The House on Wednesday passed a bill with broad bipartisan support that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner to either sell the hugely popular video app or be banned in the United States.
Republican leaders fast-tracked the bill through the House with limited debate, and it passed on a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting widespread backing for legislation that would take direct aim at China in an election year.
Sketchy Chinese data brokers: 👎
Sketchy US data brokers:👍
Signed, Congress.
lol yep. we constantly talk about how horrible tik tok is but the US government who is, of course, a much bigger threat to US citizens is doing the exact same thing.
It would arguably take less effort to write a more general ban on apps and companies sharing, selling, and aggregating data on users than one specifically carving out foreign-owned companies.
Not doing that makes it clear this isn’t a “first step.” This is a blanket approval of the practice, but with “election year, China bad” thrown in.
Yes, any government access to user data can, and will, be mis-used, including Tik Tok. Opposing this bill isn’t an approval of Bytedance, it’s an opposition to the process.
I simply don’t agree that kind of power is more acceptable in the hands of a country like China
Nobody said that Tiktok is more acceptable, just that the American ones that are given free rein are just as unacceptable.
Come to think of it, though, the American ones are a bigger threat, simply by virtue of spying on a larger userbase than Tiktok currently has.
And if you think the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t beholden to foreign governments such as the ones of India, Israel and yes China too, just because they’re headquartered in the US, you clearly don’t know much about how they operate.
No. Because that’s not how politics works. This will be sold as a solved problem and the second you try to lobby to ban Facebook from selling data and ad space to the CCP the line will suddenly be about government interference in business.
Swallowing bullshit like this is part and parcel of corporate governance.
I would argue that this is the opposite order. You want to take care of the people who actually hold power over you now, China has no power over you.
Look at what the eu has done. First control and regulate the local companies.
in the meantime STOP USING these companies products.
Can you share this list? I didn’t know we had a definitive answer on everything to avoid that the united states government is using to spy on its citizens. Not sure how I missed that, its kinda big news that we got something that definitive.
Straight up using Chinese tactics of forcing a company to be majority domestic owned.
The legality of foreign ownership should absolutely be bilateral. I don’t get why this wasn’t the policy from the start.
Uncle Sam is upset that they can’t spy on you. Uncle Sam wants you to use Instagram.
can’t believe people’s insanely smug reaction to this. the government is banning an app that 100+ million americans use and presumably enjoy. that is insane, full stop.
The government also bans drugs, guns, alcohol, smoking, etc. They ban things that are perceived threats to health and safety. It’s what they should be doing.
That being said, wasting their time on TikTok is fucking stupid.
Ah yes. Banning alcohol.
That went really well.
Ah yes. Banning drugs.
That’s going really well.
Government bans drugs to imprison POC.
Government doesn’t ban guns unless POC own them. If you are white you get a license to kill.
Government doesn’t ban alcohol a century ago it banned poor people from having it safely.
Government never banned smoking. It makes them too much money.
Stop pretending that they give a shit. If they did we would have like freaken free fruit a veg stands on every block and cars would be speed limited.
It’s also unconstitutional. But when’s the last time anyone heard the words, “Bill of Attainder”? There’s a fairly good chance TikTok takes this to court and wins.
Does the Constitution apply to foreign companies? I thought it doesn’t even apply to non-residents that are not on U.S. soil.
It’s not like there’s no reason to it. Don’t be so dramatic. You can waste time on YouTube shorts, Instagram, snapchat etc…
Rather not have genocidal dictatorships programming us
Israel (at least in large part) is why they’re pushing the tiktok ban now. It is a little hard to connect the dots on this because the China-reasoning seems strong on the surface. I agree that China is bad, but there has not been any stellar evidence to show that China censors or otherwise manipulates users on the platform. You can easily go to tiktok and find videos discussing how awful the Chinese government is, information about tiananmen square, Winnie the Pooh jokes, etc. In comparison, the data that came out of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal was far more concrete, and Congress did nothing. Certainly there were not 81% of house members coming together to force Facebook to sell. Tiktok has even offered to make major concessions about data privacy.
Israel’s war in Gaza is deeply unpopular and the fascists in Israel and here in the US are concerned that they are losing popularity. Tiktok has 100+ million active users in the US and the heaviest anti-Israel sentiment (the government and the US’s relationship with the Israeli government, not the Israeli/Jewish people) is heaviest on Tiktok, which is dominated by young millennials and gen Z. This is leaked audio of the director of the anti-defamation league (a very pro-Israel organization) speaking about this. He basically tells his audience that they have a “major major major… problem” and specifically says that they have a “tiktok problem and a gen Z problem.” Listen to the audio- you can agree or not with his reasoning, but he’s essentially saying that the spread of ideas on tiktok is causing their polling issues.
People like this want to stop the spread of ideas on tiktok because young people are organizing, boycotting, and putting dents in the system. They do not like that young voters are having a larger and larger influence. These young people are also boycotting major companies like McDonalds and Starbucks who have taken pro-Israel stances, and these companies have lost profits from this. All this to say - I don’t think there is any lack of motivation by people with lots of money to destroy the platform where these people are organizing.
It is incredible how much money Israel pumps into our politicians, both Democrats and Republicans. Joe Biden himself is the largest recipient of this money. There are anti-BDS laws (specifically for Israel) in 37 states. I don’t think many people are aware of just how much influence Israel has in the US. It is surprising and disturbing, but I am equally surprised/disturbed at how little attention these topics have received on Lemmy of all places. I don’t think it takes a genius to start making these connections and to start asking questions - maybe this isn’t the full picture but there is a lot of stuff here to be skeptical about. That said, I absolutely do think this kind of information is suppressed on other platforms, and they want to suppress all of tiktok because it’s dangerous to them.
