Man people really set up the strawmen here. Congress has literally said it’s about foreign influence, not about protecting children. It has absolutely nothing to do with kids. It has to do with China influencing the citizens of the United States to do things that are beneficial to China, against the interests of the US government.
It’s not a ban, if China gives up control of the app to a United States entity then there’s no problem. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children.
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it’s adults, that’s almost more insulting, they think we don’t deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction. We may as well dispense with free expression entirely at that point because the government can just say “you’re too stupid to read this and we’re worried you’ll be influenced, so you can only read the books we’ve pre-approved for you”
It is every American’s right to think freely, to speak those thoughts to others, and to have others have the opportunity to hear those thoughts whether or not they are “good influences” according to govt. It is wild how easily people are willing to throw that right away for fears of “foreign influence”. What’s next, banning TV shows from foreign countries because they might “corrupt our culture”? Banning books with subversive topics because they will “give people bad ideas”?. This is how the road to fascism begins.
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it’s adults, that’s almost more insulting, they think we don’t deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction.
Yeah fam, you and me are definitely way too smart to ever be manipulated by military units whose sole job is to effectively manipulate large swaths of the population.
The answer is everyone. They’re worried about anyone and everyone, because they do it also.
The problem that many people have with this argument that “China is going to influence us” isn’t that we are immune to influence, its that the argument sounds extremely hallow when our own native social media manipulates the absolute shit out of us already… like what is China going to do that our own country isn’t already doing.
This is the argument you hear from people on tiktok about why they don’t care about the governments concern.
Well that and how its kind of disgusting how completely unified the house is in this bill, but couldn’t give a shit about wealth inequality, corporate ownership of residential housing, rampant inflation, rising homelessness, school shootings.
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Good point. We are all vulnerable to manipulation and should only read content that is approved by the US Govt. Anybody who breaks this rule should go to jail. That is for our safety ✅
Except that’s not my point, but you already knew that didn’t you? It’s pretty obvious you’re not actually here for a conversation.
Yeah they’re clearly here because they think they have no chance of getting manipulated, that they’re better than others, or even that they think this is some sort of free speech thing. Sorry bud, that’s not how it works. The government routinely bans things that cause foreign influence, it’s just usually not at this scale and not something people are addicted to and use as their news.
Literally Huawei and ZTE are banned from imports and sale in America for the exact same reasons. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-bans-equipment-sales-imports-zte-huawei-over-national-security-risk-2022-11-25/
They’re here because they’re one of the ones doing the manipulating.
Lemmy.ml is a tankie instance.
Is there any chance that the fact you’re lemmy.ml user might be an indication that you’re not looking at this completely objectionally? I’m not for the ban either but that doesn’t mean I can’t be honest about the reasons for it.
I joined this instance at random, look at my history if you think I’m a tankie.
deleted by creator
We are all vulnerable to manipulation and should only read content that is approved by the US Govt.
Blocking another country’s possible influence is not the same as ONLY being fed whatever the Government approves.
TIktok, due to the nature of the company’s ownership and board directors WILL have Chinese Government influence. And they’ve already proven that they’re willing to influence the internet to the point of controlling it 99% for their own citizens. China is the latter of the above statement. The USA and most other countries are barely even doing the former.
You are asking if banning books is the next thing. Isnt it already happening in the schools in some parts of USA?
Yep. Unfortunately both the left and right in the US seem to have free speech in their crosshairs one way or another. The right with “don’t say gay”, their book bans, and war on drag, the left with the TikTok ban, wanting the government to be able to define and regulate “misinformation” on social media, etc. The long-term protectors of free speech like the ACLU have even done a pivot away from free speech cases because they perceive them as unpopular.
Maybe what you think is the left, isn’t really all that left.
Congress has literally said it’s about foreign influence
Which is also a lie. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and Google are just as beholden to foreign governments such as the fascist regimes of India, Israel, Myanmar and others. They pay the people in Congress a lot more in legal bribes, though, so they can basically get away with anything.
It’s not a ban, if China gives up control of the app to a United States entity then there’s no problem.
Imagine the uproar if China demanded that Google stopped being a US military contractor…
What the whole thing is about is empty symbolic rhetoric and xenophobia in an election year and oppressive measures to go with it.
Google was blocked in China in 2014 for refusing to censor search results. Now search results are censored and must go through their Hong Kong subsiduary. The last part is what the US Government is asking for TikTok to do right?
China already bans and censors loads of apps and websites already so I don’t think looking at what they do in this instance is a good idea.
So it’s okay for me to rob you because someone else was robbed by a thief?
Okay. Which part of what I written makes you think that? I thought my second paragraph was enough to say China doing things is not a reason to do things.
China did that. We criticized them for it. Now we’re turning around and doing it. “We should get to do it because insert dictator here does it” isn’t a great argument.
Imagine the uproar if China demanded that Google stopped being a US military contractor.
China is actively demanding that all Chinese companies excise American hardware and software from their technology stacks. They know that they can’t divorce a US tech company headquartered in the US from the US intelligence agencies, so it is the next best option. This is colloquially known in China as “Delete A” or “Delete America”. Who is being xenophobic again?
Ok, China is a bad example, except as what not to do.
As you pointed out yourself, this bill is Congress acting like the oppressive Chinese government rather than the liberal democracy the US likes to pretend to be.
Preventing an oppressive government from exerting undue influence on another sovereign nation’s citizenry is an oppressive act itself?
Dude. Tiktok is a social media platform that happens to be owned by a company with Chinese government connections.
It’s not a nefarious conspiracy to control Americans. That would be Facebook and the Republican party platform
Agreed on the Republican party bit.
If Facebook could be considered a nefarious conspiracy (or at least subservient to the powers engaging in said conspiracy), why is it unbelievable that TikTok could also be?
Because Facebook has been PROVEN to knowingly allow widespread coordinated election tampering (Cambridge Analytica, for example) and steering users towards far right pages and groups,
Tiktok is only SUSPECTED based on association with China and furthermore has a much smaller user base and therefore less impact if they DO run election influence campaigns like Facebook does.
So what you’re saying is that 'murica is no better than China
Nope that’s not what i’m saying, try again.
It never was.
The difference being that this is about protecting sensitive data like trade secrets, in a complex ecosystem that is impossible to fully oversee. Many western governments have banned Huawei from 5g network components for the same reason and that is solid reasoning.
But with TikTok it is a very different story. Nobody needs to use it. People are using it voluntarily. In regards to steering people to bad content through its algorithm, it is no different from Facebook or Instagram. The argument @[email protected] made is valid.
It is not about preventing foreign or private influence that his harmful to the citizens. It is about controling that influence.
It is not about preventing foreign or private influence that his harmful to the citizens. It is about controling that influence.
No, it is about preventing foreign influence on citizens. The fact that some level of control (or more accurately accountability) can be exerted by the US government on companies like Meta is true but unrelated. If ByteDance was a company in the EU we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Americans are so racist that they can’t accept the fact that non-American companies can be successful.
1
Short answer: No
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooo
Its worth adding, TikTok in China (it’s called something else, I’m blanking) is entirely controlled on the state and there is absolutely no way that it would be permitted to host any political discussion or advocate mass action not approved by the state. Their “Hey call your congressman” stunt was the most idiotic PR move ever, because they demonstrated that this company is willing and able to leverage the userbase in the US in ways that would never be permitted in “West Taiwan”.
China beat America at capitalism and now America big sad. 😢
I was with you until you childishly suggested that the rightful rulers of China are an imperial dynasty rather than the will of the people. It’s like calling America West England and claiming Charles is the rightful ruler because you disagree with the Vietnam War.
But yeah china would never allow free expression on their version of tiktok but let’s ban free expression because china does is a bad argument. Let’s make choices based entirely on merit and circumstance.
calling America West England
But there is part of America that basically is West England. That’s called Canada.
But yeah china would never allow free expression on their version of tiktok but let’s ban free expression because china does is a bad argument.
What you post on Tiktok is free speech. How it get manipulated and shared to everyone else by an algorithm controlled by a Country that has everything to gain from the downfall of the USA is not free speech.
China doesn’t claim to be liberal, so no
So we’re no different? Is that your argument? If so we’re saying the same thing. This paves the way for more bans in the future.
So the goal is to make laws like China does?
According to that logic we should ban Instagram and Facebook
No. But that’s not the point. America’s government allows foreign aid interests to buy land and other property in America. Should they ban all of it, even if it crashes the economy?
Damn straight they should. No foreign entity should own any American land. Same goes for Canada too, with the obvious problem being their housing crisis caused by foreign real estate investment.
“What about the people on epsteins list” is gotta be the most generic strawman.
Cna you believe that they haven’t arrested every single person who ever made social contact with epstein and arrested them for rape, despite a lack of any supporting evidence that they committed a crime?
I mean i am sure that rich people get away with lots of stuff that normal people wont. But this whole “pedophile elite” thing smells very similar to the “elite jews control everything” and is simplistic bs at best. I am not even sure what people are on about. I would be happy if we finally fought for more equality and better distrubution of wealth but that seems “too simple” to most or something.
In other countries the connection is power, not Judaism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/05/the-main-allegations-against-ted-heath
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/16/westminster-paedophile-ring-innuendo-evidence
This is what a lot of power does to humans, it corrupts, makes one view those with less power as less of a human being. There shouldnt be any absurdly powerful people.
An alternative is that corrupt people seek power.
Virginia Giuffre, Prince Andrew’s accuser, disagrees.
Let’s ban TikTok while our kids are dying because of guns. It’s like they’re doing everything they can to lose an election.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
Holy shit America is crazy. How do you get to the point where more kids are dying of guns than cars in a country with too many cars. And why has poisoning gone up so much?
It’s poisoning and drug overdose. I can only assume fentanyl is the reason for a huge spike in that area.
And Tide pods, of course 😛
When you actually do the calculations… Even just taking a rough “6 kids per 100,000” killed with firearms, doesn’t sound too bad no?
That’s about 20,000 KIDS killed per year
TWENTY FUCKIN THOUSAND
Christ on a bike
And giant cats it seems.
Also wtf is going on with drugs since 2019. Is this all fentanyl?
You betcha
Well, it ain’t the marijuana that still hasn’t been decriminalized.
I dunno - don’t underestimate just how jaw-dropping shockingly unintelligent many of them are.
The only way to stop a bad Tik Tok, is a good Tik Tok with a gun.
Let’s ban TikTok while our kids are dying because of guns.
TBF… That spike in “poisoning” could easily be attributed to dumb shit like the “tide pod” challenge.
Lol. Without looking up anything I can tell you not more than 50 kids have died from laundry detergent digestion in the last 5 years. I’d love to be proven wrong about this. And even among those some will be actual accidents since children ate detergents long before TikTok. That spike in poisoning is probably due to fentanyl since this data includes people younger than 19. Drug use has increased a lot in teenagers in the last few years. So stop antagonizing a fucking app to support censorship and start seeing the real problems out there.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2790949
“New data show relatively low use of illicit substances, yet overdose death rates among teens have risen in recent years”
Without looking up anything I can tell you not more than 50 kids have died from laundry detergent digestion in the last 5 years.
“Dumb shit like”… Not that Tide pods are 100% of.
poisoning is probably due to fentanyl
Huh, wonder where that’s coming from!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/world/asia/us-china-fentanyl.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-china-fentanyl-crisis-talks-rcna136345
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-role-in-the-fentanyl-crisis/
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/16/1213588974/the-us-and-china-agree-to-curb-fentanyl-will-it-workOops. But right! China Good!
So stop antagonizing a fucking app to support censorship and start seeing the real problems out there.
I don’t need to antagonize anything. The USA (or ANY sovereign nation) has the right to limit another government’s/country’s holdings within it’s own borders. That’s it. Tiktok is operating here in the USA… The USA can kick them out if they will not divest their Chinese stakes. There’s nothing to antagonize here. I don’t actually care about the argument that this graph claims to make, just pointing out that Tiktok definitely has SOME percentage of a representation on the graph as well.
Considering that the Chinese Government only owns 1% stake in Bytedance, it’s interesting that the Chinese government has a board seat on the company isn’t it? https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/beijing-takes-stake-board-seat-in-bytedances-key-china-entity-the-information-2021-08-16
Usually you need to get voted in, and need to be a larger stakeholder than simply 1%… This alone is enough to claim there’s foul play. Yet you all are screaming from the top of your lungs “My rights”… As if you couldn’t post whatever the fuck you want literally ANYWHERE else.
and start seeing the real problems out there.
I see a common feature of BOTH problems. Do you? And it’s not racism for me to call that out regardless of what bullshit you concoct in your head.
The way .ml cries everyday about TikTok being banned you’d think it was an actual real life crises for all of you.
Multiple counties have already banned the app (as well as other ccp government apps) years before the US started trying to. Where was all the out cry then?
can’t find any western countries that have it banned for the general public
Yeah that’s true, while it’s being debated in a lot of places the only current bans I can find any news on are for government officials and employees. Now that I think about it, doesn’t that make Biden’s TikTok illegal?
Rules for thee not for me
Afghanistan.
Australia.
Belgium.
Canada.
Denmark.
European Union.
France.
India.
Lativa.
Netherlands.
New Zealand.
Norway.
Pakistan.
Taiwan.
United Kingdom.All have banned the app either from government employees to a nationwide ban.
This is a bit dishonest. Only Afghanistan and India have banned TikTok from citizens and neither of them are western countires. In every other country you listed it’s just about government devices.
“You can’t use this at work” and “You can’t use this ever” are very different things.
That’s correct. Not every country on that list limits the ban to just govt employees.
How many apps has China flat out banned? Movies? The actual Internet?
How many apps has China flat out banned? Movies? The actual Internet?
So what you’re saying is that 'murica is just as bad as China
Hardly. Banning one app for security is nowhere near as bad as blocking most of the entire world because you don’t want your citizens to see it.
Are you even remotely aware of the level of spying going on in 'murica, by 'murica?
TBH the comments are always filled with “Fuck TikTok” so it doesn’t feel like an organic trend of posts to me.
In .ml? Lol no it’s all weirdos complaining how bad the US is.
Yes but Lemmy isn’t as bad as Hexbear, a very large number of us still think the CCP is even worse.
Oh definitely, hexbear is a special kind of special
In .ml, yes. You know, the instance I’m currently posting from. Also, only a complete blind idiot wouldn’t see that the US is a shithole.
-and other things highschool kids say to be edgy
'murican can’t comprehend the existence of places outside 'murica. More non-news at 11.
Did you finish your homework tonight?
I finished my free higher education a while ago :)
It was at a time when I really didn’t need to make too many free healthcare visits.
.ee users and simping for every lib policy. Name a better combo.
Dune 2 on mushrooms?
Aww did mommy and daddy go to sleep already so you could use the computer?
But Black Dynamite, we’re on Epstein’s list.
🎵DYNAMITE DYNAMITE🎵
Because it’s not a list of rapists, just a list of people Epstein was interested in having influential control over.
…and even going to the Island just meant he was trying to influence you. He was looking for whatever leverage he could find over people.
The list of rapists certainly exists
Court papers said that alongside photos were compact discs with handwritten labels including: “‘Young [Name] + [Name],’
Agreed. Its a list. Anyone can make a list of people. They can even put people they’ve never met on the list.
I can make a list, put your name on it, label “bad people” and leave it for the FBI to find . Does that you’re bad?
For those who have truley committed the crimes suggested by the “list”, I vote for a beheading (not the one attached to the neck).
When was the last time Tik Tok was accused of rape?
Virginia Giuffre: What we know about Prince Andrew’s accuser
Fuck TikTok, but I’m sick of hearing “BUT THE KIDS!!!” As an excuse for constantly trampling everyone’s freedoms
The fact that we have to baby proof the internet because someone is too lazy to do basic parenting is crazy
If the “protect children” politician does nothing about school shootings, you know they’re a PoS.
Guys, have you ever been screwed by chinese seller on Aliexpress? Or missleaded by chinese ad? Lie and cheating is a part of chinese culture. So I think, that China is really a security threat.
I’ve had very little issues with chinese sellers personally. The two times I did they quickly resolved the issue to my satisfaction. That’s more than I can say for all the times I had issues with American sellers.
Same. I’ve had several refunds. No request to return. Just full money back.
I don’t think people recognize how often a purchase made to Amazon or some similar seller platform is actually coming straight from China; always with a 2x or more mark up.
I’ve taken to always searching on ali to see if I can get the same thing for 1/10 the price. They don’t try to hide the shipping information like Amazon does. Where as Amazon won’t report anything until it’s in country and passed customs.
That’s because Aliexpress refund system works good. But some time ago, several chinese seller tried to fool me in direct messaging saying “close the appelation and I’ll return money to your PayPal”. Also I had bad expirience with chinese software. It’s always proprietary, contain bugs and rarely get fixes.
All of that stuff happens in international retail with any country, and with software coming from any country.
I think you’re just being bigoted.
Are you shitposting, I can’t tell
I have been screwed a time or two, but honestly, most of the time I’ve had a pretty good experience dealing with Chinese sellers. Of course that’s partly because I choose who I buy from carefully, as yeah there are a lot of scanners out there. I’ve also been scammed by local people and I think it’s important to not immediately judge people based on where they are from.
I’m pretty sure the reason there are so many scammers in china, is because of the amount of poor and desperate people there, and the fact that the situation has been like that for so long, is the reason it seems to have now been ingrained in their culture. There’s a huge amount of scammers in other poor countries like india as well.
Edit: typos
This is incredibly racist. So I really hope this is a troll post.
Tiktok was caught spying on American journalists. Where is the racism here?
What in the tankie fuck am i reading
They aren’t wrong though. Every time they want to screw with us they trot out the children. From gun control to banning transgender care.
Lemmy being lemmy.
You can take the Redditor out of Reddit but not the Reddit out of the Redditor, it would seem.
How is this itself not a fake argument?
The arguments in support of tick-tock are a bizarre amalgamation of just about every category of bad faith argument. I haven’t seen one that suggests tick-tock it’s actually a net benefit.
it’s not that tiktok is good, it’s that banning it sets a bad precedent and will be used to justify further control and censorship of the internet
That’s a much better argument than what’s presented in this meme. There’s at least an argument to claim that the difference is about curtailing foreign interest through ownership. Ownership does heavily influence a platform. Unfortunately that hasn’t prevented Murdock from owning more formal messaging platforms.
On a side note, how do you feel about a handful of corporations controlling and censoring the Internet?
I’m all for setting a precedent if it’s about banning chinese spyware and propaganda weapons.
They don’t want to ban it, they want to seize controll of it and let it operate as is, just with different propaganda now.
The net benefit is that people enjoy it.
If there was some negative that outweighed that you’d think the bill would be banning that practice but the thing they don’t like is its partially owned by Chinese companies so they’re just trying to force it to be sold so it can cobtinye to operate in the exact same way but just for the benefit of an American billionaire instead.
Net benefit to whom? And by what metric? And who gets to apply said metric?
Whataboutism is a form of informal fallacy.
Whataboutism means nothing at this point. Risk analysis? Whataboutism. Considering consequences? Whataboutism.
“Informal” means it’s not actually a fallacy. Prooooobably because people use it way outside of its definition to dismiss arguments they don’t like because they have not thought through whatever they are arguing about.
The “for the children” arguments are almost always misleading.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s stuff that’s genuinely “for the children”, but the vast majority of the time they’re doing something for the children it’s not.
Bluntly, the core of the argument for a lot of the online stuff for the children is reported as protecting them against would be child molestation or dangers of some similar variety. In tiktok’s case, here’s a platform that has huge potential for revenue due to its popularity, and has an established user base. I’m certain that many of the so-called upper class/elites/capitalist pigs/owners of the country, are salivating at the prospect of getting a piece of that. It was said, in the open discussion for the bill to ban tiktok, that they want to “make” tiktok “better”. Not better for the people using it, better for the people who could profit from it. Several of these shit heads have already, formally and publicly stated that they have an interest in acquiring the platform, because the bill says: tiktok will be banned unless it sells to an American owner. So the only way for tiktok to operate in America after the bill is passed, is for them to buy it.
The legislation isn’t for the children. The legislation is the people who actually hold power, making the government do a thing so they can reap the rewards.
They want to profit off of the children. Because mind raping them at a young age into a life of consumerism and spending, while earning money for that privilege, is a capitalists wet dream.
“Can you do something so that any given incel can’t shoot 30 of us while we hide under our desk.” - kids
“Literally go fuck yourself also no tik tok because it could be dangerous.” - government
Relax nobody is taking away your TikToks
American political posts and the comments never fail to disappoint me.
This is fucking retarded
