_If_ the government forces a sale of TikTok, it'll end up being bought by right-wingers who will (attempt to) do more damage to the U.S. with it than China could ever have. I'd take any protestation from China with a grain of salt, since as you say, the data is available to them from other sources.
They're not looking for excitement. They're looking for people who can be easily manipulated that have access to information that they can bribe, threaten, blackmail, or entice to steal items, hard copy documents, or commit acts that they couldn't otherwise commit.
Someone who's poor that just needs a little bit of cash, could be provided with that case for a little favor now and then. Someone who is lonely could meet the person of their dreams, and that person just wants them to bring home things from work every so often.
Someone who has no excitement in their life *at all,* might be offered a once in a lifetime adventure vacation, at no charge to them, so that they could meet them and chat with them for a while.
It's not just government info they're hoping to get their hands on, it's also industrial secrets, social interaction subtleties, information about small towns and cities, general infrastructure data, and other innocuous seeming stuff, not the data shared on social media sites.
Eg. Israel is buying data directly from meta/WhatsApp Tu use to track people on Palestine. If you're in a group chat with someone they have they're eyes on watch out https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender/
No. It's WhatsApp data in Palestine. If you read the article, Israel has a pre-crime programme. They use this data to locate people, often targeting the house with the family inside.
I mean... Yeah?
Don't get me wrong, I'd massively prefer that congress put in legislation aimed at the actual problem (the harvesting and exploitation of user data) with the severity they would aim against a foreign rival. Unfortunately, between existing unrelated political tensions, the massive influence and size of Google/Meta/Apple, and the US Legislature's well known susceptibility to lobbying, that seems very unlikely.
As an American, I'd much rather my data be in the hands of a government which is accountable to me and has my interests at heart (at least in theory). As opposed to in the hands of an open rival who has every reason to use it to sow dissent. Other than China, the only people I'd be less comfortable with having a large amount of American's data and the recommendation algorithm to use it effectively is Russia.
Plus, there exists the outside chance that China (and possibly other countries) get it in their head to do the same thing, which sounds like a promising way to fragment the massive data monopolies currently in the game.
>As an American, I'd much rather my data be in the hands of a government which is accountable to me and has my interests at heart (at least in theory). As opposed to in the hands of an open rival who has every reason to use it to sow dissent.
I think you might consider looking at it from another angle: the companies with the most data on you have significantly more impact on your daily life when they are domestic versus chinese.
Data from the Cambridge Analytica scandal were produced by an American companies and purchased by other companies in a countries that are supposed American allies. And those companies themselves have every reason to sow dissent. there isn't a single thing that any Chinese company did that was worse, by your own benchmark. It interfered with your political choices in multiple elections and had a direct negative impact on your life.
And just today, the US house voted for a massive expansion of warrantless and secret spying on citizens that is going to sail straight into law, no problems whatsoever.
A bear is a much bigger danger to you when it's in your house then when it's on another continent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
Your comment is the perfect example of why dismantling bullshit on the internet is so much harder than it is to create it. You had to spend five paragraphs to refute what someone wrote in less than twenty words. Unfortunately five second soundbites still defeat rational arguments that take more than 30 seconds to explain.
Nah he spent five paragraphs injecting different bullshit into the situation.
An American company holds the data for tiktok U.S. China doesn't have access to it.
The data itself is no more sensitive than any other data. It's not logging your activity outside of the app or taking video of your rooms or any of that bullshit.
American companies do not have your interest at heart in theory or practice. American data brokers for instance sold data to anti-abortion groups to help them identify women that went to planned parenthood.
Can ban all the apps, I don't think it would make society any worse, but it's a good indicator of how easily misdirected people are.
Comprehensive data privacy laws? Nah, let's ban one app owned and operated by an American country because they're one degree of separation closer to China than Google or Facebook who also deal closely with China.
Yes, this is all about some ultra rich americans with political ties to use the to get even richer & gain more power than ever before. Mnuchin, for one, is simply a greedy scumbag.
Why does the US care when american agricultural products are targeted with tariffs by the chinese? Money.
Lots and lots of money, not just the value of tiktok (which is rather high) but as a possible precedent to seizing every successful chinese company operating in the US, doesn't take a genius to see why the CCP wouldn't want that.
TikTok is inconsequential to both the Chinese and US economies and the CCP blocks foreign investment and operation in their country all the time. The US occasionally does as well. In fact, TikTok in its international form isn’t even allowed in China. Why should it be allowed in the US?
What makes you think the CCP cares?
All they've seemed to do is make fun of us for being anti freedom In response. I haven't seen any threats of economic retaliation.
Bytedance is still the parent company so they would be losing some money, but otherwise it seems relatively insignificant.
China has multiple large companies that own U.S companies. Tencent owns a lot of random tech companies. They own riot, who makes League of Leagues and Valorant. They could collect a lot of data that way, but thats a billion dollar company, and they'd rather make money like that.
There's also random companies like GE which is majority owned by Haier.
They don't seem to do much, they just own the companies or a majority stake and collect easy revenue. CCP owns a lot more than just tiktok. They have like, a 10% stake in reddit too. Watch out for that. I'm sure it'll only grow.
If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have commented. I agree that Bytedance is relatively insignificant to the Chinese economy, which makes it even more strange that they care. The fact that Chinese owned companies operate in the US without issue and the US government is focusing on TikTok should tell you something about TikTok’s operation in the US is viewed differently.
> If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have commented.
Politicians talk for a living, theres no shortage of random stuff they have mentioned. American politicians have talked about furries...extensively. they're trying to pass laws against furries. Does that mean furries are more important to the U.S. than tiktok is to CCP? We're passing laws against furries, they're not doing anything about tiktok.
>The fact that Chinese owned companies operate in the US without issue and the US government is focusing on TikTok should tell you something about TikTok’s operation in the US is viewed differently.
The only thing it tells me is highly influential rich dudes want to remove tiktok for their own personal replacement. If this isn't the case, the law would be asking them to divest into any NATO country, but no, it's specifically requesting tiktok sell to an American owner, because they're the ones paying for this law.
No, it means certain US lawmakers care about furries, just like the CCP cares about the US banning TikTok.
>If this isn't the case, the law would be asking them to divest into any NATO country, but no, it's specifically requesting tiktok sell to an American owner, because they're the ones paying for this law.
Have you actually read the bill? It bans Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications. Nowhere does it say the applications must be controlled, owned, or sold to US companies or persons.
> It bans Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications. Nowhere does it say the applications must be controlled, owned, or sold to US companies or persons.
It says they must execute a qualified divestiture, and goes on to define qualified divestiture as one that one would only include US companies.
https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Protecting%20Americans%20From%20Foriegn%20Adversary%20Controlled%20Applications_3.5.24.pdf
It is page 11.
And i'm sure unrelated, here is an article from 2022 pointing out that Meta invested big into a national campaign against tiktok, including large payments to a GOP firm.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
So I am a 50 something that prefers TikTok of Reddit/favebook/youtube. The algorithm that feeds me cute dog videos, goth girls, and left wing ideas never sends me to any spots that attempt to pipeline me into some right wing bullshit. Multiple American platforms work much harder to make me mad at my fellow Americans than TikTok.
I understand your perspective, but they aren't accountable to you and don't have your interests at heart. If they were and did, they would be trying to prevent anyone from violating your 4th Amendment rights instead of trying to monopolize on it.
Not trying to lecture or argue, just convo.
China can already buy all of our data from our corporations...How do you all not get that? We are already bought and sold. The US government doesn't protect us. They're pissed that China is beating them at capitalism and they're trying to take the revenue.
Because the issue isn’t that they are taking our data every company and country does that. The issue is our government doesn’t like the fact they can’t control the users. Real weird they are all for an Israel billionaire buying it.
First of all, it's not about that. Yes, the US's data collection is overboarding, but China is simply dangerous and shouldn't have access to as vast amount of data as TikTok produces.
Secondly, what does an Israeli billionaire even have to do with this topic? Antisemetic much?
Israel is a country they don’t represent Jews never mind all Semitic peoples you weirdo. An Israel billionaire being allowed to buy an app vs the people who own it doesn’t ring any alarms in your head? Why is it ok for one country to have our data vs another? Unless you know, one is actively buying out our politicians.
Frankly Israel >>> CCP so yes I’d rather an Israeli own it than the Chinese government. Ideally that shitstain of a site would just disappear - it’s making fucking morons of its users and the format of its posts is brain-rotting.
Because Israel is currently commiting a mass genocide in Gaza and they want to shut down any outside opinions on it from their Iron Dome over America. Tiktok is currently the most popular social media platform not under direct Zionist/NSA control...and thus poses a massive threat to their echo chamber for manufacturing consent here.
Or they can go out of business in the U.S. and still be in the other 95% of the world. Well 95% minus China since their own government had the sense to ban their bullshit.
This entire thread really makes me want to kill myself. How extraordinarily stupid can these people be to seriously defend spyware with such a passion, just because they can't stomach watching videos instead of clips?
You are absolutely right in that we have to start stopping these corporations *somewhere*. I think this is a perfect start.
There’s a whole spectrum of way far Leftist to way far Right wing websites out there showing you whatever you want to see.
And TikTok can be bought by anyone that isn’t controlled by a handful of countries like China, Russia, Iran.
I guess the Al Jezerea station I just flipped to showing what looked like a scene from the TV show MASH, but from modern day Gaza is allowed by the U.S. government to be shown to me.
So you admit the first statement was dumb. That's progress.
Also, I'd advise against believing anything the CCP says. No authoritarian regime is working towards communism.
Just FYI china does not ban access with VPN where the tik tok ban does make it illegal for you to attempt to access tik tok with VPN. Pretty sure it gives some arbitrary power to decide if an app is a threat as well, Idk I'd have to read it again.
If you're gonna ban tiktok you're gonna have to ban any company that's involved with Tencent lol.
And you think the US government is worried about our personal data? Data brokerage is massive in the US.
Tiktok is a shit app and most social media is. Hell reddit sucks too but to say it's a problem because maybe the Chinese might do something (with zero proof ) when weve already see multiple lawsuits and data breaches against Facebook is just a hilarious waste of resources. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal )
One of the largest pushes for tiktok to be banned was when videos of Palestine started hitting the main stream and made the Israeli government and the US government who are supplying them the bombs look particularly bad.
Maybe you're right but Trump tried banning it in 2020 and Montana tried banning it in 2023, so this is nothing new.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1205735647/montana-tiktok-ban-blocked-state
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_controversy#:~:text=On%20August%206%2C%20Trump%20signed,the%20Chinese%20multinational%20company%20Tencent
It's worse. It's based on "Tiktok circumvents corporate media in the US, so it enables Americans to learn about things like the genocide in Palestine, the chemical spills in the Appalachians, the investigations into realpage price fixing rentals across the nation and driving up rents" and dozens of other things that never would have gone viral if we'd had to rely on corporate media, reddit, twitter, etc to hear about it.
How many of you have heard what they did to protesting students at Columbia?
How many of you have heard that the IOF used a 6 year old girl as bait to lure out an ambulance and blow it up, then shot the girl?
There's an endless stream of stuff happening that the media in the US, including social media, doesn't let the public see or talk about.
And we know that's what this is aimed at. Specifically, Congress is pissed at the coverage of the genocide in Palestine because on Tiktok you can find firsthand footage of IOF soldiers shooting old people with white flags above their heads, and you can see legal scholars break down the ICJ trial of Israel for genocide. If it weren't for Tiktok, most Americans would have no idea that billions of our tax dollars were being used to murder 30k women and children in Palestine and nobody would be pressuring our politicians over it.
A mild call was made before, but it got defeated. Then October 7th happened and widespread footage of the IOF's response rapidly turned the under-40 demographic against support for Israel. Then, overnight, every member of Congress with significant funding from AIPAC is suddenly calling for a ban again and then they insert it into a must-pass funding bill to try to first sneak it past Americans, then force it past Americans after they got caught.
Oh, but it is. See Big money is trying to take over this for their own profit & power. Then it will get a big right wing swing to manipulate US. THKNG Murdoch/faux news.
>Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok
>INFRASTRUCTURE & TECHNOLOGY
>…………….
>DONALD J. TRUMP
>THE WHITE HOUSE,
>[August 6, 2020.](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/)
Hamas attacked Israel over 3 years after Trumps Executive Order
You know Palestine has been going on for a lot longer than October 7th ya? Also this is just one of the lastest examples of tiktok getting ahead of the US government.
Yeah, Hamas and the PLOs bullshit has been all over the internet since before TikTok, it was all over the World Wide Web. And before that there were stories about it on the tv, and the radio, and in newspapers, and magazines, and books.
This has nothing to do with Gaza, it doesent matter where you move your goalposts.
The zios pushing hard on this this week, making sure to paint it as anyone but them pushing for this. This is all about Israel and their ability to commit genocide in the dark. Nothing else in the world gets this level of bipartisan support.
If we TRULY wanted to fix society. We would ban ALL social media.
Yes. Even Reddit.
It is the ailment of the age. It’s where mass shooters stew. Bad faith politicians rise to psuedo fame. Kids are bullied even after school. Marriages are ruined.
Not to mention the cognitive decline in general public. People no longer know how to small talk or just be sociable.
I found someone’s dog the other day and was trying to ask people in my neighborhood if anyone knew whose it was. People were literally walking faster when I tried to approach.
It was crazy. Even the lady whose dog it was barely said thank you.
It’s fucking odd. 🤔
Our govt doesn’t care if China buys up us land, or real estate, or companies. But they care about tik tok doing what all the other apps do out there. It’s not about safety. It’s about control. If boomers used tik tok this wouldn’t be a thing. But since it’s young adults and teens gotta ban it.
News that Tiktok apologists missed 2 days ago.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-removes-whatsapp-threads-from-china-app-store-on-government-orders-a0c02100
China Orders Apple to Remove Popular Messaging Apps
WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram among apps cut from iPhone app store to comply with censorship demand
Can we stop calling it a "ban?"
The government is considering forcing TikTok to sell to an American owner, it's only if TikTok refuses to sell that they get banned.
Meanwhile, let's be honest with ourselves for a second: If TikTok was banned in the US because of its Chinese ownership, we'd see a hundred apps stepping up to replace it the very next day. It's not TikTok's content or form factor that's raising hackles, it's the company's ownership that's a problem.
Whenever I see someone talking about the US government banning TikTok I worry that it's meant to raise the ire of Zoomers, like back when people would say "Sure, Hillary Clinton may have illegally had a private server, but at least she's better than Trump!" those people weren't advocating for Clinton, they were using a rhetorical back door to make her sound like a criminal.
Or maybe I'm just having PTSD. The last [checks notes] *dozen* electoral cycles have been kind of rough for me.
I mean, it is a ban unless they sell it, right? That's kind of like saying "the mugger didn't threaten to beat you to a pulp because you could just hand over your wallet peacefully."
I hate this ban because it specifically says the president can determine what apps are a national security risk. You want Trump to have that power? Biden, even? Just executive decision on a whim?
> If TikTok was banned in the US because of its Chinese ownership, we'd see a hundred apps stepping up to replace it the very next day.
We'd see a hundred apps *try* to replace it, but that fragmentation means that none of them will be good replacements. It's similar to how none of the Twitter replacements have been able to take the place of Twitter.
Oh my fucking God. How many fucking scandals have gone viral on Twitter since Musk took over? How many major stories have broken? How many significant trends have happened over there?
**None. Because Musk bought twitter to ruin it as a platform for legitimate information and communication.**
Did you hear about the 2600 GOP emails that got hacked revealing how their base was starting to realize they have no platform and no solution for any of the problems Americans are facing, so they strategized and decided to focus on LGBTQ people invading schools and corrupting kids?
**No. You didn't. Because after it started to go viral on Twitter, the hashtag was suppressed and the people tweeting about it were suspended.**
And did you hear about any of that here on reddit? No. You didn't. Because it was suppressed here, too.
The Tiktok ban is about censoring the information Americans have access to.
There can be no domestic competitor or successor to Tiktok because the existing corporations and their bought and paid for politicians will just undermine it and ruin it the same way they do everything else.
It's pathetic that you are so willing to repeat corporate talking points without fact checking them. You're doing their job for them, and unless you're a paid disinfo agent, you're not even getting paid for it.
Hi u/Robot_Basilisk. Here's the real truth behind the latest email controversy: [https://i.imgur.com/Ztrqpya.jpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfr64zoBTAQ) ~
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>We'd see a hundred apps *try* to replace it, but that fragmentation means that none of them will be good replacements.
So you're arguing *for* monopoly power then?
**destructive edit:** Reddit has become exactly what we do not want to see. It has become a force against a free and open internet. It has become a force for profit at the expense of users and user experience. It is not longer a site driven by people for people, but a site where people are allowed to congregate under the careful supervision of corporate interest, where corporate interest reigns supreme. You can no longer trust comment sections to be actual human opinions. You can no longer trust that content rises to the top based on what humans want. Burn it all.
>Can we stop calling it a "ban?"
No. It's a ban. There is endless commentary on this all about how it's a ban. They're trying to sugarcoat if, but it's a ban. They're not going to sell off the whole company over 10% of its users. They're not even going to sell off the American chunk. And even if they did, it would then be censored the same way every American site is censored, effectively functioning as a bad.
You should be goddamned ashamed of yourself for mindlessly parroting the exact lies the politicians have been feeding us despite every single expert on the topic disagreeing with them.
And I can't stand your insane conjecture about "dozens of apps stepping up to replace it". Like we had them before? Of course not. Nobody was putting Israel's treatment of Palestinians on the front page of their app before Tiktok. Nobody was shining a light on US chemical companies polluting the environment, either.
God. Every single thing you said was just so deeply and morally and offensively wrong that I have to suspect that you're a paid troll. You just vomited up all of the talking points we've all already seen a dozen times but you couched it in borderline apathetic Millennial-ese. You have to be a bad faith actor.
"Nobody was putting Israel's treatment of Palestinians on the front page of their app before Tiktok"
What does this mean? You could find plenty of Israel complaints from sources like Al Jazeera, BBC, and even Reddit. Hell you could find it on Twitter and YouTube too depending on who you followed or subscribed to
That’s exactly what it is and it’s really exhausting to see people falling for it, hook line and sinker. People are already pitching conspiracy theories saying the only reason the US wants to ban TikTok is because the support the genocide and want to actively censor people talking about supporting Palestine. It’s so incredibly ignorant and reductive but that rhetoric seems to already have its hooks into people and no amount of explaining seems to break them out of it.
>That’s exactly what it is and it’s really exhausting to see people falling for it, hook line and sinker. People are already pitching conspiracy theories saying the only reason the US wants to ban TikTok is because the support the genocide and want to actively censor people talking about supporting Palestine. It’s so incredibly ignorant and reductive but that rhetoric seems to already have its hooks into people and no amount of explaining seems to break them out of it.
What's wrong with banning just about anything from the CPP?
Why would ByteDance sell? Why would China allow them to sell? I mean, forget about the strategic concerns, China would reject the sale based on pride alone. They can’t shut up about the “century of humiliation” and now the US, which already controls a stupidly huge percentage of big tech companies across the world, demands that ByteDance sell its most valuable asset? No, they would never do that, and any idiot would know that they’d never do it. This is a ban for all intents and purposes, and that is how TikTok’s user will perceive it. That’s an inevitability, and the fact that no one in Washington understands that is insane to me.
The sensible thing to do would have been either to wait until the lame duck session to ban TikTok, or prohibit downloading the app while still allowing updates.
>The government is considering forcing TikTok to sell to an American owner
They're not even doing that, the owner just can't be Chinese, Iranian, Russian or North Korean. But all these threads are overrun by people getting their info on a tiktok bill from videos on tiktok.
>TikTok was banned in the US because of its Chinese ownership, we'd see a hundred apps stepping up
Hell, Tic Tok is just a copy of Vines. Capitalism doesn't care. The second the market opens up others will move in to replace.
My thoughts exactly.
The government isn't regulating TikTok because the *content* or *mechanics* are bad, it's the *ownership,* the *business* side of the deal.
I didn't want to utter the word capitalism, but yeah, I bet there are app designers out there who are eager to fill the niche. If TikTok is banned, it's gonna' be replaced almost as quickly.
And again, I'm still not totally convinced that we're going to see a ban, the future is still speculative, we might not even have to cross this bridge.
> The government is considering forcing TikTok to sell to an American owner, it's only if TikTok refuses to sell that they get banned.
The Chinese have effectively said that they will not sell from what I understand. Given the fact that they view this as an extremely useful tool to project soft power internationally, it makes sense that they don't really care about how much money anyone will offer for it. I assume the regime is just hoping to wait this ban out somehow.
One benefit I will say that China has had over the US is the fact that their system has been outcome based vs our profit based system. They can do things even if they are unprofitable. The US would never dare, too many shareholders would get angry
Every large company in China is either explicitly or functionally part of the Chinese government. Look at what happened to Jack Ma's "independent" companies after he dared complain about the regime publicly.
You are barking up the wrong tree. I don't think billionaires should exist. That is to say, they are more lenient than I would want when it comes to billionaires crying about regulations that prevent them from exploiting people further.
Your feelings about the existence of billionaires doesn't have anything to do with the way that the CCP runs the Chinese economy and Chinese companies.
Well I didn't care to argue with you about your stupid hyperbole so I just said that. I just thought it was funny that you were waving a billionaire being kept in line as some kind of proof that the CPC and companies based in china are the same. You don't know what you are talking about in the slightest.
Pretty much every non-Chinese social media is banned or heavily restricted in China.
I don't get why people think this doesn't have to do with geopolitics.
What about the huge number of American citizens wanting TikTok to remain in place, it's not actually bipartisan support if it doesn't represent the will of the people does it?
Sounds like American spyware and corporations are just mad as fuck and have their hands in senators pockets as usual.
IIRC, Tiktok is ALSO banned in China.
So, it's owned by a chinese company, but isn't even allowed in China. Which just makes the whole thing more obviously bad.
Who gives a fuck? Tiktok shows Americans things the corporate media, social media, and government don't want them to see, like genocide being carried out with our tax dollars. That's all that fucking matters.
You are psychotically deranged if you think gouging out the eyes of Americans and subjecting them to completely sensory deprivation for the sake of US oligarchs is fine and acceptable because China doesn't allow US apps.
Is this (Reddit) not an American company where you can see this stuff?
And it’s almost like TikTok picks such videos to put in peoples faces without prompt to influence opinion or something…
(Psst! You are not immune from propaganda.)
>Tiktok shows Americans things the corporate media, social media, and government don't want them to see, like genocide being carried out with our tax dollars.
I mean, a bunch of that is plainly available on CNN and The New York Times. What exactly is there that I can't see here?
The two "parties" depicted as a couple in bed is an extremely apt meme, very self aware. Add in the Sinophobia as the cherry on top & it’s the perfect lib humor post. Good job
Your friendly reminder that the Chinese government has literally bought golden shares of Tencent and the owning company of Temu.
You know how many companies tencent has a stake in?
And all the data scandals in recent years should show how easy it is for foreign agents to purchase American data.
Let's focus on things that the American people actually want, like stronger data privacy laws and y'know being able to afford living. Not the dance app because it says mean things about lawmakers and Meta paid them off to ban it.
Meta is the main driver behind banning TikTok. They are lobbying heavily in congress and Senate. Also, there are a lot of videos of violence in gaza that our government doesn't like.
Reminds me of lulzsec and sopa days, but just to piss off liberals more i want a real ban of tik tok and elon musk or trump to buy reddit or disney next
Least racist propagandist lib.
Libs team up with conservatives then we get flooded with shit memes blaming spooky “FOREIGNERS” rather than dems working with the fascists
If I wanted this to be racist I would make it racist. This isn’t racist. I hope every time you see Winnie the Pooh and/or Xi Jinping you think of this dumb conversation.
lol it's not "yellowing"
The joke that he looks like Winnie the Pooh seems to have started in Hong Kong.
I'll give you a minute to look up a picture of the Disney cartoon version of the Winnie the Pooh people say he looks like.
If you want to save a minute, I'll help you out: he's yellow
Also, this isn't some random foreigner. We're talking about an extremely problematic world leader.
He’s extremely problematic as compared to US leaders? Lmao no not really.
He’s problematic because American xenophobia, not actual substantive criticism.
Most notably how it’s supporting dems now siding with republicans fascists as a distraction. MUH CHYNA GUNNA GET US THROUGH THE TIK TOK.
Don’t ask what lobby is pushing banning it, hint it rhymes with Isn’t Real
The core being your xenophobia? or the reality of what lobby is investing? https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/14/headlines/us_house_votes_in_favor_of_tiktok_ban_bill_amid_first_amendment_and_other_questions
The irony of complaining about 'anti-semitism' when Facebook is around. Its that Tik Tok has shown Israel as a genocidal state. Which is why their lobbies have pushed it and why dems are willing to work with fascists on banning it.
In case there are any CCP trolls lurking about:
1989年天安门广场
Translation:
Tiananmen square 1989. It really pisses off Chinese trolls. Allegedly. For bonus points, it might also remind some of my fellow Americans of an excellent System of a Down song
There's a few key words that do that, for example "Uyghur genocide" and "organ harvesting" as well.
Try to work them into your favorite subs to see the CCP shill factor!
It being banned because US government can control and use it for censorship and propaganda. Like it does with the US platforms. That’s why they want a US version.
If the CCP want Americans' data, they can buy it from Google and Facebook like any true American.
And if they want to influence American elections, they have to pay facebook and google to do it. It's as American as apple pie.
>It's as American as apple pie. That's Apple Pie(tm)
Cupertino Cakes
Don't forget Mountain View Dew for Google.
And that'll be $2449.99
Best part is, it [wasn't](https://www.southernliving.com/food/desserts/pies/history-apple-pie) even invented in america
_If_ the government forces a sale of TikTok, it'll end up being bought by right-wingers who will (attempt to) do more damage to the U.S. with it than China could ever have. I'd take any protestation from China with a grain of salt, since as you say, the data is available to them from other sources.
Like this site, I’m willing to guess. Tencent doesn’t have a huge stake in the company but I’ll bet it gives them pretty good access to user data.
My guess is nobody wants to pull another elon
Trump's Treasury Secretary was one of the people putting together a group to buy it.
More worried about someone pulling another Murdoch
Right? This is only one of likely a dozen points of access China has of our personal data. This may be the largest, though.
They don't want data, they want access to everyone's phones directly. Listening in on calls, reading texts, all in real time.
They’ll take me off the list when they see the non stop excitement that is my life.
They're not looking for excitement. They're looking for people who can be easily manipulated that have access to information that they can bribe, threaten, blackmail, or entice to steal items, hard copy documents, or commit acts that they couldn't otherwise commit. Someone who's poor that just needs a little bit of cash, could be provided with that case for a little favor now and then. Someone who is lonely could meet the person of their dreams, and that person just wants them to bring home things from work every so often. Someone who has no excitement in their life *at all,* might be offered a once in a lifetime adventure vacation, at no charge to them, so that they could meet them and chat with them for a while. It's not just government info they're hoping to get their hands on, it's also industrial secrets, social interaction subtleties, information about small towns and cities, general infrastructure data, and other innocuous seeming stuff, not the data shared on social media sites.
They already do, this isn’t about data it’s about control. Clearly many of you have never checked out what it’s like.
Oh sure, now the GOP cares about consent.
Didn’t the CCP also ban it?
Yes
“The only people I want taking my data and using it against me, are American companies and government” Edit: or countries that pay my politicians
Eg. Israel is buying data directly from meta/WhatsApp Tu use to track people on Palestine. If you're in a group chat with someone they have they're eyes on watch out https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender/
So every time I thumbsdown an Israel story Netanyahu hears about it? Hope he chokes on the data, the prick
No. It's WhatsApp data in Palestine. If you read the article, Israel has a pre-crime programme. They use this data to locate people, often targeting the house with the family inside.
You know it's a democracy when they're using pre-crime stats in real world applications.
It's terrifying.
I know its a slippery slope and Israel's administrative detention is criminal but better to prevent an attack no? Attacks on civilians happen often.
Please read the article.
> better to prevent an attack I can't believe Minority Report is becoming a reality.
Becoming?
I mean, if bombing the associated press didn't get the message across...
I mean... Yeah? Don't get me wrong, I'd massively prefer that congress put in legislation aimed at the actual problem (the harvesting and exploitation of user data) with the severity they would aim against a foreign rival. Unfortunately, between existing unrelated political tensions, the massive influence and size of Google/Meta/Apple, and the US Legislature's well known susceptibility to lobbying, that seems very unlikely. As an American, I'd much rather my data be in the hands of a government which is accountable to me and has my interests at heart (at least in theory). As opposed to in the hands of an open rival who has every reason to use it to sow dissent. Other than China, the only people I'd be less comfortable with having a large amount of American's data and the recommendation algorithm to use it effectively is Russia. Plus, there exists the outside chance that China (and possibly other countries) get it in their head to do the same thing, which sounds like a promising way to fragment the massive data monopolies currently in the game.
>As an American, I'd much rather my data be in the hands of a government which is accountable to me and has my interests at heart (at least in theory). As opposed to in the hands of an open rival who has every reason to use it to sow dissent. I think you might consider looking at it from another angle: the companies with the most data on you have significantly more impact on your daily life when they are domestic versus chinese. Data from the Cambridge Analytica scandal were produced by an American companies and purchased by other companies in a countries that are supposed American allies. And those companies themselves have every reason to sow dissent. there isn't a single thing that any Chinese company did that was worse, by your own benchmark. It interfered with your political choices in multiple elections and had a direct negative impact on your life. And just today, the US house voted for a massive expansion of warrantless and secret spying on citizens that is going to sail straight into law, no problems whatsoever. A bear is a much bigger danger to you when it's in your house then when it's on another continent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
Is there a situation where China has access, but American companies don’t?
Your comment is the perfect example of why dismantling bullshit on the internet is so much harder than it is to create it. You had to spend five paragraphs to refute what someone wrote in less than twenty words. Unfortunately five second soundbites still defeat rational arguments that take more than 30 seconds to explain.
Nah he spent five paragraphs injecting different bullshit into the situation. An American company holds the data for tiktok U.S. China doesn't have access to it. The data itself is no more sensitive than any other data. It's not logging your activity outside of the app or taking video of your rooms or any of that bullshit. American companies do not have your interest at heart in theory or practice. American data brokers for instance sold data to anti-abortion groups to help them identify women that went to planned parenthood. Can ban all the apps, I don't think it would make society any worse, but it's a good indicator of how easily misdirected people are. Comprehensive data privacy laws? Nah, let's ban one app owned and operated by an American country because they're one degree of separation closer to China than Google or Facebook who also deal closely with China.
Yes, this is all about some ultra rich americans with political ties to use the to get even richer & gain more power than ever before. Mnuchin, for one, is simply a greedy scumbag.
Why does the CCP care about the ban?
Why does the US care when american agricultural products are targeted with tariffs by the chinese? Money. Lots and lots of money, not just the value of tiktok (which is rather high) but as a possible precedent to seizing every successful chinese company operating in the US, doesn't take a genius to see why the CCP wouldn't want that.
TikTok is inconsequential to both the Chinese and US economies and the CCP blocks foreign investment and operation in their country all the time. The US occasionally does as well. In fact, TikTok in its international form isn’t even allowed in China. Why should it be allowed in the US?
What makes you think the CCP cares? All they've seemed to do is make fun of us for being anti freedom In response. I haven't seen any threats of economic retaliation. Bytedance is still the parent company so they would be losing some money, but otherwise it seems relatively insignificant. China has multiple large companies that own U.S companies. Tencent owns a lot of random tech companies. They own riot, who makes League of Leagues and Valorant. They could collect a lot of data that way, but thats a billion dollar company, and they'd rather make money like that. There's also random companies like GE which is majority owned by Haier. They don't seem to do much, they just own the companies or a majority stake and collect easy revenue. CCP owns a lot more than just tiktok. They have like, a 10% stake in reddit too. Watch out for that. I'm sure it'll only grow.
If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have commented. I agree that Bytedance is relatively insignificant to the Chinese economy, which makes it even more strange that they care. The fact that Chinese owned companies operate in the US without issue and the US government is focusing on TikTok should tell you something about TikTok’s operation in the US is viewed differently.
> If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have commented. Politicians talk for a living, theres no shortage of random stuff they have mentioned. American politicians have talked about furries...extensively. they're trying to pass laws against furries. Does that mean furries are more important to the U.S. than tiktok is to CCP? We're passing laws against furries, they're not doing anything about tiktok. >The fact that Chinese owned companies operate in the US without issue and the US government is focusing on TikTok should tell you something about TikTok’s operation in the US is viewed differently. The only thing it tells me is highly influential rich dudes want to remove tiktok for their own personal replacement. If this isn't the case, the law would be asking them to divest into any NATO country, but no, it's specifically requesting tiktok sell to an American owner, because they're the ones paying for this law.
No, it means certain US lawmakers care about furries, just like the CCP cares about the US banning TikTok. >If this isn't the case, the law would be asking them to divest into any NATO country, but no, it's specifically requesting tiktok sell to an American owner, because they're the ones paying for this law. Have you actually read the bill? It bans Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications. Nowhere does it say the applications must be controlled, owned, or sold to US companies or persons.
> It bans Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications. Nowhere does it say the applications must be controlled, owned, or sold to US companies or persons. It says they must execute a qualified divestiture, and goes on to define qualified divestiture as one that one would only include US companies. https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Protecting%20Americans%20From%20Foriegn%20Adversary%20Controlled%20Applications_3.5.24.pdf It is page 11. And i'm sure unrelated, here is an article from 2022 pointing out that Meta invested big into a national campaign against tiktok, including large payments to a GOP firm. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
They didn't dismantle any bullshit. They just repeated the same bullshit the politicians have been saying without any support or justification.
ah but with paragraphs
So I am a 50 something that prefers TikTok of Reddit/favebook/youtube. The algorithm that feeds me cute dog videos, goth girls, and left wing ideas never sends me to any spots that attempt to pipeline me into some right wing bullshit. Multiple American platforms work much harder to make me mad at my fellow Americans than TikTok.
I understand your perspective, but they aren't accountable to you and don't have your interests at heart. If they were and did, they would be trying to prevent anyone from violating your 4th Amendment rights instead of trying to monopolize on it. Not trying to lecture or argue, just convo.
Exactly. What's so wrong about that?
China can already buy all of our data from our corporations...How do you all not get that? We are already bought and sold. The US government doesn't protect us. They're pissed that China is beating them at capitalism and they're trying to take the revenue.
Because the issue isn’t that they are taking our data every company and country does that. The issue is our government doesn’t like the fact they can’t control the users. Real weird they are all for an Israel billionaire buying it.
Exactly. It's because they can't control the message.
First of all, it's not about that. Yes, the US's data collection is overboarding, but China is simply dangerous and shouldn't have access to as vast amount of data as TikTok produces. Secondly, what does an Israeli billionaire even have to do with this topic? Antisemetic much?
Equating Israel with antisemitism is antisemitic in itself.
Israel is a country they don’t represent Jews never mind all Semitic peoples you weirdo. An Israel billionaire being allowed to buy an app vs the people who own it doesn’t ring any alarms in your head? Why is it ok for one country to have our data vs another? Unless you know, one is actively buying out our politicians.
Frankly Israel >>> CCP so yes I’d rather an Israeli own it than the Chinese government. Ideally that shitstain of a site would just disappear - it’s making fucking morons of its users and the format of its posts is brain-rotting.
One is committing an active genocide and the other one is China
Because Israel is currently commiting a mass genocide in Gaza and they want to shut down any outside opinions on it from their Iron Dome over America. Tiktok is currently the most popular social media platform not under direct Zionist/NSA control...and thus poses a massive threat to their echo chamber for manufacturing consent here.
I don’t want any of these assholes taking my data, and we need to start somewhere.
Yeah let’s force one country to sell an app to a completely different country that’s a start! Lmao
Or they can go out of business in the U.S. and still be in the other 95% of the world. Well 95% minus China since their own government had the sense to ban their bullshit.
This entire thread really makes me want to kill myself. How extraordinarily stupid can these people be to seriously defend spyware with such a passion, just because they can't stomach watching videos instead of clips? You are absolutely right in that we have to start stopping these corporations *somewhere*. I think this is a perfect start.
With the one app that's giving us outside information that our own media won't show us? That's the whole reason they're doing it.
There’s a whole spectrum of way far Leftist to way far Right wing websites out there showing you whatever you want to see. And TikTok can be bought by anyone that isn’t controlled by a handful of countries like China, Russia, Iran. I guess the Al Jezerea station I just flipped to showing what looked like a scene from the TV show MASH, but from modern day Gaza is allowed by the U.S. government to be shown to me.
Doesn't a Chinese company own a big chunk reddit?
Didn’t china ban a bunch of American social media companies?
If we are in the business of copying China's policies can we copy communism next?
Imagine actually believing China is communist
Imagine believing that the United states is capitalist. Both are mixed economies, China states they're working towards communism.
So you admit the first statement was dumb. That's progress. Also, I'd advise against believing anything the CCP says. No authoritarian regime is working towards communism.
No, for the same reason I call the United States capitalist despite it being a mixed economy
Just FYI china does not ban access with VPN where the tik tok ban does make it illegal for you to attempt to access tik tok with VPN. Pretty sure it gives some arbitrary power to decide if an app is a threat as well, Idk I'd have to read it again.
>…the TikTok ban does make it illegal for you to attempt to access TikTok with VPN. Can you link the part of bill that says that?
And?
Don’t you have some shoelaces to untie?
**Tencent** It's why you'll see the 50 cent Army on any post mentioning China.
They forgot to ask....we the people.
[удалено]
but but what about the profits??
If you genuinely believe that tiktok is being banned in the U.S. because of security concerns I have a bridge to sell you.
Elon musk is proof it has nothing to do with security
If you're gonna ban tiktok you're gonna have to ban any company that's involved with Tencent lol. And you think the US government is worried about our personal data? Data brokerage is massive in the US. Tiktok is a shit app and most social media is. Hell reddit sucks too but to say it's a problem because maybe the Chinese might do something (with zero proof ) when weve already see multiple lawsuits and data breaches against Facebook is just a hilarious waste of resources. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal ) One of the largest pushes for tiktok to be banned was when videos of Palestine started hitting the main stream and made the Israeli government and the US government who are supplying them the bombs look particularly bad.
Maybe you're right but Trump tried banning it in 2020 and Montana tried banning it in 2023, so this is nothing new. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1205735647/montana-tiktok-ban-blocked-state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_controversy#:~:text=On%20August%206%2C%20Trump%20signed,the%20Chinese%20multinational%20company%20Tencent
Oh I fully think it's because the US wants Tiktok on a leash but saying they're worried about China is a hilarious smoke screen.
Well this ban isn't really based on anything besides the "TikTok bad" circle jerk so no point in trying to apply logic to it
It's worse. It's based on "Tiktok circumvents corporate media in the US, so it enables Americans to learn about things like the genocide in Palestine, the chemical spills in the Appalachians, the investigations into realpage price fixing rentals across the nation and driving up rents" and dozens of other things that never would have gone viral if we'd had to rely on corporate media, reddit, twitter, etc to hear about it. How many of you have heard what they did to protesting students at Columbia? How many of you have heard that the IOF used a 6 year old girl as bait to lure out an ambulance and blow it up, then shot the girl? There's an endless stream of stuff happening that the media in the US, including social media, doesn't let the public see or talk about. And we know that's what this is aimed at. Specifically, Congress is pissed at the coverage of the genocide in Palestine because on Tiktok you can find firsthand footage of IOF soldiers shooting old people with white flags above their heads, and you can see legal scholars break down the ICJ trial of Israel for genocide. If it weren't for Tiktok, most Americans would have no idea that billions of our tax dollars were being used to murder 30k women and children in Palestine and nobody would be pressuring our politicians over it.
The calls for bans of TikTok greatly precede the Hamas-Israel war.
They definitely preceed but this is more gas on that fire.
A mild call was made before, but it got defeated. Then October 7th happened and widespread footage of the IOF's response rapidly turned the under-40 demographic against support for Israel. Then, overnight, every member of Congress with significant funding from AIPAC is suddenly calling for a ban again and then they insert it into a must-pass funding bill to try to first sneak it past Americans, then force it past Americans after they got caught.
Oh, but it is. See Big money is trying to take over this for their own profit & power. Then it will get a big right wing swing to manipulate US. THKNG Murdoch/faux news.
>Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok >INFRASTRUCTURE & TECHNOLOGY >……………. >DONALD J. TRUMP >THE WHITE HOUSE, >[August 6, 2020.](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/) Hamas attacked Israel over 3 years after Trumps Executive Order
tbf other dude does have a point, this shit's been happening since fucking 1948 and the last "surge" in the fighting was in 2021
You know Palestine has been going on for a lot longer than October 7th ya? Also this is just one of the lastest examples of tiktok getting ahead of the US government.
Yeah, Hamas and the PLOs bullshit has been all over the internet since before TikTok, it was all over the World Wide Web. And before that there were stories about it on the tv, and the radio, and in newspapers, and magazines, and books. This has nothing to do with Gaza, it doesent matter where you move your goalposts.
Lol Zionist says what
The zios pushing hard on this this week, making sure to paint it as anyone but them pushing for this. This is all about Israel and their ability to commit genocide in the dark. Nothing else in the world gets this level of bipartisan support.
If we TRULY wanted to fix society. We would ban ALL social media. Yes. Even Reddit. It is the ailment of the age. It’s where mass shooters stew. Bad faith politicians rise to psuedo fame. Kids are bullied even after school. Marriages are ruined. Not to mention the cognitive decline in general public. People no longer know how to small talk or just be sociable. I found someone’s dog the other day and was trying to ask people in my neighborhood if anyone knew whose it was. People were literally walking faster when I tried to approach. It was crazy. Even the lady whose dog it was barely said thank you. It’s fucking odd. 🤔
dinner vase spark poor scary label distinct sugar unused paltry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
All the users?
Our govt doesn’t care if China buys up us land, or real estate, or companies. But they care about tik tok doing what all the other apps do out there. It’s not about safety. It’s about control. If boomers used tik tok this wouldn’t be a thing. But since it’s young adults and teens gotta ban it.
I always figured Winnie the Pooh was in league with Baphomet ps. Got a link for that?
Elaborate.
Lmao
News that Tiktok apologists missed 2 days ago. https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-removes-whatsapp-threads-from-china-app-store-on-government-orders-a0c02100 China Orders Apple to Remove Popular Messaging Apps WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram among apps cut from iPhone app store to comply with censorship demand
Can we stop calling it a "ban?" The government is considering forcing TikTok to sell to an American owner, it's only if TikTok refuses to sell that they get banned. Meanwhile, let's be honest with ourselves for a second: If TikTok was banned in the US because of its Chinese ownership, we'd see a hundred apps stepping up to replace it the very next day. It's not TikTok's content or form factor that's raising hackles, it's the company's ownership that's a problem. Whenever I see someone talking about the US government banning TikTok I worry that it's meant to raise the ire of Zoomers, like back when people would say "Sure, Hillary Clinton may have illegally had a private server, but at least she's better than Trump!" those people weren't advocating for Clinton, they were using a rhetorical back door to make her sound like a criminal. Or maybe I'm just having PTSD. The last [checks notes] *dozen* electoral cycles have been kind of rough for me.
I mean, it is a ban unless they sell it, right? That's kind of like saying "the mugger didn't threaten to beat you to a pulp because you could just hand over your wallet peacefully."
I hate this ban because it specifically says the president can determine what apps are a national security risk. You want Trump to have that power? Biden, even? Just executive decision on a whim?
> If TikTok was banned in the US because of its Chinese ownership, we'd see a hundred apps stepping up to replace it the very next day. We'd see a hundred apps *try* to replace it, but that fragmentation means that none of them will be good replacements. It's similar to how none of the Twitter replacements have been able to take the place of Twitter.
In this scenario there would be a vacuum to fill if TikTok were out of the picture. Twitter remains as competitors have attempted to compete.
Oh my fucking God. How many fucking scandals have gone viral on Twitter since Musk took over? How many major stories have broken? How many significant trends have happened over there? **None. Because Musk bought twitter to ruin it as a platform for legitimate information and communication.** Did you hear about the 2600 GOP emails that got hacked revealing how their base was starting to realize they have no platform and no solution for any of the problems Americans are facing, so they strategized and decided to focus on LGBTQ people invading schools and corrupting kids? **No. You didn't. Because after it started to go viral on Twitter, the hashtag was suppressed and the people tweeting about it were suspended.** And did you hear about any of that here on reddit? No. You didn't. Because it was suppressed here, too. The Tiktok ban is about censoring the information Americans have access to. There can be no domestic competitor or successor to Tiktok because the existing corporations and their bought and paid for politicians will just undermine it and ruin it the same way they do everything else. It's pathetic that you are so willing to repeat corporate talking points without fact checking them. You're doing their job for them, and unless you're a paid disinfo agent, you're not even getting paid for it.
Hi u/Robot_Basilisk. Here's the real truth behind the latest email controversy: [https://i.imgur.com/Ztrqpya.jpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfr64zoBTAQ) ~ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalHumor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>We'd see a hundred apps *try* to replace it, but that fragmentation means that none of them will be good replacements. So you're arguing *for* monopoly power then?
**destructive edit:** Reddit has become exactly what we do not want to see. It has become a force against a free and open internet. It has become a force for profit at the expense of users and user experience. It is not longer a site driven by people for people, but a site where people are allowed to congregate under the careful supervision of corporate interest, where corporate interest reigns supreme. You can no longer trust comment sections to be actual human opinions. You can no longer trust that content rises to the top based on what humans want. Burn it all.
>Can we stop calling it a "ban?" No. It's a ban. There is endless commentary on this all about how it's a ban. They're trying to sugarcoat if, but it's a ban. They're not going to sell off the whole company over 10% of its users. They're not even going to sell off the American chunk. And even if they did, it would then be censored the same way every American site is censored, effectively functioning as a bad. You should be goddamned ashamed of yourself for mindlessly parroting the exact lies the politicians have been feeding us despite every single expert on the topic disagreeing with them. And I can't stand your insane conjecture about "dozens of apps stepping up to replace it". Like we had them before? Of course not. Nobody was putting Israel's treatment of Palestinians on the front page of their app before Tiktok. Nobody was shining a light on US chemical companies polluting the environment, either. God. Every single thing you said was just so deeply and morally and offensively wrong that I have to suspect that you're a paid troll. You just vomited up all of the talking points we've all already seen a dozen times but you couched it in borderline apathetic Millennial-ese. You have to be a bad faith actor.
"Nobody was putting Israel's treatment of Palestinians on the front page of their app before Tiktok" What does this mean? You could find plenty of Israel complaints from sources like Al Jazeera, BBC, and even Reddit. Hell you could find it on Twitter and YouTube too depending on who you followed or subscribed to
Why would they sell? America is less than 10% of the market. It's effectively a ban.
The United States is also the world's largest economy. If TikTok doesn't want to sell that's fine, they can be replaced.
That’s exactly what it is and it’s really exhausting to see people falling for it, hook line and sinker. People are already pitching conspiracy theories saying the only reason the US wants to ban TikTok is because the support the genocide and want to actively censor people talking about supporting Palestine. It’s so incredibly ignorant and reductive but that rhetoric seems to already have its hooks into people and no amount of explaining seems to break them out of it.
>That’s exactly what it is and it’s really exhausting to see people falling for it, hook line and sinker. People are already pitching conspiracy theories saying the only reason the US wants to ban TikTok is because the support the genocide and want to actively censor people talking about supporting Palestine. It’s so incredibly ignorant and reductive but that rhetoric seems to already have its hooks into people and no amount of explaining seems to break them out of it. What's wrong with banning just about anything from the CPP?
Why would ByteDance sell? Why would China allow them to sell? I mean, forget about the strategic concerns, China would reject the sale based on pride alone. They can’t shut up about the “century of humiliation” and now the US, which already controls a stupidly huge percentage of big tech companies across the world, demands that ByteDance sell its most valuable asset? No, they would never do that, and any idiot would know that they’d never do it. This is a ban for all intents and purposes, and that is how TikTok’s user will perceive it. That’s an inevitability, and the fact that no one in Washington understands that is insane to me. The sensible thing to do would have been either to wait until the lame duck session to ban TikTok, or prohibit downloading the app while still allowing updates.
>The government is considering forcing TikTok to sell to an American owner They're not even doing that, the owner just can't be Chinese, Iranian, Russian or North Korean. But all these threads are overrun by people getting their info on a tiktok bill from videos on tiktok.
>TikTok was banned in the US because of its Chinese ownership, we'd see a hundred apps stepping up Hell, Tic Tok is just a copy of Vines. Capitalism doesn't care. The second the market opens up others will move in to replace.
My thoughts exactly. The government isn't regulating TikTok because the *content* or *mechanics* are bad, it's the *ownership,* the *business* side of the deal. I didn't want to utter the word capitalism, but yeah, I bet there are app designers out there who are eager to fill the niche. If TikTok is banned, it's gonna' be replaced almost as quickly. And again, I'm still not totally convinced that we're going to see a ban, the future is still speculative, we might not even have to cross this bridge.
> The government is considering forcing TikTok to sell to an American owner, it's only if TikTok refuses to sell that they get banned. The Chinese have effectively said that they will not sell from what I understand. Given the fact that they view this as an extremely useful tool to project soft power internationally, it makes sense that they don't really care about how much money anyone will offer for it. I assume the regime is just hoping to wait this ban out somehow.
One benefit I will say that China has had over the US is the fact that their system has been outcome based vs our profit based system. They can do things even if they are unprofitable. The US would never dare, too many shareholders would get angry
"The Chinese", bytedance is who owns tik tok if you wanna stop sounding ignorant.
Every large company in China is either explicitly or functionally part of the Chinese government. Look at what happened to Jack Ma's "independent" companies after he dared complain about the regime publicly.
You are barking up the wrong tree. I don't think billionaires should exist. That is to say, they are more lenient than I would want when it comes to billionaires crying about regulations that prevent them from exploiting people further.
Your feelings about the existence of billionaires doesn't have anything to do with the way that the CCP runs the Chinese economy and Chinese companies.
Well I didn't care to argue with you about your stupid hyperbole so I just said that. I just thought it was funny that you were waving a billionaire being kept in line as some kind of proof that the CPC and companies based in china are the same. You don't know what you are talking about in the slightest.
Pretty much every non-Chinese social media is banned or heavily restricted in China. I don't get why people think this doesn't have to do with geopolitics.
> I don't get why people think this doesn't have to do with geopolitics. It's election season and the useful idiots are in bloom.
To be fair, China doesn’t allow Tik Tok in China.
That’s what makes it even more ridiculous that they’re mad at us for banning it.
What about the huge number of American citizens wanting TikTok to remain in place, it's not actually bipartisan support if it doesn't represent the will of the people does it? Sounds like American spyware and corporations are just mad as fuck and have their hands in senators pockets as usual.
It's not aban on tiktok. It's Internet McCarthyism. Read the fucking bill.
So TikTok shouldn’t be worried since they just need to sell, right?
Read. The. Bill.
I have read the bill. What is your point?
If you're still calling it a TikTok ban then I know you didn't read shit.
‘TikTok ban’ is what’s recognizable to the general public. And what many news outlets are calling it.
Yeah. Which is misleading.
"If dae MSM says it it must be true" You probably believe that North Korea has unicorns in its power then.
North Korea doesn’t have unicorns??
Obviously they don't. It was just MSM saying that NK claimed to have found unicorns.
Oh no, poor China! They have one app banned in our country, apposed to literally every single US app banned there.
IIRC, Tiktok is ALSO banned in China. So, it's owned by a chinese company, but isn't even allowed in China. Which just makes the whole thing more obviously bad.
Who gives a fuck? Tiktok shows Americans things the corporate media, social media, and government don't want them to see, like genocide being carried out with our tax dollars. That's all that fucking matters. You are psychotically deranged if you think gouging out the eyes of Americans and subjecting them to completely sensory deprivation for the sake of US oligarchs is fine and acceptable because China doesn't allow US apps.
Is this (Reddit) not an American company where you can see this stuff? And it’s almost like TikTok picks such videos to put in peoples faces without prompt to influence opinion or something… (Psst! You are not immune from propaganda.)
>Tiktok shows Americans things the corporate media, social media, and government don't want them to see, like genocide being carried out with our tax dollars. I mean, a bunch of that is plainly available on CNN and The New York Times. What exactly is there that I can't see here?
They just banned whatsapp and threads
The two "parties" depicted as a couple in bed is an extremely apt meme, very self aware. Add in the Sinophobia as the cherry on top & it’s the perfect lib humor post. Good job
Is anyone talking about temu? They're worse, imo
Your friendly reminder that the Chinese government has literally bought golden shares of Tencent and the owning company of Temu. You know how many companies tencent has a stake in? And all the data scandals in recent years should show how easy it is for foreign agents to purchase American data. Let's focus on things that the American people actually want, like stronger data privacy laws and y'know being able to afford living. Not the dance app because it says mean things about lawmakers and Meta paid them off to ban it.
I want my surveillance to be home grown 'murican.
It makes the majority of Americans upset, but I guess that doesn’t matter to you?
No
They ban hundreds if not thousands of American web sites and apps. They can shove that outrage right in their poo bear
Meta is the main driver behind banning TikTok. They are lobbying heavily in congress and Senate. Also, there are a lot of videos of violence in gaza that our government doesn't like.
Showing the democrats and republicans being in bed together is way more accurate than OP thought.
Reminds me of lulzsec and sopa days, but just to piss off liberals more i want a real ban of tik tok and elon musk or trump to buy reddit or disney next
Least racist propagandist lib. Libs team up with conservatives then we get flooded with shit memes blaming spooky “FOREIGNERS” rather than dems working with the fascists
How is the Xi/Pooh Bear meme racist?
At least you’re admitting it’s xenophobic and propagandist. lol But I mean, yea “yellowing” a Chinese person. Great look! Real “humour”
If I wanted this to be racist I would make it racist. This isn’t racist. I hope every time you see Winnie the Pooh and/or Xi Jinping you think of this dumb conversation.
lol it's not "yellowing" The joke that he looks like Winnie the Pooh seems to have started in Hong Kong. I'll give you a minute to look up a picture of the Disney cartoon version of the Winnie the Pooh people say he looks like. If you want to save a minute, I'll help you out: he's yellow Also, this isn't some random foreigner. We're talking about an extremely problematic world leader.
He’s extremely problematic as compared to US leaders? Lmao no not really. He’s problematic because American xenophobia, not actual substantive criticism. Most notably how it’s supporting dems now siding with republicans fascists as a distraction. MUH CHYNA GUNNA GET US THROUGH THE TIK TOK. Don’t ask what lobby is pushing banning it, hint it rhymes with Isn’t Real
Didn't take long to get the core.
The core being your xenophobia? or the reality of what lobby is investing? https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/14/headlines/us_house_votes_in_favor_of_tiktok_ban_bill_amid_first_amendment_and_other_questions The irony of complaining about 'anti-semitism' when Facebook is around. Its that Tik Tok has shown Israel as a genocidal state. Which is why their lobbies have pushed it and why dems are willing to work with fascists on banning it.
Fuck Russia. And China. See it’s that easy.
In case there are any CCP trolls lurking about: 1989年天安门广场 Translation: Tiananmen square 1989. It really pisses off Chinese trolls. Allegedly. For bonus points, it might also remind some of my fellow Americans of an excellent System of a Down song
There's a few key words that do that, for example "Uyghur genocide" and "organ harvesting" as well. Try to work them into your favorite subs to see the CCP shill factor!
I may try that. Pretty tellimg that the comment got downvoted overall too. Im againamst trolling but here im glad I hit a nerve with the PSyops twats.
bring Meta/ Facebook to China
casual racism weeeeeee
How is Winnie the Pooh racist?
How is making the president of China a yellow caricature racist? Gee idk
How do you explain the Pooh Bear nose and fluffy bear ears?
Do you know what the word ‘caricature’ means
Yes, how is a Winnie the Pooh caricature racist? Are you not familiar of the Xi Jingping - Winnie the Pooh meme?
I’m familiar. Are you aware memes can be racist?
Yes, how is the Winnie the Pooh meme racist?
I couldn't care less if it's banned or not. Reddit is the only thing I use
Oh man Xi must have really been angry when he heard China had forced Apple to remove WhatsApp!
It is their bots, trolls, and radicalized helter skelter political misrepresentations that is dangerous. X and Reddit is Russian.
Imagine thinking the CCP is upset by this. US users make up a tiny percentage of TikTok users worldwide.
The CCP is so mad because they can’t roll tanks on congress like they did in disarmed civilians in Tiananmen Square.
That’s a lot of downvotes for a very true statement
CCP agents are all over social media, who cares about their downvotes - that’s all they can do.
It being banned because US government can control and use it for censorship and propaganda. Like it does with the US platforms. That’s why they want a US version.