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That's not the point. The reason the US judicial system isn't cracking down on TikTok is because there's no law preventing what they are doing. If the US passe

That's not the point. The reason the US judicial system isn't cracking down on TikTok is because there's no law preventing what they are doing. If the US passed a comprehensive data privacy & anti-surveillance law, US courts could sue TikTok into oblivion and even potentially levy criminal charges if they continued to refuse to comply. But they aren't doing that. Instead they are trying to ban TikTok so that the other social media companies (which are all US companies) can continue doing largely the same shit without getting in trouble. This bill is US economic & political protectionism. It's about banning software, services, and products from other countries without holding domestic companies to the same standard.

bioemerl 4y ago
There is no such thing as a bill comprehensive and deep enough to ensure that a tool like tiktok not be abused by the Chinese government. Imagine for a moment you went back into the 1950s and told everyone "hey, let's have all of our television run by the Soviet Union! It's okay though, it's not actually the Soviet Union, it's just a company in the Soviet Union. And we passed a regulation, the regulation says they aren't allowed to use the TV show to do anything bad" They would think you're out of your mind, and the situation is similar today with TikTok. It doesn't matter how many regulations you put on it. We should pass such laws regardless, but we also need these bans as well.
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > There is no such thing as a bill comprehensive and deep enough to ensure that a tool like tiktok not be abused by the Chinese government. Sure there is. An comprehensive data privacy bill would render it impossible to legally collect the data that is necessary for the abuse in the first place. But that won't happen, because that would kneecap the US companies that these senators have stock in.
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    No there isn't, unless you want to regulate down to the specific details of what it's promoted or suppressed in their algorithm, who gets banned, who gets compensated for their videos, and so on You'd have to regulate so harshly that you may as well just nationalize the company
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Tiktok made the offer to have all their data and compute be hosted by a trusted US third party (Oracle), as well as to let itself be subject to US government oversight.
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    And none of that would have helped resolve the issues with the fact that they are still under the control of the Chinese government. It doesn't matter where the data is if China controls the code. It doesn't matter where the servers are, if China controls the code. Government oversight doesn't help, because you can't provide the level of depth and insight requires to actually make sure that everything is being done properly. To exert the proper amount of control and security over a company like this you basically have to nationalize it.
    - FooBarWidget 4y ago
      Why does having control over the code matters when you can review the code? The argument you make is like Microsoft during the 90s when supposedly anybody can sneak malware into an open source codebase, which just isn't true because of reviews.
- ramblenode 4y ago
  > There is no such thing as a bill comprehensive and deep enough to ensure that a tool like tiktok not be abused by the Chinese government. This is Cold War 2.0 boogeymanism. It's "the state of exception" [0]: the idea that normal laws aren't sufficient because the enemy is too clever and too powerful so instead we need exceptional laws. (And afterwards more exceptional laws, because they haven't been defeated yet.) You bring up what would happen in the 1950s if we hadn't been more careful, but look at the actual 1950s: a time full of paranoid McCarthyism, innocent people being defamed and branded as Soviet sympathizers, the FBI framing people, the CIA testing drugs on unwitting citizens, and almost a nuclear first strike. "National security" logic rarely invites a nuanced and balanced assessment of the threat and possible remedies; rather, it's a kind of dogma that takes for granted that the threat is exceptional and requires an exceptional answer. The discilpined alternative is to make good laws that enshrine a principle rather than attack an enemy (e.g. data protection, public opinion manipulation). This deals with the problem and also preserves the civil institutions and trust in the rule of law. If the problem morphs, then pass new laws. That's how legislating is supposed to work and how it works for every other problem. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_exception
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    China threatens to invade one of our allies every week, this isn't a false monster, it's an obvious truth. And it's barely cold anymore, trying to actively supplying Russia who is at war with Ukraine today. And I think you should take a closer look at what happened in the 1950s. If you read your history the Soviets were slightly more than an imaginary threat. What's the problem with McCarthyism the fact that the Soviet Union was a wonderful great place? No. None of this applies to something where China literally owns the company. The reason half of Eastern Europe is free today is the fact that we were able to successfully cut the Soviets off of much of global trade. Do the same for China.

bioemerl 4y ago

There is no such thing as a bill comprehensive and deep enough to ensure that a tool like tiktok not be abused by the Chinese government. Imagine for a moment you went back into the 1950s and told everyone "hey, let's have all of our television run by the Soviet Union! It's okay though, it's not actually the Soviet Union, it's just a company in the Soviet Union. And we passed a regulation, the regulation says they aren't allowed to use the TV show to do anything bad" They would think you're out of your mind, and the situation is similar today with TikTok. It doesn't matter how many regulations you put on it. We should pass such laws regardless, but we also need these bans as well.

chimeracoder 4y ago
> There is no such thing as a bill comprehensive and deep enough to ensure that a tool like tiktok not be abused by the Chinese government. Sure there is. An comprehensive data privacy bill would render it impossible to legally collect the data that is necessary for the abuse in the first place. But that won't happen, because that would kneecap the US companies that these senators have stock in.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  No there isn't, unless you want to regulate down to the specific details of what it's promoted or suppressed in their algorithm, who gets banned, who gets compensated for their videos, and so on You'd have to regulate so harshly that you may as well just nationalize the company
FooBarWidget 4y ago
Tiktok made the offer to have all their data and compute be hosted by a trusted US third party (Oracle), as well as to let itself be subject to US government oversight.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  And none of that would have helped resolve the issues with the fact that they are still under the control of the Chinese government. It doesn't matter where the data is if China controls the code. It doesn't matter where the servers are, if China controls the code. Government oversight doesn't help, because you can't provide the level of depth and insight requires to actually make sure that everything is being done properly. To exert the proper amount of control and security over a company like this you basically have to nationalize it.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    Why does having control over the code matters when you can review the code? The argument you make is like Microsoft during the 90s when supposedly anybody can sneak malware into an open source codebase, which just isn't true because of reviews.
ramblenode 4y ago
> There is no such thing as a bill comprehensive and deep enough to ensure that a tool like tiktok not be abused by the Chinese government. This is Cold War 2.0 boogeymanism. It's "the state of exception" [0]: the idea that normal laws aren't sufficient because the enemy is too clever and too powerful so instead we need exceptional laws. (And afterwards more exceptional laws, because they haven't been defeated yet.) You bring up what would happen in the 1950s if we hadn't been more careful, but look at the actual 1950s: a time full of paranoid McCarthyism, innocent people being defamed and branded as Soviet sympathizers, the FBI framing people, the CIA testing drugs on unwitting citizens, and almost a nuclear first strike. "National security" logic rarely invites a nuanced and balanced assessment of the threat and possible remedies; rather, it's a kind of dogma that takes for granted that the threat is exceptional and requires an exceptional answer. The discilpined alternative is to make good laws that enshrine a principle rather than attack an enemy (e.g. data protection, public opinion manipulation). This deals with the problem and also preserves the civil institutions and trust in the rule of law. If the problem morphs, then pass new laws. That's how legislating is supposed to work and how it works for every other problem. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_exception
- bioemerl 4y ago
  China threatens to invade one of our allies every week, this isn't a false monster, it's an obvious truth. And it's barely cold anymore, trying to actively supplying Russia who is at war with Ukraine today. And I think you should take a closer look at what happened in the 1950s. If you read your history the Soviets were slightly more than an imaginary threat. What's the problem with McCarthyism the fact that the Soviet Union was a wonderful great place? No. None of this applies to something where China literally owns the company. The reason half of Eastern Europe is free today is the fact that we were able to successfully cut the Soviets off of much of global trade. Do the same for China.