Rand Paul blocks the fast-tracking of TikTok ban

https://www.wionews.com/world/republican-rand-paul-blocks-tiktok-ban-asks-if-us-is-going-to-be-just-like-china-and-block-free-speech-577130

by malshe • 3 years ago

76 75 3 years ago

wionews.com

BMc20203• 3 years ago

Specifically, the Department of Commerce must identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, and mitigate transactions involving ICT products and services (1) in which any foreign adversary has any interest, and (2) that pose an undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security or the safety of U.S. persons.

We're rapidly approaching a time where a lot of US citizens who think they can play both sides have to decide if they are an American first or not.

mardifoufs• 3 years ago

This is just reheated cold war/GWOT rhetoric lol. Might as well just say "either you're with us or with the terrorists", or accuse him of being a communist (which, for Rand Paul I mean would certainly be a take). I mean sure the outline of the law is designed to evoke emotions (who would disagree with it except for traitors, right?!). But this is not far from saying that disagreeing with the PATRIOT act means you are unpatriotic. Just come on, lol.

BMc20203• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...

weard_beard• 3 years ago

I worry that we've replaced the American understanding of austerity, rationing, community, and hard work necessary to survive the next decade with a fig leaf of cries of national security.

If you're still in the later camp, when times get tough you're more likely to be first to the black market. First to burn your ration card. I see all kinds of firsts in the future for such folks, none of them America.

Good riddance.

BMc20203• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...

fasterik• 3 years ago

Sounds like a perfect time to revive the House Un-American Activities Committee.

akiselev• 3 years ago

The House Speaker is named McCarthy and everything. We are good to go!

jbigelow76• 3 years ago

"House Un-American Activities Committee" is a LOT of words to read, say, or remember. It's easier just to lump it all under "woke" now, a single, shorter more approachable word for the intended audience.

arp2424• 3 years ago

Please hold while I go nail my thesis to a church door. Should that also be allowed? It's also a valid and historically relevant method to disperse speech. There are countless of possible methods that are restricted.

I don't know if TikTok should be banned or not; I haven't looked in to the matter in great detail. But limiting one particular method to disperse speech is not limiting free speech as a concept; this entire argument is silly and just poisons the entire discussion.

bb883• 3 years ago

Please hold while I go nail my thesis to a church door. Should that also be allowed?

You mean other than the vandalism aspect? I think that might even be vandalism if you used scotch tape.

arp2424• 3 years ago

I'm reasonably sure that taping stuff to church doors – or other doors you don't own – won't be looked on kindly either in many cases. There are countless of other examples; playing my thesis in a public place on speakers 24/7 is also not going to end well for you.

At some point a method to disperse speech becomes so disruptive to the general public interest it makes sense to step in. I am talking about the method of dispersal only here, NOT the content. Is TikTok too disruptive? I don't know, but I do know that is what the discussion should be about, and Rand Paul's arguments are missing the point.

jameskilton• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses

Scotch tape didn't exist in 1517.

oatmeal1• 3 years ago

But limiting one particular method to disperse speech is not limiting free speech as a concept; this entire argument is silly and just poisons the entire discussion.

Could you quote from the article where this argument is made?

I see these arguments:

1. Banning TikTok is similar to what China does. What China does is bad.

2. It will harm Republicans to ban a popular social media app

3. The act gives the executive too much discretion to ban modes of communication <- Main argument

arp2424• 3 years ago

It's literally in the title with and first highlighted paragraph. "We're going to be just like China and ban speech we're afraid of" is hard to interpret as any other way than "this is limiting free speech".

tomjen3• 3 years ago

Your argument doesn't fit.

It is illegal to nail thesis to church doors, but also to trees, houses, hospitals, military installations, porches, fences, barns and anything else without the owners permission.

It is illegal no matter what the thesis says, who wrote it or what church you are nailing it to.

This will ban sharing with the owners permission, but only of a specific church because it is owned by people we don't like.

I don't see how anyone can look at this and not see a clear issue with freedom of speech here.

shrewduser• 3 years ago

so what, we can't ban any apps that allow you to send a message or are considered social in some way?

yucky• 3 years ago

More like our government fully understands how to weaponize social media to spread their bullshit, and how valuable it is for mass control and surveillance. We're more than ok with our social media platforms because of this usefulness, but TikTok is China's version and we can't have that type of mass surveillance and control and propaganda in anyone's hands but ours.

A few years ago this would have sounded like a conspiracy theory. Now it's the only logical conclusion.

falcolas2• 3 years ago

Our government (well, our congressmen and women) demonstrably has no clue what social media is capable of outside of their meta sponsored talking points.

“Do you track pupil dilation?!”

tomohelix• 3 years ago

Tbf, China doesn't allow US propaganda in their country either, i.e Facebook and co. They even banned or make it impossible for stuff like wikipedia and google to work over there.

It is not like this is a one sided problem.

falcolas2• 3 years ago

Only communists value speech between peers, not brands.

welshwelsh• 3 years ago

The government shouldn't be banning any apps period. Keep computing unregulated and free

mupuff1234• 3 years ago

Another piece of information: One of Paul Rand's top donors is billionaire Jeff Yass, the largest U.S. investor in TikTok.

Doesn't mean that's the cause obviously, but still worth keeping in mind.

yesbut3• 3 years ago

Yeah, not just him, and not just TikTok / ByteDance:

It’s also spent over $13 million lobbying the federal government since 2019, per OpenSecrets, including a record $5.4 million last year. ByteDance’s spending on lobbying was reportedly the fourth-largest among internet companies, behind only Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet.
Records show that the same politicians who’ve publicly attacked the app and voted to restrict its use have also accepted donations from top executives with TikTok and its parent company ByteDance.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that in the last election cycle, ByteDance and TikTok employees handed out $130,000 in campaign donations to a range of politicians. A third of these donations came from one person: David J. Urban, who was the executive vice president of ByteDance at the time. (Urban has since left the company.) His profile on his current employer’s website says that he helped ByteDance “navigate public policy and communications challenges.”

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tiktok-bytedance-donations-ke...

iudqnolq• 3 years ago

Absolutely. Do keep in mind the massive donations Facebook & co as well though.

Buying regulators to stifle your new competitor because you can't hack it is a classic game.

kelnos• 3 years ago

I'm usually not a fan of Paul, but... good! It's a bad law, broadly written, and it does seem like it would allow whomever is in power to ban whatever they don't like.

Granted, the headline is a bit misleading: Paul blocked the fast-tracking of the bill. Presumably it could still make it to the floor for a full vote.

than3• 3 years ago

Its not just a bad law, it fundamentally undermines democracy as a whole.

prpl2• 3 years ago

While I don’t really think a TikTok ban would accomplish much, I’m not terribly concerned of the implications.

Huawei/ZTE has been banned from sale and thus import and I effectively view this as equivalent and likely permissible under law in any case - so it’s probably the case they can just ban it from App stores though not actually block it on the internet - which I would frankly find acceptable (admittedly, it would likely be a death knell)

I don’t want to live in a populist/nationalist world, but a little bit of reciprocity, through protectionism, in small doses, isn’t a terrible thing.

inconceivable2• 3 years ago

if tiktok were banned from the store, they could just publish an api and let 3rd party developers create client apps. an app store ban might even have the opposite of the intended effect. which would be pretty much on par as far as sanctions go.

prpl2• 3 years ago

So ban any app that uses the API

cykros• 3 years ago

Given the user base for TikTok in the US, I don't think this is a likely issue, because this is not a group of people clamoring tenaciously to get something; rather, it is a group of people following the path of least resistance. If TikTok is suddenly gone from the app store, you're not going to see swarms of bored teenagers and soccer moms jailbreaking their iPhones to install some third party TikTok workaround; you're going to see them switch to Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.

TikTok's popularity, while in part fueled by the algorithm, is largely a matter of network effect. Sure, a small portion of the users may "stick it to the man" and go through the trouble of working around the ban, but it won't be anything close to a majority of the 150+ million users they currently have in the US.

This is all also somewhat beside the point -- the bill in question here isn't bad because it bans TikTok; it's bad because it hands almost unfettered Internet censorship power to the executive branch and provides stiff penalties for workarounds such as VPN use to circumvent blocks. Which is why it's been called by some the USA PATRIOT Act 2.0.

malshe• 3 years ago

I think that's a reasonable perspective. Previously I had pointed that the US banning all the social media apps from China because China bans all the American social media apps is the recommended strategy in game theory, specifically in iterated prisoner's dilemma. This is called "Tit for Tat" strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

chrischen2• 3 years ago

But China believes in a controlled economy whereas the West believes in a free market. If you apply tit for tat we are basically saying that a free market economy cannot win in a game with controlled economies, and therefore a free market is impractical and idealist in the same sense that communism is…

pclmulqdq• 3 years ago

The modems are covered by import/export controls, which the government has much tighter control over than software, which is effectively speech (at least today). Past attempts to apply those controls to algorithms, cryptography being exhibit A, haven't worked.

It is an interesting question if there's a good way to produce a legal vehicle to apply import/export restrictions to software, but this definitely isn't it.

chrischen2• 3 years ago

Didn’t Huawei/ZTE violate some sanctions? Tiktok ban amounts to mostly “we don’t like it” so it is fundamentally different. It also sets a precedent that the US government can arbitrarily ban to shape public opinion in much the same way China currently does.

prh8• 3 years ago

In the thread earlier, a lot of people were curious about banning Tiktok, whether it was the reasons or implementation. As for the reason, here's a quick demonstration: search Instagram for France, and then search Tiktok. This stark difference holds true for a massive number of things, this is just a current example. Tiktok has become a far better news source than any other social media, especially since the recent changes with Twitter.

xnx2• 3 years ago

I heard about this exact example earlier today ... on TikTok.

yesbut3• 3 years ago

The US is just upset that Tik Tok doesn't allow the US gov to influence their content or access their user's data like Facebook, Twitter, and Google does. That is all this is about. The US gov just wants more backdoors and control.

This isn't a defense of Tik Tok or any of these platforms. They are all collecting massive amounts of user data and all of them are privacy nightmares. But this Tik Tok ban stuff is partially anti-China theater and mostly "why won't you allow us access and control like the other guys are doing?" garbage. This would all go away overnight if Tik Tok put ex US FBI or CIA staff on their board of directors.

vinyl7• 3 years ago

I remember when Zoom got all the same attention as TikTok is getting being a Chinese spying tool, but it's been awfully quiet on that front for a while now. I wonder if Zoom coughed up some lobbying bucks or something, and this is just another extortion attempt

yesbut3• 3 years ago

Zoom must have bribed, I mean donated, to the right politicians. Its all theater. "It would be a shame if something were to happen to that big tech company of yours...."

cscurmudgeon• 3 years ago

According to OpenSecrets:

Zoom spent $240,000 in 2022. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

Compare that to TikTok's $5.4 million in the same year

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

By your logic, TikTok should be supersafe.

ipaddr2• 3 years ago

They put backdoors in

pelagicAustral• 3 years ago

I think TikTok is right next to places like /pol/ on the level of corruption they can deliver with such simple interactions. But even then I do not think they should ban access, it just sets a horrible precedence for things to come, all over tech. Limiting and regulating sounds more like a solution.

Then again, and going back to the /pol/ example, more horrible conduct is being condoned on that front than on TikTok, or at least more blatant radical behavior, and yet here we are talking about a bill to ban a Chinese-made reels et al.

xnx2• 3 years ago

Why not seize and auction off TikTok instead of banning it? To be clear: I'm a big fan of the TikTok app, and don't think any action is warranted.

kennywinker2• 3 years ago

Is that something the us gov had the authority to do? I’m skeptical it does

fspeech2• 3 years ago

How? Its US subsidiary doesn't own all the pieces for its success. Not even TikTok itself does, as much development is done through its parent company.

duringmath5• 3 years ago

We need more libertarians in congress, they err on the side of civil liberties and work to stop the deluge of bad laws.

zzzeek3• 3 years ago

Liberties like abortion rights for example?

Or not that kind of "liberty" then. (Paul favors a federal ban on abortion - throwing doctors and mothers in jail for miscarriages and other medical emergencies that can't be adequately explained to the local abortion police). That's "libertarian" apparently

duringmath5• 3 years ago

Realistically everyone has to "sell out" a little to get elected to office

bhawks• 3 years ago

Abortion is a pretty contentious issue for both big and small l libertarians. Generally it is not a litmus test for a person's libertarian-ness like it is for democrats and republicans.

Although the libertarian party doesn't speak for all - here is a decent summary: https://www.lp.org/libertarians-on-abortion/

platevoltage• 3 years ago

The idea that Rand Paul is a libertarian is pretty absurd.

revelio3• 3 years ago

That's not a gotcha for libertarians because libertarianism has a whole philosophy around the use of violence, which abortion would fall under. That is libertarians do not consider there to be a right to violence except in cases of self defence. Thus it is consistent to be libertarian and not consider abortion rights to be legitimate.

ryan_lane4• 3 years ago

This particular libertarian has accepted large donations from ByteDance. Though I think the decision he made was ultimately correct, it's very likely he wasn't doing it out of principle, but because he wants to keep getting bribes.

We should make buying politicians illegal, so that we can see their actual character.

duringmath5• 3 years ago

I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

revelio3• 3 years ago

Isn't it more likely that he's just being consistent with his prior principles, and bytedance donated to him knowing that he'd be a reliable ally and thus wanting him to remain in Congress?

rexreed• 3 years ago

In 3 yrs TikTok won't even be relevant. The next hypergrowth app will be the one where the content is instantly generated personally for you, no interaction with other humans needed. You can immerse yourself in an addictive world of algo-generated content, and you don't event need to interact with others.

kennywinker2• 3 years ago

Bad take imo.

1. Large social networks don’t come and go in a few years: facebook’s still a major force in most people’s live, instagram’s still huge, the dead social networks are all from the early days (myspace, friendster, livejournal, msn/aim) and as far as i recall none of them had only a six year run.

2. The thing that makes tiktok /facebook/instagram/etc interesting is interacting with other humans. No ai content is going to approach that for at least another ten years, and potentially never.

Whatarethese• 3 years ago

No shot. It's the fastest growing social network at the moment. It's only going to get more popular with all of the bad press it's been getting recently.

ryandvm• 3 years ago

This is the Great Filter you never hear about.

ryan_lane4• 3 years ago

It would be a lot more effective to regulate the things that make TikTok dangerous, rather than banning TikTok itself. Facebook, instagram, twitter, and a number of other social media services are guilty of the same behavior and I'd really prefer none of them have the ability to affect us the way they do.

Ban algorithmic ordering of content. Make a strong privacy policy that makes it impossible to track and/or collect data on you without opting-in. Make the opt-in text and prompt default to no, with the language of the opt-in and the buttons standard. Require ads to be prominently labeled, and require users to be offboarded if they break advertising laws.

The real problem is that the aim of these bills isn't to protect us. It's to harm China, and to sneak in changes that gives the government more ability to access our private data, or to block encrypted communications.

more_corn• 3 years ago

Why don’t we just pass a privacy law with teeth not some weird vague all-powerful dictator shit.

Rand Paul blocks the fast-tracking of TikTok ban

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