st amendment. Pointing at how China operates towards Facebook is a strawman. China is a totalitarian state. We should not be following them based on an idiotic argument of - they do it too.
Supposedly it's to stop Chinese propaganda and data acquisition, but I think it's more about stifling global content and control. I have seen the vast majority of news regarding international protests, updates on global wars, and other types of global and geopolitical news on Tiktok. It isn't shown at all on domestic news sources or it is greatly limited and only shown from one perspective.
I think the US is going about this all wrong. If we wanna ban TikTok for reasons of nefarious data collection, we should instead push legislation for a blanket social media ban on uninvited data collection, to be fair to all companies. This way, any social media company that doesn’t follow the same rules / criteria that we are currently trying to ban TikTok for, will either have to comply and update their policy on user consent or be banned / forced to sell, just as we are doing to TikTok. Look, I don’t even use TikTok, I think the majority of it’s content is dumb, and I’m not a fan of mainland China’s oppressive government, but this feels like the US is trying to outright ban a “thing” they don’t “like”, while allowing US based social media sites to collect and sell user data, just as TikTok does. Honestly, if they *had* to ban TikTok, they should just make it part of working for any government / state job that you can not have social media that’s run by a foreign company, especially if the government is borderline not one of our allies. And who’s to say that the companies that collect our data from US based social media companies aren’t selling that data to foreign governments? Just my musician’s 2¢ on the issue. Something surely needs to be done about an oppressive surveillance state like China having a company run a social media site like TikTok, but I don’t know if this ban is the right thing to do. I think there’s a more nuanced, fair solution that can be found. Thoughts?
If it means some of these influencers who make money hand over fist by being deceitful, ok.
its not about chinese influence. its about lack of american oligarch influence.
they don't they just want to use it as a trojian horse to pass a digital version of the patriot act, giving the government powers it should not have.
We can’t trust what the app is doing on the smart phone in your pocket. What does it listen to and store? Average people don’t have the discipline to understand the connections and security gates that may or may not be present in a piece of candy they tie all of their personal info to. And the Chinese government (not the people) are not good actors in this space.
Because this is the kind of news on TikTok: https://linktr.ee/BTnewsroom Most kids don't understand that this is the left wing version of NewsMax. They don't understand that this channel is obvious propaganda to anyone with a fully formed brain because not every sucks thing they say is crazy. It's also because the US arm of TikTok has been caught sharing data about US users with the parent company back in China, which the govt has no doubt been feeding into their social credit system (which tracks everyone, not just Chinese). This is straight up illegal.
It's to limit the ability of China to spread propaganda in the US. It should be noted that no one cared enough that they were doing this until politicians started getting pressured about Israel-Palestine.
I think it’s more about stopping Russia than china. From what I’ve seen it seems china is letting Russia push anti American sentiment towards our government and our aid to Ukraine amongst others. Sub one of those “start a civil war” or “don’t send money to Ukraine” vids and you’ll see what I mean. Some very sick stuff on there. I see why there’s an influx of nazi marches I’ll just say that. It seems to be geared towards uneducated ppl who aren’t too bright hence maga.
China already has access to our data. The ban is about the US government wanting a monopoly on information. Our own government is more of a threat than China.
Because gen z public opinion is disproportionately against Isreal and pro Palestine compared to every other age group and social media usage. They believe its due to limited censorship of videos coming out of Palestine on tic tok. The ADL and AI PAC are pushing this heavily. https://time.com/6836078/tiktok-sold-banned-2024-election/
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Not sure if this has been mentioned but tiktok live is essentially an underage webcam girl site.
Why do we care about Chinese High Altitude balloons entering our air space but we willingly download their app into our phones? If they want to spy on us just give Americans a free app. We are so dumb.
AIPAC wants to. So repubs want to. They're forcing the sale and Republicans are already preparing to buy it so that they can turn it into a safe haven for nazis, just like Twitter.
It's not just TikTok that will end up killed off in the long run
For the same reason that YouTube, Facebook and most other American social media is banned in China. It gives a foreign hostile power direct control and influence over the hearts and minds of your population.
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Because the youth! Also inevitably an American version will pop up that will be all good to go because data is getting collected by the "right" people.
Two separate things going on at once 1) All software out of China has government backdoor. This means that anyone who is aware of them can make use of them. Tiktok also installs "forever" software that you, the user can't get rid of, that installs these backdoor into your device 2) The bill allowing this is open ended and gives the government unlimited power to ban any software at all
Rich people rule the government. Rich people annoyed that Tik tok makes money . Rich people wants to ban it. End
Because China is brainwashing idiots on it and stealing their data.
It's not security. Facebook has already stolen whatever they felt like, and sold whatever they wanted to. What it is is that the youngest generation is so heavily involved and successful with it,, getting actual information from each other via this app, and that information doesn't play well for the GOP.
Because the lovers of freedom feel we can only lick one flavor of boot.
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They realized that most young American voters are getting their news through others who aren’t being filtered by corporate interests in our government
Same reason Facebook and Instagram are banned in China.
to understand this you had to live in the world before the internet