Comment by tardigrada@beehaw.org on TikTok set to be banned in the US after losing appeal

TikTok’s bid to overturn a law which would see it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected.

The social media company had hoped a federal appeals court would agree with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users.

But the court upheld the law, which it said “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.

[…]

The court agreed the law was “carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”

It helps to think before you type.

The free market is free if and when you play by the same -democratic- rules. Look at Romania, just to name an actual example. Tiktok is much worse than Facebook and (most) others, and being worse is not an easy task here.

Tik Tok is not much worse than Facebook. The only reason is because Facebook cooperates with the US agencies, while they don’t get the information from Tik Tok. US does not like that citizen data is going to China instead being able to collect it themselves. From privacy standpoint of the end user, it does not matter who has the data; lost privacy is lost privacy.

I think Tiktok is much worse. It’s about a foreign country whose government is pursuing a dictatorial policy trying to interfere in foreign elections (again, look at Romania, for example).

The argument of FB collaborating with the US gov is true I guess, but isn’t valid here. China is doing the same, the Chinese government is banning the Western version of Tiktok, too, let alone all other non-Chinese apps. So the ‘free market’-argument doesn’t make any sense here, it’d be even hypocritical.

Because another countries takes away freedom and eliminates the free market, makes it a non argument if the US does the same? The US is doing the same what China does.

@thingsiplay

Because another countries takes away freedom and eliminates the free market, makes it a non argument if the US does the same? The US is doing the same what China does.

If so, why then haven’t you long been criticizing China the same way you do now the US? Where are these posts?

(Just to say that: The US, China, EU, and all the others can ban Tiktok, Twitter, FB, and all the centralized data collectors. I wouldn’t miss any of them, and I think it would be better for the world. But the hypocrisy here in this thread is very telling.)

So you are saying I am hypocrisy, because you could not find posts in my history criticizing China? And that makes my critique about the US less true or acceptable? I no longer believe in good faith of your discussion here and will end discussing with you. You have the last word if you want.

When the dictionary points to bad faith arguments, your name comes up.

I agree with you that “free market” standpoints aren’t very good places to criticize this decision from – except to point out the hypocrisy of the right-wing, which I do think the original comment was trying to do – but it has to be said that nobody is obligated to criticize both China and the U.S. equally in order to not be a hypocrite.

One simple example of why would be that most if not all users here have absolutely no say at all as to what China does. There aren’t a lot of Chinese citizenry here. But there are a lot of Americans. It so follows that it makes sense to criticize the U.S. more, because many people on Beehaw can actually do something about it, especially in aggregate.

It doesn’t help to criticize China much either, anyway. China’s bad, yes; we know. Even among honest-to-god capital-C Communist circles, China is controversial. Posts about it tend to do three things: 1) Create a sort of misery/anger circle-jerk, 2) arbitrarily and unnecessarily signal to others that you aren’t a tankie, when nobody should really need to clarify that in most scenarios, and 3) further U.S. propaganda interests by taking people’s time and attention away from issues they’re more likely to be able to do something about.

I’m obviously not in favor of forgetting what China’s done, either, but there’s a happy middle-ground I think a lot of Western-centric sites sail right past, and I don’t think any of it is helpful.

@LukeZaz

There aren’t a lot of Chinese citizenry here. But there are a lot of Americans. It so follows that it makes sense to criticize the U.S. more, because many people on Beehaw can actually do something about it, especially in aggregate.

I agree that there are most likely more Americans (or other ‘Westerners’) here than Chinese, yet there are many tankies here with alt accounts on Beehaw. It is them who spread the Chinese propaganda, criticizing the West in general while being silent on China.

Yeah China sure is scary. Centralized social media owned by American billionaires on the other hand can totally be trusted never to interfere in elections.

Why not include legacy media? Same problem.

The irony of this post is over 9000

From a national security standpoint of the government, it absolutely does matter who has the data.

Dude, the US based social media platforms are no better than TikTok. Its all rotten to the core. X is a great example of this.

Except all the social media are doing the exact same thing. This is pointless political posturing

Not quite. TikTok has been shown to tweak their algorithm against criticism of China. That’s the real reason for the concern. Their ability and willingness to purposefully manipulate people.

Which is no different from any of the US social media companies tweaking their algorithms against criticism of all number of political things.

Twitter blatantly forced right wing radical propaganda down their entire user bases through a for months. Facebook was selling user data to foreign influence groups to assist with political message targeting. They’re all the same.

Lots of people think the US social media platforms do that. But none of the scientific studies have been able to show it.
The US companies are all purely driven by engagement, to maximize profit. The most effective source of that engagement, changes from person to person. But it’s most commonly what you might call “Rage Bait”.

Twiter’s recent bend toward the right, is primarily self selection of it’s users. As the left… left… the platform, the pool of available content shifted right; Causing even more to leave. Unless you have some paper I haven’t seen.

And Facebook selling data, is entirely different and unrelated. Nobody (no lawmakers) care about that.

No, Twitter changed its algorithms leading up to the election. That was not self selection. They were actively pushing right wing bullshit down everyone’s throats because the owner spent $200 million trying to get the dipshit elected.

That could be. It sounds plausible. Do you have any studies?

Do you have a source that is not from a hostile intelligence agency?

What intelligence agency?
NCRI is a social media research group.

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TikTok set to be banned in the US after losing appeal(www.bbc.com)

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