At this point, I'd like to ask: If a foreign company threatens democracy in a country, is it legal for the executive to ban business with that company?
No? Then that doesn't make sense. It's a FOREIGN company, the government should have the right to do whatever it needs to protect its citizens in that regard.
If tiktok were a serious threat, the executive branch would have already banned it by now via an executive order.
That's not what happend, instead a whole bill went through congress and got passed with the explanation being "foreign influence" as if American social media platforms don't already do the same thing
This is more about removing foreign competition and not about saving democracy or ensuring security.
DoD already banned it 4 years ago for military because of the actual security threat of data collection.
TikTok pushed a notifications to all US users with the phone numbers of their local congressmen to oppose the bill. So many calls came in that the phone lines were jammed.
Let me distill that for you: China attempted to directly influence legislation with a mass propaganda campaign targeted at its US user base.
Please explain to me why that isn't a threat and why the US should allow hostile foreign powers to directly influence internal politics?
We've already established that Tiktok Tok is not the CCP. That's what the whole first "gonna ban TikTok" fiasco was over. It's why they don't store US data in China but continue to do business in the US.
That would be a business using the 1st amendment right (which everyone gets, not just citizens) to free speech to use it's platform to ask it's users to do something directly beneficial to them. Nothing illegal about it unless you want to reevaluate that "TikTok is the CCP" claim again.
This is the real question. Is there a loophole that allows foreign governments to freely exercise mass surveillance and psyops if they allow US citizens to post on a blackboard outside their offices?
The government certainly does have the right to protect citizens and make whatever laws are necessary. In this case, the government can do so by amending the constitution. Until then, the 1st Amendment applies to all citizens, non-citizens, and business entities operating in the United States.
This is just blatantly false, if an organization is committing crimes or doing something the government dislikes then the government will sanction it, like it has done with almost every Russian Oligarch's business, or front businesses for terrorist groups.
I'm pretty sure the whole point of banning TikTok is that the government is alleging that TikTok has engaged/can be forced to engage in abusive or illegal practices.
There are already exceptions to the First Amendment that did not require updating the US Constitution, such as the Supreme Court ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio 1969 which excludes Incitement as protected speech, Incitement being the advocacy of or in any way leading to the breaking of US laws which *checks notes includes sending personal data to adversarial nations including China and therefor TikTok's operations are not protected.
The ironic thing is that if the US government wanted people to stop using it because of the PRC, they should have just leaked some fake Snowden style documents saying that the NSA was using it. Everyone would drop it like a hot potato then.
In the U.S., laws that disadvantage specific entities are generally considered to not be following the "equal protection" part of the (amended) constitution.
Countries without (their own) laws prohibiting it can (and do) prohibit specific services.
Member states of the WTO (like the U.S.) have agreed to allow themselves to be sued for lost profits based on any (new) laws they pass.
But, I'm no expert -- this is just the view from my (potentially misinformed) corner of the world.
Except the part about the authoritarian regime, the US has many problems but it's still a democracy.
Edit: I'm glad you downvote me because you never had to learn what living in a dictatorship is like, I didn't, but my parents generation still did and I can tell you it looks nothing like the US of today. Women were only allowed to be housewives, groups of more than 2 people couldn't talk openly in the street because that can lead to dangerous ideas spreading out, you would have to be careful what you said even at home because your neighbour could be listening to sell you out, all pieces of art and media would go through an government office to get censored, and so on, so yes, I stand with what I said, the US is a free democratic country even if you have been spoiled enough to think it is not.
the US has many problems but it’s still a democracy
Given the choice between hot shit and cold shit still ends with you being covered in shit. Heads or tails between two very similar parties hardly counts as a true democracy.
This is incredibly disingenuous. The US might not be a true democracy, but it's not an authoritarian regime. Xi and putin disappear people who have an opinion on whether they should be forever-rulers.
The fact that independent parties exist and hold seats at all three levels of government mean you are fundamentally wrong in saying there are only two choices.
The US is a flawed democracy. That's still better than an authoritarian regime.
Power in the US is held within an oligarchy and when they are threatened people get disappeared. There's examples of that but one that's being made an example of in broad daylight is Julian Assange
Just wondering why would you want to ban anything? Does banning something solve any problem that a normal person has? I mean if the ban wave is on it would be fair to ban anything that's not open source but I do think censorship is cancer.
I am not very comfortable with "banning" websites - let's say outright dissolving some companies is probably the better approach, but also a double-edged sword.
However, there is sometimes a need to legally shut down some entities.
I believe that by now it should no longer be a subject of debate that social media has a very unhealthy influence on the public opinion, and that most humans do not have the intellectual capacity to critically reflect on the media they consume. That's already a problem with some TV programs, and it has gotten worse with social media monetizing anger. As a result we get people who vote for politicians who promise them nothing short of a dictatorship. That's incredibly dangerous, and therefore I would like to see all social media federated - centralized services give way too much power to individuals with shady motives.
The fact that the company that manages TikTok is insisting on maintaining the power structure that allows for influence by the CCP makes that claim incredibly suspicious.
First, that's materially different. Second, yes; I think Facebook giving the government our information without a fight is bad. What, did you think I would suddenly think the dissolution of our privacy was good because it was an American company?
Oh no. Not a name! Not on the Internet! I am mortally wounded!! God forbid you examine why we don't have actual data privacy laws in the US. Nope nope nope, just wave that flag and stick your head in the ground.
According to former head engineer for US locations of TikTok, their services are centralized in China to the extent that it probably cannot even run off the US locations alone, and the Chinese owners ByteDance had complete access to everything on the platform including user data and if you believe security experts: your photo library, text message history, contacts list, and information of nearby wireless devices that you've so much as passed by. Also, they're a military partner in China.
That's not a US Corporation in any way, shape, or form. That is espionage. The fact that they announced they won't sell shows that they were never a business operating for profit, it was always about control.
I'm sure you can link these security experts. Since that would be classed as malware and the industry standard is to write public reports on that stuff.
And saying they aren't like a US corporation because they do some military contracting is fucking hilarious.
Would it be classified as malware? I think people hand over permissions on their smartphone for most or all of those things on a daily basis without a second thought.
The report on the vast extent of data obtained by TikTok was published by an Australian firm called "Internet 2.0" but it's pay to view. Seems pretty substantial, though, since it hasn't been debunked in the 2 years since it was published. It also scored the highest recorded score on Malcore, owned by Internet 2.0, with a 63.1.
Lmao. They're trying to sell a product. They admit on their blog that the reason their score is so high is the trackers. Which are all from other social media companies and an advertiser. Oh and they counted Google Crashlytics.
TIL I learned good app maintenance is considered a red flag.
Ah my apologies I thought you meant TikTok when you said "They’re trying to sell a product." It's a pretty common defence and misdirection on these sort of posts.
If you don't trust Internet 2.0 is telling the truth, then how exactly have they evaded defamation lawsuits? Telling lies that negatively impact ByteDance's operations would be grounds for a lawsuit in all 3 of these countries.
Because launching a defamation suit is a PR disaster for them right now. Just look at you breathlessly repeating unproven accusations from years ago. They hardly need to blow up new ones.
Well one of those is required if they want to stay in business and the other one hasn't had much bearing on their US business. So I think it's pretty self explanatory.
We were talking about what TikTok has to do with China, as you seemed to not know how, so you finding their direct obvious ties to China
"fucking hilarious" is telling of your intentions.
No that's ByteDance's direct ties. TikTok would be indirect. My intention is to get to the bottom of this but it's constantly just unsourced accusations and conflations. Not to mention excuse after excuse for why we can't just pass an American GDPR. Instead we have to instigate Red Scare 2.0 which is totally not sus.
ByteDance is not just an indirect tie between TickTock and China, former employees have testified that the TikTok services are centralized in China. The offices in the USA operate like a shell company.
He left ByteDance 4 years before Project Texas. Even if that was happening then there's no evidence it's still happening. But also how is this any different than the US Government telling Facebook it has to share information?
Not everything that's not a dictatorship is a democracy. You're using a strawman to argue your point.
A democracy stops when there is a severe imbalance in influence on legislation between voters and lobbyists / corporations / or voters depending on income / colour of skin.
There's also a quasi oligarchy with freedom of speech, that's about where western Europe is at. In the US, by now, a large part of the population has been deprived of basic human rights, as shown in unpunished police brutality and murders, and vigilante killings of people for their beliefs, opinions or identity.
Neither still qualifies for democracy. We would have to unite about two thirds of the voters behind a new party to even hope to change anything that matters (hello climate change), and that's assuming that a hypothetical party that would actually act in the interest of restoring democratic mechanisms would be persecuted or otherwise hindered by authorities.
Hey I was born in a country with a military dictatorship and my parents grew up under it.
That's exactly why I believe in freedom and liberty. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association. We need to uphold these principles so that the US doesn't slowly slip into authoritarianism like most democracies tend to do over the long term.
That's exactly why I oppose this TikTok ban with every fiber of my being. If a citizen wants to communicate on a Chinese platform, he has every right to do so under our laws. He can make the executive decision for himself about the potential risks or benefits.
That's what it means to live in a free society. You are advocating for authoritarianism while you rail against authoritarianism. Reminds me of 1984. War is peace, right?
They're saying that the US is a democracy and the other country is a regime. Can you guess which other country is involved with TikTok other than the USA? I'll give you a hint: Hundred Acre Woods.
You got downvoted so much that I had to check if we were on ml or hexbear. Those CCP shills really operating in broad daylight on this post, they must have gotten board of the echo rooms filled with bots on their home instance.
Idk why you would be upset about me insulting instances operated by agents of incitement and chaos. If you love the CCP so much then go join Hexbear. They've got like 19 Xi Jinping Emojis, the most recent one I saw was a pile of money with his face on it.
I don’t love CCP. But I also think hexbear et al. should be allowed to exist in peace in their own corner of our shared internet without me or anyone else having to be exposed to unnecessary and completely inconsequential hate warring and whatever else negative. Nobody needed to see or hear that, but you chose to go out of your way to just push shit on everyone’s feed.
TikTok is solely responsible for that AI voice. Instagram and Twitter have never done anything that compares to the pain and suffering that has caused to humanity.
I'm basically indifferent to Instagram (IDK what it's about) and I've hated Twitter since I first learned about its high concept. Twitter makes people stupid.
To be fair, so is League of Legends and every product made by Tencent and their subsidiaries. If they're going to go ahead with a ban, they should at least keep it consistent.
The real question you are asking is whether inaction is worse than inconsistency. Should we not put out a fire unless we can put out all fires? What you are suggesting is to let something burn for the sake of consistency.
If this were true, it wouldn't matter that the US set up the social security number system, because Experian leaked millions of Americans' SSNs.
It obviously matters who owns a service that millions of citizens use from a country that is a political rival. You're just hoping to shut down any conversation against TikTok with a whataboutism
We're talking about individuals' personal data stored by social media companies being accessible to others (governments, in this case). This has nothing to do with social security.
The problem is that the data is accessable, but that's not being addressed. This is an improper fix to an actual problem, just facts.
It's a bad analogy. Mass surveillance (continuous collection of everyone's data) has very little to do with the number we use to track social security payments.
The ownership part was how it was analogous. That was pretty obvious. Any time a massive system is set up for millions of people to use, it quite obviously matters who set it up and why.
I just love when Internet randos pretend not to get analogies because I'm, gasp, comparing things which aren't identical.
In any case, sorry to interrupt your stream of 15 second video clips.
When signing up for a tik-tok account, I put in a birth date, a username, an email address for verifcation and that was it. I didn't need to provide a drivers license, verify that the name I put in was my actual name, that the birth date was my actual birth date. Location isn't allowed nor was it requested and neither was Nearby devices. It's actually been a much better behaved application than any American social media app.
Alright, thank you for clarifying that you want more restrictions and laws against these companies, it just seemed odd for you to bring up those other businesses in a post talking about the TikTok forced sale and resulting lawsuit.
I'm just happy about them restricting US Citizen data being brokered to adversarial nations including Iran, Russia, China, and others.
I want the issue of mass surveillance / data collection to be addressed, instead of this bs which is basically working around the edges the problem. Tick-tock shouldn't be allowed to sell (/provide) user data to anyone but neither should Meta, X, reddit, etc.
It doesn’t matter who owns it. It’s the data that the US government is accessing.
I couldn’t give a shit about TikTok, I’ve never used it in my life. I just think the US should be open and say we are banning this as we don’t have control over it. Sure China is only doing what we are doing but fuck em. I’d respect that.
Also, it’s got to be about silencing pro-Palestinian rhetoric too.
If they ban TikTok they should ban FaceBook and Instagram too.
Also, it’s got to be about silencing pro-Palestinian rhetoric too.
Yeah trump was talking about banning it in 2020 because he used his time machine to find out what it would be used for in the future. After his harrowing story from the future, I agreed with the effort to ban it because I lOvE gEnOcIdE
Noone is saying that. The argument is pretty much that people want more scrutiny applied to other companies beyond tiktok, and ideally not be under constant surveillance by any of them, not that people want to be monitored by all police states equally.
It's a whataboutist cop out. People who like tiktok just wanna point out how supposedly since tiktok was targeted, then it's all in bad faith and therefore there could never possibly be a legit concern with tiktok in particular. Any argument to be addressed with "ChInA bAd"
This is not whataboutism - it's looking at the bigger picture. The point is that you should want to prevent all mass surveillance by social media companies. Not force them to sell so that the government can get its greedy paws on the data.
The government can already access the data with a warrant. The ownership of TikTok has literally 0 effect on the government's ability to access user data. Not being owned by the Chinese government has a huge impact on China's ability to access that data.
And if someone chooses to watch that, that's their business. Not nanny government's. Not saying I do. But none of us have any business telling someone else what they can and cannot watch. That's part of living in a supposedly "free" country. We aren't China. You want a "great firewall", then move there.
In our zeal to shun everything China-related, we must not become them.
The difference from the perspective of the US is that it's spyware from a potentially malicious foreign state. China bans US tech companies as well, TikTok took advantage of the US having a much more open market and the state decided that they were acting in bad faith.
Wait, I'm in HK right now for business and can open it just fine from my hotel wifi. The website that is, I don't care about the platform and wouldn't use the app.
I could play videos just fine without login though. Anything I'm missing?
What would give them standing? They'd have to be an entity protected by the constitution to claim that protection was harmed. Is it this (Wikipedia)?
TikTok Ltd was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and is based in both Singapore and Los Angeles. source
I guess I've never thought about what makes an entity have rights here. Buckingham Palace couldn't just open shop here and start suing our government, right?
Important note regarding a business's right to regulate free speech:
The rules of the Constitution are meant to regulate Congress, not businesses or citizens. Therefore, the right to free speech means Congress cannot restrict someone from speaking his or her mind, but a business may be able to.
For example, a radio show has the right to not allow a certain person to speak on its program or to say certain things. Ultimately, such issues are decided by the Supreme Court, and there may be some exceptions, depending on the circumstances.
Mostly obscure to me, but I looked up GlobalFoundries. Originally divested from AMD, bought IBM's chip business, got a contract from US Department of Defense in 2023 for manufacturing military chips
I imagine you wouldn't object to GlobalFoundries suing the US government
We decided a while ago that the Constitution protects everyone and every thing in the US because the loophole of declaring people and companies to not be protected was too dystopian even for conservatives at the time.
Something important to note here is that there are various exceptions to freedom of speech protections from various time periods, one such exception is Incitement – If a person has the intention of inciting the violations of laws that is imminent and likely, while directing this incitement at a person or groups of persons, their speech will not be protected under the First Amendment. This test was created by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
This is relevant because alongside the TikTok forced sale they also passed a law against sending sensitive data including personal details and photographs to adversarial nations including Russia, China, Iran, etc. That means that Incitement could be used to describe TikTok operating in any capacity without completely centralizing to the USA, and therefor they would have no protections by the first amendment.
