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It's really, really dangerous that this is seriously being considered. Yes, it's Chinese-controlled. Yes, China ~bans US social media in China. But this is a gi

It's really, really dangerous that this is seriously being considered. Yes, it's Chinese-controlled. Yes, China ~bans US social media in China. But this is a giant, unchecked lever for the government to suppress free speech. And it's being delegated to the executive branch. All it takes is a president with radical views and an ineffective congress and you have a much more powerful censorship apparatus.

ryanwaggoner 3y ago
Is this anything more than a slippery slope argument? Should the government have no power to regulate media entities owned by hostile foreign governments? Should Congress be allowed to take actions to stop Russia from spreading misinformation designed to destabilize the US?
- Leary 3y ago
  Congress can write whatever law they want, as long as it doesn't violate the First Amendment.
  - logicchains 3y ago
    That's not true; all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government belong to the states, and congress doesn't have the right to override that.
- johngladtj 3y ago
  Zero power is a good start
- halJordan 3y ago
  Slippery slope is a logical fallacy, not a rhetorical fallacy. Defeating the Nazis is nothing more than a slippery slope. We have to stop the Russians in Ukraine or else they'll get greedier and more belligerent is just a slippery slope. Your argument is a slippery slope you decided to slide down. You're saying, if we do this one thing we'll end up with no power to regulate.
- pastacacioepepe 3y ago
  > hostile foreign governments China has been financing the US for years. That's not what I would define hostile. > Should Congress be allowed to take actions to stop Russia from spreading misinformation designed to destabilize the US? Then it becomes easy to frame any dissent as "enemy sponsored" and ban it. You are thinking like WW3 blown up already.
- woooooo 3y ago
  > Should the government have no power to regulate media entities? Yes, you got it. Perfect. We have 200 years of first amendment jurisprudence, there are limited cases where it's acceptable.
  - alfalfasprout 3y ago
    There's a VERY big difference between regulating a company's right to operate in the US and the government controlling what content is allowable while they operate. The latter is very strongly protected by over a century of jurisprudence. The former is not.
    - woooooo 3y ago
      When you're making the decision entirely based on concerns with their speech, that starts sounding like a technicality to me.
rasz 3y ago
Free speech doesnt exist on tiktok.
- yogenpro 3y ago
  Of course. Nor does free speech exist on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Youtube, etc. Only difference is who makes rules for censorship.
- henryfjordan 3y ago
  The right to talk _to_ tiktok (ie use the app) is the Free Speech
  - rasz 3y ago
    You arent talking, you are consuming. You can consume all you want using web interface. App tracks users, builds detailed profiles and can be used to spy and manipulate whole population (elections). Sure bookface does the same, but bookface is under US jurisdiction and there can be at least a glimpse of oversight. The only oversight tiktok receives comes from Chinese Communist party officials lawfully installed there "to provide necessary conditions for the activities of party association.". https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-s-companies-rewrite-rules-to-declare-Communist-Party-ties https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-s-companies... https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/12/communist-cells-influence-companies-in-china-fbi-director.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/12/communist-cells-influence-co... https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinpings-subtle-strategy-to-control-chinas-biggest-companies-ad001a63 https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinpings-subtle-strategy-to-...
ericmay 3y ago
> All it takes is a president with radical views and an ineffective congress and you have a much more powerful censorship apparatus. How so exactly w.r.t TikTok? And how do you know it's not already being censored or manipulated to show you content that makes you think it would be bad to ban TikTok? Of course this is anecdotal but I haven't come across very many people who use TikTok and support a ban, but I have come across many people who don't use TikTok and either don't care or do support a ban. A much more interesting element here anyway is that Bytedance wasn't paying their dues to Republicans or Democrats via lobbying and so they're using this continued "threat" to get Bytedance to pony up like all the other tech companies. That's the actual dangerous thing here.
CalRobert 3y ago
When I started using the internet in the mid-90's this would have been the accepted normal view - obviously we should be free to view any publicly available website (barring situations where the site itself is hosting content like sexual abuse against minors, etc.), it's absurd to think otherwise. I detest the CCP but still think that it's horrifying the US wants to ban tik tok, even if it _were_ foreign propaganda you should be allowed to see it if you wish.
- Invictus0 3y ago
  I might be out of the loop, but I thought the original plan was just to force China to sell the assets to a company based in the US, not actually ban tiktok.
  - kneebonian 3y ago
    That was originally what Trump was trying to do but for some reason it ran into judicial challenges. I think Oracle was the frontrunner to acquire it.
- yogenpro 3y ago
  "People should be allowed to see whatever they want, but if they are attracted to influences controlled by the boogeyman, then the government knows better and should cut off your access, for your own good." This has been a common justification for CCP's censorship on Internet and other media. Considering how magnificent CCP's censorship machine has grown into today, the slope is not that slippery.
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    It's not only what you can see on the platform. It's what the platform puts on every device the viewer uses to access. Spyware that scans the rest of the device for data, that streams information back to Chinese servers, and more. Perhaps we should ban the app, while allowing the web site.
    - 3y ago
waihtis 3y ago
you're very very late with your concern: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-requests-stay-order-that-restricted-biden-officials-contacting-social-media-2023-07-10/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-requests-stay-order-that-re...
- FollowingTheDao 3y ago
  Uhm, that is actually promoting free speech.
  - waihtis 3y ago
    yes, meaning that the attempted censoring has been going on for a long time.
spywaregorilla 3y ago
If you have a president with radical views and an ineffective congress then the government is already broken. The problem in that scenario is not this bill. And it's not likely that this bill would make things materially worse.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway290 3y ago
Can someone explain how a law that allows to ban apps with foreign ties = "unchecked lever for the government to suppress free speech"? I'm not from US but it seems pretty obviously a thing a country that cares about security in the information age should be able to do. It does not mean banning apps left and right, but if a viral app is owned by a country that has open animosity to you and the app clearly does shady things (remember injected keyloggers in tiktok's webview?) it may be critical to be able to ban it quickly. If it's not possible, that's just a massive security hole. This seems like all there is to it
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  It is a libertarian argument. The weaker the government, the stronger individual power, and therefore freedom is. We had some founding fathers who were libertarian in nature, but today's crop of libertarians don't have the same education level, class, or philosophical understanding that our founding fathers did, so they don't focus on key distinctions. Protection from foreign interests is a government concern, while controlling individuals is not a government concern. They frame the conversation around them being controlled rather than a foreign interest being fought for mindshare. The framing determines the assessment.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
I 90% agree with you. I do however think that TikTok deliberately shows anti-US cultural stuff. My thinking is probably is not logical on this, rather emotional: I like quality news organizations like Democracy Now sometimes taking a hard look at US foreign policy, etc. (and for years I have given them monthly donations because it is difficult to find good news sources). It feels good to praise my country when it deserves praise and criticize its behavior when it deserves it. I don’t like a foreign government like China attacking our culture. My analogy: we can criticize the behavior of our children who we love, but no one else can.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  China is doing what the US does: Promoting divisive content (eg, “critical theories”) that divide societies based on grievance narratives — cloaking that anti-social behavior under benevolent guises (eg, calling rebuilding institutional racism “equity”). Given that we’ve watched those grievance narratives trigger widespread violence and arson before an election and a permanent state of racialized looting, I think the US is beyond the point of fixing this with such mild measures. (And TikTok is hardly the only problem.) And the US hypocritically screams about how even forcing us to disclose our NGOs is “anti-democratic” (eg, in Georgia).
cheriot 3y ago
Please explain how my free speech is taken away by a TikTok ban. I don't understand. Depending on the day, HN is convinced that 1. free speech is an obligation of private companies to their customers 2. free speech is an obligation of the government to companies It is neither. > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  > Please explain how my free speech is taken away by a TikTok ban. I don't understand. The executive is unilaterally deciding users cannot have an app on their phone, and that as a US citizen I cannot access APIs in another country simply because the executive has declared it. For me it is all about how this is implemented and there is no way I can see this not being implemented in a way that serves as a vast expansion of government powers. Do they shut tikTok out of DNS? Do they tell people they aren't allowed to install the app? Do they tell google and apple they aren't allowed to have the app in the app star? Do they block their IPs from being routed in the US? There's no real way to bring a "TikTok" ban into effect that doesn't constitute a massive increase of power the executive has to regulate the internet. On the flip side I 100% think we need to figure out how to get TikTok out of here as it is 100% a tool by the CCP. So I am conflicted and confused.
  - cheriot 3y ago
    > The executive is unilaterally deciding users cannot have an app on their phone, and that as a US citizen I cannot access APIs in another country simply because the executive has declared it. I can understand not liking that, but it has nothing to do with free speech. This is regulating commerce. > There's no real way to bring a "TikTok" ban into effect that doesn't constitute a massive increase of power the executive TikTok is a company with a balance sheet to protect. They'll pull their app when told to avoid the US government taking their money. Apple and Google will also pull it from the app store. There's nothing new here.
  - 3y ago
alfalfasprout 3y ago
Why are we even letting Chinese internet companies freely compete in US markets when US companies are de facto forbidden from operating in China? At minimum, a requirement of reciprocity should be in place before we even consider allowing mainland Chinese tech companies to operate here. TikTok isn't even novel either. Before TikTok there were Vine and Musicly. Removing TikTok isn't speech suppression since other platforms can easily take their place.
- yorwba 3y ago
  US citizens are allowed to access Chinese social media even though Chinese citizens are not allowed to access US social media because the Chinese government is oppressing their people and trying to prevent them from accessing foreign information sources, whereas the US government is not yet oppressing their people in the same manner (and constitutionally forbidden from doing so). It sounds unfair from the perspective of companies wanting a right to market access, but companies do not have rights, people do. People's right to freely choose where they get their information from trumps companies' non-existent right to have the government shut out their competitors.
  - alfalfasprout 3y ago
    You need a Chinese phone # or ID to create a Bilibili or Douyin account.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  >a requirement of reciprocity Reciprocity is there - follow PRC media filtering (read censorship) laws. There's a reason google and facebook both had internal projects to engineer PRC compliance to reenter PRC before internal corporate dissesnt shut it down. The only reason western platforms were booted from PRC in first place was not censoring calls for violence / terroism post 2009 minority riots because muh freedom of speech, but actually because following PRC filtering requirements = onerous moderation (read expensive) that every PRC platform had to follow (and pay for). Few years later western platforms get roasted for radicalization/violence and realized PRC was precient in social media censorship and forced to adopt their own bulk moderation systems and realize some tweaks can get them back in PRC market. Like if US wants genuine reciprocity, just do a JV like in PRC that favours US interests. Even PRC hasn't implemented something as bold as a force sale or "ban" for largely following domestic PRC laws.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> unchecked lever for the government to suppress free speech. This is them dipping their toes in. It'll get much worse if this passes.
hayst4ck 3y ago
I think this is a deeply grey issue. As a philosophical exercise, how dangerous is "banning" fentanyl? Treating it as a criminal issue rather than a health issue is arguably quite bad. Giving the government control to suppress what we can put in our bodies, and how we choose to exercise our pursuit of happiness is a dangerous precedent. Yet those who try fentanyl often become enslaved to it. They lose their freedom because they don't understand the consequences. I don't think it's so easy to apply a rule like "freedom good, restriction bad." I think the parallels to fentanyl are philosophically sound. That is cargo cult politics. It's applying the ritual of "supporting freedom" without understanding where freedom comes from. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science > They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. Letting an anti-democratic, anti human rights, arguably Han supremacist, foreign adversary exercise a great deal of influence over your people is an extremely dangerous game. China has every ability to enshittify their products to support the CPC, just like our own social media products are enshittified for their investors or advertisers. 54% percent of Americans can't read at a 6th grade level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States At the very least, if you want freedom, you must support education, but you run into exactly the same problem. What if you have an unchecked lever to choose curriculum. What if the people in power do the wrong thing? > All it takes is a president with radical views and an ineffective congress and you have a much more powerful censorship apparatus. Then you get to the core of the issue. If you want good governance, you need good governors. Good governors are one such "something essential" that separates ritual from actual. If fascists are getting into power, maybe the more important thing is to focus on how that is happening and how to prevent it. It is probably not good to let ultimately fascist entities become popular enough to get into power by being good, and then use that power for evil once they have enough that they don't need to grow anymore.
nocsi 3y ago
Have some perspective. The US used to solve things by outright evicting Chinese workers or interning Japanese. If the solution to stem foreign influence and manipulation is to throttle/ban an app that platforms crazies - then I must say that the US has grown a lot as a country. Also as a side note, your right to free speech is not really protected when it comes to private companies. US citizens should have a right to say whatever they want, but not everyone should have an a platform to build an audience. Very divisive people are having their reach disproportionately magnified to divide people
- rileymat2 3y ago
  The perspective I get from those two examples is that we do things that embarrass us later, so we should be /more/ aware and hesitant in the present, not pat ourselves on the back for improving.

ryanwaggoner 3y ago

Is this anything more than a slippery slope argument? Should the government have no power to regulate media entities owned by hostile foreign governments? Should Congress be allowed to take actions to stop Russia from spreading misinformation designed to destabilize the US?

Leary 3y ago
Congress can write whatever law they want, as long as it doesn't violate the First Amendment.
- logicchains 3y ago
  That's not true; all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government belong to the states, and congress doesn't have the right to override that.
johngladtj 3y ago
Zero power is a good start
halJordan 3y ago
Slippery slope is a logical fallacy, not a rhetorical fallacy. Defeating the Nazis is nothing more than a slippery slope. We have to stop the Russians in Ukraine or else they'll get greedier and more belligerent is just a slippery slope. Your argument is a slippery slope you decided to slide down. You're saying, if we do this one thing we'll end up with no power to regulate.
pastacacioepepe 3y ago
> hostile foreign governments China has been financing the US for years. That's not what I would define hostile. > Should Congress be allowed to take actions to stop Russia from spreading misinformation designed to destabilize the US? Then it becomes easy to frame any dissent as "enemy sponsored" and ban it. You are thinking like WW3 blown up already.
woooooo 3y ago
> Should the government have no power to regulate media entities? Yes, you got it. Perfect. We have 200 years of first amendment jurisprudence, there are limited cases where it's acceptable.
- alfalfasprout 3y ago
  There's a VERY big difference between regulating a company's right to operate in the US and the government controlling what content is allowable while they operate. The latter is very strongly protected by over a century of jurisprudence. The former is not.
  - woooooo 3y ago
    When you're making the decision entirely based on concerns with their speech, that starts sounding like a technicality to me.

rasz 3y ago

Free speech doesnt exist on tiktok.

yogenpro 3y ago
Of course. Nor does free speech exist on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Youtube, etc. Only difference is who makes rules for censorship.
henryfjordan 3y ago
The right to talk _to_ tiktok (ie use the app) is the Free Speech
- rasz 3y ago
  You arent talking, you are consuming. You can consume all you want using web interface. App tracks users, builds detailed profiles and can be used to spy and manipulate whole population (elections). Sure bookface does the same, but bookface is under US jurisdiction and there can be at least a glimpse of oversight. The only oversight tiktok receives comes from Chinese Communist party officials lawfully installed there "to provide necessary conditions for the activities of party association.". https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-s-companies-rewrite-rules-to-declare-Communist-Party-ties https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-s-companies... https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/12/communist-cells-influence-companies-in-china-fbi-director.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/12/communist-cells-influence-co... https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinpings-subtle-strategy-to-control-chinas-biggest-companies-ad001a63 https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinpings-subtle-strategy-to-...

ericmay 3y ago

> All it takes is a president with radical views and an ineffective congress and you have a much more powerful censorship apparatus. How so exactly w.r.t TikTok? And how do you know it's not already being censored or manipulated to show you content that makes you think it would be bad to ban TikTok? Of course this is anecdotal but I haven't come across very many people who use TikTok and support a ban, but I have come across many people who don't use TikTok and either don't care or do support a ban. A much more interesting element here anyway is that Bytedance wasn't paying their dues to Republicans or Democrats via lobbying and so they're using this continued "threat" to get Bytedance to pony up like all the other tech companies. That's the actual dangerous thing here.

CalRobert 3y ago

When I started using the internet in the mid-90's this would have been the accepted normal view - obviously we should be free to view any publicly available website (barring situations where the site itself is hosting content like sexual abuse against minors, etc.), it's absurd to think otherwise. I detest the CCP but still think that it's horrifying the US wants to ban tik tok, even if it _were_ foreign propaganda you should be allowed to see it if you wish.

Invictus0 3y ago
I might be out of the loop, but I thought the original plan was just to force China to sell the assets to a company based in the US, not actually ban tiktok.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  That was originally what Trump was trying to do but for some reason it ran into judicial challenges. I think Oracle was the frontrunner to acquire it.
yogenpro 3y ago
"People should be allowed to see whatever they want, but if they are attracted to influences controlled by the boogeyman, then the government knows better and should cut off your access, for your own good." This has been a common justification for CCP's censorship on Internet and other media. Considering how magnificent CCP's censorship machine has grown into today, the slope is not that slippery.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  It's not only what you can see on the platform. It's what the platform puts on every device the viewer uses to access. Spyware that scans the rest of the device for data, that streams information back to Chinese servers, and more. Perhaps we should ban the app, while allowing the web site.
  - 3y ago

waihtis 3y ago

you're very very late with your concern: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-requests-stay-order-that-restricted-biden-officials-contacting-social-media-2023-07-10/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-requests-stay-order-that-re...

FollowingTheDao 3y ago
Uhm, that is actually promoting free speech.
- waihtis 3y ago
  yes, meaning that the attempted censoring has been going on for a long time.

spywaregorilla 3y ago

If you have a president with radical views and an ineffective congress then the government is already broken. The problem in that scenario is not this bill. And it's not likely that this bill would make things materially worse.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

throwaway290 3y ago

Can someone explain how a law that allows to ban apps with foreign ties = "unchecked lever for the government to suppress free speech"? I'm not from US but it seems pretty obviously a thing a country that cares about security in the information age should be able to do. It does not mean banning apps left and right, but if a viral app is owned by a country that has open animosity to you and the app clearly does shady things (remember injected keyloggers in tiktok's webview?) it may be critical to be able to ban it quickly. If it's not possible, that's just a massive security hole. This seems like all there is to it

hayst4ck 3y ago
It is a libertarian argument. The weaker the government, the stronger individual power, and therefore freedom is. We had some founding fathers who were libertarian in nature, but today's crop of libertarians don't have the same education level, class, or philosophical understanding that our founding fathers did, so they don't focus on key distinctions. Protection from foreign interests is a government concern, while controlling individuals is not a government concern. They frame the conversation around them being controlled rather than a foreign interest being fought for mindshare. The framing determines the assessment.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

I 90% agree with you. I do however think that TikTok deliberately shows anti-US cultural stuff. My thinking is probably is not logical on this, rather emotional: I like quality news organizations like Democracy Now sometimes taking a hard look at US foreign policy, etc. (and for years I have given them monthly donations because it is difficult to find good news sources). It feels good to praise my country when it deserves praise and criticize its behavior when it deserves it. I don’t like a foreign government like China attacking our culture. My analogy: we can criticize the behavior of our children who we love, but no one else can.

zmgsabst 3y ago
China is doing what the US does: Promoting divisive content (eg, “critical theories”) that divide societies based on grievance narratives — cloaking that anti-social behavior under benevolent guises (eg, calling rebuilding institutional racism “equity”). Given that we’ve watched those grievance narratives trigger widespread violence and arson before an election and a permanent state of racialized looting, I think the US is beyond the point of fixing this with such mild measures. (And TikTok is hardly the only problem.) And the US hypocritically screams about how even forcing us to disclose our NGOs is “anti-democratic” (eg, in Georgia).

cheriot 3y ago

Please explain how my free speech is taken away by a TikTok ban. I don't understand. Depending on the day, HN is convinced that 1. free speech is an obligation of private companies to their customers 2. free speech is an obligation of the government to companies It is neither. > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

kneebonian 3y ago
> Please explain how my free speech is taken away by a TikTok ban. I don't understand. The executive is unilaterally deciding users cannot have an app on their phone, and that as a US citizen I cannot access APIs in another country simply because the executive has declared it. For me it is all about how this is implemented and there is no way I can see this not being implemented in a way that serves as a vast expansion of government powers. Do they shut tikTok out of DNS? Do they tell people they aren't allowed to install the app? Do they tell google and apple they aren't allowed to have the app in the app star? Do they block their IPs from being routed in the US? There's no real way to bring a "TikTok" ban into effect that doesn't constitute a massive increase of power the executive has to regulate the internet. On the flip side I 100% think we need to figure out how to get TikTok out of here as it is 100% a tool by the CCP. So I am conflicted and confused.
- cheriot 3y ago
  > The executive is unilaterally deciding users cannot have an app on their phone, and that as a US citizen I cannot access APIs in another country simply because the executive has declared it. I can understand not liking that, but it has nothing to do with free speech. This is regulating commerce. > There's no real way to bring a "TikTok" ban into effect that doesn't constitute a massive increase of power the executive TikTok is a company with a balance sheet to protect. They'll pull their app when told to avoid the US government taking their money. Apple and Google will also pull it from the app store. There's nothing new here.
- 3y ago

alfalfasprout 3y ago

Why are we even letting Chinese internet companies freely compete in US markets when US companies are de facto forbidden from operating in China? At minimum, a requirement of reciprocity should be in place before we even consider allowing mainland Chinese tech companies to operate here. TikTok isn't even novel either. Before TikTok there were Vine and Musicly. Removing TikTok isn't speech suppression since other platforms can easily take their place.

yorwba 3y ago
US citizens are allowed to access Chinese social media even though Chinese citizens are not allowed to access US social media because the Chinese government is oppressing their people and trying to prevent them from accessing foreign information sources, whereas the US government is not yet oppressing their people in the same manner (and constitutionally forbidden from doing so). It sounds unfair from the perspective of companies wanting a right to market access, but companies do not have rights, people do. People's right to freely choose where they get their information from trumps companies' non-existent right to have the government shut out their competitors.
- alfalfasprout 3y ago
  You need a Chinese phone # or ID to create a Bilibili or Douyin account.
dirtyid 3y ago
>a requirement of reciprocity Reciprocity is there - follow PRC media filtering (read censorship) laws. There's a reason google and facebook both had internal projects to engineer PRC compliance to reenter PRC before internal corporate dissesnt shut it down. The only reason western platforms were booted from PRC in first place was not censoring calls for violence / terroism post 2009 minority riots because muh freedom of speech, but actually because following PRC filtering requirements = onerous moderation (read expensive) that every PRC platform had to follow (and pay for). Few years later western platforms get roasted for radicalization/violence and realized PRC was precient in social media censorship and forced to adopt their own bulk moderation systems and realize some tweaks can get them back in PRC market. Like if US wants genuine reciprocity, just do a JV like in PRC that favours US interests. Even PRC hasn't implemented something as bold as a force sale or "ban" for largely following domestic PRC laws.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> unchecked lever for the government to suppress free speech. This is them dipping their toes in. It'll get much worse if this passes.

hayst4ck 3y ago

I think this is a deeply grey issue. As a philosophical exercise, how dangerous is "banning" fentanyl? Treating it as a criminal issue rather than a health issue is arguably quite bad. Giving the government control to suppress what we can put in our bodies, and how we choose to exercise our pursuit of happiness is a dangerous precedent. Yet those who try fentanyl often become enslaved to it. They lose their freedom because they don't understand the consequences. I don't think it's so easy to apply a rule like "freedom good, restriction bad." I think the parallels to fentanyl are philosophically sound. That is cargo cult politics. It's applying the ritual of "supporting freedom" without understanding where freedom comes from. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science > They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. Letting an anti-democratic, anti human rights, arguably Han supremacist, foreign adversary exercise a great deal of influence over your people is an extremely dangerous game. China has every ability to enshittify their products to support the CPC, just like our own social media products are enshittified for their investors or advertisers. 54% percent of Americans can't read at a 6th grade level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States At the very least, if you want freedom, you must support education, but you run into exactly the same problem. What if you have an unchecked lever to choose curriculum. What if the people in power do the wrong thing? > All it takes is a president with radical views and an ineffective congress and you have a much more powerful censorship apparatus. Then you get to the core of the issue. If you want good governance, you need good governors. Good governors are one such "something essential" that separates ritual from actual. If fascists are getting into power, maybe the more important thing is to focus on how that is happening and how to prevent it. It is probably not good to let ultimately fascist entities become popular enough to get into power by being good, and then use that power for evil once they have enough that they don't need to grow anymore.

nocsi 3y ago

Have some perspective. The US used to solve things by outright evicting Chinese workers or interning Japanese. If the solution to stem foreign influence and manipulation is to throttle/ban an app that platforms crazies - then I must say that the US has grown a lot as a country. Also as a side note, your right to free speech is not really protected when it comes to private companies. US citizens should have a right to say whatever they want, but not everyone should have an a platform to build an audience. Very divisive people are having their reach disproportionately magnified to divide people

rileymat2 3y ago
The perspective I get from those two examples is that we do things that embarrass us later, so we should be /more/ aware and hesitant in the present, not pat ourselves on the back for improving.