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I hope this will show the severity of threats countries face from social media and that things are no longer business as usual. Every European country /and/or

I hope this will show the severity of threats countries face from social media and that things are no longer business as usual. Every European country /and/or EU/ECC as a block, as well as every other nation or block, should follow this up as soon as permitted to have all social media apps operated by a foreign country be subject to the same legislation. TikTok will have to sel to the US, Netherlands, France, Germany, Turkey, Gabon, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Egypt etc etc etc. That will of course also go for all other social networks as well. The threats this bill highlights are universal to all social media operated outside the control and ownership, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, WhatsApp, will either have to stop operating outside of the Unites States or they will need to be sold to every country they wish to operate in. Certainly, a small state has the same rights and the same cause to protect their citizens from the surveillance and manipulation from foreign owned social networks. From a geek perspective this would be great. We would get smaller entities that would need to interact with each other in so far as that would be possible or attainable.

vizzier 2y ago
De-facto international antitrust, I like it.
- malfist 2y ago
  I believe this would be de jure, not de facto.
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    It wouldn't be explicitly anti-trust, but that would be the practical effect.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, WhatsApp, will either have to stop operating outside of the Unites States or they will need to be sold to every country they wish to operate in TikTok can sell to a French, Hungarian, Indian, Brazilian or even Iraqi person and be in compliance with this bill's terms. It doesn't require American ownership, it forbids control by a foreign adversary. If the EU and U.S. passed legislation subjecting all tech companies to these rules, the only ones who would have to do anything are those owned and controlled by a foreign adversary state.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  Correct. Any other country on earth, other than: * China * North Korea * Iran * Cuba * Russia * Venezuela Could sell it to Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Belarus, etc.
  - josu 2y ago
    What about Hong Kong?
    - Moto7451 2y ago
      That’s very much China.
    - paulddraper 2y ago
      As of the executive order on Hong Kong Normalization [1], there is no policy distinction between Hong Kong and China. The more interesting question is Taiwan, for which the US has taken no official position on sovereignty. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/17/2020-15646/the-presidents-executive-order-on-hong-kong-normalization https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/17/2020-15...
  - mywittyname 2y ago
    Honest question: what's stopping them from being transferred to a Belizean shell company owned by a company in Delaware with a board full of puppets who blindly do the bidding of the previous owners? Do the CxOs need to be replaced? Are Chinese senior staff members being replaced? Low level staff? What concrete changes are going to be made that will change their behavior? I oppose this bill because it doesn't seem to do anything to address the actual threats posed by social media. After all, foreign adversaries openly operate on Facebook. Why isn't Zuckerberg being forced to divest? Either all social media is a threat, and that threat needs to be addressed, or this is all theater meant to satisfy the population without tackling the actual issues (if we are honest, the same politicians pushing for this bill benefit from social media influence) .
roody15 2y ago
Hmm not sure I agree. It can be helpful to have access to social media that contains perspectives outside of the control of the country you live in. Sure will it be slanted or even outright propaganda ? Yes but this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions. The idea that our “government” will curate content and sanctify what is true is simply dystopian. Citizen these social media sites and these news sources are safe. We have curated this list for your safety and that of the community at large. Geez things have gotten bad in a hurry :(
- noqc 2y ago
  >this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions. This is a nice fantasy but it fails to a number of intractible social problems. Children aren't taught skepticism because parents don't want their children to be taught skepticism. You would need to use force that you do not have access to in order to even attempt the solution you are proposing. Second, implicit in your argument is that people would be responsible for thinking critically about every fact that they believe. This is just too much work, the human strategy requires trust, and we have massive incentive structures called societies whose main job is to facilitate that trust through the establishment of systems of incentives. This complicated system of incentives has been demolished, wholesale, by social media, and we're not going to adapt fast enough to avoid serious damage.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    We solved this by disallowing children from voting. Kids these days eventually learn not to trust anything they read on the Internet.
    - kalupa 2y ago
      hard to see that we "solved" this, regardless of who's allowed to vote
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    > Children aren't taught skepticism because parents don't want their children to be taught skepticism. Say huh? Where on earth did you pull this “factoid” from?
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Ironically, this sort of internet sovereignty is exactly what China has been preaching for years (though its so-called World Internet Conference), and of course has the most advanced state of the art implementation (aka Great Firewall) to ensure it. It likely didn't envision that this philosophy might one day come back to bite one of their own :)
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > Great Firewall This is what sovereignty looks like to you? It looks like totalitarianism to me.
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    Sovereignty is really just a fancy word for "do whatever the hell we want" made to sound noble.
    - trog 2y ago
      Not wrong, but arguably, the entire basis for our civilisation since the dawn of time - it's why we've had societies forming from groups of like-minded people, evolving into city states and then nation states.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    I think that was the point being made. ;)
  - flawn 2y ago
    Both are more close to each other than you think. Just different semantics but speaking of the same
    - gleenn 2y ago
      The US allows nearly everything and is now blocking one thing. China is almost exactly the opposite. They aren't the same.
collegeburner 2y ago
No, small states do not have the same rights as large ones. You may disagree with this but I don't see any point in pretending it's untrue. Large countries have more sway and matter more to everyone, including but not limited to operators of social platforms. Losing half your userbase hurts much more than losing a hundredth. I also doubt that the U.S. would force a sale of a social app based in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Turkey, Gabon, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Egypt etc etc etc. I wouldn't particularly blame Gabon or Vietnam if they wanted their primary media outlets operated by nations that are at least vaguely friendly to their values. They are free to attempt to force a sale and ban it when those apps inevitably do not comply.
- b-side 2y ago
  I think you are conflating "incomebase" and userbase. There are no "hard facts" on this but everyone seems to agree that the US is not even remotely close to 50% userbase for TikTok which makes sense (inverse Pigeonhole principle) if TikTok really has 1b+ active users. However, the US might be a bigger share of the "incomebase" because ads for US users are more valuable.
npteljes 2y ago
>Certainly, a small state has the same rights and the same cause to protect their citizens from the surveillance and manipulation from foreign owned social networks. Next up, we could migrate government systems away from foreign IT software and services. The FOSS world has plenty of capable offerings, and it's not as if the choices were made on technical merit in the first place. I'd love to see Free Software and open standards being taught in schools, and being used in government.
- ThinkBeat 2y ago
  All FOSS developers may be foreigners for a project. Is it ok to use that then?
  - npteljes 2y ago
    I think that's okay. I'm not opposed to foreigners at all. What I find a bit strange is that (proprietary) tech provides a backdoor to the user - I think this is something that a reasonable govt would oppose, but of course they have other things on their plates too, and they are corrupt as well. This concern is similar to what is cited as the reason for the Huawei sanctions in the US. Of course, it's not like FOSS magically eliminates all threat. If FOSS was commonly utilized by governments, I think we would see more "XZ Utils backdoor" type of attacks, as it were a juicier target. I firmly believe though that using FOSS would be a step in the right direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_against_China#Ban_of_Huawei_and_ZTE_equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_agains... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
astrea 2y ago
Yes and while we’re at it, we should simply relinquish control of these companies to the government. Perhaps any company remotely journalistic in nature. For safety of course.
- deleted 2y ago
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Tepix 2y ago
I'd argue that for european users, handing over a huge amount of data to american social networks with their lack of privacy protection is also highly problematic. Perhaps the EU should do something similar to Facebook, X etc.?

vizzier 2y ago

De-facto international antitrust, I like it.

malfist 2y ago
I believe this would be de jure, not de facto.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  It wouldn't be explicitly anti-trust, but that would be the practical effect.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, WhatsApp, will either have to stop operating outside of the Unites States or they will need to be sold to every country they wish to operate in TikTok can sell to a French, Hungarian, Indian, Brazilian or even Iraqi person and be in compliance with this bill's terms. It doesn't require American ownership, it forbids control by a foreign adversary. If the EU and U.S. passed legislation subjecting all tech companies to these rules, the only ones who would have to do anything are those owned and controlled by a foreign adversary state.

paulddraper 2y ago
Correct. Any other country on earth, other than: * China * North Korea * Iran * Cuba * Russia * Venezuela Could sell it to Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Belarus, etc.
- josu 2y ago
  What about Hong Kong?
  - Moto7451 2y ago
    That’s very much China.
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    As of the executive order on Hong Kong Normalization [1], there is no policy distinction between Hong Kong and China. The more interesting question is Taiwan, for which the US has taken no official position on sovereignty. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/17/2020-15646/the-presidents-executive-order-on-hong-kong-normalization https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/17/2020-15...
- mywittyname 2y ago
  Honest question: what's stopping them from being transferred to a Belizean shell company owned by a company in Delaware with a board full of puppets who blindly do the bidding of the previous owners? Do the CxOs need to be replaced? Are Chinese senior staff members being replaced? Low level staff? What concrete changes are going to be made that will change their behavior? I oppose this bill because it doesn't seem to do anything to address the actual threats posed by social media. After all, foreign adversaries openly operate on Facebook. Why isn't Zuckerberg being forced to divest? Either all social media is a threat, and that threat needs to be addressed, or this is all theater meant to satisfy the population without tackling the actual issues (if we are honest, the same politicians pushing for this bill benefit from social media influence) .

roody15 2y ago

Hmm not sure I agree. It can be helpful to have access to social media that contains perspectives outside of the control of the country you live in. Sure will it be slanted or even outright propaganda ? Yes but this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions. The idea that our “government” will curate content and sanctify what is true is simply dystopian. Citizen these social media sites and these news sources are safe. We have curated this list for your safety and that of the community at large. Geez things have gotten bad in a hurry :(

noqc 2y ago
>this is still okay as we can teach people to critically think and make their own decisions. This is a nice fantasy but it fails to a number of intractible social problems. Children aren't taught skepticism because parents don't want their children to be taught skepticism. You would need to use force that you do not have access to in order to even attempt the solution you are proposing. Second, implicit in your argument is that people would be responsible for thinking critically about every fact that they believe. This is just too much work, the human strategy requires trust, and we have massive incentive structures called societies whose main job is to facilitate that trust through the establishment of systems of incentives. This complicated system of incentives has been demolished, wholesale, by social media, and we're not going to adapt fast enough to avoid serious damage.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  We solved this by disallowing children from voting. Kids these days eventually learn not to trust anything they read on the Internet.
  - kalupa 2y ago
    hard to see that we "solved" this, regardless of who's allowed to vote
- dgfitz 2y ago
  > Children aren't taught skepticism because parents don't want their children to be taught skepticism. Say huh? Where on earth did you pull this “factoid” from?

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Ironically, this sort of internet sovereignty is exactly what China has been preaching for years (though its so-called World Internet Conference), and of course has the most advanced state of the art implementation (aka Great Firewall) to ensure it. It likely didn't envision that this philosophy might one day come back to bite one of their own :)

lostlogin 2y ago
> Great Firewall This is what sovereignty looks like to you? It looks like totalitarianism to me.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  Sovereignty is really just a fancy word for "do whatever the hell we want" made to sound noble.
  - trog 2y ago
    Not wrong, but arguably, the entire basis for our civilisation since the dawn of time - it's why we've had societies forming from groups of like-minded people, evolving into city states and then nation states.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  I think that was the point being made. ;)
- flawn 2y ago
  Both are more close to each other than you think. Just different semantics but speaking of the same
  - gleenn 2y ago
    The US allows nearly everything and is now blocking one thing. China is almost exactly the opposite. They aren't the same.

collegeburner 2y ago

No, small states do not have the same rights as large ones. You may disagree with this but I don't see any point in pretending it's untrue. Large countries have more sway and matter more to everyone, including but not limited to operators of social platforms. Losing half your userbase hurts much more than losing a hundredth. I also doubt that the U.S. would force a sale of a social app based in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Turkey, Gabon, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Egypt etc etc etc. I wouldn't particularly blame Gabon or Vietnam if they wanted their primary media outlets operated by nations that are at least vaguely friendly to their values. They are free to attempt to force a sale and ban it when those apps inevitably do not comply.

b-side 2y ago
I think you are conflating "incomebase" and userbase. There are no "hard facts" on this but everyone seems to agree that the US is not even remotely close to 50% userbase for TikTok which makes sense (inverse Pigeonhole principle) if TikTok really has 1b+ active users. However, the US might be a bigger share of the "incomebase" because ads for US users are more valuable.

npteljes 2y ago

>Certainly, a small state has the same rights and the same cause to protect their citizens from the surveillance and manipulation from foreign owned social networks. Next up, we could migrate government systems away from foreign IT software and services. The FOSS world has plenty of capable offerings, and it's not as if the choices were made on technical merit in the first place. I'd love to see Free Software and open standards being taught in schools, and being used in government.

ThinkBeat 2y ago
All FOSS developers may be foreigners for a project. Is it ok to use that then?
- npteljes 2y ago
  I think that's okay. I'm not opposed to foreigners at all. What I find a bit strange is that (proprietary) tech provides a backdoor to the user - I think this is something that a reasonable govt would oppose, but of course they have other things on their plates too, and they are corrupt as well. This concern is similar to what is cited as the reason for the Huawei sanctions in the US. Of course, it's not like FOSS magically eliminates all threat. If FOSS was commonly utilized by governments, I think we would see more "XZ Utils backdoor" type of attacks, as it were a juicier target. I firmly believe though that using FOSS would be a step in the right direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_against_China#Ban_of_Huawei_and_ZTE_equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_agains... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

astrea 2y ago

Yes and while we’re at it, we should simply relinquish control of these companies to the government. Perhaps any company remotely journalistic in nature. For safety of course.

deleted 2y ago
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Tepix 2y ago

I'd argue that for european users, handing over a huge amount of data to american social networks with their lack of privacy protection is also highly problematic. Perhaps the EU should do something similar to Facebook, X etc.?