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View: https://twitter.com/metzgov/status/1767944208386515356?


This may be one of the better reasons to support China divesting from TikTok..

On another note... Holy crap, this seems to be the worst PR campaign I have ever seen from a company.... Its been blatantly clear that TikTok did nothing more than geolocate users and provide them the contact information for their local "congressman." They clearly did not bother to only target those of voting age. members of Congress have constantly been getting calls from people who are minors and cant even vote! Which should be a red flag itself
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I asked one of my daughters what she’d do if TikTok were banned.

”Snapchat” was the one word answer….
 
How is tik tok bad lol
I guess it isn't a problem unique to TikTok. But in today's social media landscape, everyone's trying to get instant validation, everyone's trying to become a digital influencer, everyone is trying to go viral. And I don’t think those things are good psychologically.
 
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If you read article correctly, it's just about TikTok needs to change from chinese ByteDance to US entity. Solved. TikTok is not going to disappear from the US. It's quite easy for ByteDance to create US company for this purpose. Especially when they already separated the US infrastructure in the last years.
But reading the article doesn't get the clicks like most of the smooth brains who think the government is out to take their social media away. This was talked about when the bill first came to be and people were losing their minds over "the government taking away muh dopamine hit."
 
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Cracks me all the replys saying they are concerned about China getting their data. Are you even aware of how much your data is already going to other countries. Major corporations include financial corporation send data to other countires with cheap labor to process the data. One if the tax return companies you talk to them in US, but all your tax info is being sent to India to be processed and then returned to US. I know the state I live in many of the state government departments all the processing is done offshore. I found would when out of work and signed up for unemployment and discovered it was done offshore. I'm think there are lots of unemployed people in the US why not hire US workers. This is just a couple examples there are a lot more you data is already available to people and countries that want it.
 
Cracks me all the replys saying they are concerned about China getting their data. Are you even aware of how much your data is already going to other countries. Major corporations include financial corporation send data to other countires with cheap labor to process the data. One if the tax return companies you talk to them in US, but all your tax info is being sent to India to be processed and then returned to US. I know the state I live in many of the state government departments all the processing is done offshore. I found would when out of work and signed up for unemployment and discovered it was done offshore. I'm think there are lots of unemployed people in the US why not hire US workers. This is just a couple examples there are a lot more you data is already available to people and countries that want it.
I mean its not unjustified to be more afraid of China in case of data harvesting. China's track record isn't the best when it comes to human rights, democracy and things like that. China is known to use harvested data against own people. Hell even the infamous China social score... So yes that may be the reason people are more concerned about China data harvesting than India data harvesting for instance.
 
I mean its not unjustified to be more afraid of China in case of data harvesting. China's track record isn't the best when it comes to human rights, democracy and things like that. China is known to use harvested data against own people. Hell even the infamous China social score... So yes that may be the reason people are more concerned about China data harvesting than India data harvesting for instance.
So what stops China from just buying all of the same data from Meta? Anyone remember Cambridge Analytics?
 
In my opinion this is the US answer to China's recently introduced data and security laws which gives China's government more over reaching powers to take hold of data held by Chinese companies whether they be in mainland China or abroad. TikTok being owned by a Chinese company means that if the government demand access to TikTok's server data or user database, the owner Bytedance by law has to comply which means various Chinese government agencies will have access to the personal data of millions of Americans, data which the US rightly believes the Chinese government will abuse for it's own use.

The US does not trust the word of Chinese companies when they say they will not had over their data to the Chinese government. The US government is protecting American TikTok users and rightly so. I applaud what the US is doing. Force Bytedance to sell TikTok to a non Chinese company which means it's users data stays out of the government of China's hands or ban it's use in the country.
 
So what stops China from just buying all of the same data from Meta? Anyone remember Cambridge Analytics?
Totally nothing except for Meta itself.

If Meta wants to play Chinese spy, nothing (except maybe for some whistleblower?) can stop them I guess.

But I believe it's safe to assume, China wants to have gathering of these data in control, so they know their validity and accuracy. Meta may fill them with bogus data for instance.
 
So what stops China from just buying all of the same data from Meta? Anyone remember Cambridge Analytics?
What Cambridge Analytics did was not legal hence why they was taken to court over it. China doing the same would be legal because they passed laws that allows them to do what Cambridge Analytics did.

China's data and security laws allows the Chinese government to legally access and snoop on the personal data of who ever they want if that data is contained within a database owned by a Chinese company.
 
I guess it isn't a problem unique to TikTok. But in today's social media landscape, everyone's trying to get instant validation, everyone's trying to become a digital influencer, everyone is trying to go viral. And I think those things are good psychologically.

Not me. I hate even havign my picture taken. The last thing I want is fame.
 
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Apple won't generally touch social media with a ten foot pole but social media isn't going away, and it's only getting worse in diminished mental health amongst youth and breaking the fabric of society with disinformation and tribalism. I would trust Apple to steer it in the right direction.

Apple doesn't need to generate revenue directly so they could lay off the algorithm keeping users engaged in an addictive overuse that plagues Tik Tok and Instagram.

Tik Tok could move back to its focus on music with a close tie-in with Apple Music where Apple would generate subscription revenue and gain an advantage over Spotify.

I like it. But it's probably never going to happen.
 


The U.S. House of Representatives today approved legislation that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media network or face a ban in the United States. The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will now go to the Senate, where its fate is unclear.

tiktok-logo.jpg

U.S. lawmakers want TikTok to be sold to a company outside of China due to concerns that the Chinese government could force ByteDance to hand over data from users located in the United States. If China made the request, ByteDance would not be able to refuse. There have also been suggestions that China could use TikTok to spread political propaganda.

ByteDance has attempted to alleviate these fears by storing data from U.S. users on servers owned by Oracle, but the White House and lawmakers do not believe that is enough.

If passed, the bill would require ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months to a company approved by the U.S. government. Should ByteDance not sell the company, U.S. app stores would not be able to distribute the app without breaking the law, effectively leading to a ban. China would also need to approve the sale, and the Chinese government made it clear last year that it would "firmly oppose" a forced sale.

There are a limited number of companies with enough capital to be able to afford TikTok, and the obvious choices, such as Google or Meta, would likely be barred from acquiring it due to antitrust concerns.

Should the bill make it through the Senate, U.S. President Joe Biden confirmed that he would sign it into law. A number of senators have expressed worries about the wording of the act, and it does not have universal support at this time.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

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

Good. This app, along with other social media apps have ruined an entire generation. Ever try talking to someone in their early to mid-twenties in person, face to face? I find a lot of the time (obviously not all the time) that they do not know how to communicate well at all via face to face talking. It is pretty sad and wild…and let’s not even get into the mental health part of it, which is disgusting because these companies target kids with certain conditions or cause kids to have certain conditions by promoting certain things.

Oh, and it is also nothing more than an arm of the CCP, spying on and infiltrating our country.

Why all the fighting age Chinese men at the border? All part of some plan, and it is not good!

Ban this, then get on with doing something about Facebook!


:apple:
 
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There’s been a few times when talking to friends about a certain subject. And later when opening tiktok that subject appears.

Don’t know if its just coincidence or tiktok was listening
 
The conspiracy theory is that Biden with veto the bill and save TikTok to get votes..
The problem with that is he already said he would sign it. Why do you think it passed the House with a huge supermajority of both parties? Only 65 Congressmen voted no. If Biden had signaled opposition, the bill would have failed. In the Senate, the Intelligence Committee has jurisdiction and both Democrat Chairman Mark Warner and Republican Vice Chairman Marco Rubio have said they support the House bill. It’ll almost certainly pass the Senate and Biden will sign it.
 
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.
 
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