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Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk
- infotainment 2y agoNice, now let’s do the rest of social media.
- 0x6c6f6c 2y agoHow does this even make sense? This bill would be perfectly happy selling TikTok to Meta even, it's not killing social media it's just telling China to GTFO.
- greenavocado 2y agoThe actual purpose of this sale is for the intelligence services to stop the illumination of hypocrisy and crimes of the ruling elite.
- nullindividual 2y agoHow do you come to that conclusion? I can rant and rave here about the shit and aberrant government and if I had an account, reddit, FB, etc without repercussions. We can call out GW Bush for committing warcrimes and killing 100k+ Iraqis. Or Obama for drone strikes on Afghan civilians. Or Trump for existing. Or Biden for killing Afghan civilians on the final day, the day we pulled out of that complete shitshow. Criticism of the US Govt is a favorite pastime, from anti-Capitalist humanist socialists like myself to the far right white supremacists. I’m sure now that I’ve said that, the FBI and DIA will be making a visit, right?
- r14c 2y agoThe topic that you're missing is coverage of Palestine and the sustained pressure that BDS and other movements are putting on Israel and US foreign policy, using Tiktok as a messaging platform. Palestine related content is heavily suppressed on most American social media networks. Israeli leaders have also expressed their concern over the "tiktok problem" and have failed to gain traction on the network with their counter-posting. From my perspective, at least, its pretty clear that this move is killing two birds with one stone by eliminating foreign competition and suppressing content that Israel doesn't want out in the wild. The issue of free speech in America is that anything is allowed, until it starts forcing the hand of the elite in some way.
- greenavocado 2y ago> I’m sure now that I’ve said that, the FBI and DIA will be making a visit, right? So far mostly true if you are in the UK. Search YouTube for "uk police visit social media post"
- labrador 2y ago> “In the context of social media platforms used by nearly half of Americans, it’s not hard to imagine how a platform that facilitates so much commerce, political discourse, and social debate could be covertly manipulated to serve the goals of an authoritarian regime, one with a long track record of censorship, transnational repression, and promotion of disinformation.” Mark Warner (D-VA), Senate Intelligence Committee Chair That's the crux of it for me. Not protecting the data of Americans.
- dqv 2y agoMark Warner has gotten $343,211 from AIPAC. He cares about placating Israel, not protecting our data. If you can find a politician who says this but doesn't take money from AIPAC, I might be a little more convinced.
- labrador 2y agoMaybe they have evidence that much of the pro-Palestian content on TikTok is stoked by Chinese bot accounts
- cad31 2y ago[dead]
- elfbargpt 2y agoI guess we'll find out. I'll be waiting with bated breath for the collapse in Palestinian support once ByteDance no longer runs TikTok.
- labrador 2y agoIt'd be nice if Gen Z became less anti-American. America deserved it in the Vietnam war. Now, not so much.
- nullindividual 2y ago
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoVeto it on the grounds that it would cost Biden the election and that would be disastrous for me personally
- ncr100 2y ago* An ENEMY STATE has controlling influence of a widely used social network in the USA. People's minds are influenced by it .. "You are what you eat" holds for what you read/watch and consequently think * This legislation won't lose Biden the election, banning abortion by an insurrectionist will win it * We are in a country that needs people to work together to be a successful country - we are big and highly populated democracy * Rugged individualism - "me first" - is easily attacked by influencers, subject to divide-and-conquer techniques. From marketing to foreign influence, it is a weakness. * Healthcare (even as expensive as it still is), reproductive rights, free ability to vote, and ability to have civil-war-free existence in our lifetimes are contingent on a healthily functioning government. * To support OUR STATE we must find a middle ground of unity. We must recognize the forces that divide us. We must choose the path to that maintains our ever-evolving sense of personal "freedom". We must be good citizens.
- lmm 2y ago> An ENEMY STATE has controlling influence of a widely used social network in the USA. People's minds are influenced by it .. "You are what you eat" holds for what you read/watch and consequently think How are you defining an enemy, and why does it matter whether they're a state or not? There are several domestic entities (governmental and non) that I would consider much bigger threats to me and the people I care about than the PRC government. And if you're not willing to let people read/watch widely and make up their own minds, what good is being a "democracy" or even an independent state at all? If I wanted to only watch state-approved media then I'd move to China.
- throwaway290 2y ago> If I wanted to only watch state-approved media then I'd move to China. Good news, looks like for now you can watch China-approved media without leaving your own country;)
- novolunt 2y ago[dead]
- ddp26 2y agoFYI, I used a tool I develop [1] to look into this, and came to the following conclusions: - Biden will sign the bill (>95%) - The Commerce Secretary will start the 12 month clock (>95%) - TikTok will challenge the ruling (>95%), which may delay the clock starting to delist or divest, but they are unlikely to win (20%) - And if they lose, they will succeed in selling to a US company (75%) - The sale will be for $30-50B (CI 50%), assuming it does not include certain ByteDance IP - Walmart and Oracle won’t compete to buy it this time. Microsoft or Amazon are the top contenders, along with a consortium led by Susquehanna or Steven Mnuchin, possibly in partnership with Snap or X. [1] I made a separate Show HN thread about the tool, FutureSearch, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40140710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40140710
- klyrs 2y agoI'll agree that Walmart seems an unlikely candidate.
- greenavocado 2y agoThe destination of the forced sale will be a large company with strong ties to the CIA
- nebula8804 2y agoCan you run a prediction on how the content on Tiktok will change in the coming 12 months or if Bytedance does indeed sell to this consortium? Will it start to lean towards the nonsense we are seeing with Meta platforms? (Limiting Pro-Palestinian voices, boosting Pro-Israel content).
- jim-jim-jim 2y ago[dead]
- swang 2y ago[flagged]
- tayo42 2y agoNeither of those countries are mentioned. Why bring the conflict up?
- cad31 2y ago[dead]
- cat_plus_plus 2y agoYeah about that. There is no sign of genocide within Israel, Arab citizens are growing as fraction of population and have serious political power. Population of Gaza is likewise growing tremendously due to very high birth rate and there have been no attempts at coerced sterilization like China does to Ughurs. Now lets turn to ethnic cleansing. It's true that ethnic cleansing of Arabs took place during formation of Israel. It's also true that ethnic cleansing of Jews took place in many/most Middle East countries like Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and so on. Now lots of people are displaced, how come no other country is given responsibility to help with aftereffects? Egypt lost Gaza as a result of attacking Israel and losing the war. Maybe they should take it back and spend resources to restore peace? Or lets consider apartheid. Any monarchy - such as Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Morocco etc is by definition an apartheid. The king privileges Islam over other religions and minorities don't get a say in what the laws are, even in case of relatively tolerant kings like in Morocco. By contrast, Arabs/Muslims within Israel have full voting rights and Gazans were left alone to run their own affairs until Oct 7 attack. West bank is in a weird state for various reasons - religious zeal of settlers, PLA not forming a viable government, interference from foreign powers like Iran. I am not trying to paint Israel as a perfect country. But which country is perfect when attacked? US literally nuked Japan and caused mass civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia? China? India?
- hackerlight 2y agoTrump admin tried to ban it in 2020 via Executive Order
- cat_plus_plus 2y ago[flagged]
- 2four2 2y agoBit hysterical, but do you think there's actual value in keeping Tiktok around?
- Dudhbbh3343 2y agoThe value is in not taking yet another step towards overbearing authoritarianism.
- corimaith 2y agoIf the CCP "wins" we'll be dealing with overbearing authoritarianism regardless.
- mytailorisrich 2y agoThat's an irrelevant question aimed at diverting the debate.
- vpastore 2y ago[dead]
- leric 2y ago[dead]
- tayo42 2y agoI don't care either way. I think it'll be really interesting to see how people react to this though. Do Americans learn how vpns work suddenly, do tiktok users just switch to reels like nothing happened. Do we snap out of our social media trance. It's like playing sim city and causing a little social chaos lol
- vsnf 2y ago> do tiktok users just switch to reels like nothing happened Yeah. The content there is already crossposted from TikTok anyway, now it will just be created there by default. Zero functional difference. Plus the YouTube Shorts algorithm has gotten a lot less overtly awful in the last year.
- cad31 2y ago[dead]
- FractalHQ 2y agoI just tested this and scrolled for a couple minutes straight — not one short was anything remotely substantive or interesting to me. An endless fountain of brain rot and offensively low quality content. Lots of it ai generated audio (wouldn’t be surprised if the content was too). Is there something I’m doing wrong? Because mine is still very very bad. It seems to ignore my actual channel subscriptions and usual viewing habits entirely.
- vsnf 2y agoI don't use it signed into YouTube at all, but it's pretty good to me. A short cruise through the short just now got me: Animal Crossing island building tips; sketch comedy; linguistics trivia; Ukraine war intelligence analysis; European history; rocket league trick shots; etc. I saw one or two irrelevant brainrot clips that I scrolled passed quickly, got an ad for Temu and Battle Royale which I also scroll by quickly, but by and large it was a fun/interesting way to spend 4 or 5 minutes.
- powerapple 2y ago
- TMWNN 2y agoFor those who say "TikTok can just exit the US market", when the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020,^1 Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue. Of the top 50 most-followed accounts <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_accounts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...>, 21 of 50 are American. TikTok's buyer does not have to be American. If TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place. Conversely, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, American would not have to fear a hostile government silently gathering data on American users, or a company repeatedly shown to be lying about using its app to do so. ^1 And boy, do Democrats who shouted Orange Man Bad back then now wish they had supported the move
- stephenlindauer 2y agoCool. Do Facebook next.
- zavertnik 2y agoI'm seeing a lot of comments like this, but I have no idea what your camp is trying to say. The bill isn't a criticism of TikTok's operation, its a criticism on its ownership and how that ownership + influence creates an exploit that poses a threat to NatSec. This kind of reactionary framing feels like an attempt to put Facebook and TikTok on a level playing field, but the premise of the bill is about tech ownership and influence by companies of or from a foreign adversary. Facebook is a US company. What am I missing here?
- grzeshru 2y agoI think this just validates China’s social, cultural, and digital hegemony. Banning (if you can call it that? Divesting?) a single product like this is a strange move. It’s using a shovel to clear the early crumbs of an avalanche. I don’t think this is the right move. Yes, it threatens the monopolies that companies like Facebook have established. And let’s assume that Haidt is right and social media and the surrounding ecosystem is a cesspool of negativity being lunged at the youth. I still think that it’s in a way petulant and reactive to pass a bill for this. A foreign country is not responsible for our leaders having failed to nurture us into sensible adults who do not fall prey to these dark patterns and tactics. I will refrain from the angle that our leaders intentionally did not want us to be critical, independent thinkers to further their own agendas by treating us like lepers.
- gibbitz 2y agoI hope ByteDance sell tiktok to North Korea. This bill is so misguided and inflammatory. It's clearly OK for Google and Meta to freely harvest our data and sell it for a profit, but I guess they can't charge tariffs on data so they'll make up excuses and bully foreign companies over it. I hope the Chinese join the EU and start pushing on our tech monopolies since our government is too busy with bills like this to uphold the laws already on the books.
- chipdart 2y ago> This bill is so misguided and inflammatory. It's clearly OK for ${US_COMPANIES} to freely harvest our data and sell it for a profit, but I guess they can't charge tariffs on data so they'll make up excuses and ${PREVENT_THREAT}.
- powerapple 2y agowatching from the sideline, I think this move has a lot to do with Palestine. Do you know how much Palestine information on TikTok, comparing to YouTube and Facebook, apparently those contents were suppressed on other platforms, and TikTok is the odd one here. I personally believe, regardless what politicians are saying, this is actually a big reason.