TikTok Closer to Potential U.S. Ban as House Passes Bill Requiring Sale

[splifingate]

The reasons I'm seeing given for banning TikTok alone are weak-- I agree privacy is a major concern, across all of these products. I agree misinformation is a concern, across all these products. Until there's legislative interest in the actual issue, this looks to me like electioneering and jingoistic projection of markets.

Hear. Hear.

Symptomatic treatment does not address the underlying illness inherent in the collection (and sharing) of our private data.

Congress Should Give Up on Unconstitutional TikTok Bans

Congress’ unfounded plan to ban TikTok under the guise of protecting our data is back, this time in the form of a new bill—the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” H.R. 7521 — which has gained a dangerous amount of momentum in Congress. This bipartisan...

www.eff.org

"User data will still be collected by numerous platforms—possibly even TikTok after a forced sale—and it will still be sold to data brokers who can then sell it elsewhere, just as they do now."

Kill the Sock, and the puppet gets away...

 

[Analog Kid]

When did I EVER use the word, hate, or any phrase similar to that except in response to your accusation?

foreign adversaries who hate our guts and would love to see our country fall.

Nobody accused you of hating your origins. It's a clever rhetorical trick to use "adversary" to mean the Chinese government hating the US nation, and then redefine it to mean your heritage when I point to your own over the top language. Who you are doesn't matter to this discussion.

"Adversary" IS IN THE BILL passed by the House as a legal definition. That's why I use the term,

Accepting the bill's language as your own and using it persistently, which is what I mean by having gotten you engaged.

This has gone from being a debate of ideas to something more personal, so I'm going to leave it here. You're clearly offended at some deeper level than the merits of and reasons for the bill, which wasn't my intent. I feel you've misinterpreted my words, intentionally or not, but I apologize if I left enough ambiguity in my phrasing to allow that to happen.

 

[tobybrut]

Nobody accused you of hating your origins. It's a clever rhetorical trick to use "adversary" to mean the Chinese government hating the US nation, and then redefine it to mean your heritage when I point to your own over the top language. Who you are doesn't matter to this discussion.

It is standard fare these days to accuse people of being a word i would not use here. So yes, it does matter to that discussion. The word I’m referring to is tossed around casually to be used against anyone who disagrees with the accuser. I’ll accept you didn’t mean to do that, so that matter is closed.

 

[SRLMJ23]

It's so funny to me when people (rightly) criticize TikTok for having all this user data and not being clear on policies to keep it safe, but then are silent on Meta and Google. If your concern is data security Meta and Google are just as culpable, and should be criticized just as strongly as ByteDance. I do understand that many, probably most, people who share that concern don't share the cognitive dissonance outlined above but some do and it's painful. I also get that people have other concerns specifically with TikTok, as the CCP is clearly more authoritarian than we'd like. I would say the American government has access to our data from American companies and does alarming things with it too, not that two wrongs make a right, but these critiques ought to be levelled consistently. In my mind it is long past since when we should have a stronger international data security agreements. I can't imagine how complicated and complex it would be to implement and enforce, but we live in the Information Age and will for some time. If we can have international agreements for wars than we can for data as well.

Great post, especially your statement about having some kind of international agreement for data!

 

[SactoGuy18]

Only one thing though: they'll be lucky to get that bill passed through the Senate in 2024. And it has to be resolved with the House version in the House-Senate conference committee, too.

 

[genovelle]

The post I was replying to said that they "didn't care about the China ties" and gave the impression that Tiktok is bad for society for other reasons. Taking the China thing out of the equation... why is TikTok any worse than Reels and Shorts?

For me China is the primary problem, but there may also be issues with the algorithm and how if effects the young