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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 T
by 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 agoCorrect. 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 agoTikTok did no such thing. Those people have free will, which in a democracy would be respected.
- figassis 3y agoWe 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 agoBut 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 agoor 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?
- bluefishinit 3y agoCensoring information is not in any way comparable to the items you list. It's also disingenuous to ignore the motivation behind this suggested ban. It came about from Zionists who are convinced that TikTok is the reason younger generations don't support Zionism. This only happened because of Oct 7th. It's a violation of the rights of US citizens.
- figassis 3y agoI don't know enough about that to speculate. If what you say is true, then it should likely be addressed in another way, not by arguing that there should be no order in a society.
- bluefishinit 3y agoI don't think any website or app should be banned just because the owner is accused of having an agenda (foreign or domestic owned). That's not society having "no order", it's basic freedom of speech and personal liberty.
- figassis 3y agoI don't disagree with you. It seem the difference here is that it's a foreign app/entity, and governments seem to have the authority to decide unilaterally on giving such entities access to it's people/economy/etc. This is done by every country, democratic or not. Think import controls, tariffs, and direct bans. The fact that people will lose access to said app is a consequence, but I'm not sure we can claim it's infringing on a freedom. Telling you not to use the app would be infringing. Banning the app is not really. Now, it'd be a different issue if they banned Facebook. The freedom infringed here would likely be facebook's and not yours.