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The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. All the talk about privacy and data collect

The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. All the talk about privacy and data collection were mostly to muddy the waters by bringing in all tech to the conversion, and divert attention from solely tiktok ("Everyone does it so why focus on tiktok?!"). It's still a threat, I'm not trying to minimize it, but tiktok was banned primarily because of who controls the content delivered, not who is collecting the data.

pjc50 2y ago
> the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. Was this actually proven in specific incidents? Is this the only media outlet this applies to?
- nradov 2y ago
  It's not just media outlets. Chinese Communist Party officials are directly embedded in all of their large corporations and can override regular management decisions. We have no visibility into exactly what they're doing but from a security perspective we have to assume the worst.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    "It's definitely bad, please trust us in US intelligence when we say this" (I'm sure it is; there have been plenty of people disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappeared-high-profile-figures-who-have-gone-missing-during-xi-jinpings-rule https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappea... , but I'd just like to have a little evidence rather than do an Iraq war again)
- germinator 2y ago
  "Direct" is not a helpful word. In the US, the government has control over the content too, it just so happens that it mostly concerns itself with combatting certain moral vices (from prostitution to bootleg fireworks) - although to be fair, it also lightly pressured big tech into combatting political "misinformation". In China, the same mechanisms exist, except the controls on speech are much tighter and the punishments more severe. Every other tech company operating there has a story of officials showing up with demands or threatening employees. I worked at two places where this happened. In addition, most businesses operate as formal or quasi-formal public-private partnership, where the CCP has officials within the corporate management structure. Again, ask anyone who tried to start a foreign-owned business in China. You can make a reasonable argument that having an oppressive and geopolitically adversarial foreign government effectively in control of the most popular youth social media platform in the country is not great. Or you can make a reasonable free-trade argument. Free trade works only if all participants follow the rules; if Western social media can't operate on their market, they don't get to operate on ours. There are things to dislike about the US government, but I really don't get the contrarian takes on TikTok. China is objectively worse and its government's legitimacy and lasting power is built in the bodies of tens of millions of victims. We're not getting along right now. This doesn't require cynicism to explain.
- chimeracoder 2y ago
  > Was this actually proven in specific incidents? No - and certainly not on any appreciable or meaningful scale. The bill's proponents claim that intelligence agencies have found proof of this, and that the proof is classified and therefore cannot be shown to the public. (If you're over the age of 30, you're almost certainly getting early 2000s flashbacks reading that sentence). > Is this the only media outlet this applies to? No. The ban applies to TikTok, but as pointed above, not to Chinese (or Russian) state media, which do directly control the content shown to users.
brightball 2y ago
I saw Mark Cuban advocating for any platform which shows content to children to be required to publish their algorithm. IMO it is the most logical approach to the entire discussion.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Why limit it to sites that show content to children?
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    It makes for a more realistic proposal that is more likely to survive legal scrutiny.
- dmix 2y ago
  That would be great, never going to happen.
- Analemma_ 2y ago
  I'm not opposed to "open algorithm requirements" on social media sites, but the chattering about them is starting to remind me of back when we thought real-name requirements might fix toxic behavior online, until YouTube and Facebook implemented them and found that, no, they absolutely do not: people will happily be despicable under their real names too. It seems to me like something people are desperately grasping for in the naive hope that there's a quick-and-easy fix to the endemic problems of human nature. X/Twitter does now publish their algorithm, and it hasn't made it any less of a shithole.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    I agree. Most people just want the quick and easy fix regardless of efficacy. Make them show the algorithm, some other entity will review it for you and tell you if you should be outraged or not, you continue using the site while complaining about the changes that need to happen. The most effective method is to severely limit or elimate your own (or kids) usage. But creating your own standards and standing by them seem to be out of favor these days (integrity and self control). It's all about FOMO and consumption.
slg 2y ago
But what is rarely addressed in this conversation is why the American people should be more scared of the Chinese government owning this type of service compared to an American billionaire who is widely regarded to have some sort of personality disorder and a drug problem? If these services are too powerful when abused and too opaque for us to even know they are being abused, then they all need to have much more stringent regulation on them and not just ban the foreign one.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  > But what is rarely addressed in this conversation is why the American people should be more scared of the Chinese government owning this type of service compared to an American billionaire who is widely regarded to have some sort of personality disorder and a drug problem? Last I checked, Elon Musk hadn't sent hundreds of Uighur women to rape camps to be "reeducated". He hasn't harvested organs from undesirables while they were still alive (for freshness) all that much either. I don't praise the United States government as saints and superheroes or anything like that, but to be unwilling to admit that there are still stark differences between the two countries probably means you wore a Che t-shirt in college and might even be wearing one now if your company permits casual dress.
  - dpkirchner 2y ago
    These are reasons to cut off China entirely, not just lazily shutting down/forcing the sale of TikTok. But by taking on TikTok the government can pretend it did something about the threat from the Chinese government, I guess.
  - slg 2y ago
    Arguing the American government has some level of moral superiority over the Chinese government doesn't address my question. As an American, what threat does the Chinese government's control of TikTok pose to me that Musk's control of Twitter doesn't? TikTok isn't going to force me into a reeducation camp or steal my organs. Yet the accusations of them manipulating public opinion for their own benefit could just as easily be leveled at Musk.
DaveExeter 2y ago
[flagged]
bjourne 2y ago
> direct control over the content shown to users How is the Chinese government's control over TikTok content any more "direct" than the US government's control over Facebook content?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  The difference is that it's the US government that's doing the banning.
- erehweb 2y ago
  The Chinese government could order TikTok to downrank / not show content that criticizes the CCP. The US government could not order FB to downrank content that criticizes the Democrats.
  - bjourne 2y ago
    What's stopping the US government from doing exactly that? Btw, a court order is not very "direct". Easier to have your buddy call his buddy who happens to be the ceo of Facebook...
  - advisedwang 2y ago
    Is there any evidence that the Chinese government has done that? No. As for the US, we have documented evidence of US corporations cooperating with the US government for spying and propaganda efforts.
  - pphysch 2y ago
    What was the whole "Hunter Biden laptop" debacle about if not precisely this?
- stewx 2y ago
  ByteDance is headquartered in China, a repressive country where they throw you in prison or worse if you don't obey the government. If the Communist Party told them to meddle with the algorithm to the advantage of China and harm of the USA, for example, they would have to obey, or else suffer the consequences.
freeone3000 2y ago
> because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. So what? Why are Elon Musk and Sundar Piachi allowed direct control of what they show me but Shou Zi Chew isn’t? Is it due to governmental involvement? Imagine if the BBC broadcast direct to Americans! Or are we, somehow, collectively, of the opinion China is an enemy of some variety? If so, what variety? And what weird peacetime rivalry are we having?
- throwawa14223 2y ago
  They are explicitly communists. Yes they are an enemy in a way none of the other listed entities are.
- nradov 2y ago
  Let's not be naive. Despite our ongoing trade ties, the Chinese Communist Party is the enemy of Western civilization in every way short of actual shooting. We shouldn't be enabling them. I don't think it's good that cabal of media and tech executives has so much concentrated control over public discourse. But there is a huge qualitative difference between them and a hostile foreign power.
linearrust 2y ago
> The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. If that was the case, chinese state media ( where the chinese government actually has direct control over the content ) would be banned. But they are not banned.
- stewx 2y ago
  Ok, TikTok has the illusion of being content-neutral and just a fair algorithm, but we have no reason to believe it is unbiased.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    > Ok, TikTok has the illusion of being content-neutral and just a fair algorithm Does it? And what does that even mean? Are there any other "content-neutral" and "fair" algorithms that you're aware of at other social media companies? > we have no reason to believe it is unbiased. Not only is that not how argument works, it's a bizarre bar that only tiktok has to leap to do business. We have every reason to believe that any and all commercial algorithms for selecting and prioritizing content to display to users are not "content-neutral," nor "fair" for every possible definition of fair.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      of course they are all biased. The question is who's biases are represented.
      - dpkirchner 2y ago
        Probably Proctor & Gamble's, Ford's, and similar.
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        I think those are honestly much lower on the list beyond the values and biases of the owners and employees.
kornhole 2y ago
It is a claim or assumption that the Chinese government has direct control. NATO's sixth arena of operation, cognitive warfare, did not have as much direct control over the dials to employ weapons of mass deletion.
doom2 2y ago
Mitt Romney has also said the TikTok ban was in part due to support for Palestinians in the current Gaza war[1]. So it seems to be a bit of both: limiting Chinese influence and trying to control the narrative about international conflict. [1] https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senator-romney-antony-blinken-tiktok-ban-israel-palestinian-content https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...
- gruez 2y ago
  >limiting Chinese influence and trying to control the narrative about international conflict I think those are two sides of the same coin. If you read the whole quote in context[1], it seems equally likely that he was trying to imply that tiktok (the platform, not just the userbase) has a pro-palestinian bias, possibly due to the Chinese government. If it's the users who pro-palestinian, it would make little sense to ban the platform, because those users would still be pro-palestinian and migrate elsewhere. Reddit has a similar pro-palestinian bias, but it hasn't attracted similar scrutiny, presumably because no one suspects it of being controlled by the chinese government. [1] https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-mccain-institutes-2024-sedona-forum-keynote-conversation-with-senator-mitt-romney/ https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-mccain-i... (search for "SENATOR ROMNEY: A small parenthetical point, which is some wonder why")
  - janice1999 2y ago
    It's entirely about controlling the narrative: Instagram apologises for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian users profiles bios [1] Facebook violated rights of Palestinian users, report finds [2] Activists: Google, Apple ‘Erasing Palestine’ from Geographic Apps [3] [1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/instagram-meta-palestine-social-media-b1114928.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/instagram-meta-palesti... [2] https://apnews.com/article/technology-middle-east-israel-8587529541424ca7882bf88ba96e2799 https://apnews.com/article/technology-middle-east-israel-858... [2] https://themedialine.org/by-region/activists-google-apple-erasing-palestine-from-geographic-apps/ https://themedialine.org/by-region/activists-google-apple-er...
- 2y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
With a little imagination we can pull that string quite far. If TikTok can change public opinion then they must have speech right? How do they have speech without speaking? They have speech by filtering and weighing things a specific way. If you can speak without speaking then how does Section 230 come into play? If platforms can speak and have opinions and affect public opinion then whey do they get Section 230 protections? Should the algorithms be open sourced and transparent (or banned) since they have so much power? It raises a lot of questions that we have put off answering. I think the (distant) relevance of Section 230 makes big tech scared to talk about it since that's their cash-cow.
- krapp 2y ago
  >If you can speak without speaking then how does Section 230 come into play? If platforms can speak and have opinions and affect public opinion then whey do they get Section 230 protections? Section 230 exists specifically to allow platforms to "have opinions and affect public opinion." Liability resides with the accounts making the content, not the platform. It would be impossible to have any degree of free expression on the internet if platforms were legally liable for everything posted there, or if they could be sued over every moderation decision they make. >It raises a lot of questions that we have put off answering. We haven't put off answering anything. We have the answers. Platforms are allowed to moderate content. They're allowed to filter and present content in whatever way they want. They're allowed to have a bias. There is no gray area here, no matter how badly people want there to be one.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    Sure. But there is also a gaping hole of regulation in this area. They can strongly sway public opinion with their algorithms? That sounds dangerous- let's regulate that as we do other forms of media. Then we see droves of nerds come out about how sacred the dang internet is and all of that and it shall never be regulated unless you're a fascist.
    - krapp 2y ago
      In a free society, particularly the US where mistrust of the government and status quo narrative is baked into the culture, the ability to "sway public opinion" is a feature, not a bug. And on social media that ability is held primarily by the public. Not in the sense of social media being a public forum, but no true public forum does or arguably can exist on the internet anyway. Notwithstanding conspiracies about deepfakes and false flags and fears of "algorithms" and "Chinese mind control," social media is the only real balancing force against corporate and government propaganda that there is. Even with its faults I think it would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to just have the government regulate it, which in essence would mean severely limiting the free speech rights of both the platforms and the people who use them. I know people think that government regulating social media means some kind of laissez-faire free for all where all legal speech will be allowed without consequence (which would be even less moderation than you find on 4chan) but that is very much not how it would go.
pessimizer 2y ago
> The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. Counterpoint: The law to ban tiktok was languishing after the US government got complete access to tiktok moderation, only still pushed by local anti-China grandstanders who ran on it when the government was busy extorting tiktok in order to get that access. The reason it passed now was to suppress the speech of Americans talking about the leveling of Gaza. > All the talk about privacy and data collection were mostly to muddy the waters by bringing in all tech to the conversion, and divert attention from solely tiktok Because an anti-tiktok law is a bill of attainder and completely unconstitutional (as I was once downvoted into oblivion for mentioning.) Generalizing the bill passes that constitutional hurdle, and if upheld allows the state to end-run around the 1st Amendment and ban speech at will. The bill would be useless if it didn't silence Americans, and all people will do after a tiktok ban is migrate to another speech platform. It's important to be able to silence speech everywhere. > tiktok was banned primarily because of who controls the content delivered, not who is collecting the data. The US doesn't care about tiktok, and has full access to ban whatever it likes. The US cares about silencing you.
aragonite 2y ago
> The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users Perhaps that's the real reason. But if so, why can't the US government just require Tiktok to push content that aligns with US interests? Say for every 3 videos a user watches, they are then required to watch a US army recruitment ad, or an VOA anti-China propaganda clip, or Uncle Sam telling them that there's a high chance they just watched foreign propaganda (think tobacco package warning messages). I'm pretty sure that Tiktok would find this acceptable as the cost of doing business, and that China wouldn't care — plenty of anti-China content already exists on Tiktok. Of course I'm not seriously suggesting this. But I'm saying that if control over content is the real motivating concern, why wouldn't a solution like this be considered viable?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  That suggestion just covers one variable among many. There is an endless list of social issues. The suggestion doesn't restrict how much anti-US propaganda gets pushed. I don't think TikTok or the US would find it acceptable. It is too heavy handed
  - aragonite 2y ago
    > I don't think TikTok or the US would find it acceptable. It is too heavy handed It's less heavy handed than banning outright, though. > The suggestion doesn't restrict how much anti-US propaganda gets pushed. Good point. Let me refine my suggestion so as to require that TikTok prohibit all anti-US content: sophisticated AI algorithms would be put in place to ensure that content that doesn't align with US interests is not allowed. This will make the suggestion even more heavy-handed, but note that, once again, it's still less heavy-handed than banning outright.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      That proposal is not compatible with US propaganda strategy. The US does not have a ministry of propaganda to design AI algorithms, or provide the pre-requisite adds for TikTok. It isnt set up to oversee the internal workings of the company algorithm. Instead, it relies on US citizens embedded in US companies to push US ideals in social media. When it does presumably conduct social engineering attacks, it does it through bots and buying adds on platforms. Last, I don't think the US government expecting to have to actually ban Tiktok. I think it is expecting to win, and get to have it's cake and eat it too. This would be the least heavy handed option.

pjc50 2y ago

> the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. Was this actually proven in specific incidents? Is this the only media outlet this applies to?

nradov 2y ago
It's not just media outlets. Chinese Communist Party officials are directly embedded in all of their large corporations and can override regular management decisions. We have no visibility into exactly what they're doing but from a security perspective we have to assume the worst.
- pjc50 2y ago
  "It's definitely bad, please trust us in US intelligence when we say this" (I'm sure it is; there have been plenty of people disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappeared-high-profile-figures-who-have-gone-missing-during-xi-jinpings-rule https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappea... , but I'd just like to have a little evidence rather than do an Iraq war again)
germinator 2y ago
"Direct" is not a helpful word. In the US, the government has control over the content too, it just so happens that it mostly concerns itself with combatting certain moral vices (from prostitution to bootleg fireworks) - although to be fair, it also lightly pressured big tech into combatting political "misinformation". In China, the same mechanisms exist, except the controls on speech are much tighter and the punishments more severe. Every other tech company operating there has a story of officials showing up with demands or threatening employees. I worked at two places where this happened. In addition, most businesses operate as formal or quasi-formal public-private partnership, where the CCP has officials within the corporate management structure. Again, ask anyone who tried to start a foreign-owned business in China. You can make a reasonable argument that having an oppressive and geopolitically adversarial foreign government effectively in control of the most popular youth social media platform in the country is not great. Or you can make a reasonable free-trade argument. Free trade works only if all participants follow the rules; if Western social media can't operate on their market, they don't get to operate on ours. There are things to dislike about the US government, but I really don't get the contrarian takes on TikTok. China is objectively worse and its government's legitimacy and lasting power is built in the bodies of tens of millions of victims. We're not getting along right now. This doesn't require cynicism to explain.
chimeracoder 2y ago
> Was this actually proven in specific incidents? No - and certainly not on any appreciable or meaningful scale. The bill's proponents claim that intelligence agencies have found proof of this, and that the proof is classified and therefore cannot be shown to the public. (If you're over the age of 30, you're almost certainly getting early 2000s flashbacks reading that sentence). > Is this the only media outlet this applies to? No. The ban applies to TikTok, but as pointed above, not to Chinese (or Russian) state media, which do directly control the content shown to users.

brightball 2y ago

I saw Mark Cuban advocating for any platform which shows content to children to be required to publish their algorithm. IMO it is the most logical approach to the entire discussion.

AlexandrB 2y ago
Why limit it to sites that show content to children?
- lupusreal 2y ago
  It makes for a more realistic proposal that is more likely to survive legal scrutiny.
dmix 2y ago
That would be great, never going to happen.
Analemma_ 2y ago
I'm not opposed to "open algorithm requirements" on social media sites, but the chattering about them is starting to remind me of back when we thought real-name requirements might fix toxic behavior online, until YouTube and Facebook implemented them and found that, no, they absolutely do not: people will happily be despicable under their real names too. It seems to me like something people are desperately grasping for in the naive hope that there's a quick-and-easy fix to the endemic problems of human nature. X/Twitter does now publish their algorithm, and it hasn't made it any less of a shithole.
- giantg2 2y ago
  I agree. Most people just want the quick and easy fix regardless of efficacy. Make them show the algorithm, some other entity will review it for you and tell you if you should be outraged or not, you continue using the site while complaining about the changes that need to happen. The most effective method is to severely limit or elimate your own (or kids) usage. But creating your own standards and standing by them seem to be out of favor these days (integrity and self control). It's all about FOMO and consumption.

slg 2y ago

But what is rarely addressed in this conversation is why the American people should be more scared of the Chinese government owning this type of service compared to an American billionaire who is widely regarded to have some sort of personality disorder and a drug problem? If these services are too powerful when abused and too opaque for us to even know they are being abused, then they all need to have much more stringent regulation on them and not just ban the foreign one.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> But what is rarely addressed in this conversation is why the American people should be more scared of the Chinese government owning this type of service compared to an American billionaire who is widely regarded to have some sort of personality disorder and a drug problem? Last I checked, Elon Musk hadn't sent hundreds of Uighur women to rape camps to be "reeducated". He hasn't harvested organs from undesirables while they were still alive (for freshness) all that much either. I don't praise the United States government as saints and superheroes or anything like that, but to be unwilling to admit that there are still stark differences between the two countries probably means you wore a Che t-shirt in college and might even be wearing one now if your company permits casual dress.
- dpkirchner 2y ago
  These are reasons to cut off China entirely, not just lazily shutting down/forcing the sale of TikTok. But by taking on TikTok the government can pretend it did something about the threat from the Chinese government, I guess.
- slg 2y ago
  Arguing the American government has some level of moral superiority over the Chinese government doesn't address my question. As an American, what threat does the Chinese government's control of TikTok pose to me that Musk's control of Twitter doesn't? TikTok isn't going to force me into a reeducation camp or steal my organs. Yet the accusations of them manipulating public opinion for their own benefit could just as easily be leveled at Musk.

DaveExeter 2y ago

[flagged]

bjourne 2y ago

> direct control over the content shown to users How is the Chinese government's control over TikTok content any more "direct" than the US government's control over Facebook content?

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
The difference is that it's the US government that's doing the banning.
erehweb 2y ago
The Chinese government could order TikTok to downrank / not show content that criticizes the CCP. The US government could not order FB to downrank content that criticizes the Democrats.
- bjourne 2y ago
  What's stopping the US government from doing exactly that? Btw, a court order is not very "direct". Easier to have your buddy call his buddy who happens to be the ceo of Facebook...
- advisedwang 2y ago
  Is there any evidence that the Chinese government has done that? No. As for the US, we have documented evidence of US corporations cooperating with the US government for spying and propaganda efforts.
- pphysch 2y ago
  What was the whole "Hunter Biden laptop" debacle about if not precisely this?
stewx 2y ago
ByteDance is headquartered in China, a repressive country where they throw you in prison or worse if you don't obey the government. If the Communist Party told them to meddle with the algorithm to the advantage of China and harm of the USA, for example, they would have to obey, or else suffer the consequences.

freeone3000 2y ago

> because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. So what? Why are Elon Musk and Sundar Piachi allowed direct control of what they show me but Shou Zi Chew isn’t? Is it due to governmental involvement? Imagine if the BBC broadcast direct to Americans! Or are we, somehow, collectively, of the opinion China is an enemy of some variety? If so, what variety? And what weird peacetime rivalry are we having?

throwawa14223 2y ago
They are explicitly communists. Yes they are an enemy in a way none of the other listed entities are.
nradov 2y ago
Let's not be naive. Despite our ongoing trade ties, the Chinese Communist Party is the enemy of Western civilization in every way short of actual shooting. We shouldn't be enabling them. I don't think it's good that cabal of media and tech executives has so much concentrated control over public discourse. But there is a huge qualitative difference between them and a hostile foreign power.

linearrust 2y ago

> The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. If that was the case, chinese state media ( where the chinese government actually has direct control over the content ) would be banned. But they are not banned.

stewx 2y ago
Ok, TikTok has the illusion of being content-neutral and just a fair algorithm, but we have no reason to believe it is unbiased.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > Ok, TikTok has the illusion of being content-neutral and just a fair algorithm Does it? And what does that even mean? Are there any other "content-neutral" and "fair" algorithms that you're aware of at other social media companies? > we have no reason to believe it is unbiased. Not only is that not how argument works, it's a bizarre bar that only tiktok has to leap to do business. We have every reason to believe that any and all commercial algorithms for selecting and prioritizing content to display to users are not "content-neutral," nor "fair" for every possible definition of fair.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    of course they are all biased. The question is who's biases are represented.
    - dpkirchner 2y ago
      Probably Proctor & Gamble's, Ford's, and similar.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        I think those are honestly much lower on the list beyond the values and biases of the owners and employees.

kornhole 2y ago

It is a claim or assumption that the Chinese government has direct control. NATO's sixth arena of operation, cognitive warfare, did not have as much direct control over the dials to employ weapons of mass deletion.

doom2 2y ago

Mitt Romney has also said the TikTok ban was in part due to support for Palestinians in the current Gaza war[1]. So it seems to be a bit of both: limiting Chinese influence and trying to control the narrative about international conflict. [1] https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senator-romney-antony-blinken-tiktok-ban-israel-palestinian-content https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...

gruez 2y ago
>limiting Chinese influence and trying to control the narrative about international conflict I think those are two sides of the same coin. If you read the whole quote in context[1], it seems equally likely that he was trying to imply that tiktok (the platform, not just the userbase) has a pro-palestinian bias, possibly due to the Chinese government. If it's the users who pro-palestinian, it would make little sense to ban the platform, because those users would still be pro-palestinian and migrate elsewhere. Reddit has a similar pro-palestinian bias, but it hasn't attracted similar scrutiny, presumably because no one suspects it of being controlled by the chinese government. [1] https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-mccain-institutes-2024-sedona-forum-keynote-conversation-with-senator-mitt-romney/ https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-mccain-i... (search for "SENATOR ROMNEY: A small parenthetical point, which is some wonder why")
- janice1999 2y ago
  It's entirely about controlling the narrative: Instagram apologises for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian users profiles bios [1] Facebook violated rights of Palestinian users, report finds [2] Activists: Google, Apple ‘Erasing Palestine’ from Geographic Apps [3] [1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/instagram-meta-palestine-social-media-b1114928.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/instagram-meta-palesti... [2] https://apnews.com/article/technology-middle-east-israel-8587529541424ca7882bf88ba96e2799 https://apnews.com/article/technology-middle-east-israel-858... [2] https://themedialine.org/by-region/activists-google-apple-erasing-palestine-from-geographic-apps/ https://themedialine.org/by-region/activists-google-apple-er...
2y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

With a little imagination we can pull that string quite far. If TikTok can change public opinion then they must have speech right? How do they have speech without speaking? They have speech by filtering and weighing things a specific way. If you can speak without speaking then how does Section 230 come into play? If platforms can speak and have opinions and affect public opinion then whey do they get Section 230 protections? Should the algorithms be open sourced and transparent (or banned) since they have so much power? It raises a lot of questions that we have put off answering. I think the (distant) relevance of Section 230 makes big tech scared to talk about it since that's their cash-cow.

krapp 2y ago
>If you can speak without speaking then how does Section 230 come into play? If platforms can speak and have opinions and affect public opinion then whey do they get Section 230 protections? Section 230 exists specifically to allow platforms to "have opinions and affect public opinion." Liability resides with the accounts making the content, not the platform. It would be impossible to have any degree of free expression on the internet if platforms were legally liable for everything posted there, or if they could be sued over every moderation decision they make. >It raises a lot of questions that we have put off answering. We haven't put off answering anything. We have the answers. Platforms are allowed to moderate content. They're allowed to filter and present content in whatever way they want. They're allowed to have a bias. There is no gray area here, no matter how badly people want there to be one.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Sure. But there is also a gaping hole of regulation in this area. They can strongly sway public opinion with their algorithms? That sounds dangerous- let's regulate that as we do other forms of media. Then we see droves of nerds come out about how sacred the dang internet is and all of that and it shall never be regulated unless you're a fascist.
  - krapp 2y ago
    In a free society, particularly the US where mistrust of the government and status quo narrative is baked into the culture, the ability to "sway public opinion" is a feature, not a bug. And on social media that ability is held primarily by the public. Not in the sense of social media being a public forum, but no true public forum does or arguably can exist on the internet anyway. Notwithstanding conspiracies about deepfakes and false flags and fears of "algorithms" and "Chinese mind control," social media is the only real balancing force against corporate and government propaganda that there is. Even with its faults I think it would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to just have the government regulate it, which in essence would mean severely limiting the free speech rights of both the platforms and the people who use them. I know people think that government regulating social media means some kind of laissez-faire free for all where all legal speech will be allowed without consequence (which would be even less moderation than you find on 4chan) but that is very much not how it would go.

pessimizer 2y ago

> The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. Counterpoint: The law to ban tiktok was languishing after the US government got complete access to tiktok moderation, only still pushed by local anti-China grandstanders who ran on it when the government was busy extorting tiktok in order to get that access. The reason it passed now was to suppress the speech of Americans talking about the leveling of Gaza. > All the talk about privacy and data collection were mostly to muddy the waters by bringing in all tech to the conversion, and divert attention from solely tiktok Because an anti-tiktok law is a bill of attainder and completely unconstitutional (as I was once downvoted into oblivion for mentioning.) Generalizing the bill passes that constitutional hurdle, and if upheld allows the state to end-run around the 1st Amendment and ban speech at will. The bill would be useless if it didn't silence Americans, and all people will do after a tiktok ban is migrate to another speech platform. It's important to be able to silence speech everywhere. > tiktok was banned primarily because of who controls the content delivered, not who is collecting the data. The US doesn't care about tiktok, and has full access to ban whatever it likes. The US cares about silencing you.

aragonite 2y ago

> The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users Perhaps that's the real reason. But if so, why can't the US government just require Tiktok to push content that aligns with US interests? Say for every 3 videos a user watches, they are then required to watch a US army recruitment ad, or an VOA anti-China propaganda clip, or Uncle Sam telling them that there's a high chance they just watched foreign propaganda (think tobacco package warning messages). I'm pretty sure that Tiktok would find this acceptable as the cost of doing business, and that China wouldn't care — plenty of anti-China content already exists on Tiktok. Of course I'm not seriously suggesting this. But I'm saying that if control over content is the real motivating concern, why wouldn't a solution like this be considered viable?

s1artibartfast 2y ago
That suggestion just covers one variable among many. There is an endless list of social issues. The suggestion doesn't restrict how much anti-US propaganda gets pushed. I don't think TikTok or the US would find it acceptable. It is too heavy handed
- aragonite 2y ago
  > I don't think TikTok or the US would find it acceptable. It is too heavy handed It's less heavy handed than banning outright, though. > The suggestion doesn't restrict how much anti-US propaganda gets pushed. Good point. Let me refine my suggestion so as to require that TikTok prohibit all anti-US content: sophisticated AI algorithms would be put in place to ensure that content that doesn't align with US interests is not allowed. This will make the suggestion even more heavy-handed, but note that, once again, it's still less heavy-handed than banning outright.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    That proposal is not compatible with US propaganda strategy. The US does not have a ministry of propaganda to design AI algorithms, or provide the pre-requisite adds for TikTok. It isnt set up to oversee the internal workings of the company algorithm. Instead, it relies on US citizens embedded in US companies to push US ideals in social media. When it does presumably conduct social engineering attacks, it does it through bots and buying adds on platforms. Last, I don't think the US government expecting to have to actually ban Tiktok. I think it is expecting to win, and get to have it's cake and eat it too. This would be the least heavy handed option.