House committee votes 50-0 to force TikTok to divest from Chinese owner

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/house-committee-votes-50-0-to-force-tiktok-to-divest-from-chinese-owner/

by notamy • 2 years ago

63 40 2 years ago

biomcgary• 2 years ago

I work at a biotech startup where the founder sold a previous company after being "encouraged" to do so by CFIUS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investmen...). That company had taken a large investment from a China-based investor. The concern was about sensitive health info of US citizens being in foreign hands.

doc55• 2 years ago

More like all info(and therefore rent on it) needs to be in the hands of American rent collectors. Its a stupid, late and irrelevent bill because info is not the issue, when info is exploding and overflowing. Attention is the issue. Attention is scarce and finite. It has been so fully exploited it has lost its value entirely. As more things that need Attention dont receive it, systems auto unravel. No Chinese or Russians required. An architecture of Attention allocation is the real need of the hour.

xpl• 2 years ago

As much as I am for the free market, TikTok is a scary thing. Probably it would need to be banned even if it was a domestic product.

krapp4• 2 years ago

It's just a social media video app. It's no more scary than Youtube shorts, Facebook rolls, Vine back in the day. Sure it's vapid entertainment, but vapid entertainment shouldn't be illegal.

gymbeaux2• 2 years ago

They should all be banned

fragmede3• 2 years ago

Youtube shorts came out in response to TikTok. Illegal is one thing, but maybe off of watching Dune, maybe there should be a guiding hand to society so that vapid entertainment isn't promoted and we don't get a society of airheads. though my problem with TikTok is that my feed is serious stuff like trama therapy and I can't use it for long because I hey overwhelmed by things to work on. I realize that's not everyone's experience with TikTok tho

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

I'm not a huge fan of TikTok (I think it's just silly and most of the content there is just not for me), but has anyone shown any credible Bad Thing that the app has been doing? It just seems like a vapid time waster that sucks up user data, just like other US-owned vapid time waster apps that suck up user data. Is this just "China Bad" from politicians, or have they actually done something wrong to users?

cromka2• 2 years ago

You might want to read on their takeover of… Newegg of all things.

ProjectArcturis• 2 years ago

Can you elaborate? There's nothing obviously nefarious in the first dozen Google results.

polski-g• 2 years ago

Security firm Quokka has briefed Congress about its relative risk: https://www.quokka.io/blog/the-security-risks-inherent-in-th...

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

insecure data storage, data leakage, and exposure to network based attacks

Huh... So this is about securing data, buffer overruns, and remote code execution. Seems like kind of small potatoes for Congress to get involved.

mannerheim3• 2 years ago

TikTok should be banned until Facebook and Google are available in China.

simpletone3• 2 years ago

Nope. Facebook and Google would be available in china if they agreed to chinese laws. Tiktok is following american laws.

ramblenode• 2 years ago

If TikTok is doing something bad then the bad thing should be illegal, not the platform or who owns it.

But banning bad things would require a well-thought-out bill that could inadvertently protect Americans from domestic tech companies that are also harvesting and selling our personal data and manipulating our attention. And that would be a problem (for politicians).

Easier to just blame China and kick the can down the road to the next generation to deal with the real problems.

danlugo922• 2 years ago

It just seems like a vapid time waster that sucks up user data, just like other US-owned vapid time waster apps that suck up user data. Is this just "China Bad" from politicians, or have they actually done something wrong to users

Well they do seem to push anti-us {anything} (not that there it isn't anything to complain about if you're a US voter) while simultaneously "hide" or "de-promote" anti-china or anti-eastern content.

They also push more us-crime content while they could push more for buddhist content and make more of a difference but it's obvious it's the CCP behind of it all...

Note that this is coming from someone that didn't grow up in the US and is anti-authoritarian (right or left) as they come... (I grew up in Venezuela, left authoritiaran system).

TulliusCicero• 2 years ago

Is this just "China Bad" from politicians, or have they actually done something wrong to users?

Honestly, banning Chinese apps in general seems fine to me, given how many Western apps/websites China bans.

Trade is good, but it should be reasonably two-sided.

It's weird to me that in these discussions people mostly ignore how many Western apps/services China bans. Isn't reciprocity entirely reasonable?

carride• 2 years ago

“The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”

stubish• 2 years ago

Interesting that this relies on 'eventually' dropping the app from US controlled app stores. While in various courts are attempts to easily allow first class alternative app stores, not necessarily controlled by the US. I guess lawmakers are hoping for Tik-tok and others to blink first, rather than forcing them to legislate the Great Firewall of the USA.

yogorenapan• 2 years ago

If I were in government, I’d vote this as well. Of course, only after I invest in the company expected to take over TikTok at a discount.

2devnull• 2 years ago

Nice to see congress doing their job. China kills many Americans via tainted products and general incompetence. For example the COVID pandemic was the CCP’s fault. Many products from CCP China are toxic, bad for the environment, literal spyware. People who want to foist more of that on American citizens are, thus may offend some people, literally traitors.

grecy• 2 years ago

I wonder what would happen if Chinese lawmakers voted to force the sale of an American company?

Like reversing genders, things always look different when the roles are reversed.

devhead2• 2 years ago

It's not a ban on TikTok; they are proposing a restriction that will be applied to American companies in order to try and block American's access to an online web service.

I do not agree with such restrictions nor would I if the role was reversed; in my opinion, any politician that supports such an encroachment on our rights will never have my support or vote. I would additionally be open to boycotting their corporate and wealthy donors since they seem to only listen to money.

I do however, wholeheartedly support enacting legislation to protect our data, require security around it and to block the sale of it.

House committee votes 50-0 to force TikTok to divest from Chinese owner

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