The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power
disconnect.blog
The platform isn’t a national security threat, but a challenge to Silicon Valley’s dominance
  • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
    649·
    9 months ago

    Are we acting like the US isn’t the biggest surveillance state existing in all history?

    So because there’s one app they don’t control the data on, we need to ban it? Sounds like the free market to me.

  • Delphia@lemmy.world
    7330·
    9 months ago

    Yes, and?

    Does anyone think that China is just full of the warm fuzzies and wants us all to hold hands, make smores and sing kumbaya? They are every bit after power as the US is to hold onto it.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
      71·
      9 months ago

      Yeah it’s sort of like accusing a presidential campaign of being “all about gaining political power”. Of course that’s the goal. That’s not the metric by which you should judge its actions.

      • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        152·
        9 months ago

        Freedom of speech? Yes and no. The government has freedom of speech, but American TikTok clones do not. If TikTok users are successfully forced to use YouTube Shorts instead, they’ll get stuck with YouTube’s censorship and content control for corporate friendliness and user engagement. People like Elon give “free speech” a bad name, but it is actually a problem if for most people “the internet” is controlled by a small number of big technology companies and those companies use their positions, intentionally or not, to suppress ideas and control public discourse. TikTok users will still need to use words like “unalive” on platforms owned by American corporations.

        Constitutional protections for your home and property? Not really. Many people are renting and protections for renters vary by state. Property can be stolen by police through civil asset forfeiture.

        The opportunity to improve your socioeconomic standings, ie The American Dream, is largely a myth. Recently, the poor get poorer. Real estate values and cost of living are climbing much faster than wages for those at the bottom. If you’re at the bottom, it’s even more difficult than usual to get the four year degree and years of prior job experience required for many entry level positions with better pay.

        America has legal slavery enshrined in the constitution. If somebody is convicted of a crime, they can be sent to private prisons to do slave labor for somebody else’s profit. This disproportionately affects poor people and minorities.

      • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
        39·
        9 months ago

        These freedoms are a strength indeed, but they are also a vulnerability that can be exploited by foreign powers. Freedoms remain free so long as the people exercising those freedoms do so responsibly. I think a lot of people in the US do not exercise this freedom responsibly. I think a lot of Americans are being manipulated into voting in autocracy. Ironically.

        Complete and total freedom is just anarchy, and anarchy collapses on itself and turns into autocracy.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      3540·
      9 months ago

      Not all states are equivalent.

      The US is the hegemonic imperial core country (like the UK before it) and has been since the end of WWII, and even moreso since the end of Cold War I. The imperial core’s imperialism is driven by the monopoly stage of capitalism. The imperial core has been pillaging the Global South for the last 200+ years, including putting China through a century of humiliation. It caused WWI & WWII & Cold War I, and has now started Cold War II.

      The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It

      The US has over 750 overseas military bases around the world, and is building more to further encircle China. It constantly has multiple regime change operations in play around the world.

      But China is not a capitalist state and is not driven by the forces of monopoly capitalism. I think it has one anti-piracy base in Djibouti.

  • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
    391·
    9 months ago

    Large centralised social media platform should all be banned. I miss the times when all you had was forums hosted in someone’s basement, the Internet was a better place. Short form video content is the worst of the bunch though.

  • delirious_owl
    287·
    9 months ago

    Democrats have convinced themselves taking over TikTok is the solution to their problems, but the reality is that if Joe Biden signs this bill into law when he is already tanking in the polls, particularly with young voters, he will hand the election to Trump. The youth will not forgive a party that was so extreme it banned or hijacked their favourite platform to censor them in order to keep a genocide going.

    Best line is at the end

  • Facebones@reddthat.com
    151·
    9 months ago

    They didn’t care about it being China owned

    They didn’t care about data sharing

    Share info on the platform the US can’t censor though and then it’s ban time 😂

  • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2212·
    9 months ago

    Yes, I too would love the US president to decide which social media platforms I am allowed to legally use and who I can legally communicate with. I’m so scared China is going to, checks notes, influence my opinion that I’m willing to sacrifice my free speech rights in the process. Regulate me harder, daddy! 😍

    • excitingburp@lemmy.world
      59·
      9 months ago

      I would find this all extremely concerning if China didn’t regulate US platforms so heavily. For example, Tiktok has safety limitations for children in China while they have nothing at all for children in the US. It’s being used as a social/mental health weapon.

      Just remember that daddy allows you access to the propaganda that encourages defending Tiktok.

      Finally, your speech has not been limited. You can take it to any of the competitors. There would be free speech concerns for Tiktok, but it’s a Chinese company, not protected by the US constitution, and checks notes China proactively limits speech.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
        1·
        9 months ago

        I would find this all extremely concerning if China didn’t regulate US platforms so heavily. For example, Tiktok has safety limitations for children in China while they have nothing at all for children in the US. It’s being used as a social/mental health weapon.

        So you’re saying China is better than the US because it regulates social media while the US does literally nothing for its own children.

        I agree.

        So! Instead of political banditry and forcing TikTok to sell to a US company we should regulate our social media companies too just like China does! Or do you really think TikTok will collect less data or exploit children less when it is owned by a US company? 😂

      • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Your defense is “some other dictatorship does it, so that doesn’t concern me?”. Saying things are OK because the CCP or Putin does them is a very slippery slope.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
    2315·
    9 months ago

    Yikes, what a flawed set of premises.

    " What if Canada did the same thing to the US? They did!"

    No, they didn’t. Canada tried to boost Canadian media presence on American streaming platforms.

    Making sure gooby gets an international viewing is very different from transmitting information to an overtly hostile government known for cyber attacks on its international peers.

    “The platform isn’t a national security threat”.

    It’s a fact that the app TikTok is based off of, Douyin, sends the private data of every user straight to bytedance, owned in powerful minority stake by the Chinese government and that tiktok did the same thing with US user data until they promised they stopped a couple years ago.

    As of January 2024 however, whoops, US citizen data(names, birthdates, location) is still being sent back to bytedance: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-pledged-to-protect-u-s-data-1-5-billion-later-its-still-struggling-cbccf203?mod=followamazon

    It’s not some baseless concern, it’s a national security consequence against data disclosures that were already carried out and have continued to this year despite assurances 2 years ago that data leaks to bytedance are not happening.

    “Instrument of soft power”

    Marvel movies becoming super popular internationally is an example of soft power. Gathering the personal information of users with a continuing precedent attacking US digital infrastructures and democratic institutions is not soft power, it is hostile statecraft.

    I am not a proponent of monolithic tech companies nor am I particularly aligned against international competition in tech supremacy, but this ban isn’t about theoretical cultural competition.

    This tiktok ban is about the recent gathering of personal information that can be used to assess and attack digital infrastructures and electoral behaviors by entities that are continually attacking digital infrastructures and electoral processes, entities focused on consolidating power not within some international free market of soft cultural influence but by gathering and consolidating power and using that power to forward state ambitions.

    • firefly@neon.nightbulb.net
      42·
      9 months ago

      @Varyk@sh.itjust.works @davel@lemmy.ml

      If we wanted national data and communication security we would shut off the transatlantic cables and physically separate the U.S. Internet from the rest of the world. All matters of diplomacy could be conducted in public courts at the coastlines instead of over telephone wires and emails. Problem solved. We could set up a nice star-spangled curtain and let all the globalists rot from the fallout.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        9 months ago

        “Afraid of your neighbor’s dog? Never leave your room, add a harness to your bed and strap in, wear plate armor at all times”.

        Not exactly practical.

        There are ways to improve security without immobilizing yourself.

        Blocking the widespread distribution and use of an app that sends personal and national data to a hostile government actively collecting and using that data to conduct digital and electoral attacks is not immobilizing, it’s a simple step with zero downside that safeguards hundreds of millions of people.

          • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            9 months ago

            You’re arguing the international merits of “separate but equal” while ignoring how much the United States and other countries have benefited from open borders.

            You are wrong top to bottom here on every short-sighted jingoist allegation.

              • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                9 months ago

                You haven’t entered a discussion, you’ve cried incredibly short-sighted neoconservative talking points that I’ve completely taken apart in my other reply to you.

                I attacked your ridiculous comment, not your character, unlike your personal insults.

                You’re labeling me a “reactionary” because I didn’t call you any of the slurs you listed.

                You might want to sit in that a while.

          • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            9 months ago

            Actually, I have time, so let’s dismantle your comment.

            "Keeping thieves and robbers from entering your house is not, ‘immobilizing yourself.’ "

            Nobody said it is.

            “The idea that America would be immobilized by taking care of itself instead of carousing around with the rest of the world is just silly.”

            Something nobody said again, but:

            Thinking that having literally enough land to fit people and resources to perpetuate some contemporary level of technology ignores all of history and every metric of national success.

            You know who had overabundant physical resources and separated themselves from other civilizations?

            Incans.

            “Canada could also seal off its borders and in a thousand years from now still be going strong.”

            So we ignore Canada’s transportation imports, machinery imports, electronics imports, plastics imports, energy imports， services that alone account for 1/3 of Canadian GDP, then Canada will “go strong”?

            5 winter months a year without cars, oil or modern manufacturing to compensate for the weather, not to mention financial services, infrastructure services, science in every form; they’re sunk.

            Oh and we can’t forget that you are wishing away Canadian exports, which also account for 1/3 of Canadian GDP.

            Your canadian isolationist whim has zero legs to stand on and 1.5 trillion dollars of debt annually.

            “International relations are the cause of war” in the same way that air is slowly poisoning you to death.

            Such a zoomed-out, irrelevant statement ignores literally every significant factor of conscious reality.

            There are two hundred ish countries.

            Show me the thriving utopias that refuse to interact with any other countries.

  • Howdy@lemmy.zip
    135·
    9 months ago

    The probability of a war between the US and China is very high as judged by the US military. Prominently over the Taiwan situation. Having service members with tiktok on their devices would be terrible for opsec. To me this confirms that we are continuing to track on that train of thought. With that line of thinking this seems to an increased likelihood. Be careful out there folks.

    Just my thoughts…

  • delirious_owl
    61·
    9 months ago

    Bans can be bypassed, but my concern is if the new law makes it criminal to use tiktok. If so, the media should stop saying “tiktok ban” and instead say “new law makes it a crime to use tiktok”

    • gorgori@lemmy.world
      4·
      9 months ago

      It’s a hosting ban on US servers and app stores. People already downloaded the app will continue to be able to use it.

      That is if Bytedance doesn’t sell.

  • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
    53·
    9 months ago

    The platform isn’t a national security threat, but a challenge to silicon valley’s dominance

    No, I’m pretty sure it’s just both

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    The main point is that tiktok can persuade people politically and cannot be sued by the US government. So it must be owned by a US entity so it plays by our rules… keep the same asshole politicians in power. You want bridges and got no rivers? A Republican or Democrat can deliver! And ofcourse all the partisan stuff like religion in school, freedom for everyone etc.

  • elfin8er@lemmy.world
    1320·
    9 months ago

    Has anybody actually read the bill?

    The whole bill is about giving the government power to ban “foreign adversary controlled applications” and there’s nothing about the president being able to ban whatever app they want.

    The bill defines a foreign adversary as: “a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code”:

    • The People’s Republic of China, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China);

    • Republic of Cuba (Cuba);

    • Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran);

    • Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea);

    • Russian Federation (Russia); and

    • Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro (Maduro Regime).

    So unless you are on the side of the enemies of the US and want social media apps controlled by them, I don’t know why you wouldn’t support this bill.

    Edit: I think the misunderstanding/misinformation comes from a few places, but ultimately I think it boils down to the fact the bill requires the app/platform to be a foreign adversary AND it requires a presidential executive order before the app will be banned.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      223·
      9 months ago

      Those are not my adversaries, they’re the adversaries of US military industrial-complex and the imperial core capitalists in general. One reason they’re a thorn in the capitalists’ side is that they’re unable to exploit them through neocolonialism.

      What has Cuba done to me? The reason Cuba has been under an illegal, grinding embargo for sixty years is that they pose the threat of a good example to the capitalist class: Americans Can Now Expect to Live Three Years Less than Cubans

      • elfin8er@lemmy.world
        21·
        9 months ago

        That’s fine if you want to believe that, but that’s not what the article is about that you posted. The article states that the president will be able to ban ANY non-us application by executive order which is inaccurate.

    • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
      177·
      9 months ago

      unless you are on the side of the enemies of the US

      You mean enemies of the US’s ruling class of capitalists, who are the working class’s allies.

      “Your enemies are not our enemies.” - Nelson Mandela (who, btw, was on the US terrorist list until 2013 and is/was an enemy of the US. Was Nelson Mandela your enemy?)

        • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
          63·
          9 months ago

          More accurate to say I support Russia’s role in geopolitics — as any working class person should — because their interests are broadly aligned with the Global South’s in ending the dictatorship that the US — and the Imperial core in general — has had on the rest of the world for the past century (it was mainly the UK before; it’s been the US since WW2).

          While much of the economic and social progress the USSR had made has been undone with its overthrow and forced privatization and capitalism, Russia’s foreign interests have surprisingly remained in favour of the Global South (though unfortunately not as much; they stopped directly funding Vietnam, DPRK, and Palestinian resistance groups since it’s not profitable for capitalists). They’ve consistently supported Syria and Venezuela’s sovereignty against the US for example, and are a core part of BRICS.

          • lud@lemm.ee
            52·
            9 months ago

            Just curious what do you think of the invasion of Ukraine?

            Btw, the USA is a flawed democracy but it’s still a democracy compared to Russia and most of the countries you mentioned.

            Also from your link to that weird wiki, why is Greenland not “the global north” when it’s owned by Denmark?

            • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
              73·
              9 months ago

              An inevitable escalation in the war that started in 2014 with the US-backed fascist coup in Ukraine that goes against the interests and wishes of Eastern Ukrainians

              https://iili.io/JX9sm8l.png

              and the subsequent killings of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, like Donbas, DPR, and LPR, by the coup gov for resisting.

              I don’t support the invasion per se. In fact, its goal of suppressing fascism in western Ukraine seems to have kinda backfired from this after all, with the Ukraine gov using this as an excuse to suppress the left.

              But the point is, what else could’ve they done? They’ve already tried to join NATO multiple times from even before the USSR’s overthrow and have been denied (since it’s an imperialist org whose entire purpose is to suppress socialism globally, and particularly Russia) and they already had the Minsk agreements which the US sidelined through the coup. Not doing something about it would lead to the continued killing of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and NATO getting even closer to Russia since the post-2014 US puppet gov doesn’t abide by the Minsk agreements.

              • lud@lemm.ee
                12·
                9 months ago

                You obviously have a flawed system but you still have a choice compared to those countries.

                And they are not only white men.

                This year one of them is orange. Earlier, one of them was a women but you didn’t want to vote for her. Why I don’t know.

                Before that there was a black man.

                • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  5·
                  9 months ago

                  All of whom are genocidal zionazis who can never go against the US gov’s imperialist interests.

                  The only US president who tried to do something half-decent, JFK, for wanting to abolish the CIA and giving an anti-imperialist speech titled “Imperialism: the Enemy of Freedom” to seemingly curtail the US’s invasions in foreign countries, made himself an enemy of both the political parties, and was thus assassinated by the CIA.

                  Political systems in the imperial core, specially in the US, only exist to protect capital and imperialism, while giving a thin veneer of “democracy”.

                  Btw, Putin has an approval rating of over 75% in Russia. Russia is much more of an actual liberal “democracy” than the US, where Trump won despite getting less votes.

                • krolden@lemmy.ml
                  4·
                  9 months ago

                  They have freedom to healthcare and I have freedom to go into crushing debt or just rot.

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
                  2·
                  9 months ago

                  You obviously have a flawed system but you still have a choice compared to those countries.

                  As a bourgeois democracy we’ve never really much choice electorally.

                  Princeton University Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

                  Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

                  Before that there was a black man.

                  Michael Hudson on the 2008 Great Recession:

                  All of these loans were against fictitious mortgages, mortgages that pretended that there was value there, but there were mortgages mainly to Black and Hispanic borrowers by banks who cheated them, who over-evaluated the prices. The banks in general discovered a new way of making money after about 2004. They could make money by charging racial minorities much higher rates, almost double the rates that they charged white people. There were whole banks and brokers that specialized in this, and this was basically the junk mortgage group. Countrywide, Financial was the most obvious beneficiary of this.

                  There were a number of notorious banks that ended up being merged. Bank of America was one of the crooked banks. Citibank was one of the most crooked banks, as has been very well documented. Randal Wray at the Levy Institute and Kansas City published a big explanation of who were these $29 trillion, $27 trillion of loans for. It ended up many of these loans were rolled over and reloaned, so the net amount was not $27 trillion, but that’s how much was given to the banks with this huge jump. Instead of sending the bankers to jail, they made them billionaires. They rewarded them. That was the Obama policy, and that is what makes them one of the most viciously racist presidents in modern American history.

    • ferralcat@monyet.cc
      94·
      9 months ago

      I will never really understand why china’s on these lists. I know it’s because theyre communist and commies = bad, but every other country on their has literally vowed to kill Americans, while china’s biggest crime is making close to as much money as we do.

    • krolden@lemmy.ml
      61·
      9 months ago

      I thought communism was bad because they want to censor our freedoms. So why is the freedoms censoring the comminsists?