9 ms·

Furious Congress plows forward with TikTok bill after user revolt

25 points by numlocked 3y ago

pavel_lishin 3y ago
> "So bad we turned phones off … Which means we could miss calls from constituents who actually need urgent help with something," a senior Democratic aide added. That's certainly a choice they decided to make.
- xyzzy123 3y ago
  What I can't figure out is how DoS-ing congress helps them achieve their goal. This was an "inorganic" campaign and based on misinformation. Seems like an excellent demonstration of the risks of having your citizens wired up to foreign controlled algorithmic feeds.
  - hooverd 3y ago
    Only the finest domestic content slop for me, please.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Yeah, if you wanted to demonstrate that TikTok needs to be banned, you couldn't have done it better. Even beside the national security implications, the fact that TikTok just demonstrated enough influence that it might threaten Congressmen in elections ... ayup, that's gonna get the ban hammer tout suite from both sides.
    - bluefishinit 3y ago
      We live in a democracy. It's not the job of these government agents to ignore their constituents, it's their job to listen to them. This is demonstrating that TikTok should not be banned.
      - bsder 3y ago
        Correct. We live in a democracy. TikTok just demonstrated it is an existential threat to that democracy by conducting a DDoS directly against Congress at the behest of a very non-democratic Chinese government. TikTok should be shut down. Immediately.
        bluefishinit 3y ago
        TikTok did no such thing. Those people have free will, which in a democracy would be respected.
        figassis 3y ago
        We all like to believe this, but practically it’s not always true. With enough resources you can make a significant part of the population act in your interests and against their own. Now I won’t get into the argument that each and every soul is able to reason and defend their interests at all times or whether if they did what you pushed them to do, it’s because your interests were in fact already aligned, there are countless examples to the contrary. So if you, as a foreign entity, can exert your will on a democracy this directly, yup, I’d ban you.
        bluefishinit 3y ago
        But that would violate the free will of all of the people who have no problem with China owning the app that they use. There's endless propaganda and advertising we are subjected to in the west. Second guessing people's free will because of influence destroys democracy.
        figassis 3y ago
        or the free will to not use seat belts, to speed, to blast your loudspeakers to your neighbors, to walk around with a contagious disease because you're immune...in the end why do you live in a society where you rely on others if you should just be allowed to do every single thing you want to do regardless of how it affects said society? Perhaps the some situations need to be more carefully considered and agreed upon by the whole?
  - krapp 3y ago
    American algorithmic feeds full of COVID nonsense and election misinformation sent Americans out into the streets armed and willing to commit violence. Why is this a bridge too far?
    - xyzzy123 3y ago
      I agree all the socials are full of memetic hazards and nonsense. Data plane issue. The platforms obviously bear major responsibility for this but to an extent their hands are tied by dispute about what constitutes "valid" speech. My perspective is that if this had been an "organic" protest it would have been fine. What TikTok demonstrated is that the platform is willing to directly spread misinformation to users through system messages with custom UX flows to magnify the impact. Devs at TikTok worked on this, they had meetings about it, they tracked progress until the work was done etc. That's a CONTROL PLANE issue.
      - krapp 3y ago
        What does "organic" even mean in this context? Of course TikTok tried to get their userbase to protest Congress if Congress was trying to regulate them. That is entirely within their rights, and just about any American platform would have done the same, including distorting the message as much in their favor as possible. That's politics as it's meant to be played.
        xyzzy123 3y ago
        To me, "organic" means people organising via messaging within the data plane of the platform, exercising their rights to free speech and political organisation. Can you name a prior instance where a social platform has added custom UX to "contact your congressman" or similar? (Bonus points if it is also about something actually untrue like "the service will be shut down").
        krapp 3y ago
        I don't know, I haven't been keeping track of the specific UI of every social platform to correlate design changes with instances of attempted political action. Why is it relevant?
  - __derek__ 3y ago
    That seems to be the committee's takeaway, too: > “The fact that they used geo-location targeting to go after minor children to call congressional offices with misinformation about the bill caused so many members on the E&C Committee to vote in favor," [Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi] said. [1]: https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-bytedance-bill-divest-5b5a685e8f1e19d22182d62526bf19b8 https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-bytedance-bill-divest-...
quantum_state 3y ago
The government has no business in dictating what apps we can use ... They are acting like any authoritarian, treating the public like kids ..
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Fricken 3y ago
At risk of being accused of whataboutism, why is HN so preoccupied with disinformation and political interference from China when Russia has essentially bought off a large chunk of the GOP and has been super effective at sowing division and radicalizing the views of US citizens for a decade now? China sucks balls at propaganda in the US. They're terrible at it. You can tell because so many here hate and are terrified of China. Whatever the CCP is trying to do, it isn't working. Yet, on HN, this is all I hear about. Meanwhile, Putin, as it turns out, isn't really such a bad guy after all.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  > Russia has essentially bought off a large chunk of the GOP Source?
  - Fricken 3y ago
    The Mueller report: https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
    - goalonetwo 3y ago
      " The report concludes that the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities" " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
- krapp 3y ago
  [flagged]
- goalonetwo 3y ago
  Ah yes... The russiagate. To believe this you need to be ball deeps in democrats-leaning conspiracy theories. This has never been anywhere close to be proven. Having common incentives, doesn't mean that you are conspiring and bought by Russia.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39641428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39641428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39635499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39635499

25 points by numlocked 3y ago

> "So bad we turned phones off … Which means we could miss calls from constituents who actually need urgent help with something," a senior Democratic aide added. That's certainly a choice they decided to make.

xyzzy123 3y ago
What I can't figure out is how DoS-ing congress helps them achieve their goal. This was an "inorganic" campaign and based on misinformation. Seems like an excellent demonstration of the risks of having your citizens wired up to foreign controlled algorithmic feeds.
- hooverd 3y ago
  Only the finest domestic content slop for me, please.
- bsder 3y ago
  Yeah, if you wanted to demonstrate that TikTok needs to be banned, you couldn't have done it better. Even beside the national security implications, the fact that TikTok just demonstrated enough influence that it might threaten Congressmen in elections ... ayup, that's gonna get the ban hammer tout suite from both sides.
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    We live in a democracy. It's not the job of these government agents to ignore their constituents, it's their job to listen to them. This is demonstrating that TikTok should not be banned.
    - bsder 3y ago
      Correct. We live in a democracy. TikTok just demonstrated it is an existential threat to that democracy by conducting a DDoS directly against Congress at the behest of a very non-democratic Chinese government. TikTok should be shut down. Immediately.
      - bluefishinit 3y ago
        TikTok did no such thing. Those people have free will, which in a democracy would be respected.
        figassis 3y ago
        We all like to believe this, but practically it’s not always true. With enough resources you can make a significant part of the population act in your interests and against their own. Now I won’t get into the argument that each and every soul is able to reason and defend their interests at all times or whether if they did what you pushed them to do, it’s because your interests were in fact already aligned, there are countless examples to the contrary. So if you, as a foreign entity, can exert your will on a democracy this directly, yup, I’d ban you.
        bluefishinit 3y ago
        But that would violate the free will of all of the people who have no problem with China owning the app that they use. There's endless propaganda and advertising we are subjected to in the west. Second guessing people's free will because of influence destroys democracy.
        figassis 3y ago
        or the free will to not use seat belts, to speed, to blast your loudspeakers to your neighbors, to walk around with a contagious disease because you're immune...in the end why do you live in a society where you rely on others if you should just be allowed to do every single thing you want to do regardless of how it affects said society? Perhaps the some situations need to be more carefully considered and agreed upon by the whole?
- krapp 3y ago
  American algorithmic feeds full of COVID nonsense and election misinformation sent Americans out into the streets armed and willing to commit violence. Why is this a bridge too far?
  - xyzzy123 3y ago
    I agree all the socials are full of memetic hazards and nonsense. Data plane issue. The platforms obviously bear major responsibility for this but to an extent their hands are tied by dispute about what constitutes "valid" speech. My perspective is that if this had been an "organic" protest it would have been fine. What TikTok demonstrated is that the platform is willing to directly spread misinformation to users through system messages with custom UX flows to magnify the impact. Devs at TikTok worked on this, they had meetings about it, they tracked progress until the work was done etc. That's a CONTROL PLANE issue.
    - krapp 3y ago
      What does "organic" even mean in this context? Of course TikTok tried to get their userbase to protest Congress if Congress was trying to regulate them. That is entirely within their rights, and just about any American platform would have done the same, including distorting the message as much in their favor as possible. That's politics as it's meant to be played.
      - xyzzy123 3y ago
        To me, "organic" means people organising via messaging within the data plane of the platform, exercising their rights to free speech and political organisation. Can you name a prior instance where a social platform has added custom UX to "contact your congressman" or similar? (Bonus points if it is also about something actually untrue like "the service will be shut down").
        krapp 3y ago
        I don't know, I haven't been keeping track of the specific UI of every social platform to correlate design changes with instances of attempted political action. Why is it relevant?
- __derek__ 3y ago
  That seems to be the committee's takeaway, too: > “The fact that they used geo-location targeting to go after minor children to call congressional offices with misinformation about the bill caused so many members on the E&C Committee to vote in favor," [Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi] said. [1]: https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-bytedance-bill-divest-5b5a685e8f1e19d22182d62526bf19b8 https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-bytedance-bill-divest-...

quantum_state 3y ago

The government has no business in dictating what apps we can use ... They are acting like any authoritarian, treating the public like kids ..

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Fricken 3y ago

At risk of being accused of whataboutism, why is HN so preoccupied with disinformation and political interference from China when Russia has essentially bought off a large chunk of the GOP and has been super effective at sowing division and radicalizing the views of US citizens for a decade now? China sucks balls at propaganda in the US. They're terrible at it. You can tell because so many here hate and are terrified of China. Whatever the CCP is trying to do, it isn't working. Yet, on HN, this is all I hear about. Meanwhile, Putin, as it turns out, isn't really such a bad guy after all.

Georgelemental 3y ago
> Russia has essentially bought off a large chunk of the GOP Source?
- Fricken 3y ago
  The Mueller report: https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
  - goalonetwo 3y ago
    " The report concludes that the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities" " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
krapp 3y ago
[flagged]
goalonetwo 3y ago
Ah yes... The russiagate. To believe this you need to be ball deeps in democrats-leaning conspiracy theories. This has never been anywhere close to be proven. Having common incentives, doesn't mean that you are conspiring and bought by Russia.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39641428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39641428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39635499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39635499