Banning TikTok in an election year is proof Democrats don’t want to win.
The sell-or-ban measure was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
This is the important part you might have missed, without a president signing it into law it means nothing.
Similar to when Biden said he would never sign a M4A bill (4yrs ago), he would veto, which became a deal breaker to some on the far left.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=biden+veto+medicare+for+all+bill
Well yeah, but saying this was all on democrats isn’t true, either. A democratic signed it, but an entire group of Democrats and Republicans are the reason it exists. Besides, I’m ok with the ban. A lot of people are actually, so technically, yeah it will affect who we vote for haha
So what? This only pisses off the Democrat’s base and it will make them stay home.
Notably the ban doesn’t kick in until after the election, after which it may not even be Biden’s problem. Maybe ByteDance will shut it down sooner. Maybe the next administration won’t follow through with the ban. 🤷
What’s the overlap between people who vote Republican and people who use Tiktok? I’m actually curious.
The age range skews younger, so probably not huge. It’s definitely there though - lots of “tradwife” thinly disguised fetish content. 😒
There’s a reason Trump came out against this ban, he knows it’s going to be unpopular and he loses nothing by flip-flopping on it.
This is just a free W for Trump and an L for Democrats with literally zero upsides. It accomplishes nothing besides pissing people off!
Well, unless there’s a credible national security angle that’s being kept confidential. I kind of suspect there is, since Trump tried to push through similar legislation, but worded it so badly that it never got out of debate… and the likes of Wyden voted for it even while they said it was the wrong legislation to solve the problem.
They’re both dumb as hell and love to be influenced by autocratic governments
You’re saying that 1/3 of Americans are dumb as hell while repeating BlueAnonsense.
- IT Pro: Cambridge Analytica models were exaggerated and ineffective, [UK Information Commissioner’s Office] claims
- Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia
- Jacobin: Democrats and Mainstream Media Were the Real Kremlin Assets
- Washington Post: FEC fines DNC, Clinton for violating rules in funding Steele dossier
- Washington Post: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters
- Jacobin: It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election
- Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
- Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big Deal On the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
- MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
- Jeff Gerth at Columbia Journalism Review on Russiagate: Editor’s Note | Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four
- Matt Taibbi: WMD, Part II: CIA “Cooked The Intelligence” To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016
- Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away
- Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power
Which is the same as a vote for a dictator. And that is super cool if you are looking forward to Project 2025, and selling out loved ones so they can be put in camps as political prisoners.
I wonder if Tiktok will just make a seperate company that would comply before the 2025 ban comes to effect…
Or they will just exit the US market, interesting stuff.
I still think Glenn Greenwald views on this topic hold true.
“ByteDance doesn’t have any plans to sell TikTok,” the company posted on its official account on Toutiao, a social media platform it owns.
The sell-or-ban measure was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
“We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts,” said TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew in a video posted on the platform this week.
“The facts, and the Constitution, are on our side… rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.”
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
Yeah, not too sure why you would forcefully see it as a threat…
If you already see it and think of a country as an enemy (boogeyman) than anything people from that country or gov’t says would look like a threat or to be a scary statements…
At least that is how I see it…
I hope we shall continue to analyze our own way of thinking and talking about such topics!
There’s literally no reason to retaliate using state actors for this. It won’t fix the economics, it won’t fix the power balance.
The retaliation is when the US sets precedent in international economic relations and China uses it to cut off American tech companies from the Chinese market which is a massive revenue source for them. If China announced anything like that, it would kill the tech stocks future projections because all that growth that US tech was banking on would disappear.
US tech companies betting on China to sustain their growth are foolish. China doesn’t need an excuse to favor its internal tech companies over external ones. It already does favor its own tech companies, and its own industries across any sector in which it can compete. China has already crippled US tech company growth within their borders. Any “retaliation” here is just spin, they are doing it anyway.
The reason regulation is required for this is because private companies, being purely proft-driven, won’t. It’s a state matter.
Imagine WW3 kicking off from TikTok. Not even a cool battle or anything, just massive misinformation campaigns to incite violence and false flag attacks
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
If instead of getting anything they are opting to get $0, that actually confirms the “paranoia”.
The fact that the two countries that are most accused of spreading disinformation (including using Western’s own social media) not only provide their own alternatives, but also bans Western social media shows that West wasn’t paranoid enough.
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
The fundamental ethos of the US and its propaganda of why it’s the greatest country on the planet is the first amendment and the current bunch are absolutely destroying that illusion in plain sight of younger generations.
They’re sending billions for wars and to Israel supporting and assisting them in genocide yet are saying to the ones they expect to pay for it that there’s no money for healthcare, infrastructure, education, welfare, raising minimum wage, etc, etc, et al, and then still demanding they should receive their votes “because the other guys much worse”.
I see a lot of younger people saying that both are shit, that the system is rigged and they ain’t playing their game anymore. That is tantamount to revolution.
Funny how you concerned citizens always seem to mention Israel without also mentioning supporting Ukraine. Almost like it’s not on your talking points list.
If you don’t see an issue with a hostile nation state directly controlling something that is consumed by so many Americans, you’re not looking at it properly.
Also because Ukraine is a nazi state. It has nothing to do with my “talking points” just that Ideologicaly I am opposed to The Ukraine, so I do not want support being sent to them.
Here’s Bernie Sanders from a year ago talking about how a handful of companies control the news people see, read, and hear. TL:DR - He makes the argument that it’s not fake news, that journalists are usually hard-working and honest. He says the problem is the limitation of allowed discussion - what topics make it to the consumer. He says for instance that he’s never asked about wealth and income inequality.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control. If the issues justifying a potential ban were truly data security or mental health as some argue (not without merit mind you), then the legislation to address those issues would look a lot different and include companies like Meta, Google, Instagram, etc. Those are valid concerns but the new measure is clearly not designed around them.
Finally, we’ve seen how Trump can tie up the courts for months on end even after all his self-snitching. Thus I very much doubt we’ll see any actual action in the 9 months + 3 months grace period laid out for the resolution of the TikTok matter. There are too many constitutional and business law challenges in my (admittedly layman’s) reading of expert opinion.
Kinda like the not-so-unsupported conspiracy theory that musk bought Twitter to silence protest coordination. That Twitter was too useful to the ‘masses’ and the “sinister cabal” (not my words) said it needed to be taken out.
To reiterate: this is not my position but it is one I’ve heard that matches the sentiment expressed in the parent comment
I 100% admit that my take on the TikTok ban is opinion based on the hearings and arguments + the scope of the bill, so you aren’t being unfair. I have never heard that about the Twitter purchase - I had read it was a poor decision Musk made only half-seriously and then was basically forced to follow through with.
The conspiracy theory, which I must again say is not my opinion, states the reluctance of the purchase was either: (A) A show put on to obfuscate “the truth”, or (B) An internal power struggle between the ruling elites and Musk
Just explaining, not advocating. Please don’t @ me.
What we certainly do know is that Musk bought twitter not to enable free speech, but to control speech according to his personal whims and beliefs.
I imagine the Saudi’s went in with Musk on the twitter deal to also control and dilute unfavorable speech. The Saudi ruler is the guy that assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi on foreign soil because he wasn’t exactly a team Saudi ruler kind of guy.
So if the Saudis went in with him, and he worked with them, then it wasn’t solely his personal whims and beliefs. Just, for once, stop psychologizing celebrities and look at what’s actually happening. Twitter was 100% a State Department and military intelligence asset. Musk makes most of his money from federal contracts, mostly related to military intelligence and adjacent domains. The state has all the means to stop Musk from destroying their asset with his personal whims (FTC, SEC, etc). Instead, he buys it with support from the Saudis, a family that leaders of the USA have sworn to protect for decades.
Face it. Musk’s personal beliefs are merely what allows him to work with the power brokers. He is the lightning rod, the money launderer, the public face, the whipping boy, and eventually the sacrificial body. He’s not running the show.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control
I mean, if this were true, that would mean you wouldn’t be able to find similar content on Western platforms. Are you really saying similar content isn’t readily available on YouTube? If so, what content?
That’s a solid criticism and I upvoted. I hadn’t thought about YouTube. Anecdotally I’ve had factual comments about how many kids are killed, what Israeli politicians say, etc. auto-moderated into oblivion on YouTube. But at the same time I get a lot of the facts I use from YouTube (basically never been on TikTok) so it holds water. I also get a lot of info from other sources, but I can’t think of something specific I’d get from them that I could never find on YouTube.
In my defense, I’m basing my opinion on why TikTok is particularly targeted on interviews like this one with Ted Cruz. He talks about how TikTok is specifically designed to push messages that are harmful to America, including what he calls pro-Hamas content but I suspect is actually anti-Israeli policy, pro-Palestine content. That is why I would argue there’s some evidence of a campaign against TikTok in particular that might skip over YouTube or other major platforms. Perhaps the Western powers feel that YouTube is still acceptably moderated towards their interests whereas TikTok isn’t. Perhaps Google is just too influential domestically.
Edit: I found a video I was looking for: Biden talking about passing the TikTok/Israel funding/Ukraine funding package. A bit of language he uses that I think is telling is “it continues America’s leadership in the world and everyone knows it” which could signal US dominance as a motivation and thus TikTok as a target and not US companies.
That doesn’t mean your point isn’t worth discussion, or that my points aren’t opinion. I’m interested to see how it develops. I’ve based my opinion on the conversations I can find and language used, but I’m open to adjusting my view if evidence prompts that.
I think this ban is completely agnostic re: content. The issue is more fundamental – it’s fully owned and operated by people in China. This is a geopolitical battle that is currently playing out across many industries. Social media grabs headlines where less sexy industry battles do not.
I think Tom Nicholas gives a great overview.
Also, fuck Ted Cruz with a 20 inch dildo. Don’t take anything that sniveling carcass has to say seriously.
Western SM is already in the pocket of the state and any content that goes against their values is suppressed.
Pro-Palestinian content on Tiktok can easily get traction and receive over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.
Considering that younger people are not watching regular media news, channels like fox just do not have comparative reach and they aren’t buying into the zionist propaganda like previous generations.
There are a lot of content creators who are articulate, succinct and organisation has come out of it. People have created sites & apps that list all corporations and products to boycott because of their support for Israel and it’s had an impact.
Sure, TTs algorithm can easily push you down unpleasant rabbit holes but that’s the nature of algorithms, not just specific to TT.
So there might be similar content on western SM but it’s being held down and isn’t showing on people feed ‘organically’.
I just did a brief search on YouTube and found pro-Palestinian content posted over the past week with hundreds of thousands of views too. I’m not arguing about the quality of the platforms, I’m saying this has more to do with geopolitical corporate hegemony (aka money) than with any specific content, as evidenced by the fact that this has been on the table since well before the Oct 7 attacks
For one the YouTube algorithm is absolute dog shit compared to TT, which is literally the gold standard at this point.
If you haven’t tried, you’re seriously missing out. It’s legit incredible how good it is. I hardly use it because I prefer long-form content (and don’t honestly have much time) but I absolutely can respect what they created
TikTok is being banned for a bunch of different reasons all added together.
Republicans agreed to it, among the other reasons, because Democrats will get the blame for it and it will hurt Biden at the election.
Republicans and Democrats supported its ban because of sinophobia. It’s a big, successful business in America, there’s scaremongering around what data it’s collecting or ways it could be used to manipulate people’s opinions—ByteDance did not do itself any favours by coming out and telling all its American users to tell their Congresspeople to vote against this, which was spun as a demonstration of that power.
They also support the ban as part of an ongoing backlash against “big tech”. Republicans are angry at big tech because they think it’s too liberal. Democrats are angry at it for being addictive, abusing monopolistic powers, and other quite legitimate issues. The problem is that neither party is very good at actually dealing with the problem, so they just lash out wildly at whatever comes along that looks vaguely tech. Not realising that in this case, that will give way more power to Meta and Alphabet.
I think the reason it’s happening now is because of the growing protest movement against the genocide in Gaza.
All the other US media companies actively sensor pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content and TikTok doesn’t. Unacceptable!
Maybe, but I don’t think so. The US govt is infamously slow and inefficient. I’ve been following this and it’s been a drumbeat that’s been growing for years, since long before Israel’s latest genocidal push began last October.
If there’s any particular reason that it’s succeeded now, I’d put it more down to the upcoming election.
Idk why so many people assumed they would its a data gold mine even with the USA blocked
Bye felecia
