Tell Congress: Stop the TikTok Ban. Instead, Protect Our Data No Matter Who

https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-stop-the-tiktok-ban

by freedomben • 2 years ago

151 189 2 years ago

act.eff.org

graeme• 2 years ago

This completely ignores propaganda concerns. Having a prominent media platform under the control of a hostile government is a serious threat. If Nazi Germany or the USSR had gotten control of a large media conglomerate you'd expect a reaction.

Divesting Tiktok from China isn't a ban, and it's disingenuous to frame it as such while also ignoring the major problem with such control.

mordae2• 2 years ago

This. US is readying to defend Taiwan. Government is obviously going to make sure no significant channels exist to go around its own propaganda.

Especially if the channel has ties to China.

justrealist2• 2 years ago

Don't try to make it a "both sides" issue. It's not.

cbsmith2• 2 years ago

Ownership isn't the only way to control a social media platform. It is, admittedly, a simpler way.

nicce4• 2 years ago

This has been proved many times already. E.g. Brexit and U.S. elections when Trump was chosen.

christkv3• 2 years ago

It’s a good thing western social media owned companies operate without any barriers in China /s our openness weaponized against us

whythre• 2 years ago

I don’t know why you are being downvoted. I think the closest parallel is Radio Free Asia, and that’s an irrelevant relic compared to TikTok.

jimbob45• 2 years ago

Having a prominent media platform under the control of a hostile government is a serious threat.

Then China was right to ban Google, Facebook, and Reddit? This seems like a war where no one wins. Why not simply ensure platforms are open, neutral, and fair for everyone? (e.g. not reddit)

alephnerd11• 2 years ago

Clearly in China's case they were.

If China could use protective tariffs against American firms and undercut American production, there's no reason to keep playing a morally pure yet essentially meaningless stance.

animal_spirits• 2 years ago

I think there is an asymmetry here. The CCP has much greater control over TikTok than The US Federal govt. has over Google, Facebook, and Reddit. American tech giants regularly fight against the US govt. and sometimes win. AFAIK, this happens less in CCP controlled China.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_Stat...

empath-nirvana4• 2 years ago

Then China was right to ban Google, Facebook, and Reddit?

From a strictly pragmatic, real-politik point of view, yes.

From my personal point of view, it would be preferable if the US and China were on friendlier terms and were not military and economic adversaries, so that this wasn't a concern.

The US isn't going to care if a French or German or UK company owned a social media company here.

CommanderData2• 2 years ago

Nazi content or serious threats will be used to control legitimate content.

Israel's recent genocide was documented largely through Tiktok with the help of the algorithm.

I can imagine this annoyed Israel quite some and the US, I envisage the algorithm being altered to stop this if the it comes under US control, like has been done on Instagram and Facebook.

Alot of footage would not have made it out if it wasn't for Tiktok.

bjourne2• 2 years ago

... Is a "serious threat" to whom? To the dozen or so American billionaires - Zuckerberg, Musk, Murdoch, Bloomberg, Bezos, Iger, etc. - who control a large fraction of the world's media or to the American people?

2devnull2• 2 years ago

To citizens. Citizens are important in America.

readams2• 2 years ago

Spying and data collection isn't remotely the main concern. The main concern is control over how Americans consume information.

See e.g. https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...

"The conclusions of our research are clear: Whether content is promoted or muted onTikTok appears to depend on whether it is aligned or opposed to the interests of the Chinese Government. As the summary data graph below illustrates, the percentages of TikTok posts out of Instagram posts are consistently range-bound for general political and pop-culture topics, but completely out-of-bounds for topics sensitive to the Chinese Government."

It's not even theoretical. This is happening now.

justrealist2• 2 years ago

It's honestly incredibly lucky for us that the Chinese propagandists couldn't resist pulling the bias trigger over issues that don't really matter. Talk about keeping your powder dry.

They could easily have pretended TikTok was a neutral actor until they needed to sway US opinion over Taiwan (or something bigger). Instead they made the control obvious on a dozen issues and are going to get cut off way earlier.

alephnerd11• 2 years ago

Having travelled across Asia, TikTok has definetly played a major role in helping build Chinese soft power.

Vietnam for example is fairly anti-China due to memories of the Sino-Vietnamese War, the PRC's support of the Khmer Rouge (edit: spelling), and the South China Sea dispute, but in my experience views among the younger generation have started to trend towards a Chinese view of the world because of TikTok.

South Korea and Japan still have massive soft power in the region, yet products like TikTok are definetly undermining it.

bjourne2• 2 years ago

Has this report been peer-reviewed or published in a reputable journal? Otherwise I would just dismiss it as more pro-regime propaganda from another American think tank.

phantomathkg2• 2 years ago

Are you saying anything anti-china is pro-us-regime?

sorenjan• 2 years ago

"Among adults, those ages 18 to 29 are most likely to say they regularly get news on TikTok. About a third of Americans in this age group (32%) say they regularly get news there"

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-amer...

notyourwork• 2 years ago

This is extremely concerning that perception of current affairs is fed to people using social media.

wanderr• 2 years ago

IIRC, they did not even bother to align the dates when comparing hashtags, i.e. this includes many instagram posts from before TikTok existed.

thiagoharry4• 2 years ago

So China sells its point so well that all the numerous tools and huge amounts of money that the United States also has to propagate its point of view and guarantee its own soft power has difficulty competing with a single Chinese tool, and this within its own territory? Or perhaps the problem is that they don't want a Chinese social network to have access and control over people's data, but neither they want to pass laws to protect people privacy like what EFF proposes because the American government also do not want to forfeit the access and control over people's data?

empath-nirvana4• 2 years ago

A) china doesn't let American companies operate freely in China.

B) The united states doesn't _do_ state owned media in the United States. Even PBS and NPR are independent.

Spivak• 2 years ago

Please people stop posting that "study" or at least read it before you take any conclusions from it. Good god it's terrible science.

Like even if it's not obvious to you how using Instagram as a "reference" for hashtags is not a good baseline it still doesn't mean anything in terms of how the content is spread because how are you going to detect algorithmic boosting and suppression by counting user generated content? A million posts with #cheesetastesbad could get less actual views than ten posts with #pro-cheese. And this is before accounting for vastly different tagging culture between social networks and different users entirely.

https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/the-truth-about-tiktok-has...

Blunt comparisons of hashtags is severely flawed and misrepresentative of the activity on TikTok.
It’s critical to understand that hashtags on the platform are created and added to videos by content creators, not TikTok. Millions of people in regions such as the Middle East and South East Asia account for a significant proportion of views on hashtags. Therefore, there’s more content with #freepalestine and #standwithpalestine and more overall views. It is easy to cherry pick hashtags to support a false narrative about the platform.

TikTok could be completely totally bold-faced evil and this study still wouldn't be good evidence of it.

DebtDeflation2• 2 years ago

It's not even just how they promote/mute political topics. Watch Tik Tok videos in China and it's all young people helping the elderly, learning job skills, and doing other socially virtuous things. Watch Tik Tok videos outside of China and it's all videos of kids stealing cars, eating Tide pods, and pranking people in Home Depot.

koube4• 2 years ago

I hear this a lot but I'm pretty sure China has mindless social media apps like we do. I think it's called Douyin or something, if you go to https://www.douyin.com/discover you'll even see the tiktok logo. I'm pretty sure you can only watch people help the elderly cross the street so many times before you start looking for something more entertaining.

For example do an internet search for Chinese people live streaming under a bridge. I'm pretty sure these people are not all demonstrating job skills.

sangnoir3• 2 years ago

You can blame the first amendment for that. The first amendment doesn't apply to China, so the Chinese government tells Douyin what content is undesirable and it gets filtered/censored. Is that what you want to happen in the US? Or did you think Douyin was intentionally leaving money on the table due to patriotic fervor?

humanlity• 2 years ago

as Chinese, it is no political, no drug, less gang style music, less sexual video, but not all as you say

jerbear4328• 2 years ago

That whitepaper compares the counts of posts in a set of (arbitrarily chosen) hashtags to Instagram. All it proves is that the ratio of posts between these hashtags is different between TikTok and Instagram.

Their findings are unrelated to whether content is promoted or muted, they only look at post count. They don't even determine that it isn't Instagram that is biased (as they only compare the ratios), and these differences can pretty easily be attributed to different userbases.

They never explain how they chose hashtags that are compared, which could potentially be biased.

This isn't to say that TikTok isn't doing these things. This PDF just doesn't prove anything, and its claims are overstated.

See the discussion from this whitepaper was posted to HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38754653

readams2• 2 years ago

I think you're somewhat missing the idea here. It's _not_ saying that China-sensitive topics are less popular on TikTok than Insta. It's saying that the difference between TikTok and Insta is _hugely greater_ for China hot-button issues than it is for other topics.

It doesn't really matter how the hash tags are chosen; the fact that this is uniformly true, by a lot, for all the obvious hash tags you might pick is damning evidence.

rightbyte2• 2 years ago

Fundamentally, users should not use closed propertiary blackbox communication platforms I guess. But that is not the critique.

The report is quite bad. There is no sensitivity analysis at all. Their methodology does not track bias but user base. I would discard it as a lobbyist hit piece.

maxglute5• 2 years ago

Or it shows US platforms like instagram is thoroughly infiltrated by US propaganda. Or antiPRC people aren't likely on TikTok in the first place. Or how US misinformation networks can't be weaponized on TikTok in the same way as western owned platforms staffed by US ex intelligence. Both in it's abillity to inject narrative or control narrative of others. For all we know, TikTok is the baseline of global sentimentality and Instagram is anomolie of US influence operations. Is TikTok aligned to PRC interests, or neutral but only seeingly aligned because TikTok is simply not specifically aligned to US interests like other US platforms. Ultimately it's the latter that's the problem for US ability to shape narrative.

alephnerd11• 2 years ago

Point blank - why not allow Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp operate in China without governmental interference?

If ByteDance can operate their platform in the US, then Meta and Alphabet should as well.

corv• 2 years ago

Another way of going about it would be to require transparent algorithms.

Any mass media platform could be problematic regardless of who owns it.

johnea2• 2 years ago

Policy makers have clearly spoken: If China wants US citizen data, they should buy it from data brokers like everyone else!

jredwards• 2 years ago

I'm glad this is the top comment. I see this misconception in every conversation about this issue.

Simulacra• 2 years ago

The title is inaccurate. This is not a ban on TikTok, it is legislation requiring TikTok to be sold, so that is not owned by the Chinese communist government. This has been discussed several times before here, yet people still think it's a ban. That's wrong.

nimbius• 2 years ago

it is a defacto attempt to ban it.

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

If ByteDance calls Washingtons bluff --which they very likely will-- it sets the stage for a first amendment case at the supreme court as per Citizens United in 2010, corporate personhood is very much a thing in the US.

strangattractor3• 2 years ago

They will call Washington's bluff because the Chinese Government will tell them to do so. It will not be out of a sense of protecting free speech or desire for the public good - quite the opposite. People seem to forget how Jack Ma virtually disappeared when he bucked the party's orders. Almost half of their users are from of the US. Surely a decentralized version of TikTok can be made to replace them.

SR2Z2• 2 years ago

I doubt that this will go in ByteDance's favor. This is actually an extremely serious national security issue.

Given that TikTok acquired Musical.ly, they fall under the purview of CFIUS, an executive branch agency. This legislation is welcome, but not actually necessary since there's already a Constitutionally-tested process for banning foreign companies. If the executive and legislative are in agreement... well, TikTok is not going to be able to ignore that.

Foreigners enjoy 1A protections _inside_ the US, but foreign-owned companies are not always entitled to the same protections for exactly these national security reasons.

empath-nirvana4• 2 years ago

No, it's an attempt to force them to sell it. The us government has zero motivation to ban any social media site.

bensecure• 2 years ago

the first amendment protects us citizens or those on us soil. The chinese government meets neither of those standards.

Ferret74463• 2 years ago

It is a defacto attempt to ban it insofar as everyone is defacto admitting that Tik Tok is an arm of the CCP.

christkv3• 2 years ago

How about both EFF

leotravis102• 2 years ago

And potentially solidify Facebook/Meta's monopoly on social media in the process? Plus not to mention that Meta is lobbying very hard for a ban so people can switch to Reels.

You surely don't want that do you?

The US needs to pass a strong privacy bill instead of this unconsititional crap.

timeon4• 2 years ago

Wish they also ban Facebook too, in EU (X is not relevant here).

omginternets2• 2 years ago

For once I disagree with the EFF. This is a national sovereignty issue masquerading as a freedom issue.

r00fus• 2 years ago

In principle I agree with you, in practice it seems the only reason TikTok legislation is passing the House is because Israel thinks everyone on TikTok hates them (reality - most people in the US disagree with genocide).

alephnerd11• 2 years ago

TikTok's change in ownership has been discussed for years.

The current action occured when TikTok pushed users to call Congressional Members through anti-patterns within the app [0]

Not everything is about Israel-Palestine smh.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/tiktok-phone-cal...

kikokikokiko3• 2 years ago

To be fair, most of the world (and not only most of Americans) want both sides to lose. Israel is just an invader nation that used power and money to take ownership of land that belonged to another group of people, less than 80 years ago. And now, 3 generations later, the former owners of this land have so much anger and resentment towards the acts of violence and tyranny they suffered on the hands of those invaders, that they themselves became a group of despicable psychopaths. Gen Z simply has new avenues to get informed and to form their own opinion than the legacy media of the 20th century, and now it's hard to impose a narrative that dismisses how much blame does Israel deserves on this subject.

Longlius• 2 years ago

reality - most people in the US disagree with genocide

I'd like to see some sources for a majority of Americans even agreeing that it's a genocide in the first place.

neilv• 2 years ago

You might be right, but...

If TikTok is a national sovereignty issue for the US, should a lot of other countries similarly be banning US tech companies?

(Since even GDPR only scratches the surface of the power they're handing over.)

nostromo• 2 years ago

should a lot of other countries similarly be banning US tech companies

China already does for reasons similar to those that are in this bill.

cj3• 2 years ago

Yes, if those countries believe US companies are using their platforms as a weapon against them or pose some other national threat.

jachee• 2 years ago

The US government generally doesn’t hold a stake in US tech companies, nor direct influence over how they operate abroad.

adventured3• 2 years ago

Sure if they want to. And then they have trade issues with the US, which is what that becomes: an economic conflict (which can easily become a military conflict).

The US economy is drastically larger than the EU economy at this point (soon to be double the size), we control the global reserve currency, and provide a very large military shield across the EU (currently keeping Russia from attacking numerous smaller European nations). The US can do a lot more damage to Europe than the other way around, if it's conflict that Europe seeks with the US (whether economic or military). The same is true with US allies in Asia (particularly Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia).

All the US has to do is look the other way and Russia and China will get to work destroying the status quo, which includes ripping apart Europe and Asia. The US can feed Asia to China anytime it wants to, that includes Australia + New Zealand; it obviously doesn't want to do that. I think US allies want to keep the US an ally for all the right reasons, both economically and militarily.

empath-nirvana4• 2 years ago

If TikTok is a national sovereignty issue for the US, should a lot of other countries similarly be banning US tech companies?

Not only should they, but they do.

dahdum• 2 years ago

If TikTok is a national sovereignty issue for the US, should a lot of other countries similarly be banning US tech companies?

NATO, Five Eyes, and close allies like Japan need not bother. Russia, China, Iran, and a few others should, and mostly do.

I thought TikTok’s CEO did a great job in the hearing defending themselves, but ByteDance ultimately owns them. We compel companies to provide data silently through court orders all the time in the U.S. and to think China isn’t capable of accessing whatever data they want, at any time, assumes major incompetence of their intelligence services.

I think it comes down to this line of thought.

China can, so they will, because when we can, we do. China no doubt knows many of our non-public exploits, as we do of theirs.

In a real way, this forced sale is a sign of respect.

op00to4• 2 years ago

should a lot of other countries similarly be banning US tech companies

Sure, if there's evidence of the US exerting its influence over the content in a way that's harmful to the country.

timeon4• 2 years ago

We are already trying to ban Google Analytics in EU.

badrequest2• 2 years ago

In what way does TikTok operating challenge U.S. sovereignty? This is 2003 all over again.

User232• 2 years ago

Just try imagining how, if you were the Chinese government, you might use Tik-Tok to influence and undermine American support for militarily defending Taiwan. This isn't hard it's obviously a powerful tool. Just how powerful remains to be seen.

__loam• 2 years ago

It's an information distribution platform with direct ties to the Chinese government lol.

snakeyjake• 2 years ago

The same way Radio y Televisión Martí challenges Cuban sovereignty which is why the Cubans jam the transmissions.

edit: Decedent western rock and roll also challenged the ideological purity of the Soviet Union so record imports were banned for a very long time.

sschueller3• 2 years ago

As a European that has been dealing with what US social media companies have been doing, I am enjoying how the US is loosing their absolute mind when an external company does the same they do to us.

omginternets2• 2 years ago

Perhaps the EU might consider defending the sovereignty of its constituent states? That might even put a dent in Euroskepticism.

I will never understand your particular brand of whataboutism.

alephnerd11• 2 years ago

Feel free to start your own platform.

VK has been the primary platform in the CIS for over a decade now at this point.

And even Signal was started in the US.

sakras• 2 years ago

The difference is that if a European social media company wanted to operate in the US, it's welcome to. With China it's a different story - they can operate in our market but we can't operate in theirs.

xtracto• 2 years ago

As a Mexican, I find this actions from the US to try to maintain the "Pax Americana" Imperialism quite interesting. People in US centric forums like HN, Reddit, Slashdot, etc just cannot understand or see it, and it's OK; it is their country and their ideals. They are allowed to unequivocally take their country side.

But for uninterested 3rd parties, it's quite entertaining the bitchslap games that China and the US play with these sort of policies (Google ban, tiktok ban, etc).

freedomben6• 2 years ago

Can you clarify what it is that the US social media companies are doing to Europe?

For example are you saying that they are showing content to European youth to sow discord or something like that, or are you only talking about the data collection/mining?

TMWNN• 2 years ago

If TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.

does the same they do to us

So you're saying that the US ought to be on your country's equivalent of the US government's "foreign adversaries" list <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversar...>, which includes China, that the proposed bill specifically targets? That's fine. I guess you won't have any objections to the US leaving NATO since you wouldn't want your country/continent to be in a military alliance with such a country.

archagon• 2 years ago

Neither you nor the government have any right to tell me what media to consume, and through which medium.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

DO ban TikTok (and by “ban” we evidently mean “force a change in ownership of”). China imposes ownership restrictions when our companies do business there. We should do the same.

ALSO please do outlaw private dragnet spying no matter which company is doing it, yes.

salawat• 2 years ago

Never happen. ALSO please do outlaw private dragnet spying no matter which company is doing it, yes.

Intelligence and National Security sectors benefit way too much from it.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Hey, take it up with the EFF. I just think we should go ahead and do the other, separately-good and basically unrelated thing in the meantime.

strangattractor3• 2 years ago

CommanderData2• 2 years ago

The Israel-Palestine conflict is playing a part in this. Israel has had a hard time controlling the narrative on Tiktok as organic support has stemmed from videos from Gaza. Especially amoung teens.

Israel has even gone to lengths to purchase advertisement slots on major platforms showing high budget propaganada. Once it's under US ownership they wll no longer have this issue.

alephnerd11• 2 years ago

The current action occured when TikTok pushed users to call Congressional Members through anti-patterns within the app [0]

Not everything is about Israel-Palestine smh.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/tiktok-phone-cal...

dralley• 2 years ago

To that point: Congressional staffers were posting on twitter that they were getting flooded by phone calls from 10-12 year olds

prosody• 2 years ago

This seems like confused causality. The ban bill was put forward and passed because TikTok asked their users to contact their representatives and share their opinion about the ban bill?

testfrequency• 2 years ago

I’m genuinely surprised by the EFF response, it feels misguided and they are conflating two separate issues

nicce4• 2 years ago

Are you saying that data should not be protected? Separate issue might be the content manipulation and censorship on TikTok, but "privacy issue" is the biggest argument so far publicly. If you are going to the privacy and data leak argument, then you should apply that for every application out there.

sangnoir3• 2 years ago

The EFF is correct and brings to light the hypocrisy of fighting companies rather than specific harmful activities, because making those activities illegal will have a very large blast radius and will destroy a lot of "value" in American companies that partake in those very profitable activities.

I see it on HN too, people hate on soft targets like Facebook, but their stock options/RSUs/portfolios depend on the respective companies (or sales funnels) depend on the same problematic behaviors. That's how we get "Google ads are evil, but Apple ads are fine. They do the same things, but Apple means well." TikTok is the softest of targets as it's not even American.

sanxiyn• 2 years ago

This is as bad as China banning YouTube. US fell to the level of China.

unglaublich• 2 years ago

It would, if YouTube would be controlled by the US government to divide and polarize the Chinese population to fuel social unrest and political instability.

badrequest2• 2 years ago

An accusation of such would have as much merit as the accusations that China is dictating the tone of conversation on TikTok.

thiagoharry4• 2 years ago

if YouTube would be controlled by the US government to divide and polarize the Chinese population to fuel social unrest and political instability.

Not Youtube, but american government using whatever social media they have access do operations like these against other countries: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-launched-cia-covert-i...

lazyeye2• 2 years ago

I've never understood why, at a minimum, this is not a simple trade issue. Why is China allowed to run all their social media apps in the West whilst simultaneously blocking all access for foreigners in their own market?

In what other trade scenario would this be remotely acceptable?

almatabata5• 2 years ago

I think technically you could probably have a western social media app in China. Just you would need to partner with a Chinese company, have all the data on chinese servers, give the chinese government access on demand and censor what they don't like. Most western companies logically think that handing over your IP, all the control and half the local profits is not really worth it.

adventured3• 2 years ago

It wouldn't be half the local profits, it would be the whole thing in the end.

They start with the scenario you mention, then they push the weakened foreign entity out of China entirely. They did that to numerous, huge US brands/companies, including McDonalds and AWS. They make it inhospitable to continue to exist at all in China, then a ditch sale becomes the only viable option for the US company.

martinky242• 2 years ago

A case where "technically" doesn't align with "realistically".

maxglute5• 2 years ago

Zuckerberg had big push in 2015s to reenter PRC, Google had Dragonfly, but IIRC they were killed internally because employees protested at least for Google. Bing's still in China. PRC fine with western platforms, as long as they censor like domestic PRC platforms and hand over dissident info, where dissident is whoever PRC says it is. Morally it's complicateded, economically it's probably not that profitable in long run, but regulatorily, it's straight forward. If anything PRC would love to have that leverage and try to get western platforms to extend censorship to PRC dissidents abroad.

lazyeye2• 2 years ago

These are obviously enormously restrictive conditions and effectively no different (worse?) than a tariff. Under normal conditions (not now, but way back when when govts used to act in the national interest) tariffs would always be reciprocated and a trade war would commence I think.

8note2• 2 years ago

Id consider that they're a US nexus since they accept American dollars, therefore the US constitution should apply.

Unless they've committed some crime, the property ownership should be protected

butler14• 2 years ago

Very rare I disagree with EFF but here I do. It’s long overdue.

silenced_trope• 2 years ago

Congress can do both.

I also disagree with EFF here.

freedomben6• 2 years ago

I didn't downvote you and I don't wish to cause offense, but unless you elaborate somewhat on why you disagree, this is a pretty low value comment.

drgo• 2 years ago

I agree with the EFF. I have even less confidence in US companies/agencies handling my data based on their well-known history exposed by multiple whistleblowers. We need to follow the EU in this matter. They are miles ahead of us

phantomathkg2• 2 years ago

I think this is not a binary issues. We can both ban TikTok and protect privacy in general at the same time.

adventured3• 2 years ago

TikTok is heavily a trade matter with regards to China blockading (or heavily restricting) US companies out of having access to their economy. That spans from Facebook to McDonalds to AWS to Disney (Disney isn't even allowed to outright own its parks in China).

The US has been far too lenient in the past with responding to China's hyper biased, anti-trade policies. If US social media companies can't operate in China, then Chinese social media companies shouldn't be allowed to have access to the US economy.

andrewstuart• 2 years ago

I usually agree with the eff but not on this.

The whole point here is not about the data, regardless of spurious justifications.

User232• 2 years ago

Did somebody in Washington finally get around to reading Unrestricted Warfare?[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

2devnull2• 2 years ago

Is TikTok available in China uncensored?

Maybe they’re smarter?

Ferret74463• 2 years ago

Only if you fancy being censored yourself.

iwanttocomment2• 2 years ago

So, I feel like we already have a mechanism as a country for working with a different country who is producing something that might be harmful to American business or politics, one that doesn't functionally impact our free speech principles. A tariff.

Just tax TikTok. Make Americans pay money to subscribe to it. Apply the same principle to any other social media entity based in another country. It's that easy.

martinky242• 2 years ago

This is misguided and naive. The real world analogy is closer to Huawei 5G systems -- thinking about it in that context, the reasoning behind the ban makes more sense.

This isn't a "capitalism based harm" that tariffs are intended to fix, this is a "national security based harm" that's being targeted. You can debate the merits of whether or not TikTok is a threat to national security, but under the supposition that it is, tariffs are not the correct lever to pull.

So, it's not "that easy". I like the smugness though.

iwanttocomment2• 2 years ago

I'd be with you if there were any indication why TikTok specifically would be banned while other Chinese social media entities or those from other countries that might be deemed national security threats are not - apart from sheer popularity, which would likely be resolved by said tariff.

The US did not merely ban Huawei, it was part of a broader national security concern, where ZTE was also banned as part of the equation, and conceivably other major Chinese telecommunications firms with a strong enough foothold in the US would have been (or will be in the future) as well. Not to mention, use of TikTok is entirely an individual choice, a telephone network user does not choose (or have knowledge of) the origin of the devices their communications are transmitted through.

leotravis102• 2 years ago

Once more, with feeling: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/11/once-more-with-feeling-b...

Let's pass a strong privacy law instead of the likely unconsitutionality of this bill plus a ban only benefits Facebook/Meta if you have forgotten.

sydbarrett74• 2 years ago

Banning TikTok is the kind of performative, 'tinker-at-the-edges' theatre that Congress does so well.

beshrkayali• 2 years ago

It's amusing how some Americans are buying into the idea that TikTok is a unique threat solely because it's associated with China, when platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others have been doing similar practices for over a decade.

johnea2• 2 years ago

Policy makers have clearly spoken: If China wants US citizen data, they should buy it from data brokers like everyone else!

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

Ideas for why someone flagged this submission. We are left to guess.

EFF seems to be invoking "either-or" argument to deflect attention away from their failire to present any facts to support their position that a ban would be unconstitutional. A ban on TikTok and passage of data privacy regulation within the US are not mutually exclusive. It is not an "either-or" proposition.

The bipartisan response to this bill, 352 yea and only 65 nay, seems quite unusual in recent times.

Tell Congress: Stop the TikTok Ban. Instead, Protect Our Data No Matter Who

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