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President signs order refusing to enforce TikTok ban for 75 days
- lenerdenator 2y agoHe's got a maximum of 90 days, right?
- Scion9066 2y agoThat's if he had gone with the delay mechanism built into the law if there was a plan to sell it in the works. This is just ignoring the law.
- SeanLuke 2y agoNo, this is something different. The law allows a 90-day reprieve only if significant effort has been expended towards selling TikTok. But ByteDance hasn't made any effort at all. Trump is instead trying to prevent the Justice Department from enforcing the law. But the penalties -- and they are very large -- for violating the law can be enforced any time up to 5 years after the violation; that is, after Trump has left office. So his action may not have any effect.
- XorNot 2y agoOh it'll have an effect: the benefit of a law you could enforce but don't is that it sends an unambiguous message about the quid-pro-quo which is expected.
- SeanLuke 2y agoYeah, but would Verizon (let's say) let TikTok on its servers given that they'll be fined for it retroactively (in 4 years) regardless of Trump's order now? And it's a big fine.
- polotics 2y agoi believe the company you're looking for here is Oracle. Hilarious if a delayed fine comes one day for the masters of costly audits!
- vkou 2y ago> So his action may not have any effect. Or it creates a strong financial incentive for TikTok to ensure that the next administration will be a continuation of the current one. It's always nice to have a media company in a politician's back pocket.
- lenerdenator 2y agoAssuming, of course, that SCOTUS has the balls to say "um... no, actually, that wasn't right, and your presidential immunity doesn't cover this." Which, I doubt they will, but I'm not psychic.
- exabrial 2y agoAfter that, can we please ban it? Sigh. The entire social network is the epitome of an obnoxious popularity rat race to the bottom under the appearance of democracy, while being completely authoritarian. Worse, the users have been recruited to repeat ad nauseam "popular content gets liked and moved up the feed" or whatever. While I'm against the federal government having this sort of control, it's just a little bit of relief to see TikTok go away until something else replaces it.
- nicce 2y agoLot’s of power available. Unlikely.
- davidw 2y agoIt'll end up owned by someone adjacent to those in power.
- seo-speedwagon 2y agoLike Truth Social and Twitter?
- jMyles 2y ago> While I'm against the federal government having this sort of control, To take this position - which is certainly the virtuous one on long time-scales, you have to also take it in the case of content you abhor. I have the utmost sympathy for wanting a life free from the message for which tiktok is the medium, but using the ring of power will only cause is to deepen an entrench more.
- exabrial 2y agoIndeed.
- energy123 2y agoThis gets the causality backwards. TikTok et al. is the ring of power and not banning or regulating it will cause the negative side effects on civic society to deepen, further speedrunning the death of liberalism and the very freedoms you're trying to protect. This is the clichéd paradox of tolerance. Sometimes you have to do seemingly illiberal things, like locking up murderers, or breaking up concentrated media ownership, or banning free speech when it comes to defamation and libel, etc., to protect the liberal project from destruction. Social media, especially large platforms owned by single people, is so new that the law just hasn't had time to catch up. As the law finally catches up, don't interpret that as an assault on liberal values. It's not.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoNew norm just dropped: President says one thing, law says another, companies must choose their allegiance to which reality they adhere to but end up in a lose lose situation. Pour one out for Apple's lawyers working late tonight.
- tantalor 2y agoFrom NPR: The law does allow one exception: TikTok can continue to operate if Trump certifies to Congress that "significant progress" has been made toward TikTok breaking away from ByteDance's ownership. The law requires that Trump show Congress there are legally binding agreements in motion over ownership changes at TikTok.
- hoten 2y agoIsn't that clearly not the case here? How has TikTok shown any movement towards selling.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoWhat is their hangup with selling 50%, really? They’ll be rich!
- foogazi 2y agoThey don’t want to give it up - CCP doesn’t need the money
- dns_snek 2y agoOr they don't want US social media companies to buy TikTok US and use their IP to outcompete them across the world? On that note, many US-based TikTok users have reported that the app and the algorithm are substantially worse since the ban was lifted, with speculation that TikTok might sell a watered down version of the TikTok experience to an American buyer.
- jsiegz 2y ago
- kzisme 2y agoA lot of folks on TikTok have been speculating that Meta/Musk/etc might become owners in some way. Shou, the TikTok CEO - apparently updated his bio to not include "TikTok CEO" post-blackout. I personally, feel that it's quite a reach for the government to ban social apps such as TikTok. It's pretty much just become endless posts of people trying to make a living off of commission/sales/views. Something will obviously replace it if it does get banned (much like Vine), but "creator culture" is just depressing.
- kristopolous 2y agoI had long assumed a reverse merge with a company like snap was the right move. It satisfies the requirement but also keeps bytedance somewhat in control since snap is effectively just a horse in trade for them.
- SecretDreams 2y agoWe should have much stricter use policies on them. Especially for the younger demographics. Between social media, pay to win gaming, phone access, and loot boxes, we're really just setting young people up for failure. I'd take a page out of the Korean approach to gaming where your SIN is associated with your login and some activities hold time/usage requirements. If it were up to me, I'd straight up ban social media for youth and not allow parents to upload so much content involving their kids... Basically stealing the privacy of the kids in the process. We used to care about privacy in society, but it feels dead now.
- kzisme 2y agoMaybe I'm too old, but I DO NOT understand the TikTok livestreams of people sleeping, obvious pre-recorded video, etc...and people sending gifts constantly. The "creator fund" incentivized just posting a lot, sharing, and once Tiktok shop was introduced almost every other video is someone talking about "Tiktok shop made a mistake on pricing buy this item". Shills all of them. I don't think being a "creator" on TikTok should be a "job" for people.
- hoten 2y agoThis law is not about protecting us from the harms of social media, and it doesn't even literally ban TikTok; so this framing of it being whackamole is missing the point. What we really need is strong data privacy laws and child development guided policies. But that's not the point of the law either.
- nerdjon 2y agoYesterday I believe he said it still needs to be at least 50% owned by a US company. If that remains the case I doubt anything will change and this is just a delay. They made no indication of selling being an option. So realistically is this anything more than political theatre?
- owlninja 2y agoWe've lived through this administration once before, it is a flurry of headlines so you can't keep up with anything else.
- runako 2y agoThe law was rushed through before; he could ram through a law canceling the original. As with the original, no research would be required and so theoretically could be signed law by the weekend if desired.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoThey considered a 20% owned joint venture last Trump administration, so a 50% deal seems like a stretch but not impossible. (It's surely not a coincidence that China also has a 50% joint venture requirement for foreign companies.)
- mesh 2y agoI dont think its good for anyone that the executive just says it won't enforce a law.
- School-Cotton 2y agoThe same mechanism is how cannabis is “legal” in several states — Obama and all subsequent presidents have refused to enforce the federal laws against it.
- cle 2y agoThis is pretty normal. Even George Washington declined to enforce the law at times. A widespread recent example of "discretion" is the lack of enforcement of federal drug laws WRT marijuana. There are 39 states flaunting federal law, and presidents haven't bothered enforcing it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- breadwinner 2y agoFacebook is way more harmful than TikTok. TikTok has never caused a genocide, but Facebook has [1]. In October 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, came forward as a whistleblower, and revealed that Facebook consistently prioritized profit over user safety and public good. She stated that internal documents showed the company was aware of its platforms being used to spread hate, misinformation, and violence but chose to hide this evidence to maintain user engagement and revenue. She asserted that Facebook's algorithms favored content that generated anger and division, which in turn increased user engagement. The revelations forced Facebook to clean up its act — and lose revenue in the process — but now Zuckerberg is going back to inciting genocides for profit. Facebook is the app we should be banning. [1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
- lazystar 2y agoIt's not a mutually exclusive issue, so the conclusion of your argument is confusing.
- breadwinner 2y agoIf you're saying just because Facebook is harmful doesn't mean TikTok can't also be harmful then I agree. But one app has already caused a genocide, the other hasn't. So why are we only talking about TikTok as if the other social media apps are safe?
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoIt seems extraordinarily hard to argue that Facebook caused the Rohingya genocide without accepting that TikTok is at least complicit in the Uyghur genocide. (I'm personally skeptical of the argument in both cases.)
- breadwinner 2y agoTikTok has not been accused of aiding in the genocide of Uyghurs. Repressing their voice, maybe. Genocide, no.
- jspann 2y ago> It’s unclear whether Trump can legally pause the TikTok ban. Irrespective of my political leaning, Trump's legal scenarios have made me learn more about how the U.S. government works and question hypothetical scenarios that I'd never thought of before. Can a non-member be the speaker of the house? How did the Gulf of Mexico get its name? What procedures are official rules vs. just customary? What does it truly mean to be "impeached"? It's given me a new perspective on how laws are written and appreciation for how rules are defined for future generations.
- neverdown2025 2y ago[dead]
- foogazi 2y agoThe President doesn’t have to enforce the laws he doesn’t like
- threeseed 2y agoIn fact given the Supreme Court ruling the President can do anything he likes.
- bdangubic 2y agoyea, given that, I think he should dismantle both house and senate and supreme court as part of DOGE. why bother with the rest of the government at all, that was a stupid all along
- gpm 2y agoThis is true, but he also doesn't have the power to grant immunity to the law. Tech companies are in a pickle, he's expecting them to break the law, but they can be fined absurd sums of money if they do. Either when they piss off Trump and he decides to prosecute, or if the next administration does 4 years from now.
- ivewonyoung 2y agoBiden refused to enforce the ban[1], so I really doubt democrats would enforce it 4 years later if they came to power again. The issue isn't very partisan, liberals don't hate TikTok much more than conservatives. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/01/17/tiktok-ban-biden-wont-enforce-decision-trump/77773281007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/01/17/tikt...
- gpm 2y agoBiden declined to initiate legal proceedings in the last 24 hours of his administration... the only notable thing about that is that it isn't notable. It's hardly going to control what happens 4 years from now. I agree the issue isn't particularly partisan. Both parties were in favour of the ban. The process was started by Trump, continued by Biden, passed by the vast majority of both parties in the house (with republicans more in favor the democrats [1]), and then at the last second both parties realized that it was going to be wildly unpopular... But who knows how political winds are blowing 4 years from now, or 1 year from now, there's every chance it's now something either or both sides wants to take tech companies to task for not complying with. Or they just want to enforce the rule of law and don't care about TikTok. Or they just don't like tech companies. [1] Republicans 197 to 15, Democrats 155 to 50 + 1 present vote https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202486 https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202486
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoOfficial post: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/application-of-protecting-americans-from-foreign-adversary-controlled-applications-act-to-tiktok/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/appl... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775227)
- iamleppert 2y agoHe just wants a cut of the deal, that’s all. He even said it live on TV: “Without me, they have nothing. With me, they have something. Could be a trillion dollar company. But it depends on what the president, what I say.” This way, TikTok can retain control of their IP and maybe even a controlling interest if they sell a portion to Trump. It’s corruption all the way down.
- anigbrowl 2y agoI don't see why this is being flagged. Tiktok is a tech company and this executive order explicitly pauses much anticipated enforcement of a contentious law written specifically for that company. The fact that it's political does not make it somehow irrelevant to the core audience of the site.
- dang 2y agoUsers flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I'd guess (1) there have been major recent threads about this topic, including about this same order (before it was signed); and (2) these threads have been on the flamey/repetitive side.