16 ms·

Maybe someone will scroll all the way down to this comment. Probably not. For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen

Maybe someone will scroll all the way down to this comment. Probably not. For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. I make a decent chunk of income in USD and this terrifies me... but this. This move saddens me. There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm when they're being influenced every day by how they might get shot up in math class? Come on (wo)man. This shit is fucking stupid. It's just sad to me, sad to watch the country I grew up in, the one I went to war for ... do this level of stupid shit. That's my 2 bucks, spend it how you want it.

nbar1 4y ago
"might be" is not the concern, it's that they are.
- stronglikedan 4y ago
  And before that it was the TV, and before that it was the radio, and before that it was the newspaper, and before that it was the printing press, and so on. Nothing new under the sun.
  - nbar1 4y ago
    The new thing under the sun is that the Chinese government has a heavy hand in TikTok.
    - realce 4y ago
      So we should respond by making it a 20 year imprisonment for using a VPN to access Wikileaks?
- withinboredom 4y ago
  My son's cousin (who lives in the US) was talking to him about 'gun drills' and my son asked, 'what is that, do you get to practice shooting a gun? That sounds fun!' To us, this was a funny question, to my sister-in-law ... she was like 'wtaf.' I can't imagine having my son worried about that kind of stuff and I can't imagine the internal stress. That's why I said 'might' because it 'might' be normalized to the point that it's just background noise; a joke. Until it isn't. My son and his friends run around in the streets like when I was a kid; they don't stop until the street lights come on. I could never take that away from him, and I feel like if we were to move back to the US, I would be doing that.
  - nbar1 4y ago
    That has nothing to do with TikTok.
throwaway4837 4y ago
Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew made that clear. The narrative of child safety, for example the story about the kid who commit suicide because of their "for you" page, is being used as a kind of legal "pretext" so they can ban TikTok.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This overlooks the "possibility" that those platforms have an "agreement" of sorts with the US Government. The Twitter Files have gone into some of that, but be careful: it is possible for things to exist that each individual/civilian may not have knowledge of, even though most people seem to be strongly under the impression that this is impossible, perhaps because it could be considered (or, has been marketed as) [only] a conspiracy theory. > This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew made that clear. The narrative of child safety, for example the story about the kid who commit suicide because of their "for you" page, is being used as a kind of legal "pretext" so they can ban TikTok. It is plausible that there are certain ideas that they would not like the minds of the American Public exposed to, certain conversations they would prefer they do not have, etc. There is a surprising amount of detail to reality, but we miss out on most of it (and often do not realize it), for a variety of reasons. The thinking on these sorts of matters one reads in this thread is rather eye opening....I suspect a lot of the styles of logic that are perfectly acceptable in threads on this topic would be very unwelcome when writing software.
  - bmarquez 4y ago
    > This overlooks the "possibility" that those platforms have an "agreement" of sorts with the US Government. Of course they do, it's called Prism and it's been around for over a decade. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...
secabeen 4y ago
They are spending their time on this because they know that with a divided Senate and House, there is no bill that will pass without extensive negotiation behind closed doors. While that happens, something has to happen on the floor of the house and senate, so they debate stuff like this, which might get traction, or might not.
threeseed 4y ago
a) The government can do more than one thing at a time. b) There is zero appetite from the GOP for gun control. Until that changes the status quo persists. c) Information about US citizens (which can be used to manipulate them) being handed over to the Chinese government is something that the government should be concerned about.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I mean, you can buy that information for 'practically free' (amortized per person), you don't need an app for that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    Please tell me where I can purchase information about the sexual preferences of Republican politicians and leading religious figures. I... have... reasons.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      I’m sure you could run some targeted ads on pornhub and figure it out.
  - etrautmann 4y ago
    It's not just the data, it's bidirectional. The concern is that by adjusting the algorithm they can influence the population (e.g. to make math and science perceived as uncool). Not sure how seriously to take that but in principle it seems like a large vulnerability that is challenging to close off without actions like what we're seeing.
    - 4y ago
korroziya 4y ago
[flagged]
- satellites 4y ago
  Can you explain how TikTok (a Chinese “psyop”) is more harmful to the average citizen than Facebook or Instagram (a corporate American “psyop?”) Can you explain how TikTok is more harmful to the average citizen than the constant mass shootings that happen in the U.S.? Touch grass, indeed.
  - henriquez 4y ago
    Because China is dumb and bans all U.S. tech companies from doing business in China? Why should we let their tech companies do business here?
eganist 4y ago
Speaking at least with my background: Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our free and open internet against our own people. Regardless of the fact that our kids are most vulnerable, China's seemingly made a point of outsourcing their most polarizing algorithmic decisions to the rest of the world but not to their own population, which is essentially a tacit admission of their awareness of the dangers of social media to their own people. At this point, I'd venture that politicians in the US are trying to grasp at whatever they can to mitigate the risk while still maintaining their election chances. Easier to "blame China" and get re-elected than it is to dump on their own constituents for not monitoring their kids' social media habits. And frankly, I'm okay with that. Even if a parent does their best, there'll be second-hand influences through all the kids raised irresponsibly through their parents, and nothing can be done about that aside from homeschooling or going off-grid, which is unsustainable for nearly everyone. I'm fine with a combination of the bill introduced + bills like the one passed in Utah placing curfews on kids since parents have proven to be so bad at parenting their own kids as to present the nation with an emergent aggregate risk to national security.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Yes, telling parents (who are the voters) that actually they should just be doing a better job monitoring their kids activities online seems like a losing political strategy!
  - alexose 4y ago
    Maybe it's not a binary choice. Parents can do a better job monitoring their kids and the state can make it mildly harder for kids to spend all day on social media.
    - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
      Fair enough, but I'm not sure that parents would want to hear the former message from their elected representative
    - Mezzie 4y ago
YellOh 4y ago
According to Washington Post data, there were 393,289 students enrolled at schools during shootings in the past 10 years[0]. (Note this is total enrollment, not those present or injured) In 2022, there were ~25.1 million teens[1], of whom ~67% used TikTok[2], for a total of ~16.8 million on TikTok (totally ignoring anyone under 12 or over 17). I know the numbers are hacky because the first group includes younger children and the second group doesn't (and 1/3 of TikTok's users could be under 14[3]), but I was trying to get a sense of scale for each category. Assume the TikTok user count is probably an underestimate. My hacky numbers come up with a bit over 40x more teens being first-hand infuenced by tiktok. To make the numbers even more hypothetical, the next step of deciding how many times worse you think being enrolled at a school that has a shooting is for students and plugging that in to get how much more attention/resources should be used on shootings is left as an exercise for the reader. [0] https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings [1] https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underage-users-ftc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underag...
- satellites 4y ago
  The person you’re replying to said that the possibility of being shot at school is psychologically taxing. This would apply to all students at all schools, not just ones where a shooting literally happened. It is relevant because of how frequent school shootings are now, compared to say, 30 years ago. Columbine shook the country when it happened, now we’re at a couple Columbine-style incidents per year. You can say “well that’s still a low overall percentage of students who get shot” and be technically correct while ignoring the gravity of the situation and the fact that other first world countries don’t have this problem. The fact that school shootings have been so normalized that we’re sitting here and discussing the math around whether they’re worse than social media is… so profoundly sad it’s hard to describe.
  - spamlettuce 4y ago
tomcar288 4y ago
It's worse than you think. This bill isn't really about Tik Tok. Read the fine print: people caught using a VPN could be thrown in jail for 20 years! It's about giving govt unchecked authority to throw people in jail.
- spogbiper 4y ago
  can you point out where the bill says this? I'm not practiced in reading this kind of thing and struggling to find it
  - tomcar288 4y ago
    FYI: i heard about that in a news article, I didn't actually read the bill.
    - yed 4y ago
      I've read the bill and while I'm not a fan for more general reasons, it doesn't say anything like this at all. The bill is strictly about foreigners from designated US "adversaries" having an ownership stake in large technology companies operating in the US. The text cherry picked in some of these news articles is just a list of the types of technology companies the bill specifies should be the prioritized when evaluating which foreign owned companies should be scrutinized.
      - akerl_ 4y ago
        The bill doesn’t require an ownership stake, it even includes provisions to consider an entity hostile if the holding is indirect.
        yed 4y ago
        The intent there is to deal with people trying to get around the provision via intermediary holding companies. At its core there still must be some ownership stake or controlling interest by a foreign national, whether direct or indirect. Edit: the key parts of the bill that specify it applies only for controlling interests: > Sec 2-2: CONTROLLING HOLDING.—The term “controlling holding” means a holding with the power, whether direct or indirect and whether exercised or not exercised, to determine, direct, or decide important matters affecting an entity. > Sec 2-3-a (emphasis mine): COVERED HOLDING.—The term “covered holding”— means [...] a controlling holding held, directly or indirectly, in an ICTS covered holding entity by— [...]
korroziya 4y ago
[flagged]
- withinboredom 4y ago
  Psyops is fun, and fairly close to some of the stuff I had fun with in the military. But to say I have any political ideology that fits into a box, is rather funny. Thanks for that!
- pvarangot 4y ago
  I agree with your comment but if you think banning TikTok is about stopping China's psyops you are not paying attention. This is protectionism for the US social media industry. Removing American made content from TikTok will also make it less appealing for other western countries as it will have less of the wealthy empire-grown "influencers" everyone loves, hence giving an alternative to US alternatives by Google/Facebook/Snap to cut into their market. China can psyops on any social media platform, Tencent owned Reddit for longer than anyone in congress has been worried about this only that no US based Reddit competitor makes enough money to pay for national security lobbyists in DC.
ononon 4y ago
[flagged]
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I grew up in a time that there were 0.~ kids per year getting murdered in school. School was a 'safe place' (insofar you weren't a target for bullies). A place to have fun and learn things. The first time that happened, where a school was shot up. It literally (collectively) fucked us up for days/weeks. I'm not advocating for guns to be taken away, I believe that ship sailed a couple hundred years ago. But Americans need to get their shit together, that's for sure.
tablespoon 4y ago
But in any case, given that AI and automation will soon make the majority of US workers economically unnecessary, it's more important than ever for the powers-that-be to ban end-to-end encryption and guns and maintain full control over social media. Otherwise, the obsolete workers may resist their obsolescence and cause problems for capital instead of being gracefully attrited from society.
throwaway29812 4y ago
> For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. Then you no longer know the place. According to media the US is nothing but school shootings and government censorship.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I had a meeting last summer with some Americans and I jokingly said “meh, it’s a free country.” They all quickly pointed out that it wasn’t, any more. I still have family there and still visit for nearly a month out of the year. The number of people running red lights has gone up significantly the last few visits. To the point where I feel like I’m driving in Bali and not the US. People are more rude now than they used to be, and scared. It took months after moving here to brush off the fear you have living in the US. Fear of the government taking your kid because your neighbor gets pissed off, fear of car accidents, fear of getting pulled over, fear of getting stabbed/shot while walking down the street, fear of seeing someone else getting stabbed/shot, fear of getting fired for no reason, fear of going to the hospital or getting seriously sick because even if you survive, you’re going to be broke af. I’ve had cops plant evidence in my car, I’ve been hit by trucks running red lights, I’ve gotten in a knife fight with a hobo, I’ve been shot at on the highway, I’ve been fired for no reason, I’ve gotten in a motorcycle accident that fucked me over seven ways to Sunday. I haven’t had to worry about any of those things since leaving. Not a one.
  - jfk13 4y ago
    > I’ve had cops plant evidence in my car, I’ve been hit by trucks running red lights, I’ve gotten in a knife fight with a hobo, I’ve been shot at on the highway, I’ve been fired for no reason, I’ve gotten in a motorcycle accident that fucked me over seven ways to Sunday. While I think I can understand many of your feelings about US culture, I'm a bit lost here. I was married to a US citizen and have lived a significant amount of time there, although never settled permanently. But I never experienced any of these things, nor felt an overwhelming need to worry about them. Is it something about your chosen lifestyle? (For context, I have also lived and worked in a place where many of my neighbours employed armed guards to sit at their gates. And I watched from my office window as an armed bank robbery took place across the way. It ended with corpses lying in the street. And I was far more worried when dealing with police there than in any of my several US interactions with them. Think the US is bad? Well, in some ways it is... but it could be a lot worse.)
micromacrofoot 4y ago
They're compounding problems, we have alarming increases in teenage depression rates (especially amongst girls), and there's some correlation with the rise of social media as well as other things like school shootings. I agree with you that there are more important things, but we do lots at once. Honestly if shooting up congresspeople, kindergartners, and kindergartners shooting teachers hasn't changed anything in regards to guns... I don't know what will. This isn't really about protecting kids anyway though, it's mostly fearmongering about China, which is one of the rare things most of our legislature agrees on these days.
- pokepim 4y ago
  Isn’t Instagram the bigger issue for depression among american teenagers according to scientific research? You gonna ban it as well or not because it’s american company so it can bend over for CIA/NSA/FBI as they please? Tiktok ban is purely political nothing else.
pessimizer 4y ago
Don't worry, it's just a first step. After this, they will more easily be able to ban any public media not accepting direct government requests for censorship (or censorship immunity) and reduction of reach (or artificial boosting of reach.) That this is auxiliary to US goals to antagonize China is the sugar. The real goal is to continue the progress made when when breakaway Trump-supporting networks like Parler were directly attacked by Congress, and app stores informally threatened if they wouldn't ban them. Twitter is being continuously threatened by Congress just because they changed ownership from movement Democrats to an "independent" rich guy. TikTok will be the precedent. It's obviously just racist to attack TikTok alone; in order to retroactively make it not racist, it's important to attack companies that amplify Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Palestinian messages, the alt-left, the alt-right, or anyone that might inspire disloyalty to the homeland. Which is why Homeland Security will be overseeing social media. > they might get shot up in math class? The safest place that a child is at all day is at school (home and family are far more dangerous), and more people die in a day in Ukraine or (until fairly recently) Yemen, or because asthma inhalers were re-patented in the US through active corruption and their price went from $5 to $75, than have ever died in a school shooting. Middle class paranoia is being exploited by dragging the discussion of 6 deaths in this suburb, 10 deaths in that suburb, over years, with public wailing and gnashing of teeth, energetic and aggressive shaming of dissenters (with state support), and constant press releases from an industry that relies on advocacy for income. Upper-middle class liberals can only be focused on issues that affect them directly, which is why gun control (and gun rights, classical liberals are liberals too) is an easy way to manipulate them. I wish they could be pushed back to important things, like our failed healthcare system that will ruthlessly bankrupt them with the slightest provocation. Gun control pandering is just Republican law & order pandering in a Democratic style. It's pretending that there's some magical incantation that will make desperate people both not violent, and also not easy targets for violence and exploitation. The solution is systemic infrastructure, rather than distraction. I'd take a school shooting that kills 6 every week in exchange for a compassionate, functional healthcare system. It's 300 lives versus hundreds of thousands of lives. edit: Americans live in a country that shut down most public mental health care from 2008-2010.
skee8383 4y ago
It's a social engineering tool designed, built, and ran by the Chinese government.
jasmer 4y ago
The Congressional Hearing was a clown show, but there are hugely material issues of National Security and trade parity to contend with. China is putting itself on a direct 'war footing' path with respect to Taiwan and the likelihood of conflict is worriesome. That conflict will make Ukraine look like a side show, and will involve Japan, Korea, Philippines, Australia, US - and incidentally Vietnam, Singapore, Canada - and everyone will be affected. For example the CCP has made deep inroads in influencing Canadian politics along a number of vectors. Xi's stated policy (and what we can infer from actual behaviour) is that 'all assets are geared towards state objectives) and that will 100% include TikTok - to varying degrees. Even from purely a 'trade parity' perspective, outside countries would simply not be allowed to have the kinds of influence in China that they somehow expect in other states and that there are bunch of conflating factors there as well. And most of that applies to pretty much all Western nations, and frankly, a bunch of others that would be powerless to do anything anyhow. I think the only reasonable solution would be to have TikTok sold off and run separately, from Singapore, US, or any place with commercial, regulatory, judicial transparency etc.. It was hilarious to watch clueless clowns in Congress, but I think that was mostly a populist display for the general population so that the 'creator furor' is tempered to some extent by the headlines they read on CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc..
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Yeah, I'd be skeptical that an event like a Congressional hearing with a 5 min format per speaker was ever going to really drill down into nuanced issues, if only by nature of the time limit.
sergiotapia 4y ago
You don't see anything wrong with all that data being slurped up by the communist regime of China? That's the main reason behind all of this. Nothing to do with "kids attention". It would be wrong for the US to do nothing.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Chinese regime is in no way communist. It is only in the name and has been so for years.
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    Fine - a dictatorship like every other communist power is at the end
c7DJTLrn 4y ago
Giving too much power to out of touch, senile old men seems to be a global issue.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  You will of course, in the name of gender equality, monitor how many women vote each way on this bill, right? Were you even aware that women are allowed in Congress?
deltree7 4y ago
Don't worry about the US. It is still the greatest country and will remain so for at least 50 years. It's reddit/HN who have never traveled or lived outside US that has jaded your view of US. You know which country released chatGPT? or NVIDIA A100 or made a huge step towards Quantum Computing / Nuclear Fusion? I'd rather congress focus on irrelevant details, while startups solve / tackle important issues. When it really comes to it, Congress will get their act together, but anything before is pure meddling in one of the greatest systems that is producing unbelievable innovations at an alarming rate.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- withinboredom 4y ago
  It’s a pretty decent country. Beautiful even. Very obviously not the greatest country (or were you being sarcastic?). I have some jaded views. Perhaps my jading moment was when my unit was used as a political pawn by Obama to get re-elected. That pissed me off to no end and broke my rose colored glasses. I sincerely miss US startups sometimes. I work at a startup here and they actually (somehow) have a work/life balance, 20 days paid vacation, and other perks with no gimmicks, like a chef who cooks us lunch every day, but no shenanigans (like “unlimited” vacations that aren’t actually unlimited). I (sometimes) miss working weekends and impossible deadlines while devouring cheap pizza and passing out on the couch. But there’s a good chance even US startups have evolved in the last ten years… but the last US startup I worked at in the early teens was like that. My then-girlfriend-now-wife would come hang out with us nerds for dinner before we got back to work. Hell, I fixed a rare database issue on my honeymoon because everyone else was asleep and I wasn’t while my new wife cussed out my CEO on the phone. He ordered us a really nice bottle wine from the hotel, so I can’t complain… Meh, maybe I don’t miss it, but you make some valuable points.
- imiric 4y ago
  > Don't worry about the US. It is still the greatest country and will remain so for at least 50 years. That's a shortsighted and very optimistic viewpoint, dripping with typical American pride. You're underestimating just how much damage foreign propaganda and misinformation can do and has done to your great country. Trump getting to power, and still being a strong contender for 2024, mass delusion and rising popularity of conspiracy theories (QAnon, pizzagate, etc.), record-high social unrest and division, racial tensions, protests, marches, insurrections, etc. And this is just starting to unravel. The ironic thing is that all that great technology built by the US, allowing everyone to join, connecting the world and whatnot, has been the perfect weapon of information warfare. You've essentially built the weapons, and handed them to your enemies, and are somehow still debating if that's the case, and what to do about it. This confused state is indicative of the effects of psyops, where the afflicted adversary doesn't understand the situation they're in, or how they got there. An ex-KGB agent explained this well way back in 1985[1]. The East certainly has an advantage, considering they've been doing this for decades now, and Western influence on their own population is close to zero, because of their isolation from the internet. Banning TikTok is a good defensive measure, but it's too little, too late, to reverse the damage already done, and to stop the bleeding. The US would have to do a major shakeup and banning of foreign accounts across all social media sites, and judging by the reactions on this well educated forum alone, that wouldn't fly with the general population, who perceive this as an infringement on free speech. EDIT: Ah, it seems the bill is broader than just banning TikTok. Good, it might be the only playable move. Unfortunately, it requires more government oversight at the expense of some civil liberties, and I can already see how unpopular this will be. Buckle up, it's going to get even bumpier. I suspect the US in its current dominant position won't last more than a couple of decades, at most. Funny that with all its untouchable military power, it's completely defenseless against this type of attack. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8
_8j50 4y ago
The majority of americans agree with this decision. You may not like it but HN audience is very tech savvy and is influenced by popular thinking in tech. The sentiment against assamge, patriot act, even the iraq war was popular at the time. Now I have tried to make a rational argument for this ban but all I got was downvotes even bots/people downvoting every unrelated thing I post probably including this post. You need to engage in polite discourse with others and change their minds not complain about the government. And believe me when I say, having seen how things are in other countries, as bad as things are in the US I wouldn't trade it for any other country. You've all chosen to whine in your bubbles instead of a healthy debate. Enjoy the result.
theRealMe 4y ago
“Why are we talking about X when we could be talking about Y” is some classic whataboutism. You really seem to be trying to push a pro China agenda by discounting the importance of this. You’re stance on this is actually “I don’t believe that the CCP would try to harm the US population”. I can tell that is your stance because if it wasn’t then you are effectively saying “I believe the CCP may potentially feed the US population mental-illness-inducing content via targeted algorithms, but I don’t think it’s worth caring about and we should be mad that lawmakers are even trying to do anything about it.” I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about something meaningless here. If you believe that there is a chance of the CCP doing something nefarious with their Golden Shares power, then that’s a pretty big deal.
dataflow 4y ago
[edit: never mind, I didn't see others already mentioned this]
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  Its about industrial protectionism with National Security as a paper thin pretext.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
djha-skin 4y ago
Really HN? The top voted comment is "this country has gone downhill"? This isn't Reddit. We're supposed to at least say something novel here, and hopefully interesting. How has the country gone downhill? Why is this decision so uninteresting? This comment also completely ignores the very interesting geopolitical aspects of this bill. On the surface it does look like something innocuous, as implied, which is why people might double-take and want to look deeper. Pathos-heavy comments like this one with no real meat disappoint me. Surely we can do better.
- tayo42 4y ago
  It's a 4 paragraph comment that's basically throw away and everyone will forget exists by tommrow. How much effort should people be putting into these comments. Especially when there's no return. There's no guarantee you'll get a smart responses
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  The comment seems pretty clear to me: Despite very serious issues legislators are focusing on unimportant fads. I increasingly think interesting geopolitics are a trap for a certain type of brain. When I was in high school I followed that sort of thing closely, and felt very smart. But it all had no connection to me, and it didn't matter to me at all. I realized I prefered geopolitics to domestic news because I could feel detached from the tradgedy.
- rkho 4y ago
  > This isn't Reddit Sorry, I'm calling bullshit on this. Look at every single thread that discusses cryptocurrency. If you haven't noticed the Redditification of Hacker News, then I envy you.
crazygringo 4y ago
> There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions That's not how Congress works. We're taught in school that Congress debates bills one at a time, but the reality is that all the real debate and drafting and work happens behind the scenes, massively parallelized. Time spent during a session of Congress is mostly just the very end of the process, discovering where the votes fall and some last-minute negotiations. Also grandstanding. There are lots of factors that have been making Congress less "productive" in recent history, depending on how you view it, but the total hours available per year isn't really one of them.
aikinai 4y ago
And now this low brow distraction is on top (at least for me), even above the next comment which has very insightful information about the content of the bill.
nateoearth 4y ago
My feelings are very much the opposite. Republicans and Democrats can hardly ever work together to get something positive accomplished. Banning TikTok--an app which is perhaps the largest psyop against the US population in history--is a breath of fresh air.
rayiner 4y ago
> There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm when they're being influenced every day by how they might get shot up in math class? What do you think causes kids to shoot up their math class?
- Thiez 4y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting that banning TikTok will significantly reduce school shootings?
  - rayiner 4y ago
    I’m asking in general terms what OP thinks causes school shootings.
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      Kids getting pissed off and anyone able to walk into a store and buy a gun, without knowing how to use it or store it properly… but that’s just a guess.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        It’s illegal to sell guns to minors in even deep red states like Tennessee. And the percentage of households with guns (where kids can get access to them) has declined dramatically, from 47% in 1973 to 31% in 2014. https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf#page5 https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gu...
        withinboredom 4y ago
        31% is about 1 out of 3. That’s a big number.
        4y ago
mixmastamyk 4y ago
Personally glad someone in congress is paying attention to the dangers of surveillance capitalism. Once TikTok is addressed, hopefully it will give them the toehold to expand rights to citizens no matter the company.
eointierney 4y ago
Oh my gosh, I feel for you. I'm Irish, still in Ireland, a lifelong pacifist, and have nothing but the deepest respect for your duty and honour to and for your country. And from a distance I must agree with you. Yes, in the supposed Great Game this is simply a mole being whacked, a performative exercise that does nothing to solve any of the problems and shoddily disguises these in puerile emnity. Yet and all, The US Senate is still and nonetheless one of the most powerful and wayward legislative bodies in our species' history. You have a direct part in your Senate, albeit at the length of another's arm, and so you still have this power. I'm at risk of rambling, but you are still a citizen of one of the greatest nations, and you should have more than hope. I take your two bucks and give it to a beggar, as their need is greater than either of ours. Please, if you are willing and brave, and as you have served your country we know you are willing and brave, get into Politics. Good people working together is the best way of making things better
varunjain99 4y ago
Hm, I think the national security concerns are far heftier here than kids being influenced. ByteDance can be forced to do almost anything by the CCP. Sure, American tech companies might be forced to do things by the American govt but theoretically there are checks / balances / rule of law to prevent misuse. On the kids' manipulation -- even though that's not the main intent and American social media co's influence kids as well -- I'd still argue it's significant. A foreign adversary can control how your population thinks... it almost speaks for itself.
- krapp 4y ago
  If you think China controlling the minds of Americans through Tik-Tok is a legitimate threat, do you think American minds aren't already controlled by the US government through every other form of media? And which is the bigger threat? I mean, at least China might actually criticize American government and policy, which is something America's so-called "free press" is no longer capable of. I say give Americans a healthy dose of propaganda from all sides and let the market decide!
  - pokepim 4y ago
    Do you actually want Americans to have their own free will and choice? Hah, you wish. Only thing we can get is propagandized version neatly created by mass media conglomerates.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
Me too, but from the inside. I spent a lot of time watching C-SPAN and similar “raw footage” sites in my youth. It was fun seeing inside the sausage factory. The raw footage has changed substantially in recent years. I watched recent senate hearings and, instead of bringing expert witnesses to educate senators to help them better do their job, it seems hearings (and basically any other chance at being in front of a camera) is an opportunity to PWN the “other side” in a series of 30s sound bites. Senators yell at each other, talk past each other and their guests, fall back on their pre-written “serious burn!” scripts no matter where the conversation goes, and insult the guests they invite in to speak. Everyone is freaking out about whether or not everything was shared with “their side” prior to the hearing because they need to have pre written burns to score more “points” than the other side. You see these 30s clips floating around the internet and wonder how they can all come from the same hearing. It’s because they are all rapid firing a bunch of pre-written dribble optimized for 30s sound bites. I don’t know how we come back from this.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Let's not forget at one point in the US senate a senator was nearly caned to death in order to pwn the opposition argument. I don't know how we come back from that.
libpcap 4y ago
It's more about levelling the playing field. While FB, IG, YouTube, New York Times, etc. are blocked in the PRC, TikTok are allowed to operate freely in the U.S.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Barrin92 4y ago
>how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm when they're being influenced every day by how they might get shot up in math class? not only that but you have media outfits literally called "Infowars" operating inside the country basically supporting treasonous activities. I find it absolutely hilarious that imaginary threats from TikTok, for which even the US government cannot find genuine evidence, somehow are more relevant than existing domestic ones. Some of the largest news channels in the country openly publish the kind of propaganda that TikTok is allegedly supposed to boost. From the outside over the last two decades it honestly looks like 9/11 just broke the US flat out. Ever since then it's been a spiral into paranoia and insecurity with 'foreign adversaries' being blamed for absolutely every self-inflicted stupidity.
ugh123 4y ago
I think what you mean is they need to address both these situations and more.
shard972 4y ago
[dead]
tuxpenguine 4y ago
I think this is exactly the manifestation of social media's influence on a person's view on America. I came from another country and lived in America now. If we watch the news from social media, you will inevitably get the sense that the country is in decline: guns out of control, sky-rocketing house and medical expense, non-functioning government etc. In reality, you take for granted the freedom that you enjoy here, protected by the US military, constitution and rule of law. People in many other countries would go to great lengths to just have what you have. I agree that gun control is a serious issue, but this TikTok thing can easily cause many more suicides among teenagers if we don't ban it, the scale of harm is much higher than school shootings. That's my 2 cents.
- chaosharmonic 4y ago
  If you have a problem with that, why limit this to TikTok? Not that it isn't at least a little reasonable to be wary of adversaries having access to a data collection platform, but the problem also gets meaningfully less substantial in general if you put meaningful limits on these companies' capacity to grow and eat each other in the name of building empires of surveillance capitalism. Meta in particular is pushing hard on that angle while hand-waving away the fact that Facebook has a history of treating society as a large-scale experiment. It's manipulated users' mental health on purpose, meddled in elections by selling users' data directly to campaigners, and furthered incitements of everything from genocides abroad to the attack on the Capitol. They're feeding into attacks that single out TikTok specifically, as part of a broader pattern that Facebook and Zuckerberg personally have exhibited of trying to buy or clone nearly anything that represents competition. They bought Instagram. They bought WhatsApp. They tried to buy Snapchat. They've lifted the primary functionality of several large competitors, ranging from disappearing messages to basically all of Reels. Instead of just taking the blunt-instrument approach of banning social media platforms from within the borders of specific foreign countries, we arguably should be having an entirely different conversation about banning the business practices that make TikTok a problem.
  - tuxpenguine 4y ago
    1) It's just a lot harder from the legislation's perspective. 2) Other social medias are mainly profit driven, any negative social impact is mainly side effect due to misalignment of incentives. But TikTok is much more likely to intentionally act in a malicious way, so I think the risk not comparable here.
throwawaymaths 4y ago
Is it terrifying? How did you feel when the US yanked Grindr away from a chinese holding company? How about when operation chokehold strangled the sex work industry? How about when the US yanked Merck away from its german parent company?
Thorentis 4y ago
You underestimate the affect of Tiktok (and other social media) on the mental health of kids, not to mention how easily it can spread ideology. The relationship between those things and school shootings shouldn't need any explanation. I think your view on this is extremely narrow.
- 8note 4y ago
  Banning TikTok does not fix social media though
- illumin8 4y ago
  By this logic we should ban Facebook and Instagram first.
carabiner 4y ago
Congress, like the news, has become dominated by clickbait. This is what gets you eyeballs, and votes.
Madmallard 4y ago
Or you could realize that Tiktok is a bad thing for society, which is absolutely true, along with many other tech inventions.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
"Decline of Empires: The Signs of Decay": Jan 22, 2008; Chalmers Johnson. https://youtu.be/Q2CCs-x9q9U https://youtu.be/Q2CCs-x9q9U Apathy, learned helplessness, inaction, cult-like fervor, magical thinking, pan-colonial ambitions, and inability to fund or defend itself lead a society to ruin. The thing is that every 8-12 generations (250+-50 years), a civilization must rework or recommit itself or it slides into decline and decay. No rampant conservative moral panic crusade, violent upheaval, civil war, or totalitarian junta can rebuild what divides left or right, or rebalances fewer haves and many more have nots.
anoy8888 4y ago
I think you are a bit naive and underestimate china’s will to influence US any chance they get. TikTok is not a toy . I repeat . TikTok is not a toy. It is a super app that gets the most attention and time from 150 million Americans. And unlike rich people in US who are powerful, in China, bitedance ( TikTok) CEO is like a dog to the CCP leaders. They asked you eat shit , you will eat it twice to please them. This is a real danger . Note: I am Chinese
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Also China has banned or regulated to uselessness every American piece of software. Globalization and unipolar power has ended. Do you think banning Huawei from owning US telecommunications infrastructure is also a sign of the end times (Parent comment)?
  - briffle 4y ago
    Or, we could go beyond tit-for-tat, and make real laws protecting our citizens and their data. Do people really think TikTok is doing things Facebook, google, etc are not already doing with tracking and algorithms ?
    - shrewduser 4y ago
      tit for tat is the only way free trade is enforced...
- xtracto 4y ago
  A couple of years ago I would have doubted this. I'm not American so my stance in general world politics is mostly neutral. But seeing what happened with China and Jack Ma (the richest/most powerful business owner in China) I'm sure they can bend the knee of any Chinese company. Not that the US spying agencies cant do the same with US companies. They surely do. But it's a strong argument for banning technology coming from an adversarial government.
- mistermann 4y ago
  I'm WAY more distrustful and scared of the US government than the Chinese government.
footlose_3815 4y ago
It's simple for me really. The threat of the nefarious and corrupted Chinese government lurking has caused the US government to react. Call US government whatever you want in another conversation, but China has a direct line to every user of Tiktok, and we don't know they plan to leverage that against US interests. Their hail mary with Tiktok could cause a social collapse if they engineered it like how the Russians engineered English social media for the last 7 years.
neither_color 4y ago
I don't really understand what it is about you being an expat for 5 years that gives you unique insight into this situation. Do you happen to be an expat in China, where Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, google, et al have all been banned for more than 5 years and tit for tat is long overdue? Are you also aware that the twin app Douyin bans content for domestic consumption that gets promoted in global TikTok?
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I read all the comments before posting this comment. At the time, everyone was like “this is awesome!” I expected it to get downvoted to oblivion but the whole thing made me sad and no one else seemed to feel that way, so I made this comment.
spamizbad 4y ago
To me it’s a beginning of the end of American technology - and cultural - dominance. Some other country created something we couldn’t: a social media app that appeals to Gen-Z. Our domestic industry tried and failed to clone it. So we banned it.
yieldcrv 4y ago
> Come on (wo)man. not inclusive enough, your opinion is invalid /s yieldcrv explains the substantive nature of this joke: OP believes that people have their priorities wrong in the face of surprise death matters, pointing out opinionated gender inclusion logic that also has not permeated universally outside of the US would be another example of prioritizing in the face of surprise death matters

nbar1 4y ago

"might be" is not the concern, it's that they are.

stronglikedan 4y ago
And before that it was the TV, and before that it was the radio, and before that it was the newspaper, and before that it was the printing press, and so on. Nothing new under the sun.
- nbar1 4y ago
  The new thing under the sun is that the Chinese government has a heavy hand in TikTok.
  - realce 4y ago
    So we should respond by making it a 20 year imprisonment for using a VPN to access Wikileaks?
withinboredom 4y ago
My son's cousin (who lives in the US) was talking to him about 'gun drills' and my son asked, 'what is that, do you get to practice shooting a gun? That sounds fun!' To us, this was a funny question, to my sister-in-law ... she was like 'wtaf.' I can't imagine having my son worried about that kind of stuff and I can't imagine the internal stress. That's why I said 'might' because it 'might' be normalized to the point that it's just background noise; a joke. Until it isn't. My son and his friends run around in the streets like when I was a kid; they don't stop until the street lights come on. I could never take that away from him, and I feel like if we were to move back to the US, I would be doing that.
- nbar1 4y ago
  That has nothing to do with TikTok.

throwaway4837 4y ago

Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew made that clear. The narrative of child safety, for example the story about the kid who commit suicide because of their "for you" page, is being used as a kind of legal "pretext" so they can ban TikTok.

mistermann 4y ago
> Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This overlooks the "possibility" that those platforms have an "agreement" of sorts with the US Government. The Twitter Files have gone into some of that, but be careful: it is possible for things to exist that each individual/civilian may not have knowledge of, even though most people seem to be strongly under the impression that this is impossible, perhaps because it could be considered (or, has been marketed as) [only] a conspiracy theory. > This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their questions to Chew made that clear. The narrative of child safety, for example the story about the kid who commit suicide because of their "for you" page, is being used as a kind of legal "pretext" so they can ban TikTok. It is plausible that there are certain ideas that they would not like the minds of the American Public exposed to, certain conversations they would prefer they do not have, etc. There is a surprising amount of detail to reality, but we miss out on most of it (and often do not realize it), for a variety of reasons. The thinking on these sorts of matters one reads in this thread is rather eye opening....I suspect a lot of the styles of logic that are perfectly acceptable in threads on this topic would be very unwelcome when writing software.
- bmarquez 4y ago
  > This overlooks the "possibility" that those platforms have an "agreement" of sorts with the US Government. Of course they do, it's called Prism and it's been around for over a decade. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...

secabeen 4y ago

They are spending their time on this because they know that with a divided Senate and House, there is no bill that will pass without extensive negotiation behind closed doors. While that happens, something has to happen on the floor of the house and senate, so they debate stuff like this, which might get traction, or might not.

threeseed 4y ago

a) The government can do more than one thing at a time. b) There is zero appetite from the GOP for gun control. Until that changes the status quo persists. c) Information about US citizens (which can be used to manipulate them) being handed over to the Chinese government is something that the government should be concerned about.

withinboredom 4y ago
I mean, you can buy that information for 'practically free' (amortized per person), you don't need an app for that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- stickfigure 4y ago
  Please tell me where I can purchase information about the sexual preferences of Republican politicians and leading religious figures. I... have... reasons.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    I’m sure you could run some targeted ads on pornhub and figure it out.
- etrautmann 4y ago
  It's not just the data, it's bidirectional. The concern is that by adjusting the algorithm they can influence the population (e.g. to make math and science perceived as uncool). Not sure how seriously to take that but in principle it seems like a large vulnerability that is challenging to close off without actions like what we're seeing.
  - 4y ago

korroziya 4y ago

[flagged]

satellites 4y ago
Can you explain how TikTok (a Chinese “psyop”) is more harmful to the average citizen than Facebook or Instagram (a corporate American “psyop?”) Can you explain how TikTok is more harmful to the average citizen than the constant mass shootings that happen in the U.S.? Touch grass, indeed.
- henriquez 4y ago
  Because China is dumb and bans all U.S. tech companies from doing business in China? Why should we let their tech companies do business here?

eganist 4y ago

Speaking at least with my background: Foreign adversaries have learned exactly how to weaponize our free and open internet against our own people. Regardless of the fact that our kids are most vulnerable, China's seemingly made a point of outsourcing their most polarizing algorithmic decisions to the rest of the world but not to their own population, which is essentially a tacit admission of their awareness of the dangers of social media to their own people. At this point, I'd venture that politicians in the US are trying to grasp at whatever they can to mitigate the risk while still maintaining their election chances. Easier to "blame China" and get re-elected than it is to dump on their own constituents for not monitoring their kids' social media habits. And frankly, I'm okay with that. Even if a parent does their best, there'll be second-hand influences through all the kids raised irresponsibly through their parents, and nothing can be done about that aside from homeschooling or going off-grid, which is unsustainable for nearly everyone. I'm fine with a combination of the bill introduced + bills like the one passed in Utah placing curfews on kids since parents have proven to be so bad at parenting their own kids as to present the nation with an emergent aggregate risk to national security.

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Yes, telling parents (who are the voters) that actually they should just be doing a better job monitoring their kids activities online seems like a losing political strategy!
- alexose 4y ago
  Maybe it's not a binary choice. Parents can do a better job monitoring their kids and the state can make it mildly harder for kids to spend all day on social media.
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    Fair enough, but I'm not sure that parents would want to hear the former message from their elected representative
  - Mezzie 4y ago

YellOh 4y ago

According to Washington Post data, there were 393,289 students enrolled at schools during shootings in the past 10 years[0]. (Note this is total enrollment, not those present or injured) In 2022, there were ~25.1 million teens[1], of whom ~67% used TikTok[2], for a total of ~16.8 million on TikTok (totally ignoring anyone under 12 or over 17). I know the numbers are hacky because the first group includes younger children and the second group doesn't (and 1/3 of TikTok's users could be under 14[3]), but I was trying to get a sense of scale for each category. Assume the TikTok user count is probably an underestimate. My hacky numbers come up with a bit over 40x more teens being first-hand infuenced by tiktok. To make the numbers even more hypothetical, the next step of deciding how many times worse you think being enrolled at a school that has a shooting is for students and plugging that in to get how much more attention/resources should be used on shootings is left as an exercise for the reader. [0] https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings [1] https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underage-users-ftc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underag...

satellites 4y ago
The person you’re replying to said that the possibility of being shot at school is psychologically taxing. This would apply to all students at all schools, not just ones where a shooting literally happened. It is relevant because of how frequent school shootings are now, compared to say, 30 years ago. Columbine shook the country when it happened, now we’re at a couple Columbine-style incidents per year. You can say “well that’s still a low overall percentage of students who get shot” and be technically correct while ignoring the gravity of the situation and the fact that other first world countries don’t have this problem. The fact that school shootings have been so normalized that we’re sitting here and discussing the math around whether they’re worse than social media is… so profoundly sad it’s hard to describe.
- spamlettuce 4y ago

tomcar288 4y ago

It's worse than you think. This bill isn't really about Tik Tok. Read the fine print: people caught using a VPN could be thrown in jail for 20 years! It's about giving govt unchecked authority to throw people in jail.

spogbiper 4y ago
can you point out where the bill says this? I'm not practiced in reading this kind of thing and struggling to find it
- tomcar288 4y ago
  FYI: i heard about that in a news article, I didn't actually read the bill.
  - yed 4y ago
    I've read the bill and while I'm not a fan for more general reasons, it doesn't say anything like this at all. The bill is strictly about foreigners from designated US "adversaries" having an ownership stake in large technology companies operating in the US. The text cherry picked in some of these news articles is just a list of the types of technology companies the bill specifies should be the prioritized when evaluating which foreign owned companies should be scrutinized.
    - akerl_ 4y ago
      The bill doesn’t require an ownership stake, it even includes provisions to consider an entity hostile if the holding is indirect.
      - yed 4y ago
        The intent there is to deal with people trying to get around the provision via intermediary holding companies. At its core there still must be some ownership stake or controlling interest by a foreign national, whether direct or indirect. Edit: the key parts of the bill that specify it applies only for controlling interests: > Sec 2-2: CONTROLLING HOLDING.—The term “controlling holding” means a holding with the power, whether direct or indirect and whether exercised or not exercised, to determine, direct, or decide important matters affecting an entity. > Sec 2-3-a (emphasis mine): COVERED HOLDING.—The term “covered holding”— means [...] a controlling holding held, directly or indirectly, in an ICTS covered holding entity by— [...]

korroziya 4y ago

[flagged]

withinboredom 4y ago
Psyops is fun, and fairly close to some of the stuff I had fun with in the military. But to say I have any political ideology that fits into a box, is rather funny. Thanks for that!
pvarangot 4y ago
I agree with your comment but if you think banning TikTok is about stopping China's psyops you are not paying attention. This is protectionism for the US social media industry. Removing American made content from TikTok will also make it less appealing for other western countries as it will have less of the wealthy empire-grown "influencers" everyone loves, hence giving an alternative to US alternatives by Google/Facebook/Snap to cut into their market. China can psyops on any social media platform, Tencent owned Reddit for longer than anyone in congress has been worried about this only that no US based Reddit competitor makes enough money to pay for national security lobbyists in DC.

ononon 4y ago

[flagged]

withinboredom 4y ago
I grew up in a time that there were 0.~ kids per year getting murdered in school. School was a 'safe place' (insofar you weren't a target for bullies). A place to have fun and learn things. The first time that happened, where a school was shot up. It literally (collectively) fucked us up for days/weeks. I'm not advocating for guns to be taken away, I believe that ship sailed a couple hundred years ago. But Americans need to get their shit together, that's for sure.

tablespoon 4y ago

But in any case, given that AI and automation will soon make the majority of US workers economically unnecessary, it's more important than ever for the powers-that-be to ban end-to-end encryption and guns and maintain full control over social media. Otherwise, the obsolete workers may resist their obsolescence and cause problems for capital instead of being gracefully attrited from society.

throwaway29812 4y ago

> For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. Then you no longer know the place. According to media the US is nothing but school shootings and government censorship.

withinboredom 4y ago
I had a meeting last summer with some Americans and I jokingly said “meh, it’s a free country.” They all quickly pointed out that it wasn’t, any more. I still have family there and still visit for nearly a month out of the year. The number of people running red lights has gone up significantly the last few visits. To the point where I feel like I’m driving in Bali and not the US. People are more rude now than they used to be, and scared. It took months after moving here to brush off the fear you have living in the US. Fear of the government taking your kid because your neighbor gets pissed off, fear of car accidents, fear of getting pulled over, fear of getting stabbed/shot while walking down the street, fear of seeing someone else getting stabbed/shot, fear of getting fired for no reason, fear of going to the hospital or getting seriously sick because even if you survive, you’re going to be broke af. I’ve had cops plant evidence in my car, I’ve been hit by trucks running red lights, I’ve gotten in a knife fight with a hobo, I’ve been shot at on the highway, I’ve been fired for no reason, I’ve gotten in a motorcycle accident that fucked me over seven ways to Sunday. I haven’t had to worry about any of those things since leaving. Not a one.
- jfk13 4y ago
  > I’ve had cops plant evidence in my car, I’ve been hit by trucks running red lights, I’ve gotten in a knife fight with a hobo, I’ve been shot at on the highway, I’ve been fired for no reason, I’ve gotten in a motorcycle accident that fucked me over seven ways to Sunday. While I think I can understand many of your feelings about US culture, I'm a bit lost here. I was married to a US citizen and have lived a significant amount of time there, although never settled permanently. But I never experienced any of these things, nor felt an overwhelming need to worry about them. Is it something about your chosen lifestyle? (For context, I have also lived and worked in a place where many of my neighbours employed armed guards to sit at their gates. And I watched from my office window as an armed bank robbery took place across the way. It ended with corpses lying in the street. And I was far more worried when dealing with police there than in any of my several US interactions with them. Think the US is bad? Well, in some ways it is... but it could be a lot worse.)

micromacrofoot 4y ago

They're compounding problems, we have alarming increases in teenage depression rates (especially amongst girls), and there's some correlation with the rise of social media as well as other things like school shootings. I agree with you that there are more important things, but we do lots at once. Honestly if shooting up congresspeople, kindergartners, and kindergartners shooting teachers hasn't changed anything in regards to guns... I don't know what will. This isn't really about protecting kids anyway though, it's mostly fearmongering about China, which is one of the rare things most of our legislature agrees on these days.

pokepim 4y ago
Isn’t Instagram the bigger issue for depression among american teenagers according to scientific research? You gonna ban it as well or not because it’s american company so it can bend over for CIA/NSA/FBI as they please? Tiktok ban is purely political nothing else.

pessimizer 4y ago

Don't worry, it's just a first step. After this, they will more easily be able to ban any public media not accepting direct government requests for censorship (or censorship immunity) and reduction of reach (or artificial boosting of reach.) That this is auxiliary to US goals to antagonize China is the sugar. The real goal is to continue the progress made when when breakaway Trump-supporting networks like Parler were directly attacked by Congress, and app stores informally threatened if they wouldn't ban them. Twitter is being continuously threatened by Congress just because they changed ownership from movement Democrats to an "independent" rich guy. TikTok will be the precedent. It's obviously just racist to attack TikTok alone; in order to retroactively make it not racist, it's important to attack companies that amplify Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Palestinian messages, the alt-left, the alt-right, or anyone that might inspire disloyalty to the homeland. Which is why Homeland Security will be overseeing social media. > they might get shot up in math class? The safest place that a child is at all day is at school (home and family are far more dangerous), and more people die in a day in Ukraine or (until fairly recently) Yemen, or because asthma inhalers were re-patented in the US through active corruption and their price went from $5 to $75, than have ever died in a school shooting. Middle class paranoia is being exploited by dragging the discussion of 6 deaths in this suburb, 10 deaths in that suburb, over years, with public wailing and gnashing of teeth, energetic and aggressive shaming of dissenters (with state support), and constant press releases from an industry that relies on advocacy for income. Upper-middle class liberals can only be focused on issues that affect them directly, which is why gun control (and gun rights, classical liberals are liberals too) is an easy way to manipulate them. I wish they could be pushed back to important things, like our failed healthcare system that will ruthlessly bankrupt them with the slightest provocation. Gun control pandering is just Republican law & order pandering in a Democratic style. It's pretending that there's some magical incantation that will make desperate people both not violent, and also not easy targets for violence and exploitation. The solution is systemic infrastructure, rather than distraction. I'd take a school shooting that kills 6 every week in exchange for a compassionate, functional healthcare system. It's 300 lives versus hundreds of thousands of lives. edit: Americans live in a country that shut down most public mental health care from 2008-2010.

skee8383 4y ago

It's a social engineering tool designed, built, and ran by the Chinese government.

jasmer 4y ago

The Congressional Hearing was a clown show, but there are hugely material issues of National Security and trade parity to contend with. China is putting itself on a direct 'war footing' path with respect to Taiwan and the likelihood of conflict is worriesome. That conflict will make Ukraine look like a side show, and will involve Japan, Korea, Philippines, Australia, US - and incidentally Vietnam, Singapore, Canada - and everyone will be affected. For example the CCP has made deep inroads in influencing Canadian politics along a number of vectors. Xi's stated policy (and what we can infer from actual behaviour) is that 'all assets are geared towards state objectives) and that will 100% include TikTok - to varying degrees. Even from purely a 'trade parity' perspective, outside countries would simply not be allowed to have the kinds of influence in China that they somehow expect in other states and that there are bunch of conflating factors there as well. And most of that applies to pretty much all Western nations, and frankly, a bunch of others that would be powerless to do anything anyhow. I think the only reasonable solution would be to have TikTok sold off and run separately, from Singapore, US, or any place with commercial, regulatory, judicial transparency etc.. It was hilarious to watch clueless clowns in Congress, but I think that was mostly a populist display for the general population so that the 'creator furor' is tempered to some extent by the headlines they read on CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc..

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Yeah, I'd be skeptical that an event like a Congressional hearing with a 5 min format per speaker was ever going to really drill down into nuanced issues, if only by nature of the time limit.

sergiotapia 4y ago

You don't see anything wrong with all that data being slurped up by the communist regime of China? That's the main reason behind all of this. Nothing to do with "kids attention". It would be wrong for the US to do nothing.

prmoustache 4y ago
Chinese regime is in no way communist. It is only in the name and has been so for years.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Fine - a dictatorship like every other communist power is at the end

c7DJTLrn 4y ago

Giving too much power to out of touch, senile old men seems to be a global issue.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
You will of course, in the name of gender equality, monitor how many women vote each way on this bill, right? Were you even aware that women are allowed in Congress?

deltree7 4y ago

Don't worry about the US. It is still the greatest country and will remain so for at least 50 years. It's reddit/HN who have never traveled or lived outside US that has jaded your view of US. You know which country released chatGPT? or NVIDIA A100 or made a huge step towards Quantum Computing / Nuclear Fusion? I'd rather congress focus on irrelevant details, while startups solve / tackle important issues. When it really comes to it, Congress will get their act together, but anything before is pure meddling in one of the greatest systems that is producing unbelievable innovations at an alarming rate.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
withinboredom 4y ago
It’s a pretty decent country. Beautiful even. Very obviously not the greatest country (or were you being sarcastic?). I have some jaded views. Perhaps my jading moment was when my unit was used as a political pawn by Obama to get re-elected. That pissed me off to no end and broke my rose colored glasses. I sincerely miss US startups sometimes. I work at a startup here and they actually (somehow) have a work/life balance, 20 days paid vacation, and other perks with no gimmicks, like a chef who cooks us lunch every day, but no shenanigans (like “unlimited” vacations that aren’t actually unlimited). I (sometimes) miss working weekends and impossible deadlines while devouring cheap pizza and passing out on the couch. But there’s a good chance even US startups have evolved in the last ten years… but the last US startup I worked at in the early teens was like that. My then-girlfriend-now-wife would come hang out with us nerds for dinner before we got back to work. Hell, I fixed a rare database issue on my honeymoon because everyone else was asleep and I wasn’t while my new wife cussed out my CEO on the phone. He ordered us a really nice bottle wine from the hotel, so I can’t complain… Meh, maybe I don’t miss it, but you make some valuable points.
imiric 4y ago
> Don't worry about the US. It is still the greatest country and will remain so for at least 50 years. That's a shortsighted and very optimistic viewpoint, dripping with typical American pride. You're underestimating just how much damage foreign propaganda and misinformation can do and has done to your great country. Trump getting to power, and still being a strong contender for 2024, mass delusion and rising popularity of conspiracy theories (QAnon, pizzagate, etc.), record-high social unrest and division, racial tensions, protests, marches, insurrections, etc. And this is just starting to unravel. The ironic thing is that all that great technology built by the US, allowing everyone to join, connecting the world and whatnot, has been the perfect weapon of information warfare. You've essentially built the weapons, and handed them to your enemies, and are somehow still debating if that's the case, and what to do about it. This confused state is indicative of the effects of psyops, where the afflicted adversary doesn't understand the situation they're in, or how they got there. An ex-KGB agent explained this well way back in 1985[1]. The East certainly has an advantage, considering they've been doing this for decades now, and Western influence on their own population is close to zero, because of their isolation from the internet. Banning TikTok is a good defensive measure, but it's too little, too late, to reverse the damage already done, and to stop the bleeding. The US would have to do a major shakeup and banning of foreign accounts across all social media sites, and judging by the reactions on this well educated forum alone, that wouldn't fly with the general population, who perceive this as an infringement on free speech. EDIT: Ah, it seems the bill is broader than just banning TikTok. Good, it might be the only playable move. Unfortunately, it requires more government oversight at the expense of some civil liberties, and I can already see how unpopular this will be. Buckle up, it's going to get even bumpier. I suspect the US in its current dominant position won't last more than a couple of decades, at most. Funny that with all its untouchable military power, it's completely defenseless against this type of attack. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8

_8j50 4y ago

The majority of americans agree with this decision. You may not like it but HN audience is very tech savvy and is influenced by popular thinking in tech. The sentiment against assamge, patriot act, even the iraq war was popular at the time. Now I have tried to make a rational argument for this ban but all I got was downvotes even bots/people downvoting every unrelated thing I post probably including this post. You need to engage in polite discourse with others and change their minds not complain about the government. And believe me when I say, having seen how things are in other countries, as bad as things are in the US I wouldn't trade it for any other country. You've all chosen to whine in your bubbles instead of a healthy debate. Enjoy the result.

theRealMe 4y ago

“Why are we talking about X when we could be talking about Y” is some classic whataboutism. You really seem to be trying to push a pro China agenda by discounting the importance of this. You’re stance on this is actually “I don’t believe that the CCP would try to harm the US population”. I can tell that is your stance because if it wasn’t then you are effectively saying “I believe the CCP may potentially feed the US population mental-illness-inducing content via targeted algorithms, but I don’t think it’s worth caring about and we should be mad that lawmakers are even trying to do anything about it.” I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about something meaningless here. If you believe that there is a chance of the CCP doing something nefarious with their Golden Shares power, then that’s a pretty big deal.

dataflow 4y ago

[edit: never mind, I didn't see others already mentioned this]

dragonwriter 4y ago
Its about industrial protectionism with National Security as a paper thin pretext.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

djha-skin 4y ago

Really HN? The top voted comment is "this country has gone downhill"? This isn't Reddit. We're supposed to at least say something novel here, and hopefully interesting. How has the country gone downhill? Why is this decision so uninteresting? This comment also completely ignores the very interesting geopolitical aspects of this bill. On the surface it does look like something innocuous, as implied, which is why people might double-take and want to look deeper. Pathos-heavy comments like this one with no real meat disappoint me. Surely we can do better.

tayo42 4y ago
It's a 4 paragraph comment that's basically throw away and everyone will forget exists by tommrow. How much effort should people be putting into these comments. Especially when there's no return. There's no guarantee you'll get a smart responses
iudqnolq 4y ago
The comment seems pretty clear to me: Despite very serious issues legislators are focusing on unimportant fads. I increasingly think interesting geopolitics are a trap for a certain type of brain. When I was in high school I followed that sort of thing closely, and felt very smart. But it all had no connection to me, and it didn't matter to me at all. I realized I prefered geopolitics to domestic news because I could feel detached from the tradgedy.
rkho 4y ago
> This isn't Reddit Sorry, I'm calling bullshit on this. Look at every single thread that discusses cryptocurrency. If you haven't noticed the Redditification of Hacker News, then I envy you.

crazygringo 4y ago

> There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions That's not how Congress works. We're taught in school that Congress debates bills one at a time, but the reality is that all the real debate and drafting and work happens behind the scenes, massively parallelized. Time spent during a session of Congress is mostly just the very end of the process, discovering where the votes fall and some last-minute negotiations. Also grandstanding. There are lots of factors that have been making Congress less "productive" in recent history, depending on how you view it, but the total hours available per year isn't really one of them.

aikinai 4y ago

And now this low brow distraction is on top (at least for me), even above the next comment which has very insightful information about the content of the bill.

nateoearth 4y ago

My feelings are very much the opposite. Republicans and Democrats can hardly ever work together to get something positive accomplished. Banning TikTok--an app which is perhaps the largest psyop against the US population in history--is a breath of fresh air.

rayiner 4y ago

> There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm when they're being influenced every day by how they might get shot up in math class? What do you think causes kids to shoot up their math class?

Thiez 4y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that banning TikTok will significantly reduce school shootings?
- rayiner 4y ago
  I’m asking in general terms what OP thinks causes school shootings.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    Kids getting pissed off and anyone able to walk into a store and buy a gun, without knowing how to use it or store it properly… but that’s just a guess.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      It’s illegal to sell guns to minors in even deep red states like Tennessee. And the percentage of households with guns (where kids can get access to them) has declined dramatically, from 47% in 1973 to 31% in 2014. https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf#page5 https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gu...
      - withinboredom 4y ago
        31% is about 1 out of 3. That’s a big number.
        4y ago

mixmastamyk 4y ago

Personally glad someone in congress is paying attention to the dangers of surveillance capitalism. Once TikTok is addressed, hopefully it will give them the toehold to expand rights to citizens no matter the company.

eointierney 4y ago

Oh my gosh, I feel for you. I'm Irish, still in Ireland, a lifelong pacifist, and have nothing but the deepest respect for your duty and honour to and for your country. And from a distance I must agree with you. Yes, in the supposed Great Game this is simply a mole being whacked, a performative exercise that does nothing to solve any of the problems and shoddily disguises these in puerile emnity. Yet and all, The US Senate is still and nonetheless one of the most powerful and wayward legislative bodies in our species' history. You have a direct part in your Senate, albeit at the length of another's arm, and so you still have this power. I'm at risk of rambling, but you are still a citizen of one of the greatest nations, and you should have more than hope. I take your two bucks and give it to a beggar, as their need is greater than either of ours. Please, if you are willing and brave, and as you have served your country we know you are willing and brave, get into Politics. Good people working together is the best way of making things better

varunjain99 4y ago

Hm, I think the national security concerns are far heftier here than kids being influenced. ByteDance can be forced to do almost anything by the CCP. Sure, American tech companies might be forced to do things by the American govt but theoretically there are checks / balances / rule of law to prevent misuse. On the kids' manipulation -- even though that's not the main intent and American social media co's influence kids as well -- I'd still argue it's significant. A foreign adversary can control how your population thinks... it almost speaks for itself.

krapp 4y ago
If you think China controlling the minds of Americans through Tik-Tok is a legitimate threat, do you think American minds aren't already controlled by the US government through every other form of media? And which is the bigger threat? I mean, at least China might actually criticize American government and policy, which is something America's so-called "free press" is no longer capable of. I say give Americans a healthy dose of propaganda from all sides and let the market decide!
- pokepim 4y ago
  Do you actually want Americans to have their own free will and choice? Hah, you wish. Only thing we can get is propagandized version neatly created by mass media conglomerates.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

Me too, but from the inside. I spent a lot of time watching C-SPAN and similar “raw footage” sites in my youth. It was fun seeing inside the sausage factory. The raw footage has changed substantially in recent years. I watched recent senate hearings and, instead of bringing expert witnesses to educate senators to help them better do their job, it seems hearings (and basically any other chance at being in front of a camera) is an opportunity to PWN the “other side” in a series of 30s sound bites. Senators yell at each other, talk past each other and their guests, fall back on their pre-written “serious burn!” scripts no matter where the conversation goes, and insult the guests they invite in to speak. Everyone is freaking out about whether or not everything was shared with “their side” prior to the hearing because they need to have pre written burns to score more “points” than the other side. You see these 30s clips floating around the internet and wonder how they can all come from the same hearing. It’s because they are all rapid firing a bunch of pre-written dribble optimized for 30s sound bites. I don’t know how we come back from this.

throwawaymaths 4y ago
Let's not forget at one point in the US senate a senator was nearly caned to death in order to pwn the opposition argument. I don't know how we come back from that.

libpcap 4y ago

It's more about levelling the playing field. While FB, IG, YouTube, New York Times, etc. are blocked in the PRC, TikTok are allowed to operate freely in the U.S.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Barrin92 4y ago

>how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm when they're being influenced every day by how they might get shot up in math class? not only that but you have media outfits literally called "Infowars" operating inside the country basically supporting treasonous activities. I find it absolutely hilarious that imaginary threats from TikTok, for which even the US government cannot find genuine evidence, somehow are more relevant than existing domestic ones. Some of the largest news channels in the country openly publish the kind of propaganda that TikTok is allegedly supposed to boost. From the outside over the last two decades it honestly looks like 9/11 just broke the US flat out. Ever since then it's been a spiral into paranoia and insecurity with 'foreign adversaries' being blamed for absolutely every self-inflicted stupidity.

ugh123 4y ago

I think what you mean is they need to address both these situations and more.

shard972 4y ago

[dead]

tuxpenguine 4y ago

I think this is exactly the manifestation of social media's influence on a person's view on America. I came from another country and lived in America now. If we watch the news from social media, you will inevitably get the sense that the country is in decline: guns out of control, sky-rocketing house and medical expense, non-functioning government etc. In reality, you take for granted the freedom that you enjoy here, protected by the US military, constitution and rule of law. People in many other countries would go to great lengths to just have what you have. I agree that gun control is a serious issue, but this TikTok thing can easily cause many more suicides among teenagers if we don't ban it, the scale of harm is much higher than school shootings. That's my 2 cents.

chaosharmonic 4y ago
If you have a problem with that, why limit this to TikTok? Not that it isn't at least a little reasonable to be wary of adversaries having access to a data collection platform, but the problem also gets meaningfully less substantial in general if you put meaningful limits on these companies' capacity to grow and eat each other in the name of building empires of surveillance capitalism. Meta in particular is pushing hard on that angle while hand-waving away the fact that Facebook has a history of treating society as a large-scale experiment. It's manipulated users' mental health on purpose, meddled in elections by selling users' data directly to campaigners, and furthered incitements of everything from genocides abroad to the attack on the Capitol. They're feeding into attacks that single out TikTok specifically, as part of a broader pattern that Facebook and Zuckerberg personally have exhibited of trying to buy or clone nearly anything that represents competition. They bought Instagram. They bought WhatsApp. They tried to buy Snapchat. They've lifted the primary functionality of several large competitors, ranging from disappearing messages to basically all of Reels. Instead of just taking the blunt-instrument approach of banning social media platforms from within the borders of specific foreign countries, we arguably should be having an entirely different conversation about banning the business practices that make TikTok a problem.
- tuxpenguine 4y ago
  1) It's just a lot harder from the legislation's perspective. 2) Other social medias are mainly profit driven, any negative social impact is mainly side effect due to misalignment of incentives. But TikTok is much more likely to intentionally act in a malicious way, so I think the risk not comparable here.

throwawaymaths 4y ago

Is it terrifying? How did you feel when the US yanked Grindr away from a chinese holding company? How about when operation chokehold strangled the sex work industry? How about when the US yanked Merck away from its german parent company?

Thorentis 4y ago

You underestimate the affect of Tiktok (and other social media) on the mental health of kids, not to mention how easily it can spread ideology. The relationship between those things and school shootings shouldn't need any explanation. I think your view on this is extremely narrow.

8note 4y ago
Banning TikTok does not fix social media though
illumin8 4y ago
By this logic we should ban Facebook and Instagram first.

carabiner 4y ago

Congress, like the news, has become dominated by clickbait. This is what gets you eyeballs, and votes.

Madmallard 4y ago

Or you could realize that Tiktok is a bad thing for society, which is absolutely true, along with many other tech inventions.

sacnoradhq 4y ago

"Decline of Empires: The Signs of Decay": Jan 22, 2008; Chalmers Johnson. https://youtu.be/Q2CCs-x9q9U https://youtu.be/Q2CCs-x9q9U Apathy, learned helplessness, inaction, cult-like fervor, magical thinking, pan-colonial ambitions, and inability to fund or defend itself lead a society to ruin. The thing is that every 8-12 generations (250+-50 years), a civilization must rework or recommit itself or it slides into decline and decay. No rampant conservative moral panic crusade, violent upheaval, civil war, or totalitarian junta can rebuild what divides left or right, or rebalances fewer haves and many more have nots.

anoy8888 4y ago

I think you are a bit naive and underestimate china’s will to influence US any chance they get. TikTok is not a toy . I repeat . TikTok is not a toy. It is a super app that gets the most attention and time from 150 million Americans. And unlike rich people in US who are powerful, in China, bitedance ( TikTok) CEO is like a dog to the CCP leaders. They asked you eat shit , you will eat it twice to please them. This is a real danger . Note: I am Chinese

coffeebeqn 4y ago
Also China has banned or regulated to uselessness every American piece of software. Globalization and unipolar power has ended. Do you think banning Huawei from owning US telecommunications infrastructure is also a sign of the end times (Parent comment)?
- briffle 4y ago
  Or, we could go beyond tit-for-tat, and make real laws protecting our citizens and their data. Do people really think TikTok is doing things Facebook, google, etc are not already doing with tracking and algorithms ?
  - shrewduser 4y ago
    tit for tat is the only way free trade is enforced...
xtracto 4y ago
A couple of years ago I would have doubted this. I'm not American so my stance in general world politics is mostly neutral. But seeing what happened with China and Jack Ma (the richest/most powerful business owner in China) I'm sure they can bend the knee of any Chinese company. Not that the US spying agencies cant do the same with US companies. They surely do. But it's a strong argument for banning technology coming from an adversarial government.
mistermann 4y ago
I'm WAY more distrustful and scared of the US government than the Chinese government.

footlose_3815 4y ago

It's simple for me really. The threat of the nefarious and corrupted Chinese government lurking has caused the US government to react. Call US government whatever you want in another conversation, but China has a direct line to every user of Tiktok, and we don't know they plan to leverage that against US interests. Their hail mary with Tiktok could cause a social collapse if they engineered it like how the Russians engineered English social media for the last 7 years.

neither_color 4y ago

I don't really understand what it is about you being an expat for 5 years that gives you unique insight into this situation. Do you happen to be an expat in China, where Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, google, et al have all been banned for more than 5 years and tit for tat is long overdue? Are you also aware that the twin app Douyin bans content for domestic consumption that gets promoted in global TikTok?

withinboredom 4y ago
I read all the comments before posting this comment. At the time, everyone was like “this is awesome!” I expected it to get downvoted to oblivion but the whole thing made me sad and no one else seemed to feel that way, so I made this comment.

spamizbad 4y ago

To me it’s a beginning of the end of American technology - and cultural - dominance. Some other country created something we couldn’t: a social media app that appeals to Gen-Z. Our domestic industry tried and failed to clone it. So we banned it.

yieldcrv 4y ago

> Come on (wo)man. not inclusive enough, your opinion is invalid /s yieldcrv explains the substantive nature of this joke: OP believes that people have their priorities wrong in the face of surprise death matters, pointing out opinionated gender inclusion logic that also has not permeated universally outside of the US would be another example of prioritizing in the face of surprise death matters