• douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s not even “banning tik-tok”. It’s “separate your interests, or we block your product”.

      Which isn’t exactly something that we haven’t seen before in the U.S. and it for sure isn’t anything new in China where plenty of services, games…etc are blocked with “Chinese only” versions of those services.

        • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I haven’t followed it too closely, but I know this has been years in the making so the company should have a contingency plan. You have to wonder why the company refuses to take steps satisfactory to Congress to ensure that the CCP cannot access user data or influence the content or algorithm. It is economically suicidal to be banned in the US, which makes me think that Bytedance’s CCP masters told the company to refuse. Of course, now that the law has been passed, Bytedance will have to separate their interests since I doubt they’ll allow the app to be banned. They’d lose most of their advertising revenue if they were banned in the US. Not to mention the fact that a US ban would likely be followed by bans in other countries. I’m sure Bytedance can find a way to have another company manage their data while still making plenty of money. No need to pity a company making billions in revenue on the labour of content creators.

            • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              You make a good point about Bytedance perhaps not being permitted to have a contingency plan. However, the CCP may have one. Whatever Xi says is law in China.

                • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  Why do you say that Congress is making legislation against its own citizens’ wishes? A quick Google search shows that polls suggest that twice as many Americans favour the ban as oppose it.

                  I’m still trying to figure out what the downside of this legislation is. It doesn’t ban any specific content or speech, it just bans a particular company from operating a specific platform in the US. Tiktok is still permitted to operate if it is controlled by a company that isn’t directly subject to the CCP. If Xi chooses to not let that happen, that is on him. Xi certainly can’t cry foul without massive hypocrisy, given that he has already banned virtually all western social media.

        • daltotron@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I’d say I expected better but it’s becoming more obvious every day that lemmy is where the old and out of touch people migrated to.

          No yeah this whole deal is like. Just a bunch of mildly liberal gen X Linux users, basically, that think they’re hot shit because they were right about like half of their opinions like a decade ago and haven’t changed since. The amount of people hating on even basic shit like discord here is nuts.

          Get with the times, grandpa, we all use pirated windows LTSC with Microsoft activation scripts and various privacy and installation scripts! C’mon! We all use YouTube revanced grandpa! Libtube? What the fuck are you talking about?

        • MalachaiConstant@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          it’s becoming more obvious every day that lemmy is where the old and out of touch people migrated to

          Hey I’ve heard there’s this really cool app for lipsyncing and dancing. Apparently it’s getting pretty popular. Sounds like you’d have more fun there

      • nexguy@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        They are not banning the content type that tiktok provides, they are banning the foreign authoritarian government control of American user information. If Bytedance Sells tiktok to a business in a non authoritarian state then they no longer care.

    • ours@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Except they would be ignoring all the other shitty social networks but it’s a start.

      • PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        It’s not a start tho, it’s killing competition of Facebook and Google. It’s consolidating power if anything. I believe this bill has nothing to do with security issues and everything to do with campaign contributions to make sure America never has to compete with another country in this space.

      • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Feeding data to the CCP, helping them identify people who can be easily swayed into espionage. Say someone gets into a position of power. “Hey, remember when you were 12 and said this on tik Tok? Now we need you to be out bitch or we’re leaking this.”

        Look at the things that have gone viral on Tik Tok, it’s like their algorithm prioritizes things that are toxic to make American youth shittier. Kia boys comes to mind.

        There is also the fact that China bans all American social media out of fear that we’d use it to manipulate their people. If they aren’t allowing our businesses to compete fairly, why should we allow theirs? Also, they probably are projecting that fear because they are doing exactly that with TikTok.

        The app has more permissions than most apps and is highly invasive. They sent a push notification to all their users based on Geo location saying who their rep was and giving their phone number saying to call them to stop this bill. That alone seems like a major abuse of power. They are using the data they have to try to sway the American politicians already.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          you’ve failed to answer my second question, which I believe was the important one: why should this behavior be perfectly legal for everyone other than tiktok?

          • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            Yeah it’s a good question, and I think the answer should be: it shouldn’t. Instead of cracking down on one platform or another, they should be cracking down on the bad behaviors built into those platforms.

            But alas, that would require us to elect politicians that understand an ounce of nuance

            • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              I agree with you, but I’m assuming malice because I don’t think that stupidity adequately explains their behavior. I think that, to them, the problem isn’t propaganda and espionage, it’s Chinese propaganda and Chinese espionage where American propaganda and American espionage should be. That’s why they’re not making what tiktok does illegal, and that’s why they’re trying to force a sale rather than actually banning it.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Not a single thing you said has convinced me. And I am going to get on Tik Tok out of spite when this passes into law.

      • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        TikTok is very heavily influenced by the CCP and could be used to collect data from Americans (probably they already are). Not wanting your biggest geopolitical rival to harvest data from your citizens is pretty understandable.

      • p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I don’t give a shit about the China bit, I just think it’s dumb and full of misinformation so I really don’t care if it’s banned. I have no reason to hide my thoughts on this. It’s stupid, I think it’s cringey as fuck, and I’ll be happy to see it go. I know nothing about it because it doesn’t remotely interest me in the slightest. I’m sorry you’re upset people don’t like your stupid little dancing app but lashing out like this changes jack shit. You’re right. We don’t like it. Nobody here was hiding that.