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Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline
- nextstep 2y ago[flagged]
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoLink to opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf
- hedora 2y ago[flagged]
- ellisv 2y agoDoesn't really seem relevant in this case.
- vessenes 2y agoI agree we have an activist court in the Roberts court. How is this making an ex-post facto law, though? The suit is over a bill passed with broad bipartisan support by Congress.
- rayiner 2y ago> I agree we have an activist court in the Roberts court. People who for decades subscribed to the notion that "emanations from penumbras" are a source of constitutional law don't have any room to talk about judicial activism.
- hedora 2y agoIt’s a bill of Attainder, i.e., a legislative act that declares a specific individual or group guilty of a crime and imposes punishment without the benefit of a judicial trial.
- vessenes 2y agoIs it, though? Not a lawyer, obviously. But here I seem to agree with both Bytedance’s lawyers, and the full SCOTUS. Bytedance challenged on free speech terms. There are no dissents as to the Consitutionality of the law. Prosaically, what individual or group is being declared guilty here? The law requires TikTok to have new ownership; it doesn’t seize it, or set a price for it, which might therefore harm shareholders. Calling this attainder seems like a pretty big stretch to me. And, it seems Bytedance legal counsel didn’t think this would fly as well.
- rayiner 2y agoDivestment could be a punishment in some circumstances. E.g. if Congress passed a law requiring Elon Musk to divest himself of X as punishment for purportedly violating the Securities Act. The difference here is that Tik Tok is not being accused of a crime and is not being punished for some crime. It's applying a restriction on foreign ownership not to punish Tik Tok for some past act, but because Congress is worried about the risks arising from that ownership in the future.
- otterley 2y agoNo it isn't.
- rayiner 2y agoFrom your own link: > However, the Court has emphasized that legislation does not violate the Bill of Attainder Clause simply because it places legal burdens on a specific individual or group.2 Rather, as discussed in more detail below, a bill of attainder must also inflict punishment. Divestment isn't a punishment for a crime. Nobody is accusing Tik Tok of having committed a crime. Congress simply doesn't want a foreign power hostile to the U.S. to control a business that's popular in the U.S.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
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- dentemple 2y ago[flagged]
- vishnugupta 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NotebookLM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NotebookLM
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- numbsafari 2y agoThe interesting bits from the text[1], relative to the now flagged sibling ----- (3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.—The term “foreign adversary controlled application” means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by— (A) any of— (i) ByteDance, Ltd.; (ii) TikTok; (iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or (iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or (B) a covered company that— (i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and (ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of— (I) a public notice proposing such determination; and (II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture. ----- The way I read this is that Congress is bootstrapping the law with its own finding that ByteDance, Ltd/TikTok are Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications, but then, in (3)(B), the President is responsible for determining any other entities this law should cover given previously stated parameters (what they mean by "covered entity" here), using the procedure it then provides. I believe that addresses the concern about this being a "Bill of Attainder". Edit: Obviously IANAL, but it also doesn't appear that this issue of this being a Bill of Attainder was raised by TikTok, nor was it considered in this opinion. Perhaps they will do so in a separate action, or already have and it just hasn't made its way to the court(?), but if it were such a slam dunk defense, you think their expensive lawyers would have raised it. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
- hedora 2y agoThis analysis seems reasonable, but I think the simpler explanation blatant corruption, since the legislation is moving judicial responsibility from from the judicial branch to the legislature and president, and a great deal of money is involved.
- raverbashing 2y agoAnd it was an unanimous decision. When was the last time we had those for such an impactful decision I wonder?
- kyrra 2y agoRegularly, you just don't read about them as they don't make news headlines.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago"impactful decision" is key here.
- kyrra 2y agoMany/most scotus rulings are impactful. They are just not all controversial.
- mynameishere 2y ago[dead]
- dataflow 2y ago"Impactful" might be counting your chickens a little too early. Let's see if it has any impact. The next POTUS might just ignore it, or some other shenanigans might be used to work around whatever the imagined impact was.
- ivraatiems 2y agoThe majority of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous, including on major issues. The recent trend of divided opinions is relatively new.
- rsanek 2y agodo you have a source for this? Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore, Citizens United are all split.
- lizhang 2y agoOOC: i thought trump installed several justices in his past term, so they are theoretically already voting along his lines? Is it expected for trump to act completely against this supreme court that his party has a lot of influence over?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SALCKIN 2y agoReply
- hb-robo 2y agoThe kids flocking to another Chinese app just to avoid using Reels, Shorts, or whatever abomination is on X continues to be so funny to me. Looks like a long game of whack a mole starting.
- EA-3167 2y agoIt isn't really whack-a-mole though, because despite the media coverage there is no "TikTok ban bill." Instead it's a "Hostile nation can't own majority stakes in media companies in the US" bill, and this SCOTUS ruling sets the precedent that can be enforced on as many entities as required. On a more amusing note the Chinese did NOT expect a bunch of Americans to show up on RedNote, and they're not thrilled so far. It seems that sharing details of how to organize labor unions, protest against your government, 3D print weapons, and so on wasn't what they were hoping for either. There's allegedly talk of them siloing off the new joins from abroad.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoSo how big does Rednote need to be to "majority stakes in media companies in the US"? I don't like this ruling at all, but it feels very American to see another looming threat and say "well, I'll just wait until it gets too big to deal with it".
- EA-3167 2y agoIt qualifies already, but I really doubt it's going to take off for many reasons. It isn't TikTok, the CCP has a much heavier hand there (ask the kids who ran into a 48 hour review period for their posts), and frankly I don't think the CCP is going to appreciate a bunch of mostly young, leftist teens sharing their ideas with Chinese people. The reaction to "Here's how you can organize a union/3D print a gun" has been hilariously predictable.
- ok123456 2y agohttps://www.xiaohongshu.com https://www.xiaohongshu.com
- diggan 2y ago> Although Trump could choose to not enforce the law Ah, clever to leave it up for bribes from ByteDance. > The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a national security concern What is the point of these "rules and regulations" and "the nation's highest court" when the president could decide just not to enforce them?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ericmay 2y ago> Ah, clever to leave it up for bribes from ByteDance. I agree. And the bribery already started when the Trump campaign found itself doing very well on engagement in TikTok. The CCP had already started the bribery before the election in a bid to maintain influence over the US while halting American influence in China. The Biden administration I believe said they won't enforce the law starting Sunday, leaving it to the incoming administration to enforce. It'll be wildly popular for Trump to save TikTok, so I expect he'll do it without forcing a sale.
- nottorp 2y ago> What is the point of these "rules and regulations" and "the nation's highest court" when the president could decide just not to enforce them? Good question actually.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoThe president is in charge of executing the law. It’s in our system of checks and balances. I’m choosing to speak at an extremely general level, of course, but that is the answer to your question.
- diggan 2y agoSpecifically, I think it's "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Art. II, §3). Does that mean "If foreign companies don't like our laws, they can pay to have them adjusted"? Seems not very faithful, but I hardly understand that word anymore it feels like.
- ddoolin 2y agoFWIW, this has driven many users to RedNote, which is even more Chinese in every way, regardless of whether it's even the same kind of platform. I doubt it would ever be anywhere near the same numbers as TikTok (assuming ByteDance didn't sell off) but it does illustrate the trouble with this i.e. cat-and-mouse game. Edited for word choice.
- tsunamifury 2y agoIt asserts how critically powerful platform media is now and that the government sees it as an essential part of managing their citizens
- ddoolin 2y agoI agree. I'm not sure if I think all of this is good or not. Even if you, a gov't, didn't have an interest in managing your citizens vis-a-vis some platform, it doesn't mean other govt's don't have that interest, so maybe there's some validity to it in that case. But all of that raises even more questions, like "so what?" and "to what end?"
- cwillu 2y agoIt's not ostensibly, it's an app completely focused on china; did you mean a different word?
- ddoolin 2y agoProbably. I didn't know that about it when I used that word, but a sibling comment also confirms this, so thanks for the correction.
- tmnvdb 2y agoThis is very misleading "news" and it doesn't illustrate anything, a bunch of users installed rednote out of protest, but this is a fully chinese app with 100% chinese content and 99% of users will move to youtube, instagram, etc Fake news.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[flagged]
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- ellisv 2y agoThe ruling isn't surprising, although I almost expected Alito or Thomas to dissent.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y agoFrom the oral arguments it was immediately obvious that Alito and Thomas had already decided their opinion --- as had the other judges, frankly. They were very skeptical of the ByteDance/petitioner's argument. The Act at issue was written in a very specific way to neuter a lot of their points. Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the US Government, is also an extremely good SC lawyer in oral arguments. A Per Curiam decision is not surprising at all, most people who follow the court were expecting it.
- ellisv 2y agoI think it is often the case that the justices' opinions are already established, based on their lines of questioning. In the way that Gorsuch wrote a separate concurrence, I expected Alito or Thomas to want to broadcast a particular message to their audience.
- iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago[flagged]
- ericmay 2y agoWhat founding principle is the SCOTUS saying doesn't matter with this ruling?
- iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago[flagged]
- ericmay 2y agoI don't think your freedom of speech is being curtailed by not being able to watch funny videos or propaganda on an app. TikTok also isn't an American company. Foreign companies have always been subject to U.S. regulations and laws that differ from the rights of American-owned businesses, as it should be and will continue to be. But don't worry either way. It'll be wildly popular for Trump to save TikTok and he does really well on the platform so it'll be saved.
- iugtmkbdfil834 2y agoFriend. I do not worry. I dislike all social media and would not shed one tear if all those were dismantled. What I shed a tear for is slow decline of US and its founding principles, because George Carlin clearly was right. Even if you barely pay attention, the list your your temporary privileges is slowly getting shorter. edit: Even the fact that I have to explain it at such a basic level is tremendously sad.
- ericmay 2y agoI understand your discussion points, I just disagree with them. If we were talking about banning all social media, I think you'd be able to make a stronger 1st Amendment case. Instead, we've passed a law through Congress to restrict a foreign business from operating in the United States. We do this all the time, and have from the start of our history. Such actions were supported by the founders and are legally consistent. Just because TikTok allows people to share memes better doesn't make it a free speech platform. It's just some company and we can choose to allow it to operate here or not as a society.
- mrcwinn 2y agoRegardless of one’s view on the outcome, this case is a reminder that textualism as a legal philosophy stands on shaky ground. This case is decided not on some strict analysis of the words written by a legislator, but on the court’s subjective view that there is a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events). Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
- dralley 2y agoWhat exactly is your issue with this, as a textualist? >[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; . . . This is foreign commerce. It falls under the explicit jurisdiction of Congress.
- mrcwinn 2y agoWell gosh, that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything! However, this case is about something else. The opinion states that there is a first amendment interest, but that interest is secondary to a compelling national security interest that, in the court’s view, is valid. That may or may not be correct - but it is a subjective interpretation.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y ago>that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything! Yeah, it's the perhaps most powerful clause in the constitution. A large number of laws are formed like "[actual law ...] in commerce." That is the hook needed for a lot of laws to be constitutional. Technically those laws only apply to interstate or international commerce. There are even supreme court cases discussing this: >Congress uses different modifiers to the word “commerce” in the design and enactment of its statutes. The phrase “affecting commerce” indicates Congress’ intent to regulate to the outer limits of its authority under the Commerce Clause. [...] Considering the usual meaning of the word “involving,” and the pro-arbitration purposes of the FAA, Allied-Bruce held the “word ‘involving,’ like ‘affecting,’ signals an intent to exercise Congress’ commerce power to the full.” Ibid. Unlike those phrases, however, the general words “in commerce” and the specific phrase “engaged in commerce” are understood to have a more limited reach. In Allied-Bruce itself the Court said the words “in commerce” are “oftenfound words of art” [...] The Court’s reluctance to accept contentions that Congress used the words “in commerce” or “engaged in commerce” to regulate to the full extent of its commerce power rests on sound foundation, as it affords objective and consistent significance to the meaning of the words Congress uses when it defines the reach of a statute.[0] [0] Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105 (2001) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/532/105/case.pdf https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/532/105/case.pdf
- h1fra 2y agoSupreme Court only likes when data is stolen locally by good US-based corporations
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- briffle 2y agoStill have no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us, and adjust and tweak an 'algorith' for displaying content. But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it? Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
- x0iii 2y agoThere's no room for equality and fairness when it comes to global political rivals especially when there's stone cold evidence of mischief.
- ranger_danger 2y agoI don't think any big business sees protection of its users as a solution to anything.
- tptacek 2y agoThe whole case turns on foreign adversary control of the data.
- mjmsmith 2y agoExactly, these are hostile political actors interfering in our country. This is also why Facebook and X should be banned everywhere except the USA.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoMeanwhile, it's perfectly fine for foreign adversaries to use American social media to interfere with American events. Anything for that GDP.
- mjmsmith 2y agoGood point. Social media accounts should only be available to people who live in the country where the company is based. Then there's no need to ban Facebook and X elsewhere.
- jdlyga 2y agoPeople don't fully understand what is at risk of being lost here. Science, history, and technology tutorials, practical life skills like cooking, budgeting, mental health, chronic illness, trauma recovery, creative expression, small businesses, home repair, friend groups, communities, and many people who make their living on TikTok. Losing TikTok means losing a massive ecosystem and all of its connections, knowledge, and content. It's like a library of books vanishing, or a large city disappearing off of a map.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- numbsafari 2y ago[flagged]
- ok123456 2y ago[flagged]
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- silverquiet 2y agoThis is always the risk of building your castle on someone else's land (or cloud).
- chipgap98 2y agoYou honestly believe most of that hasn't already be re-uploaded to other platforms and more of it won't be re-uploaded over the next month?
- carstenhag 2y agoYes, I believe so. It's way easier to upload something on tiktok with captions, voiceovers etc than on YouTube. You can have real communities instead of random channels.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
- Workaccount2 2y agoI believe Biden says his admin won't enforce the ban, as they only have 1 day left in office after it goes into effect. Trump has signaled he doesn't support the ban, and wants tiktok under american ownership. The legislation allows the president to put a 90 day hold on the ban too. So my guess is that this isn't over yet.
- scarface_74 2y agoDo you think Apple, Oracle and Google are going to thumb their noses at the law? Trump initially championed the ban during his first term
- Workaccount2 2y agoFor one day? Maybe.
- scarface_74 2y agohttps://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executive-order-that-will-effectively-ban-use-of-tiktok-in-the-u-s https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
- Workaccount2 2y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly57kxkmrxo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly57kxkmrxo Apparently Trump did well on tiktok during the last election, and ByteDance (and everyone else) knows that Trump plays favorites.
- flutas 2y ago> The legislation allows the president to put a 90 day hold on the ban too. Only if there is an in-progress divestiture and only before the ban goes into effect. Aka, TikTok/Biden would have to announce a sale is in process and Biden would have to enact the extension before the 19th.
- 2y ago
- shmatt 2y agoMaybe someone smarter than me can explain - how both Biden and Trump can hint or announce they wont enforce the law. Signed laws upheld by the Supreme Court can be filtered out by the President? News to me.
- whimsicalism 2y agothe law doesn’t ban tiktok it just grants discretion to the president to ban tiktok
- nickthegreek 2y agoThe law makes it illegal for Oracle, Apple and Google to continue doing what they are doing. It does in fact make it illegal for some companies to operate with TikTok. The president can use this law in the future on other companies controlled by foreign adversaries to divest or face a ban.
- est 2y agoJust curious, so if the POTUS decides to fine Tiktok, how would Tiktok pay? Because banks can't accept Tiktok transactions.
- nickthegreek 2y agoThe companies still take risk not obeying the law. Most large publicly traded companies will not task the liability risk based on a wink and a nod.
- colejohnson66 2y agoThey've announced that they won't enforce the fines required by the law. But yes, selective enforcement of laws is legal — it's how prosecutorial discretion works.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoCongress writes the law but the executive enforces the law. They can choose not to enforce the ban.
- mmmmmbop 2y agoIt's really quite funny to read the timeline in the opinion. Essentially, Trump started the TikTok ban, Biden continued it, and Congress finally put it into law. And now both Trump and Biden, as well as Congress, are shying away from actually enforcing the ban. • In August 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order finding that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in [China] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” • President Trump determined that TikTok raised particular concerns, noting that the platform “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and is susceptible to being used to further the interests of the Chinese Government. • Just days after issuing his initial Executive Order, President Trump ordered ByteDance Ltd. to divest all interests and rights in any property “used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States,” along with “any data obtained or derived from” U. S. TikTok users. • Throughout 2021 and 2022, ByteDance Ltd. negotiated with Executive Branch officials to develop a national security agreement that would resolve those concerns. Executive Branch officials ultimately determined, however, that ByteDance Ltd.’s proposed agreement did not adequately “mitigate the risks posed to U. S. national security interests.” 2 App. 686. Negotiations stalled, and the parties never finalized an agreement. • Against this backdrop, Congress enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
- mplanchard 2y ago2025, despite all this going on for four years, Gorusch complains bitterly about having had to rule on the case in less than a fortnight
- est 2y agoA simpler explaination, politicians were worried that Tiktok may influence mit-term and presidential elections, but it turns out a good place to run campaigns. Then Gaza happened.
- suraci 2y agoOuch
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- dralley 2y agoIt isn't a "ban" except that TikTok would rather shut down than sell, forgoing billions of dollars in the process.
- iugtmkbdfil834 2y agoFrom pure PR perspective, it is a win for China; sometimes it is not about the money. US used to be much smarter those kinds of optics.
- taylodl 2y agoUS used to be much smarter in general. Now that Trump is starting a 2nd term on Monday, the world over now realizes the US is comprised of a bunch of imbeciles. We've lost our prestige, and we'd been trading on it for a long, long time.
- scarface_74 2y agoI lean heavily Democratic when it comes to social issues. But let’s be honest, everyone knew that Biden was losing his mental faculties. The last time we had two smart candidates was 2012.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoSo the answer was... Elect in a president who long lost his mental faculties. Okay.
- scarface_74 2y agoThe Democrats loss fair and square. They should have spoken up a lot sooner. Everyone on the inside knew that Biden was incompetent. If they had a real primary would Kamala ever have been the nominee? The Democrats lost strongholds like Miami of all places. The dumbest thing they did was go against the tech industry who have always been their biggest supporters. Would Republicans go after Evangelical Christians or the NRA? They gave people no reason to support them.
- wnevets 2y agoWhere is reels, reddit and shorts gonna get all of its most popular content from now?
- xyst 2y agoAI generated slop, of course
- johnnyanmac 2y agoSounds like we have our answer. Have China flood the internet with "content". American scrapers train on it. Now we can ban LLM use on American websites, compromised by China!
- timeon 2y agoMost Reddit is just Twitter screenshots. There are few from BlueSky now but that is pretty recent. But there is also lot of OC rage-bait.
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y agoBecause Twitter (or letter 24) generates the rediculous hot takes that Reddit can laugh at.
- gregopet 2y agoI'm sure the other countries are watching this and considering what the US is doing with their data in its apps.
- xeromal 2y agoTikTok is banned in China. We're just joining in
- sunaookami 2y agoSadly they won't, that's just one more reason for e.g. the EU to censor more social media on the grounds that one of their """allies""" does it too.
- epolanski 2y agoEU is among the most restrictive legislations when it comes to data leaving European ground already.
- mplanchard 2y agoOh look: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/european-union-orders-x-to-hand-over-algorithm-documents/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/european-union-o...
- kube-system 2y agoOther countries that were concerned about this started blocking websites of their adversaries decades ago.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThey dont need to wonder. The US is constantly operating media propaganda campaigns around the globe interfering with elections and promoting coups. Democratic outcomes that don't agree with our politics are officially deemed illegitimate, even if the elections are certified as fair. It would be crazy to believe the US is somehow shy about running psyops when we openly arm rebels and bomb countries.
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- fidotron 2y agoBy the given reasoning every official at the EU wonders why they ever allowed Google, Facebook or Twitter to exist. This is balkanization.
- drawkward 2y agoMy representatives represent me, my country, its citizens and its government. They specifically do NOT represent foreign entities.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoGiven the controversy over this, they clearly do not represent "the people". I think that's a big part of the issue.
- drawkward 2y agoClearly, huh? https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-for-a-us-tiktok-ban-continues-to-decline-and-half-of-adults-doubt-it-will-happen/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f...
- p_j_w 2y agoThe ban only has 32% support from the US public. This isn’t happening because the government is representing its citizens.
- drawkward 2y agohow many oppose the ban? hint: it is less than 32%. what percentage of americans vote for a given president? hint: it is less than 32%.
- tmnvdb 2y agoThey have been wondering about that for many years quite explicitly.
- roschdal 2y ago[flagged]
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoNo matter what you think of this ban, the court is obviously not the right place to solve it. It is completely unsurprising that this is a unanimous decision because foreign trade is one of the few powers expressly given to the federal government in the constitution: >[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;[0] (The actual law may not have relied exclusively on the Commerce Clause, you would have to read it to find out. But from a high level there is nothing stopping congress from regulating any instance foreign trade.) [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/clause-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
- xeromal 2y agoCongress passed a law banning it. Where else would you solve it?
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoIn congress, with another law.
- hwillis 2y ago> But from a high level there is nothing stopping congress from regulating any instance foreign trade. Incorrect- federal powers do not override constitutional rights like free speech.
- throwkja 2y agoAmerica has the right to ban since china banned all American tech companies from operating in their nation but this means America could never ever talk about freedom of doing business bs
- vehemenz 2y agoChina bans US businesses because it has an autocratic, ethnocratic government. The US is banning a Chinese business for obvious national security reasons.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoNot too obvious to me unless there's some actual evidence of any of these claims of "China takes American data". They take as much data as any of the various other manufacturing processes we outsourced over the decades.
- vehemenz 2y agoIf you're comparing outsourcing, mutual trade agreements that benefit both countries, to intelligence gathering, copyright/patent theft, media influence, etc., you're probably not going to arrive at a serious position here (not to mention the downvote).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- suraci 2y agoI need to print this sentence out, frame it, paste it on the Tiananmen's wall.
- mrighele 2y agoAnswering tit-for-tat is fine, even if the thing being done is bad in itself (e.g. waging war is bad, but should a country not use weapons to defend itself when invaded?). If else US and in general the West should have acted earlier: if American companies where free to operate in China and influence its people I doubt this ban would have been enacted.
- stevenhubertron 2y agoThis makes it easier for those 170M users to find new homes with President Musk's X or any of Zuck's advertising products.
- paganel 2y ago[flagged]
- jmyeet 2y agoThis whole thing is both silly and unsurprising. Everybody knows the fearmongering about Chinese control and manipulation is a smokescreen. The real reason is that Tiktok doesn't fall in line with State Department propaganda [1]. It's noteworthy that SCOTUS sidestepped this issue entirely by not even considering the secret evidence the government brought. That being said, it's unsurprising because you can make a strictly commerce-based argument that has nothing to do with speech and the First Amendment. Personally, I think reciprocity would've been a far more defensible position, in that US apps like Google, FB, Youtube and IG are restricted from the Chinese market so you could demand recipricol access on strictly commerce grounds. The best analogy is the restriction on foreign ownership of media outlets, which used to be a big deal. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, US companies would defend themselves from foreign takeovers by buying TV stations, for example. That's basically the premise of the movie Working Girl, as one (fictional) example. Politically, the big loser here is Biden and the Democratic Party because they will be (rightly) blamed for banning a highly popular app (even though the Congressional vote was hugely bipartisan) and Trump will likely get credit for saving Tiktok. [1]: https://x.com/Roots_Action/status/1767941861866348615 https://x.com/Roots_Action/status/1767941861866348615
- cryptonector 2y agoWe don't know that the secret evidence was that TT doesn't promote U.S. propaganda. We can surmise, but speculation can be wrong. Besides, the justices might simply have revealed that secret evidence, had it really been just that. But they claim they didn't even consider the secret evidence. Unclear whether they took a peek, but they say they didn't consider it.
- belorn 2y agoAn implementation detail that might be interesting is that the discussed method of the ban is to use the same ISP block that is used for torrent sites (and other websites). This may be a bit of relevance when talking about how banning a website get applied through the legal system.
- hedora 2y agoThat’s a good point. Apparently VPN popularity is already exploding in states that PornHub had to block. Maybe we will finally get the decentralized computer network we thought we were building in the 1990s (as a combination of software overlays and point to point unlicensed wireless links).
- whimsicalism 2y agotrump finally got the (fire)wall he wanted
- DanAtC 2y agoWhat ISPs blocks? American ISPs don't block anything. The US government prefers to seize domains and hosting. We're not (yet) like the UK or EU where rights holders can click a button and have IPs blocked without due process.
- nickelpro 2y agoThat's not how the law works. The law levies fines against distributors of the app, it doesn't ban possession or block the operation of the app itself. Ie, Google and Apple are forced to delist TikTok or face heavy fines
- xnx 2y agoI'm not sure how many dimensions this chess game is being played in, but if I were a lawmaker I would be wary of unintended consequences. Overall, I view this is as an admission to US populace and the world that the US is a weak-minded country that can easily be influenced by propaganda.
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- MaxHoppersGhost 2y ago> Overall, I view this is as an admission to US populace and the world that the US is a weak-minded country that can easily be influenced by propaganda. That is quite a silly assumption to make
- legitster 2y agoTikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created. The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive. There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction. Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
- ternnoburn 2y agoI wish it were a reckoning for social media, but reading here shows there's plenty of people here who are passionate about "China bad" and see this only through that one lens. And they seem to think it is strictly about TikTok.
- epolanski 2y agoAs an European citizen I'm very uneasy with US-based services having my data and I nuked everything from ages bar LinkedIn and HN. The hard part is de-googling.
- krunck 2y ago> The hard part is de-googling. But it's worth the effort.
- pc86 2y agoThe is a completely legitimate and not uncommon viewpoint. But is it relevant in the context of this thread?
- miroljub 2y agoYes. What is China for Americans, for us Europeans, is the USA. Some argue that it's even worse for Europeans because the Chinese military and government can't reach you while in the USA. And there is no safe place for Europeans from the US government, unless they move to China or Russia.
- iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago<< Second, I am pleased that the Court declines to consider the classified evidence the government has submitted to us but shielded from petitioners and their counsel. Ante, at 13, n. 3. Efforts to inject secret evidence into judicial proceedings present obvious constitutional concerns. Usually, “the evidence used to prove the Government’s case must be disclosed to the individual so that he has an opportunity to show that it is untrue.” Good grief.. I clearly wasn't following it closely, but even the fact that this could have become a thing ( SCOTUS ruling using 'redacted' as evidence ) is severely disheartening.
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- cryptonector 2y ago> but even the fact that this could have become a thing So you're upset that the Biden admin attempted to sway the court with secret evidence. But any admin always could behave in that way, and nothing you can do can stop that. The fact that the court decided to ignore that secret evidence should be comforting. Sure, nothing forces the court in the future to stick to that, but this is always true as to everything.
- iugtmkbdfil834 2y agoFriend. Why would you insist on painting this in a simple political framework and, more amusingly, assume I follow it that same framework? I am not upset. I am disheartened, dispirited, demoralized, and dismayed, but I am not upset. If that is the case, why would you start the sentence with a 'so' suggesting you made a leap of logic, where nothing of the sort actually occured given that it is almost a complete non-sequitur. I am open to a conversation, but I think, and please correct me as needed, that your political bias blinds you in ways that affect any and all discussions.
- cryptonector 2y agoI took "disheartened" as "upset". Replace "upset" in my above reply with "disheartened". I'm quite sure my reply evinced no political bias. I was saying that any administration could do this sort of thing at any time, and any SCOTUS could accept it when the administration does it. We can expect political animals to do this, so it's not surprising when they do it, but we can also expect the SCOTUS not to go there, and they didn't, so what exactly is disheartening? That politicians are so fallible? Whereas I would think it disheartening only of the court actually used the secret evidence. But they didn't.
- mrkramer 2y agoUS should ban all Chinese software apps and services as long as CCP does not allow Google and Facebook to operate in China. As a matter of fact not only Google and Facebook but all the Western internet social apps and services should be allowed in China. We want equal opportunity and equal rights for business. This way it is not fair play, it is botched market economy.
- MaxHoppersGhost 2y agoThank goodness! I don’t know how anyone thinks this isn’t a good idea for America.
- carstenhag 2y agoNot sure if sarcastic or not, I'll bite. If tiktok infringes some kind of data privacy laws, punish them. If the data privacy laws of the US are bad, improve them. But this? Just because some... not so bright soldiers use tiktok to upload videos of their base? What else is there so bad it requires a total ban? It seems like hypocrisy to me, when Meta, Google, X also have similar data available and also don't want to adhere to for example EU laws.
- pr337h4m 2y agoDo you think a Great Firewall of America is a good thing? Because that is what this ruling enables.
- misiti3780 2y agoDo you think TikToc is a net positive for the world or the US?
- yibg 2y agoIsn't that the same argument used by China for why the GFW is needed? The US allows all sorts of things that can be argued as net negative (e.g. smoking).
- yyhhsj0521 2y agoIt is not. But not banning it for geopolitical reasons is a net positive for everyone.
- jMyles 2y agoIt is a net negative. Attempts at intervention by legacy states over the evolution of the internet (which will obviously fail on sufficiently long time-scales) are also a net negative. Two net negatives do not make a net positive.
- atlasunshrugged 2y agoGreat twitter thread analyzing the Supreme Court decision from a former Congressional Staffer who now leads a think tank doing tech-focused policy work: https://x.com/marcidale/status/1880274466619691247 https://x.com/marcidale/status/1880274466619691247
- rvz 2y agoThe clock is still "tiking" for TikTok. As usual, the digital crack / cocaine addicts of this generation are now running to Red note for their next fresh hit in less than 48 hours. Nothing's changed. Just a new brand of digital crack / cocaine has overtaken another one who's supply is getting cut off by the US. Although a fine would be better than an outright ban as I said before.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoLooks like India set the way here. Wonder what it holds for US India relations.
- est 2y agochina banned US apps like since forever.
- russdpale 2y agoGood, now do it for the rest of them, from linkd-in to facebook.
- elzbardico 2y agoThis is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content. Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries. Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content. Will it keep being a english first space? Will it survive/thrive? How the content is going to evolve? What does this means in terms of global cultural influence? Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it? Will this backfire for the US?
- hshshshshsh 2y agoInstagram and Facebook is more popular outside the US and China than TikTok.
- schroeding 2y agoAt least in Germany, for Gen Z, Facebook is quite dead and Instagram co-exists with TikTok, both with >70% of the cohort [1] using them. There is no clear winner. Anecdata, but for freshmen, TikTok is way more popular. TikTok-based social media campaigns also e.g. managed to unexpectedly swing an election in Romania (for Georgescu, was later annulled). [1] https://www.absatzwirtschaft.de/tiktok-vs-instagram-ein-vergleich-262319/ https://www.absatzwirtschaft.de/tiktok-vs-instagram-ein-verg... - sorry, I only found a German source
- gunian 2y agoWhy do you think Instagram is immune from being used in social media based campaign? The only difference between TikTok and Instagram is the recommendation engine they use
- schroeding 2y ago... I do not think that it's immune? I don't see where I implied this, sorry if I was unclear. ^^' This specific campaign was done via TikTok, though, and had massive impact, which shows that TikTok has heavy usage and is popular, outside of the US and China. (I'm not American, I have no horse in this "ban foreign TikTok" race. :D)
- Plasmoid 2y agoCan someone ELI5 how/why this is legal?
- johnnyanmac 2y agoOne of the few federal powers in the constitution includes "control over foreign commerce". Somehow a Chinese website is now "foreign commerce". China bad. I think that covers it.
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- Ylpertnodi 2y agoIs there a difference between the communists and the capitalists spying on 'US'?
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- SiempreViernes 2y agoTelling others what they must want is an example of that famous freedom of expression, right?
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- 65 2y agoDoes this only apply to TikTok or any other "foreign adversary" application that collects user data? What's stopping another version of TikTok from being created, effectively defeating the purpose of banning a single app?
- hshshshshsh 2y agoIt doesn't defeat the purpose. You can just make a new ban. There would be less friction since there is already an example.
- mplanchard 2y agoYou could have read either the law or the decision, linked in the comments here, to get the answer to this question. From the decision: > Second, the Act establishes a general designa- > tion framework for any application that is both (1) operated > by a “covered company” that is “controlled by a foreign ad- > versary,” and (2) “determined by the President to present a > significant threat to the national security of the United > States,” following a public notice and reporting process. > §2(g)(3)(B). In broad terms, the Act defines “covered com- > pany” to include a company that operates an application > that enables users to generate, share, and view content and > has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users. §2(g)(2)(A). > The Act excludes from that definition a company that oper- > ates an application “whose primary purpose is to allow us- > ers to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel in- > formation and reviews.” §2(g)(2)(B).
- 65 2y agoThis still doesn't really directly answer the question in plain English. So would that mean Red Note would get banned as well?
- mplanchard 2y agoIf it gains more than 1 million active users and the president deems it to represent a potential threat, yes Edit: assuming they, like tiktok, refuse to divest to a company based in the US Edit: also assuming it is a foreign company. I’ve never even heard of it prior to this comment section
- 999900000999 2y ago>In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act which President Joe Biden signed in April. Glad to see when it comes to protecting tech monopolies the wisest among us are in full agreement. Silly things like a right to a speedy trial are up for debate though. I think this is a massive over reach. You can argue to restrict social media to those over 18, but Americans should have a right to consume content they choose. What's next, banning books by Chinese authors? Banning Chinese Americans from holding key positions in social media companies, after all they might have uncles in the CCP! Follow the money. TikTok is an issue for Facebook, BYD cars are an issue for Tesla.
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago> I think this is a massive over reach. You can argue to restrict social media to those over 18, but Americans should have a right to consume content they choose. Ain't about that. > What's next, banning books by Chinese authors? No > Banning Chinese Americans from holding key positions in social media companies, after all they might have uncles in the CCP! No.
- misiti3780 2y agoThis is great news!
- xyst 2y agoI can agree to an extent that TT (and social media in general) is an addictive app and harmful to youth and society in general. Spend enough time on these types of apps and suddenly your worldview is just whatever the TT algorithm pushes to you. It’s not entirely unprecedented either. There was the case of FB and Myanmar/Burma which strongly promoted military propaganda. This unfortunately lead to violence against Rohingya. But the argument is very weak in my opinion, and wouldn’t be a reason to outright ban it. Prohibition never works. The only thing that does work is fixing our society. In the USA, we have increasing wage disparity, increasing homelessness, increasing poverty, food scarcity, water scarcity, worsening climate change related events (see Palisades fire…), and a shit ton of other issues that will remain unsolved for at least the next 4 years. Yet leadership is doing almost nothing to address this. Neoclassical economics and neoliberalism have outright ruined this country. Fuck the culture war the billionaire class is trying to initiate.
- xnx 2y ago> I can agree to an extent that TT (and social media in general) is an addictive app and harmful to youth and society in general. You could say this about Fox News, scratch-off lottery tickets, Cocomelon, or anything you don't like.
- medhir 2y agoIn a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk. Have witnessed first-hand the threats by foreign state actors penetrating US-based cloud infrastructure. And it’s not like any of our domestic corporations are practicing the type of security hygiene necessary to prevent those intrusions. So idk, the whole thing feels like a farce that will mainly benefit Zuck and co while doing very little to ultimately protect our interests. We would be much better off actually addressing data privacy and passing legislation that regulates every company in a consistent manner.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y agoIt's questionable what a more functional democracy would actually do, since there hasn't really been one in history. There's been other forms of democracy, but they've all had their flaws, and none of them so far have acted in the interests of all the people in that country.
- medhir 2y agoI mean, however flawed the EU may be, I think they are earnestly trying to protect the average person from the current paradigm of abusive data collection. Perfect can’t be the enemy of good.
- Always42 2y agoIsn’t the EU trying to ban encryption? Do you really think they give a crap about average person
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- wafflemaker 2y agoAren't you using USB C for all devices? Don't companies have to disclose selling your data online? Right to repair? EU is made of many forces. The cryptography ban is stupid, but EU doesn't homogenously support it. It's an ocean away from dark patterns on every step and people thinking that having to spend 3 hours on phone to cancel a subscription is "normal".
- joejohnson 2y ago[flagged]
- spencerflem 2y agoThank you, finally a real patriot in the comments
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- duxup 2y agoI’d be fine with a general rule that if China (or anyone) places limits on US social media that effectively limits / bans them… same goes for Chinese social media platforms. Done.
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoEverybody already moved to red book and are starting to recognize that the US is just an aging colonialist with nothing to offer the future https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/hXe9HsWslW https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/hXe9HsWslW The GenZ folks (including my kids) that I interact with on a day-to-day basis are much happier on that application and they’re starting to realize that the US is not what it pretends to be That doesn’t mean any place is better (though possible) it simply means people started finally realizing the truth of the United States
- vehemenz 2y agoChina is an ethnostate. What does China offer the future to anyone who's not Chinese? Chinese nationals in the United States have substantially more rights than they do in China.
- greenavocado 2y agoChina has 1.4 billion people. Americans can learn from them.
- xdennis 2y agoYou use colonialist as a slur, but China has literal colonies in Tibet and the Uyghur land.
- suraci 2y ago[flagged]
- mrighele 2y ago> That's quite interesting, because most of Chinese can only understand what's being colonized, but never understand what's colonizing and genocide. You are saying that Chinese people don't even realize their colonialism and their genocides. Unless you're sarcastic, it is not the flex you think it is. Also LOL at you using "white" as a slur.
- jrockway 2y agoI have mixed feelings. The Supreme Court did the right thing; the democratically elected government did decide upon a ban, so it should likely continue as was made law. I am not sure that banning forms of media feels good. The point of free speech is to let everyone say their thing and for people to be smart enough to ignore the bad ideas. I am not sure the general population of vertical video viewers does part 2, however, so I get the desire to force people to not engage. The algorithmic boosting has had lots of weird side effects; increased political polarization, people being constantly inundated with rage bait, and even "trends" that get kids to vandalize their school. (My favorite was when I asked why ice cream is locked up in the freezer at CVS. Apparently it was a TikTok "trend" to lick the ice cream and then put it back in the freezer, so now an employee has to escort you from the ice cream area to the cashier to ensure that you pay for it before you lick it. Not sure how much of this actually happened versus how companies were afraid of it happening, however.) With all this in mind, it's unclear to me whether TikTok is uniquely responsible for this effect. I feel like Instagram, YouTube Shorts, etc. have the potential to cause the exact same problems (and perhaps already have). Even the legacy media is not guilt free here. Traditional newspapers ownership has changed over the years and they all seem pretty biased in a certain direction, and I am pretty sure that the local news is responsible for a lot of reactionary poor public policy making. (Do I dare mention that I think the whole New Jersy drone thing was just mass hysteria?) Now, everyone is saying that regulating TikTok has nothing to do with its content, but I'm pretty sure that's just a flat-out lie. First, Trump wanted to ban it because everything on there was negative towards him. Then right-wing influencers got a lot of traction on the platform, and suddenly Democrats want to ban it and Trump wants to reverse the ban. It's pretty transparent what's going on there. I agree with the other comments that say if data collection is the issue, we shouldn't let American companies do it either. That seems very fair to regulate and I'm in favor of that. The best effect will be someone with a lot of money and media reach standing up against app stores. I can live with that.
- tuan 2y agoThis seems like a bandaid, maybe the real national security is that US companies cannot build a product that can compete with TikTok.
- 65 2y agoI don't really agree with this line of thinking if you consider the addictive part of TikTok. Imagine the US legalized and exported meth. All of a sudden, the US is "competing" because everyone is hooked on drugs. We had Opium wars in a somewhat similar vein as the social media wars.
- suraci 2y agoHahaha
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoThe sitting president of the United States of America was banned by almost every major AMERICAN company, and even some Canadian companies (Shopify), yet we're going after Tiktok. No Chinese ever banned the sitting president of the United States.
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- nickthegreek 2y agoCompany banned user who fragrantly and continually violated TOS, regardless of who they were... the horror!
- xdennis 2y agoThese are the tweets he was banned for: > The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!! > To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th. Twitter said the first tweet "is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an 'orderly transition'" and the second is "being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate". So they banned him because they wanted to not because of TOS violations. If you can interpret "I will not attend" as "It's illegitimate" you can interpret anything as anything and ban anyone for any TOS provision.
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- DudeOpotomus 2y agoTikTok is fun but it has degraded into a commercialized mess of copycats, IP theft and scams. Like everything else that is commercialized on the internet. It has a lifespan of a few years before it becomes unusable to all but the meek and the ignorant. A new service will emerge and replace it within months. The truth is their algorithm is about as complicated as a HS algebra test.
- Zak 2y agoI'm surprised TikTok isn't trying to push a web version, hosted outside the USA as an alternative to shutting down. While it would be difficult for a new social media service to gain traction that way, TikTok has a huge established audience.
- btbuildem 2y agoI wonder about that: wouldn't the law force internet providers to blanket block any and all web versions of TikTok?
- Zak 2y agoI don't think so. It probably stops them from using US-based CDNs to host content, but that only makes it less efficient, not inaccessible.
- hiq 2y agoIsn't https://www.tiktok.com https://www.tiktok.com exactly this?
- Zak 2y agoSort of. In a mobile browser, it almost immediately tries to get me to download the app, which is the opposite of pushing the web version in a marketing sense. Pushing would be telling app users that the app will become unavailable soon and they should use TikTok on the web.
- xnx 2y ago> I'm surprised TikTok isn't trying to push a web version, They have a web version that's surprisingly capable. Not sure if tiktok.com will be blocked on Sunday.
- iamnotsure 2y ago[flagged]
- shahzaibmushtaq 2y agoTikTok is also banned in China. For the Chinese market, Douyin is there from the same company ByteDance. Americans need to understand this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation.
- e_i_pi_2 2y ago> this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation I'd argue that it is an emotional decision for both, and it does seem ironic that the US would be following China in restricting a platform that people see as a major tool for free speech. Whether you agree with that or not the optics are terrible, and the users are very aware of it. If this is really a big concern then they would also ban facebook/instagram/snapchat, but they aren't being included in this, despite having a worse track record.
- cooper_ganglia 2y agoFacebook/Instagram/Snapchat are not functionally owned & operated by an unfriendly foreign government that would have incentive to destabilize the USA via civil unrest by influencing our algorithms.
- randomcatuser 2y agoTheoretically that can happen. But functionally, that hasn't happened - and in fact, the primary incentive is for that not to happen (bad business, etc). I think there would need to be some basis in fact for these claims, right?
- e_i_pi_2 2y agoThey are owned and operated by unfriendly actors with no allegiance to the government - they just need to be profitable. If there was a publicly owned and operated alternative I would feel better about that, but for example Facebook has been shown to experiment with their algorithm and increase depression rates in the past. If the argument is that the US should own/operate it then I'm not opposed to that because we could remove the profit incentive, but then meta/snapchat would have to become parts of the government instead of independent companies, and with them already being global I don't see how that would actually be implemented. Right now the proposal is to continue letting them do all the harm and data collection, so the reasoning for the change doesn't match up with the actions being taken.
- Funes- 2y agoI'd love to see what a global ban for TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and X would look like. Even better: massive breakdown of iOS and Android installations. Just for a couple of weeks, then revert to the nightmarish status quo we live in. Now that would be an interesting experiment. The change in people's behavior would be palpable for those fourteen days, I bet. It'd be so much fun.
- gekoxyz 2y agoWe got something similar with social interactions during covid lockdowns (if your country had those). Btw i feel like people would go literally MAD, I can see it when just WhatsApp crashses for just a couple hours (doesn't happen often but I remember people's reactions when it happened). You can get a feel of what it would do for yourself by getting a dumbphone and limiting yourself from accessing social media.
- Funes- 2y ago>You can get a feel of what it would do for yourself by getting a dumbphone and limiting yourself from accessing social media. I already do that. It's the most alienating and pessimism-inducing thing. I'd just love to see a world where people aren't hunched over, staring at a screen for 90% of their waking life.
- switchbak 2y ago> It's the most alienating and pessimism-inducing thing Not using a smart phone makes you feel like that?
- Funes- 2y agoHave you tried going to a classroom full of young adults like yourself in the last eight to ten years, without using one? I did, for years. You'll feel like there's no point in trying to socialize with anyone most of the time, as there's a huge barrier between them and yourself. Even when the phones aren't physically involved, people are way, way less social now than back then. Engaging in spontaneous conversations or interactions with people you aren't really familiar with is something that isn't seen in a positive light as much anymore. It's even panic-inducing or seen as ill-advised for many people, in environments that should be very conducive to such things, and safe for them to take place (college, for instance).
- russli1993 2y ago[flagged]
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- ttrgsafs 2y agoSo what are the real dangers? - Frying teenagers' brains with short attention deficit videos. That one seems logical, but others are doing it, too. - Political indoctrination. - Compromised politicians who can be blackmailed: The big one, but a certain island run by the daughter of a certain intelligence agency operative was largely ignored. - Corporate espionage: Probably not happening on TikTok. Certainly happening in the EU using US products.
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- jetrink 2y agoLook at what foreign adversaries are already actively doing: working to turn Americans against each other. Social media is the perfect tool to spread discord. Russia has troll farms that create fake news stories, manipulated photos, and incendiary memes targeted at both sides of the political spectrum. They've even orchestrated in-person protests and counter-protests to those protests, though those efforts have been less successful. Now imagine that instead of merely using fake user accounts to this end, an adversary controlled an entire social network, including its algorithm and its content guidelines and could tailor manipulative content on an individual basis.
- spencerflem 2y agoOr, equally as importantly, imagine if US oligarchs used to be doing that and can't as effectively anymore.
- suraci 2y agofunny many of us(Chinese) also believe that online disputes and the moral decay of teenagers are all part of a conspiracy by the US. It's possible that we all wrong or we all right about it, or one of us are right
- spencerflem 2y agoUS Govt has a lot more limited say on what content is pushed or neutered. Content relating to the genocide happening in Palestine for example, is much more restricted on US sites.
- xbmcuser 2y agoThis is ban is only because US has no control over the content and organic anti Israel content was not censored like it was in all other us social platforms.
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- stiltzkin 2y ago[dead]
- ritcgab 2y agoBanning an app because of China's threat only makes you resemble China itself.
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- Frederation 2y agoGood riddance.
- adriand 2y agoWhat I love is that apparently tons of Americans are signing up for a different Chinese social video app whose name is being translated as “Red Note”. I would love if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app.
- tmnvdb 2y agoWhy would you love that?
- arresin 2y agoHe’s using sarcasm
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- ethagnawl 2y agoIt would likely lay bare just how much any of the TikTok detractors actually cared about privacy/security concerns versus cultural ones.
- theoreticalmal 2y agoSometimes it’s fun to watch chaos unfold. It’s subjectively entertaining
- adriand 2y agoSomeone wrote, "Because it's punk rock" and I think that sums it up. It's an act of rebellion.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app No need. If it’s Chinese and has more than 100mm (EDIT: 1mm) users, Commerce can designate it a foreign-adversary controlled application and designate it for app-store delisting.
- Pete-Codes 2y agoEveryone has been in denial - this was always the most likely outcome.
- Flatcircle 2y agoSurprised some American billionaire hasn't thrown 50 Milly into like 5 clones of tik Tok to see which one takes off? there should be an easy pivot to an American equivalent but there hasn't been? Or has there?
- throwaway199956 2y agoBut why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA. Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publications were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA. What changed now? Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed. Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
- blindriver 2y agoFirst amendment rights is the only argument that I agree with keeping TikTok alive. However if there is proof that China is manipulating the algorithm to feed the worst manipulative content to Americans then I do think there’s a national security concern here.
- p_j_w 2y agoThere are no carve outs for national security in the First Amendment.
- nickelpro 2y agoThe SCOTUS opinion does not rely on a national security interest to justify itself, merely that the ban is content neutral and thus is subject to intermediate scrutiny.
- throwaway199956 2y agoWhat does intermediate scrutiny mean?
- nickelpro 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny
- submeta 2y agoWe all know the Elephant in the room, that Israel‘s genocide in Palestine led to lots of criticism on Tik Tok, and that led the Israel lobby to push a Tik Tok ban.
- tradertef 2y agoYes, the "we have a Tiktok problem" statement is proof of that.
- rabid_turtle 2y ago[flagged]
- rabid_turtle 2y ago[flagged]
- trinsic2 2y agoWait, where's the Facebook/Meta ban? Is unlawful data collection only unlawful if it's done under a foreign adversary? I guess not to the US Government where their interests align with adversarial data collection practices against its own people.
- nickelpro 2y agoFacebook / Meta are not controlled by a foreign adversary as designated by the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Thus they cannot become subject to the distribution restrictions designated by that law. The core factor in the law is control by a foreign adversary, it's not a law that outlaws data collection.
- dawnerd 2y ago60% of Bytedance is owned by outside of China investors. I fail to see how that makes it controlled by China.
- nickelpro 2y agoThe law does not care about who financially owns the company, only about designations of control made by the president (along with a 30 day notice). The law actually skips this step for ByteDance / TikTok and directly adds them to the list of "Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications" along with the enactment of the law.
- patmcc 2y agoThe argument is that China has a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_share https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_share in Bytedance; that despite only owning (on paper) 1% or whatever, they still have effective control over the whole company, if they so desire. (I don't know if that's true, but it strikes me as plausible) edit: you can make an analogy to e.g. Meta - Zuckerberg doesn't strictly own a majority, but he does have very strong control because of the particular corporate structure.
- trinsic2 2y ago
- the_real_cher 2y agoI think in the future people will look back at kids on social media, like we look back at kids smoking cigarettes.
- cyclecount 2y agoThis is like paying doctors to say only evil foreign cigarettes cause cancer. Buy American!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- the_arun 2y agoThousands of US content creators were earning on TikTok. Now they need to migrate over to other alternatives. Also this is a reminder for all content creators to always plan for failovers. Though I would assume most them already are on multiple platforms.
- javier123454321 2y agoNot at all the case except for the largest ones. It is hard to grasp the distribution capacity of TikTok. It WILL put your content in front of people interested in it. It's crazy good at that. Also, a lot of money came in from the live streams within the app.
- maeil 2y agoMany people here upset about this. Here's what recently happened in Romania, all through TikTok. Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country, waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by getting their chosen candidate elected. Without TikTok, this would not have happened. I have talked about this with Romanians who concur. In the real world, there are two responses to this. 1. "Tough luck, it's too late now, should just stand by and watch the country get taken over". 2. "Ban it and future popular big platforms controlled by a foreign adversary". That's it. We'd all love for something inbetween. It's not happening, all such options would end up becoming 1). That's the state of the modern day world. The facts that A. They seem to rather abandon the app rather than receive tens of billions by selling it B. "The Chinese government also weighed a contingency plan that would have X owner Elon Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations" C. The remaining mountains of evidence that it is a CCP tool Mean that the arguments of Congress here are valid and this is the right decision. It is a tool directly controlled by a foreign adversary, for geopolitical, not profit-oriented, purposes. This is nothing like the PATRIOT act or other moves by governments that claim "protect the children" or "protect against terrorism" for some ulterior motive of surveillance or worse. It might be a rarity, but in this case the claims by Congress are factual and a sufficiently good reason.
- cyclecount 2y agoThis is laughable, even with your depiction of the events. The candidate in question (Georgescu) had a very popular platform, and was supported by a large bases or Romanians on the left and right. He was, however, opposed to further expansion of NATO. If these ideas are too scary to let general public even consider, then democracies have to step in and censor the media. And that begins by banning TikTok, the largest platform where a narrative like this can bypass the existing power structures.
- abeppu 2y ago> Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country, waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by getting their chosen candidate elected. But in the US, Russia also has waged enormous disinformation campaigns on US-based social media networks. Taking the problem of foreign (dis|mis)information, election interference, etc seriously requires that we do more than ban one network based on the ownership of that company. After TikTok gets shut down, Chinese influence operations can still use Twitter/X, Meta, Reddit etc. We need better tools and regulations to make these campaigns visible stoppable in real-time, rather than just banning one network while leaving up multiple other vulnerable networks. This ban is political theater, where the US can act like it's doing something while not having to address the harder parts of the problem. > A. They seem to rather abandon the app rather than receive tens of billions by selling it I think this is weak evidence of them being a mostly political tool. Valuations based on their actual use are well above what anyone has actually offered to pay. And disentangling US operations from the rest of TikTok would not be straight-forward; do you merely cleave it in two? Given network effects, would cutting off the US component to sell it make both the US and non-US portions less valuable? https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/15/tiktoks-us-unit-could-be-worth-as-much-as-50-billion-in-a-sale.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/15/tiktoks-us-unit-could-be-wor...
- commandlinefan 2y agoAs a free speech absolutist, I hope that what comes out of this is a completely anonymized, uncensorable alternative. We've gotten the arbitrary censorship walled garden social media sites mostly because until now there hasn't been any particular reason for most users to step outside of them.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fsflover 2y agoYou mean PeerTube? Perhaps it could also be combined ith I2P.
- commandlinefan 2y agoExactly - there are technical solutions, they just rely on mass uptake in order to work.
- IntrnlCmplrErr 2y agoI think many have tried but face an uphill battle of unless a significant majority is willing to relocate, the prevailing content will be things that are deemed undesirable/bannable on other platforms, which distracts potential users. Having a completely decentralized solution also comes with the issue of future governance. If a single entity controls the direction (even if the spec is open and you can host it yourself), then it's not decentralized. If you end up with a consortium then you'll face the same issue of email, innovation is hard to spread as you need multiple actors with competing interests to agree. If your vision is having multiple entities providing different experiences tailored to individual taste, they might start consolidating and effectively forming several disjoint platforms. p.s. The web can be said to be decentralized but it's dominated by large players all the way from hosting to browsers. If all three major browsers don't agree on your proposal, it's effectively dead. Who's to say entrenched players won't arise in your vision of a decentralized social media?
- daedrdev 2y agojust think a tiny bit about why that would be a bad idea
- xnx 2y agoWhat happens to the copyright on these videos?
- wslh 2y agoI only take this as a geopolitical decision. Not saying that the US couldn't do that (like any other country) but adding arguments that also apply to other social media apps as well is, IMHO, FUD.
- bnetd 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- btbuildem 2y agoIt's hard not to see this as a continuation of the American corporate interests controlling the media their population consumes. TikTok I think has the largest share of American's attention out of all the social media? Doesn't seem to matter which clown flaps about in the wind at the oval office, control of the narrative holds a steady keel for decades. This is the same story, in a new medium. Sure, as the "sides" in culture wars take turns "ruling", certain things are allowed or disallowed. The real consequential stuff, ideas and patterns that would lead to the empowerment of the working class vs hoarders of capital -- all the back to basic education, critical thinking, civic engagement, and the implicit/explicit deprioritization of any and all that in favour of obedient consumerism. With the "new" tech they've discovered they can really shape people's opinions, tweak the emotional charge to make people act in such unconsidered ways, en masse, against each others' and their own best interest -- of course they'll hold on to that at any cost. It's unprecedented, though not unimagined. I wonder what will fill this space. Over all the rises and falls of the various blinking nonsense, I've never really seen people go -back- to an app / service / etc. They all just wither away as the next new things comes up.
- zavertnik 2y ago> It's hard not to see this as a continuation of the American corporate interests controlling the media their population consumes. Do you find the natsec argument to be compelling considering: > TikTok I think has the largest share of American's attention out of all the social media?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hunglee2 2y agoChina's vision of the Internet turned out to be more prescient than we realised at the time. Everyone is going to their own Great Firewall. In hindsight, it will seem crazy that we ever allowed media platforms to be controlled by foreign governments - especially ones which like to seed revolution, social unrest and regime change
- cryptonector 2y agoThis law does not impose a Great Wall on the Internet in the U.S.
- lintkw 2y ago[dead]
- reverendsteveii 2y agoIf what TikTok is doing is dangerous when TikTok does it why is it safe when everyone else does it? This is theft, pure and simple. The government-industrial complex is trying to steal this app. The private side wants to make money and the public side wants yet another way to control narratives on social media much the way President Musk does on twitter.
- Fischgericht 2y agoThe key issue here now is: The future, freedom, international policy etc of you US guys no longer depends on democratic structures in ANY way whatsoever. Who pays Trump most, wins. Who does what Musk wants, wins. From what I know, there is no second Oligarch-run corrupt country that would come close to this. This is worse than China and Russia combined. Sorry, not meant to bash our US HN friends at all, just an observation from another western country targeted by MuskTrump that has yet to follow the US lead (which they will), so we still have some time left to be in shock and awe about what is going on on your side of the pond for a while. FFS.
- Fischgericht 2y agoCommenting on your own posts sucks, but let me add: The current status of insanity is that the US is threatening to invade a EU country by force to annex it to be able to exploit natural resources and gain a strategic military position. Again, let me repeat, as very clearly a lot of people are now completely numb to insanity and just filter it out: THE US IS THREATENING TO INVADE A EU COUNTRY. YES. SERIOUSLY. Was US Headlines for one day, now drowned in other madness already. Anyway, you won't have any democratic say on this anyway, so let's just gamble: Jeff Yass will bribe Trump heavily, and Trump will then lift the ban next week, no matter what his Supreme Court sock puppets want.
- _r4nc 2y agoWhat does this shutdown mean for US employees of Bytedance? Will they shut down their US offices or continue business as usual working from the US but only serving users outside?
- dbl000 2y ago[dead]
- IncreasePosts 2y agoWhy was a sale of TikTok allowed if the bill was anything to do with banning dissenting viewpoints?
- dbl000 2y agoI didn't see a sale of TikTok anywhere? The main point of issue I have with the bill is that the text of the bill [0] specifies that any company if it is owned by a "foreign adversary" (as defined by Congress) and the President deems it to be a threat will be forced to divest or stop participating in the American market. Part of the core reason that TikTok didn't want to divest was that they had ownership of a damn good algorithm and didn't want to share it. It's not a big leap from this to banning other companies that might have competing algorithms that could eat into major US corporations. If Egypt designs a better X does Elon get to urge it's bad because it's a threat? I also think it's a pretty badly written bill in general. The bill won't punish or ByteDance. It punishes the digital infrastructure companies like Apple, Google and Oracle who provide the ability to download the app or the database. I'm not defending TikTok or claiming it's not an security threat. I just think that the bill is poorly written and doesn't deal with the actual root of the problem. [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
- ryanmcbride 2y agoBecause if it's owned by a US company the US government will have more control over its content? Especially if it gets bought by one of the country's oligarchs? Honestly seems pretty obvious.
- w0m 2y agoI like more details/discussion; but the take in this podcast feels incredibly naive and conspiratorial; going isnofaras to blame Israeli dark money for the 'ban' while ignoring the legally mandated CCP integration w/ large companies (while claiming "i have no way to know if there is integration" despite it being easily searchable).
- MrPapz 2y agoIf the youth of the rest of the world keeps using it, the US culture attention will be replaced by something else. This might be another step in the US journey of losing their role as a superpower nation to become just another country.
- nthingtohide 2y agoYour concern about losing the dominant culture status is useless. Recent geopolitical situation clearly shows soft power is useless. Hardpower is where everything is at.
- HamsterDan 2y ago[flagged]
- Prbeek 2y agoA globally used social media app without American narrative and propaganda. A huge loss for American soft power.
- curiousllama 2y agoMaybe. Network effects are strong, though. I wonder how much losing access to the US market sets back TT's financial & competitive positions
- tboyd47 2y agoYou mean the young people now on Rednote complaining that they can't buy groceries?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI love all the comments saying that the Supreme Court doesn't understand the first amendment.
- xnx 2y agoIt would be interesting to see TikTok go full scorched earth and become a mega pirate movie, music, TV, streaming sports site.
- deadbabe 2y agoThat will never work. The TikTok audience doesn’t have the attention span to support such long form content.
- xnx 2y agoAs long as it supports split-screen with Subway Surfers.
- etblg 2y agoFunnily enough there are full movies uploaded on TikTok split up in to parts, they come across my feed every once in a while.
- xnx 2y agoExactly. Why not make it official? I feel like split up movies peaked awhile ago ("chop chop movie boy"), but is now limited to live video with a person in the foreground.
- deadbabe 2y agoI’ve seen these too on Instagram and TikTok, but usually it’s some tense part of a movie and the scene encourages me to basically go watch the whole movie, which then turns out to not be as great as that one curated clip.
- dluan 2y agorumors are that XHS wont region split, in which case this is setting up to a monumental event in the evolution and future of the internet. words can't really describe how big of a decision this is going to be.
- CryptoBanker 2y agoThat's the opposite of what I've heard https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall-off-tiktok-refugees-to-prevent-us-influence-on-chinese-users/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
- dluan 2y agoArstechnica quoting a random reddit poster is not the same as the people I've been talking to lol
- glurblur 2y agoYeah, from my other reply > I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
- skyyler 2y ago>There has been no official announcement that such a change is coming, but Reddit commenters speculated You may want to read more than the headline next time.
- blast 2y agoCan you explain further? Sounds important but I don't understand.
- dluan 2y agoI jobbled down some thoughts a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42690618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42690618 But in a nut shell I think we're seeing outcome #2 play out, which has huge ramifications for the Chinese internet. Essentially this could become a precedent for all Chinese apps moving forward, and essentially the great firewall slowly dissolving. Trends have been slowly going that way with Bilibili, Douban, Kuaishou, etc, being more open to foreigners. There's still a lot to play out over the next few weeks as Trump assumes office and Tiktok CEO attends the inauguration. But there is just too much to comment about this entire situation, and most people who aren't Chinese or have experience with the great firewall are not going to comprehend just how monumental this whole ordeal has already been, and will be.
- computerex 2y agoFree speech.
- ezfe 2y agoCould TikTok develop a web app and direct users to it?
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoYes. TikTok.com is legal as long as it isn’t hosted here.
- zombiwoof 2y agoKinda funny we have a president that can and will just ignore the Supreme Court and laws
- siliconc0w 2y agoYeah! If China wants our data they'll have to buy it from data brokers like everyone else!
- hintymad 2y agoSince the ban is about not allowing app stores to host TT, can TT build its own App Store to offer the download of its app, given that Apple has to allow other app stores?
- Wingy 2y agoApple doesn't have to and doesn't choose to allow alternative app stores outside of the EU.
- zombiwoof 2y agoThis is just a roundabout way for Trump to get bribed
- sergiotapia 2y agoVery sad moment for the united states. Banning an app because the users are too critical of israel/support palestine, and they cannot control it.
- _yb2s 2y agoIt sounds like they are just banning it from new installs on app stores, won't people just browse to the URL to use it? The distinction between apps and websites seems arbitrary to me... especially since a huge fraction of apps seem to be effectively just a browser window with a single website locked in full screen. I have never before used tiktok, but just now as an experiment I opened it in a browser and scrolled for a minute- I had no problem accessing an apparently endless stream of mostly young women jumping up and down without bras, and young men vandalizing automobiles.
- curiousllama 2y agoTik Tok said they'll fully shut down. They'd rather go dark now than have a slowly-degrading experience, since users won't be able to update the apps.
- _yb2s 2y agoIt makes sense to shut down the app in the US immediately rather than be unable to update it- but does that necessarily mean they would also shut it down outside the US, or access directly via the website?
- hbn 2y agoWhy would the experience degrade because US users are disappearing? There are countries other than America.
- mcintyre1994 2y agoI think they just mean fully shut down in the US, as opposed to trying to serve existing US users as best they can.
- _yb2s 2y ago> There are countries other than America I've heard this myth repeated a few times online, but it sounds like an urban legend to me- and is easily disproven. If other countries exist, why do all of the movies take place in America? How come I once walked for hours in the same direction and was still in America?
- joshfee 2y agoI think the easiest answer to follow for "why is this not prevented by free speech protection" is "the fact that petitioners “cannot avoid or mitigate” the effects of the Act by altering their speech." (page 10 of this ruling, but is a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Broadcasting_System,_Inc._v._FCC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Broadcasting_System,_In...)
- curiousllama 2y agoThat's a great point. Hadn't thought about that angle
- yobid20 2y agoSimple answer. A chinese owned company has no such rights or protections. Free speech does not apply. The law also does not censor content (so no free speech violation anyway). The law simply bans the distribution of the app on marketplaces stores for reasons stated (national security). Big difference.
- concinds 2y agoThe EFF disagrees. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supreme-courts-decision-uphold-tiktok-ban https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supre...
- airstrike 2y agoThe Supreme Court doesn't.
- garbagewoman 2y agoThe supreme court says a lot of things.
- airstrike 2y agoSo does the EFF, but they have no say in legal matters, so their opinion here is irrelevant, whereas the Supreme Court's opinion is final.
- Melomomololo 2y ago[flagged]
- msie 2y agoSomehow people shilling for Russia can operate unimpeded in this country.
- toephu2 2y agoRemember, TikTok has also been banned in the largest country in the world by population for years now..
- throwawayq3423 2y agoIt's been banned in both of the largest countries.
- chaseadam17 2y agoIf US users continue to use the app via VPN, will that hinder the CCPs ability to weaponize it? If so, this outcome may be a good middle ground.
- curiousllama 2y agoThe whole thing with social media is network effects though. The added friction of a VPN, though small, is just so much larger than "click download, open app"
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoBut people might already have a VPN installed, thanks to the porn laws. Porn is the most powerful force on the Internet.
- buzzerbetrayed 2y agoYou won’t need a vpn. TikTok isn’t getting blocked. It’s getting delisted from the App Store. The app will still be on your phone.
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y agoThat's more of a blocker then. It won't get updates and new users.
- dluan 2y agoThis is not a good outcome, this is Meta shooting itself in the face.
- account266928 2y agoSurprised not more people are tying this to the Uber-Didi situation. IIRC it was a big complicated mess, but e.g. (this)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Law_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Law_of_the_Peopl...] seems to imply that e.g. Uber would have to use Chinese domestic servers subject to auditing, etc. Upshot is eventually Uber stopped dumping billions to try to get a foothold, and eventually divested their Chinese operations. (Also later Didi got kinda screwed imo right after their IPO in IMO a retaliatory move by the Chinese gov). So, is this TikTok ban one more shot in a new form of economic warfare? Is this type of war even new? Again, IMO, I think in instituting this law, this kind of stuff was on at least some of congress' minds.
- 0xB31B1B 2y agoDidi/Uber was more complicated than just data stuff. At a high level, chinese tech culture is an insane no holds barred cage match with very little legal structure to protect IP or employees or anything and most companies who enter fail at participating in this. Didi did a lot of corporate espionage and sabotage at uber china. They'd have "double agents" working for uber they'd pay to f stuff up. This type of thing is not practices in america because it is extremely illegal, but it was fine in China at not something that uber could do "back" to didi. There were people on the uber china fraud team paid by didi to tip off fraud networks on how to fraud. In the last year in china, they moved a ton of important work back to US offices because the china office was "compromised".
- account266928 2y agoIt is a lot more complicated, and I agree with the vibe of your comment based on some readings, but couldn't find much regarding sources about the sabotage. I found [this article](https://www.digitalaoban.com/why-uber-failed-in-china/ https://www.digitalaoban.com/why-uber-failed-in-china/), and I also found another by searching "IMEI FRAUD UBER DIDI SIM CARD", (but that other article was literally copy pasted from the first) (couldn't find sources from the first) (I have some hurtful things to say about tech journalism but this website is too polite for that) Again, don't really doubt, but more sort of wondering where you sorts get primary information from.
- sircastor 2y agoMy wife and I are split on this, though neither of us are regular TikTok users. I keep coming across elected officials who are apparently briefed on something about TikTok, and they decide there’s a reasonable threat regarding the CCP or some such. The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me. My wife feels like this is the US Government trying to shut down a communication and news delivery tool. While I don’t agree with her, I don’t think she’s wrong. It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.
- ok123456 2y agoThey make up lies that they tell them in the SCIF. It's just theater.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoIf the President had over Meta and X the sort of control the CCP has over TikTok, Instagram and Twitter would be banned in most countries. The only reason this is debated so much here is we’re (in my opinion correctly) very cautious about free speech.
- jayzalowitz 2y agoI believe theres a related argument that congress might be making here, idk.
- mattrick 2y agoThe owner of Twitter/X is about to be in the president’s cabinet. And the owner of Meta is clearly cozying up to the incoming administration with their new “anti-woke” policies.
- rsanek 2y ago>about to be in the president’s cabinet source? DOGE is not a real department and so he's not part of the cabinet. rich people affecting government officials is as old as time, nothing new. what has never been true in the US is the ability for the gov to legally compel X/Meta to do their bidding, which is the whole issue with TikTok.
- squarefoot 2y agoYou don't destroy what can give you even more power by controlling it. Trump/Musk/Zuck plan is to control it, not destroy it: the army of teens willing to be inundated by propaganda just to keep using it is too appealing to ignore, and China will happily trade that control for something (less/no tariffs?).
- hotstickyballs 2y agoIf TikTok is just in the business of earning money they would've sold.
- mcintyre1994 2y agoWho are they actually supposed to be selling to? Given the US has pretty active antitrust for now, I can't really think of anyone who has both the money and expertise to run it and would be allowed to buy it.
- thehappypm 2y agoAn easy solution is to spin off TikTok to its own company and then that company IPOs.
- sunaookami 2y agoTikTok cannot be sold because the algorithm cannot be sold under the export control laws enacted by China.
- cryptonector 2y agoBits that can't be exported can be recreated by the new owner, most likely with material differences anyways not just because the new owner might not be able to recreate the original faithfully but because they might not want to.
- ok123456 2y agoWhy would I sell my business just to appease some gangsters on capitol hill?
- vondur 2y agoWell, India has already banned Tik-Tok, now the US is. It looks like some European countries are giving it the side eye. This may be the beginning of the end for it.
- mips_avatar 2y agoIt's a bit disingenuous for Mark Zuckerberg to go on Joe Rogan and say that the Biden administration is anti Meta/anti America, when congress passed this bill to shut down TikTok. I don't love that TikTok is run by a Chinese company (thus giving way too much control to the Chinese government), but Meta builds such garbage experiences in their apps. There really needs to be a real competitor to Meta.
- julienb_sea 2y agoBiden has said he won't enforce the ban and Trump has said he will keep TikTok from going dark. Shou is attending the inauguration. Ivanka and Kai are posting actively on TikTok. It is not going anywhere.
- thehappypm 2y agoI'd be stunned if Trump saved TikTok, that would be really inconsistent with his anti-China rhetoric, which is one of the consistent policies he has.
- IAmGraydon 2y agoHe may be anti-China, but he’s even more anti-Biden.
- cycrutchfield 2y agoHe’s more pro-donor than anti-China, and Jeff Yass is a big donor.
- energy123 2y agoAnd yet Polymarket has the ban probability at 84%. If it's not going anywhere, you stand to become a very wealthy individual.
- aunterste 2y agoThis would have been a great opportunity to regulate and prohibit massive data collection on mobile phones, by writing a law that requires the platforms (iOS,android) to architect differently and police this aggressively. Takes care of a lot of the TikTok worry and cleans up ecosystems from location tracking/selling weather apps as well.
- JimmaDaRustla 2y agoThere's no compelling argument or evidence of data collection with TikTok, to my knowledge. Theres more evidence of data collection and aggregation with American platforms than TikTok. Additionally, TikTok is operated independently within the USA and hosted on American servers. I think if there's any opportunity to regulate data collection, TikTok seems to have positioned itself defensively and seems to be distant from being used as an example. The only thing that seems to matter with this ban is that TikTok is mostly owned by a Chinese company. I'd love to be corrected, but I haven't been provided any evidence or information that suggests this ban was justified at all.
- bsimpson 2y agoI met someone who did some high-level work for ByteDance. I asked them what they thought of the worries that TikTok was a CCP spying instrument. They said ByteDance is as disorganized as any other big tech company, and it would be approximately impossible for them to discretely pull that off. It's easy to see "CCP" and think bogeyman, but it is interesting to think about how achievable it would be to pull off something shady at Google or Facebook, and apply that same thought process to ByteDance.
- bun_at_work 2y agoGiven the Cambridge Analytica scandal, why wouldn't it be achievable at Facebook, let alone TikTok. The CCP could mandate that the TikTok algorithm display certain types of political content, then further mandate that any criticism of the CCP be limited, especially discussion of the said censorship. Most users wouldn't know about it and leakers at ByteDance wouldn't be able to change that. It's not the US - they are punished in China in a way that doesn't happen in the US.
- redler 2y agoPrediction: We'll hear that magically Truth Social has sourced sufficient funds that will enable it to make an offer for TikTok.
- notfed 2y agoI suspect that this was the original plan, and that the ban was a bluff in order to incentive this. Thus why both Biden and Trump are "panicking" about it.
- jrflowers 2y agoThe silliness of the ban itself aside, it is wild how casually the whole “both chambers of congress passed a law and that law was upheld by the highest federal court but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it” thing is being treated by the media. It is like “Does America have laws?” is a 3 minute section of Good Morning America between low-carb breakfast recipes and the memoir of a skateboarding dog.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DangitBobby 2y ago> but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it Are you talking about a presidential veto? What are you saying?
- jrflowers 2y agoNo. The opportunity for a presidential veto in our system happened in April of last year. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what-next/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what...
- DangitBobby 2y agoYou've ruled out my only guess, but you still haven't explained what you're talking about!
- dpkirchner 2y agoBiden will probably not enforce the ban (no fines) and Trump will likely continue that non-enforcement, essentially nullifying the will of Congress and judgement of the court.
- kshacker 2y agoI think Biden talk is a nothing burger. You need time to enforce things. Ban goes into effect on the 19th. Do they send out violation notice on 19th (Sunday), 20th (Monday and holiday and transition day) or 21st (first working day) when Biden administration does not exist.
- toddmorey 2y agoAnyone here who's not a TikTok content creator reasonably upset about losing access to the platform? Can you tell me why it will sting for you? I was really surprised that my daughters (avid teenage TikTok users) are much more relieved than mad. Both said they wasted too much time on TikTok and were hoping life will now feel better. Seems the very thing that made the platform sticky puts it in a guilty pleasure category perhaps. (I'm asking about the lived experience outside of the political questions around who should decide what we see / access online.) EDIT: Thank you for the replies! Interesting. I'm still wondering if most people use TikTok just for passive entertainment? I don't love Youtube, but it's been a huge learning and music discovery resource for me. The only thing I get sent from TikTok are dances and silly memes but I don't have an account.
- scinerio 2y agoNot a content creator and use it regularly. My algorithm is mostly silly stuff, music, etc. I'm not convinced there's a discernible risk to national security, and as someone with a lot of libertarian views, I think the ban is an overstep by the US government. The "sticky"-ness is real, but many will flock to the TikTok copies in other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, anyway. Regardless, I enjoy the platform. It's fun to reference the viral sounds/trends on the platform with other friends that use it.
- Ateoto 2y agoI'm pretty upset about it honestly. TikTok's algorithm has always done a fantastic job of providing interesting clips in a way that Facebook and Instagram has never been able to provide. I will say that upon a new account, it's mostly garbage, but it quickly learned what I was interested in and what I would tend to engage with. It also does this while showing me considerably fewer ads than the meta platforms.
- sillysaurusx 2y agoSeconded. My experiences were similar. That said, the algorithm got noticeably worse after 2021. Maybe because of the TikTok shop. I’ve categorized around 3,000 clips into different collections (with 600+ being in “educational”) but that fell off over the last few years. I would be a lot more upset about the ban if they had maintained quality, but now I’m like well, whatever.
- atarian 2y agoTikTok should just build out a PWA. That would be a huge fuck you to this whole situation.
- scinerio 2y agoHow?
- keiferski 2y agoAn interesting angle to this whole drama that I haven’t seen discussed much: in the creator industry, TikTok is known for being significantly harder to make money from your content, as compared to YouTube. For various reasons, content just makes much more money on YouTube than it does on TikTok. I do wonder what will happen if TikTok users migrate to YouTube shorts, and if that will change this.
- cwkoss 2y agoI made $400 making tiktoks as a hobby. I would say its much easier to earn money on tiktok, but harder to earn huge sums. A lot of people are currently making ends meet with what they get from Tiktok.
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y agoHow does that work, does tiktok share ad revenue?
- keiferski 2y agoI’ve had a number of videos get over a million views on TikTok, and earned $0 from it. That amount of views on YouTube would earn me a few thousand dollars, minimum, purely from Adsense.
- outside1234 2y agoNot hard to see how this will play out. Trump will get a bribe from them and it will be opened.
- baggachipz 2y ago> but Trump might offer lifeline Is this the same guy who wanted to ban TikTok 4.5 years ago? Just asking. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executive-order-that-will-effectively-ban-use-of-tiktok-in-the-u-s https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
- portaouflop 2y agoAh the land of free speech and freedom of the press. Not even in Europe we have such crackdown on freedom while Americans scream censorship because nazi symbols and certain phrases are illegal in Germany.
- sunaookami 2y ago>Not even in Europe we have such crackdown on freedom Telegram?
- portaouflop 2y agoWdym? Last I checked Telegram is not banned in any way.
- sunaookami 2y agoSince Durov was arrested in France they censored much more to appease Europe. Germany is now no. 2 for the most takedown requests, that's a nearly 20x increase in the last 3 months alone! https://te-k.github.io/telegram-transparency/ https://te-k.github.io/telegram-transparency/
- portaouflop 2y agoThat’s understandable, Telegram is mostly used for illegal stuff in Germany. What I think is more interesting from your link is that India has 10x the number of takedown requests wtf
- sunaookami 2y ago>Telegram is mostly used for illegal stuff in Germany According to whom? Politicians who don't like other opinions and threatened to block it?
- joering2 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challeng...
- JimmaDaRustla 2y agoHow very "land of the free" of America
- smm11 2y agoWasn't the idea Trump's in the first place?
- nashashmi 2y agoHere is what Chairman McCaul said: “I was proud to join 352 of my Republican and Democrat colleagues and pass H.R. 7521 today. CCP-controlled TikTok is an enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”[1] The U.S. national security angle identified is "mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions". And give me a break that they actually care about "young Americans’ mental health". This bill was about pro-Palestine content ... "being mobilized by CCP" that was harming "young people's health". The fact that none of this was put forward by the lawyers makes me think the tiktok lawyers were incompetent. I went through the testimonies given and it was DAMMMMMNNNN weak. Three issues were identified by me: The Bill suddenly declares "non-aligned countries" to be "foreign adversaries" but there is no declared war so how can they be adversaries already; The Bill declares anyone facilitating the company including through the transfer of communication is in violation of the bill but that is a freedom of speech issue which they did not bring up but instead brought the ban as a FoS issue; The Bill labels TikTok and ByteDance as companies to be sold [to an aligned state] or banned entirely but that is the only company being single-handedly called out and I don't know how to say this but that sounds like some form of discrimination and unsubstantiated claim of threat. They could have done a better job at the SCOTUS. [1] https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mccaul-issues-statement-on-bill-addressing-critical-tiktok-threat/ https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mcca...
- pessimizer 2y agoThe next Supreme Court decision will be them deciding if disagreeing with the TikTok decision is sufficient grounds for being censored. Public disagreement with the TikTok decision could lead to legislative pressure, which would add support to the pressure campaigns of Chinese lobbyists and diplomats, or of other organizations that are funded or donated to by Chinese people or people of Chinese descent. This could either result in new legislation being passed that nullifies the ban, or pressure the Executive into failing to enforce the ban. Either of those outcomes would, in effect, allow the user data of Americans to be accessed by the government of China. Disagreement with the TikTok ban would in and of itself aid America's adversaries. Besides, disagreement with it implies that America unduly restricts speech, when we're supposed to hate China because China unduly restricts speech. That's a clear case of creating a false equivalence in order to foment discord, which again is material support to China's goal to monitor American's communications and corrupt the minds of America's children.
- Buttons840 2y agoThis outcome is worse than I could have ever conceived: 1) People have valid concerns about TikTok. TikTok will remain, and those concerns will remain. 2) People have valid concerns about free speech. The law that tramples free speech stands and is upheld by the court. 3) People have valid concerns about unfair and unequal enforcement of laws. The law will be blatantly and openly ignored for political reasons. Literally everyone loses. What a clown show.
- miningape 2y agoYeah this is why I don't like the "tit for tat - they banned facebook, insta, etc." argument. We're supposed to be better than them, but we stoop to their level.
- amelius 2y ago[flagged]
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- stevenAthompson 2y agoThe United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China. They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department. Specifically they used the telco hacks to gather geolocation data in order to pinpoint Americans and to spy on phone calls by abusing our legally mandated wiretap capabilities. Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones. I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.
- quantumsequoia 2y ago> Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories. Is there any evidence of this? FWIW, I saw plenty of tiktoks talking about the China hack
- adamanonymous 2y agoThere is no evidence. This is just blind speculation. 95% of the population just doesn't care about telecom cybersecurity.
- WillPostForFood 2y agoI agree the evidence is weak, and circumstantial, but it is not true that there none. Quick overview of some of it (which includes critique of it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok
- dvngnt_ 2y agoYeah i shared with relatives by taking a screenshot of a tiktok to show them the news
- HamsterDan 2y agoIt's completely irrelevant whether they have done it or not. The only thing that matters is the fact that they can do it. We're not going let you have nukes just because you haven't nuked anybody yet.
- 4ndrewl 2y agoI mean this won't happen. The TikTok CEO is invited to Trump's inauguration.
- curvaturearth 2y agoGood news for everyone. Get off these endless scrolling trash providers
- throwaway314155 2y agoI found this comment by scrolling endlessly.
- agosz 2y agoThis will ultimately benefit the current Big Tech incumbents. Tiktok was gaining ground rapidly on advertising money and I wouldn't be surprised if there was lobbying that stifled the competition. Instead of banning TikTok, we should be trying to compete with them and make a better product that wins customers over. It's sad to see the US becoming more authoritarian and follow China's example.
- svara 2y agoGood riddance, do the other social networks next!
- booboodenali 2y agoAgreed! You think HN is different?
- ok123456 2y agoEveryone thinks their consumption is more virtuous than everyone else. HN provides the same basic neophilia.
- svara 2y agoThere's a difference in degree, it's less addictive. HN works a little differently, in that its goal is not primarily to convert attention directly into revenue. Personally, I still need to be deliberate in limiting my use, so I wouldn't be sad to see it disappear, even though I do find some value in it. None of us have more than 24 hours in our days. That time is precious. Products that are specifically designed to suck up as much of it as possible must be avoided. I'm really bored at this point by the political discussions around this. We've heard it all a million times. As far as I'm concerned, that's missing the point. Because, at the end of the day, and ignoring for a moment the practicality of the notion, the world would just be a better place without them. Seriously, go read a book. We'd be living in a different world if that scaled.
- aucisson_masque 2y agoIn a developed country, government would ensure its citizens receive top notch education so that they are able by themselves to understand that using a Chinese owned app is just as bad as using Facebook for instance and so these app would be dead, no one would use them. Instead when you cut so hard on education that you get millions of flat earth believers, you got to protect them from their own behavior with law. But as far as I know, no law can prevent little Jimmy from putting crayons up his nose. Blocking TikTok won't just make its user look for better privacy, or at least more independent alternative. They will use something else just as bad or worst.. little red book for instance.
- flir 2y agoHow's it worse for me, personally, to give up PII to Tik Tok as opposed to - well, all the US-owned equivalents.
- daymanstep 2y agoLittle red book is truly evil. Every Chinese woman I know uses it. It is truly brain rotting. The relationship advice that it promulgates is every bit as toxic as the stuff on TikTok and instagram
- qingcharles 2y agoNobody is talking about music? For the last 4 years, TikTok has been my primary music discovery engine. Probably is for a large chunk of users. What effect will this have on the music industry?
- kshacker 2y agoAnd just yesterday I saw a news where UK had best music revenue ever, and I do not think US is published but first 1/2 of US also had record sales. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cn858xgng2vo https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cn858xgng2vo) And I agree, even for me, music discovery is (was) via TikTok.
- saysjonathan 2y agoI’m hoping https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ takes off
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoI imagine you'll get the same content on YouTube shorts or Facebook reels? I don't like using apps, so I never bothered with Tiktok, but tiktok watermarks are still on most of the short videos I view, content creators are either putting their work on multiple platforms, or someone else is ripping it off and putting it on different platforms.
- rc_kas 2y agowber.org
- lopkeny12ko 2y agoCan someone explain in unambiguous terms why people are so drawn specifically to TikTok? I have tried TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and they are all basically the same--algorithmically-driven feeds of short videos. I don't see how banning TikTok is such a big problem, just use one of the other apps.
- brailsafe 2y agoI'd like to see less pervasive chronic use of media, so would hope Canada follows suit, but I don't think banning specific services for political reasons is necessarily a good way to get there. Along with other toxic outlets like gambling, we should be able to make coherent judgements about what belongs and what doesn't based on assessments of well-being indicators that evolve over time. I know it's a fairly conservative take, but it's one I'm happy with, and have a hard time seeing how we're better off with the existence of things like TikTok that provide such an easy way to siphon off human hours in a way that few things other than TV before. Incidentally, I feel almost controversial for seeing more ads for alcohol and gambling than anything else, and thinking "when did we agree it was a good thing to be more permissive about encouraging objectively addicting risky behavior?".
- bitcurious 2y agoThe United States, through its influence over Facebook, instagram, and twitter, facilitated the Arab Spring. Of course we don’t want an adversary to have the same influence over our domestic political conversation.
- CodeWriter23 2y agoNBC is delusional, thinking Trump who ran on a law and order platform is going to disregard the law.
- known 2y ago[dead]
- MollyRealized 2y agoJust as an aside, I'm surprised that Instagram has done nothing to facilitate the migration it wants. I've been hitting the same old rate limits while trying to "migrate" by subscribing to creators who have IG accounts as well. It's now got me down to one or two a day. Not only have they not made it easier ("import your export data file here, we'll subscribe you to everyone with the same handle"), they are making it quite hard.
- hellojesus 2y agoThis won't ban anything. It's on the web. Just sideload the app and enjoy.
- TechSquidTV 2y agoIts a business. With ad and an e-commerce network to support that content. Without that connection, it will die.
- hellojesus 2y agoTrue, but it could easily just shift to mining XMR in the background as users doomscroll and collect money without regulatory burden that way.
- lobsterthief 2y agoRemember we’re all in a tech bubble here. 99.9% of TikTok users don’t know what sideloading is.
- Kye 2y agoOr the web It's hard to overstate how much the coinciding rise of smartphones and growth of the internet has taught people that apps are the internet, if they have any notion of the internet at all.
- WesleyJohnson 2y agoI don't have a list of factors or research in front of me, so let me just state that upfront. It's widely understood that Meta, X, and plenty of other companies are collecting, and selling massive amounts of data. Meta builds profiles on people that have never even used Facebook, simply by monitoring their activity across the web through Ads, Embeds and Sign-Up w/ Facebook widgets, etc. This data, if I recall, has been sold many times over, and likely stolen, many times over, in data breaches - both disclosed and undisclosed. Which almost assures that China has it already. Where is the outrage there? The laws, and fines, there? Why not ban that kind of pervasive data collection and digital finger printing, regardless of where it originates, to avoid the potential misuse of that data? Obviously a company, like ByteDance, running businesses and Apps inside the US, while also being legally bound to helping the CCP - is cause for concern. But clearly we have our concerns right at our front door - and - nothing? Either or government believes access to this kind of data to be a threat, or they don't. I know that's a gross over simplification, probably misses some key points, and probably falls under the dreaded "whataboutisms"... but it just seems like, its okay of US companies do it, as long as they give that data to OUR government, and losing that data is a just cost of doing business. I'll take my tinfoil hat off now. :P
- airstrike 2y agoThis isn't a privacy or data collection matter. What Meta, X or any other company that is not de facto controlled by the CCP does or doesn't do has no bearing on this particular case.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lugu 2y agoSo many trolls here. They must be really annoyed.
- toastau 2y agoThere's a lot of hope for the other services but Europe, Australia, Asia are not moving away. A lot of people watch videos from other countries, and if they aren't on those other services I don't think they'll stick.
- mandeepj 2y ago> A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content. You can also include Canada and India in that list as it’s banned in those countries
- me551ah 2y agoI personally don't think that it is going to be a big issue. India banned TikTok, but it is still accessibly on the browser via a VPN. And everyone has a VPN installed on their phone these days. What is stopping people from just opening tiktok in their browser on their phone and continuing to browse their old accounts and content?
- xanderlewis 2y agoInconvenience?
- gonzo41 2y agoIt's crazy the Facebook and Instagram are still available for use. They,be done just as much damage.
- Vilian 2y agoThe fact that it's going to be in hold because USA has allowed bribes and have a cute name for it "megadonors" explain every problem that Americans complain about that place, why would they higher wages if their billionaires friends said no
- fredgrott 2y agoLet's see how many flunk Literacy.... How does one value a start up asset that according to ByteDance will never ever get access to the TikTok algo powering the app? It appears at the moment, the only one to bet on who knows what the eff they are talking about is Mark Cuban who wants to pay or buy someone creating a new tiktok clone that uses the Bluesky protocol
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoI can't imagine the ban can't be circumvented with some creative use of VPN, geo spoofing etc. If I were a TikTok fan, I'd launch an Android emulator in a VPS in a censorship free country and install TikTok there.
- rsanek 2y agoi don't think the gov is concerned with the 0.01% of people that are both capable of and motivated enough to do this. even if you did do this, what content would you be watching? all us based creators will be gone.
- Integrity 2y agoITT: How many languages Switzerland has.
- tlogan 2y agoIf TikTok is truly banned on Sunday and no action is taken to stop it, the company’s value could drop significantly—perhaps by as much as 90%. This raises an even bigger question: Who really owns TikTok? Who is the true decision-maker behind the scenes? Who is so wealthy and powerful that they’re willing to let $100 billion vanish? The answer to that question will be more obvious.
- lmm 2y ago> Who really owns TikTok? Who is the true decision-maker behind the scenes? Who is so wealthy and powerful that they’re willing to let $100 billion vanish? They're hardly "letting" it happen. What exactly can you do when the US government decides they want to smash your business and take your stuff?
- rsanek 2y agoyou sell it?
- Alifatisk 2y agoYou really believe their value could drop by 90% because of this? 90%!!!
- _fat_santa 2y agoMaybe not by 90% but by a significant amount. Just doing a quick google for the userbase of TT by country and the US is the largest market with ~113M users [1]. What would happen to any company if their largest userbase just vanished overnight? [1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tiktok-users-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tiktok-us...
- hwillis 2y agoIt's less than 7% of their total users. The US is not that big compared to the whole world.
- shortsunblack 2y agoThe ban is nothing more than an attempt to abridge speech and deny the youth voice in politics. TikTok increasingly has become refuge from censorship occurring on other platforms (see the recent issues). The lawmakers indicated that is the reason for the ban. If United States was honestly concerned about data protection and privacy, it would devise a federal privacy law that models GDPR. They are trying to pass a federal law now, but it is seriously flawed and they are trying to preempt more user-centric privacy laws of the states. Finally, such partisan, targeted and unprincipled bans reenforce that EU's approach on issues such as data transfers abroad (see Schrems 1 and Schrems 2) is perfectly valid. EU has a principled regulation, which gets evaluated by free and democratic courts. The outcomes are what they are. Not partisan and discriminatory, as they are here.
- rsanek 2y ago>TikTok increasingly has become refuge from censorship occurring on other platforms do you have a source for this? if anything other platforms are shifting to less editorial control -- see recent announcements by Zucc https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/amp/ https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mis...
- yapyap 2y agoof course he would
- gigatexal 2y agoSpineless democrats are now trying to save TikTok after the bipartisan bill was passed. And the Supreme Court upheld the ban. SMH.
- russli1993 2y agoAll countries in the world, USA just showed it is perfectly fine to steal a foreign companies' asset. Let's do that to all USA companies, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, Boeing, Qualcomn, Intel, all of them. U know how rich you will be if you just got a piece of them? U know you could end homelessness, poverty, balance trade, stabilize your currency, elevate tax revenues, get free education and health care for your citizens, provide great jobs if you just got a piece of USA companies? Now you can! All of them can be Indian, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian, Kenyan, Egyptian companies. Everyone gets a piece, everyone gets them equally, everyone will benefit and be happy!
- EasyMark 2y agoI don't get this take. China is constantly stealing US IP. The US simply wanted to cut out the foreign influence, while allowing free speech of the users. That's a simple plan and makes a lot of sense. China doesn't allow any of the big US platforms to influence their people for a similar reason, and it's valid. What you pitch is a very optimistic Communist outlook, which has never panned out anywhere in the world where the experiment was tried.
- tagami 2y agoIs it possible that Truth Social would acquire it before Monday?
- npvrite 2y agoCrazy how this Gestapo like gov managed to force uninstall Kaspersky. I paid money and they actually did that? That actually just shows me that that antivirus was too strong against the NSA. Anyhow I'm a Linux user and a VPN user and a Tor user and an I2P user and a Freenet user. AND I LOVE LEARNING ABOUT DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS IN RUST. This government is becoming too totalitarian and should be made an example of. The internet was made to be impossible to take down and so should our thoughts and ideas. Distribute everything from now on.
- Friedduck 2y agoI don’t know if it’s widely known but now that we have TikTok back it’s irrevocably altered. Content amd actions are being policed for anti-right wing sentiment and people are being TOS’d or prohibited from that action. Examples that have been posted: warnings or prohibitions from posting content. Limits placed on sharing content (no bulk-sharing and a hard stop on sharing). We’ve lost one of the only venues that wasn’t under control of an American oligarch, and it’s now clear what we’ve traded to retain access to TikTok.