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Emmy ,

Even if China has access to my data, that's way less scary than Zuck, musk, Bezos or any other tech bro.

yarr ,

I want my data to be centralized, profiled and used against me, but I want it by American corporations, dammit!

InternetUser2012 ,

I feel there's a lot of China influence in this thread. I wonder why that is...

bigMouthCommie ,
@bigMouthCommie@kolektiva.social avatar

sinophobia

sailingbythelee ,

CCP-phobia, I think. It is inappropriate to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people.

maculata ,

The world is on fire but the kids are upset that they have to use another platform for their stupid fucking dance videos.

BTW: someone in the US should just make a similar app and call it tiktok. It’s not like China gives a crap about IP protection so turn about is fair play.

Crikeste ,

The world is on fire but lawmakers are doing petty antagonistic policy and turning a blind eye to atrocities.

mechoman444 ,

That's right. What's important is TikTok and Chinese interests of course. /S

Crack0n7uesday ,

So NSA backdoors are mandatory but Chinese ones are bad.

redfox ,
@redfox@infosec.pub avatar

Yes. 🤷

Nobody wants to be spied on by their perceived enemies. Also, how do you expect us to maintain an appropriate level of hypocrisy if we don't constantly do hypocritical things?

I wish we would go after foreign investment, ownership, and political meddling as much as tiktok

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

I would be more afraid of being spied on by the government of the country I live in than by a government from a foreign country. Who do you think is more capable of doing something to you?

redfox ,
@redfox@infosec.pub avatar

being spied on by the government of the country I live in than by a government from a foreign country

Ha, that's a decent point. I don't really care for either. I think about these things among others:

  • China has proved they are interested in conflict. They haven't used any kinetic/traditional warfare against anyone lately, though they seriously want to with Tiwan.
  • China has been using nonstop cyber related warfare to conduct espionage, steal trade secrets, position themselves for assisting kinetic warfare with cyber warfare, etc.

I am not a direct target of these, but China killing the power grid or disabling telecommunications does have the potential to have a huge impact on my life.

  • The US government has used nonstop kinetic and cyber warfare over the last 20+ years.

The US playing world police doesn't directly threaten my safety, but I definitely would be more worried about the US than China if I wasn't a US citizen.

The US government spying on me:

  • Super annoying mostly due to the principle of a lack of privacy, regardless of whether I do anything bad or not
  • Becomes a serious problem if I was an active opponent of government policy and elected officials, and the government/leadership deems me a terrorist/insurrectionist/etc.

Their discretion of what's my free speech and right to criticize the government vs leading insurrection would be more complicated if they were using the NSA to own my life and try to use any excuse to lock me up.

I guess I weigh what's more likely to be a problem in my current/future life.

I don't like either of these scenarios.

Crack0n7uesday ,

You have a choice to not use tiktok, in this day and age you don't really have a choice to not use a phone...

nialv7 ,

Yes, governmental surveillance is always bad. But let's not pretend being surveilled by NSA is as bad as being surveilled by the authoritarian government of China.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Sure bro, it's the CCP out to oppress Americans and arrest and assassinate reformers and journalists, because they hate our freedom!

bigMouthCommie ,
@bigMouthCommie@kolektiva.social avatar

it's worse. it's worse because they have the power to arrest me, freeze my assets, or do a hundred other terrible things. the chinese can... uh... find out my sense of humor is immature i think.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

The fundamental fear of TikTok isn't censorship. It's fear of a media outlet that expresses views sympathetic to the Chinese government.

If Americans are exposed to these views, there is a horrifying possibility that they my agree with them. And if Americans agree with the Chinese government, it's just a matter of time before America crumbles from within.

bigMouthCommie ,
@bigMouthCommie@kolektiva.social avatar

the second paragraph, that's satire, right?

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

It's what American politicians actually believe

tpihkal ,

Both are bad but fuck Xi and the CCP 🖕

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

The former is more pressing than the latter.

jeremyparker ,

I mean, it's not one or the other. No interference from Congress means we get surveilled by China and the US. Congress can cut that number in half.

fuckingkangaroos ,

I've got you tagged as "CCP shill?"

JasonDJ ,

High school nerds pay attention. This is how you can make some money and have an excuse to talk to the hot girls…by installing a vpn on their phones so they can still have their tik tok.

Get one popular girls phone set up and every girl in the school will be hitting you up within a week.

LemmyKnowsBest ,

And why do you assume everyone including hot girls & popular girls aren't already capable of installing their own VPNs? Unless of course you mean the high school nerd is going to pay for our VPN service, then come on over!

JasonDJ ,

I’m sure some do. I haven’t talked to many high school girls lately.

If this goes through and this happened when I was in school…that’d be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’d probably never even think of it then. I’d probably luck into it by telling the rest of the nerd table at lunch, jock overheard, sell him my services, and then word of mouth from there.

That happening now…probably be the inspiration for the gen Z’s “American Pie”. Or “Superbad”.

locuester ,

Are you kidding? There isn’t a phone owning high schooler that doesn’t know how to vpn past their high school’s nanny software. You’re out of touch.

escaped_cruzader ,

aren’t already capable

Anyone who can read and follow directions is capable

Most people can't install a VPN, including hot or cold girls

JasonDJ ,

It’s more like most people are unwilling to find or read directions. Most people can do most things nowadays. They’re just unwilling to try.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Most people can’t install a VPN,

My guy, do YOU know how to set up a VPN?

roguetrick ,

This shit is like saying most people can't connect to wifi. It's not exactly rocket science.

BreakDecks ,

And the cycle of infantalizing women continues...

Harbinger01173430 ,

Everything will keep going as planned /s

DingoBilly ,

Lemmy does draw a certain crowd unfortunately.

bluemite ,

That's mainly the internet, not just Lemmy

Euphoma ,

Highschooler here, everyone already uses vpn's to bypass the school firewall to view blocked sites and stuff while on school wifi.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

The kids are gonna be alright

fuckingkangaroos ,

They won't want TikTok once the chumps who follow them stop using it. They'll have to do something other than dancing for strangers to bolster their self-esteem.

bartolomeo ,
@bartolomeo@suppo.fi avatar

U.S. lawmakers can't force anything on foreign corporations.

If the bill passes in the House and Senate and is signed into law by President Biden, TikTok would eventually be dropped from app stores in the US if its owner doesn't sell. It also would lose access to US-based web-hosting services.

ByteDance would be banned from the U.S. market and lose it's webhosting on U.S. servers.

Also, what's with the "foreign adversary" status of China?

stoly ,

Actually a court in any country can prevent a company from doing something. When you do business in a country you have to abide by their laws.

bartolomeo ,
@bartolomeo@suppo.fi avatar

That's right, I totally came off wrong. I meant that U.S. lawmakers can't force ByteDance to sell TikTok, as the headline implies.

stoly ,

Though possibly US operations could be sold off, whatever that would mean.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Also, what’s with the “foreign adversary” status of China?

China is attacking us by having a bigger economy

bartolomeo ,
@bartolomeo@suppo.fi avatar

Lol yea. They also maintain control over their big corpos and that must be threatening to the 9 corporations in a trench coat that the U.S. calls a government. Still, the world doesn't need any more adversarial relationships, thank you very much U.S.A.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Unironically, so much of US/China hostility boils down to corporate market share

Alpha71 ,

Sooo... How do Republican's square being the party of "Small Govt" and then interfering in a private business?

PilferJynx ,

They don't. It's all bad faith to get what they want - control.

whereisk ,

Government is bad except when it comes to brutal subjugation of out-groups I don't like, while the in-group gets protected and treated with kid gloves by the same.

Unfortunately most of them are the dupes not the protected class they think they are - "they're hurting the wrong people" summed it up when it was uttered..

retrieval4558 ,

Too lazy to look up who said it, but there's a quote I like that goes something like "conservative seeks to have an in group who the law protects but does not bind, and an outgroup who the law binds but not protects"

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Is it a private business if it's owned by the Chinese government?

Eiim ,

It's really not though? The Chinese government has a 1% stake in ByteDance. Meanwhile ~60% is foreign investors – believed to be mostly American.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Then it should be easy to buy out that 1% stake.

I'm not saying it's a good bill, but reducing interference by foreign governments in US sold products is not against any party's philosophies.

PriorityMotif ,
@PriorityMotif@lemmy.world avatar

Do you think that They could avoid doing something that the Chinese government tells them to do?

BreakDecks ,

You mean like how US ISPs wiretapped the Internet for the NSA? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

But really, how dare anyone but us do that.

PriorityMotif ,
@PriorityMotif@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, why not let everyone do it if someone else is already doing it.

nialv7 ,

You have a misunderstanding of how China's government operates. It does not matter how much stake the government holds, companies just cannot say no to the government's request. Otherwise you will be disappeared. See Alibaba for example.

Remember, China does not have a democracy.

Crikeste ,

Ooooof, somebody licking the boot of capitalism a little too hard.

ferralcat ,

That's literally the same thing the us government is doing here....

fuckingkangaroos ,

No. It's a malicious foreign entity.

Dra ,

Foreign policy

le_saucisson_masquay ,

NSA can't harvest user data from tiktok because it's Chinese based, so they force them to split and sell to American subcompany that is obliged by law to give them access to their server. Everything else is political bullshit, like the Chinese gouvernement can "weaponize it's app" ?? They can't turn teenager into terrorist hating their country just like that, tiktok can only influence so much.

fruitycoder ,

If the Chinese government believed that why do they ban so many US apps in their country?

le_saucisson_masquay ,

Cmon that's not that difficult to understand: The same reason usa bans Chinese app. China, just as usa, has mass surveillance system and want to get every single data, they can't do that with apps owned by usa based companies.

Buttons ,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

My prediction is coming true: https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/10ofony/anything_to_protect_the_youth/

https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/e7c3d2b4-4ee2-478c-b872-eb1898a2e48d.png

DAMunzy ,

I watched that commercial - I guess banning TikTok is gonna work, huh?

tiltinyall ,

For the commercial yeah, real life is more of a no.

jaemo ,

What's more likely to work is something else will appear and distract the gnat-like attention span of our status-obsessed species, and we can go back to tik tok being the sound your you hear at night when you visit your boomer relatives and try to sleep in the guest bedroom.

Trantarius ,

I dislike TikTok as much as the next guy, but I think there are several issues with this bill:

  • It specifically mentions TikTok and ByteDance. While none of the provisions seem to apply exclusively to them, the way they are included would give them no recourse to petition this, the way other companies would be able to (ie, other companies could argue in court that they aren't controlled by a foreign adversary, but TikTok can't. The bill literally defines "foreign adversary controlled application" as "TikTok, or ..." (g.3.A)). It also gives the appearance that this law is only supposed to apply to them, which isn't what it says but it might be treated that way anyway.

  • It leaves the determination of whether or not a company is "controlled by a foreign adversary" entirely up to the president. He has to explain himself to Congress, but doesn't need their approval. That seems ripe for exploitation. I think it should require Congress to approve, either in a addition to or instead of the president.

  • According to g.2.A.ii (in the definition of "covered company"), the law only applies to social media with more than 1,000,000 monthly active users. Not sure why that's included.

  • There is a specific exemption for any app that's for posting reviews (g.2.B). I'm guessing one such company paid a whole lot to just not have this apply to them.

Buttons ,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

According to g.2.A.ii (in the definition of “covered company”), the law only applies to social media with more than 1,000,000 monthly active users. Not sure why that’s included.

I'm glad clauses like this are common. We don't want some teenager who wants to experiment with creating a "social media" website for his friends to have the full weight of the law immediately fall on their shoulders. People should be free to create website with minimal legal requirements, especially if it's a small website.

postmateDumbass ,

3 months later:

Hottest trending new app: TokTic

tiltinyall , (edited )

Insert astounded meme when a shell partner aquires the Brand and now, (pick your)company is now a known CCP co-conspirator.

CoopaLoopa ,

The directed scope of the bill is going to do the same thing to TikTok that legislation did to Juul.

If you target Juul with legal repercussions for all their flavored vapes, then only Juul stops selling flavored pods.
Now a million other disposable vape companies fill the void with flavored vapes that are worse for the ecosystem.

Targeting TikTok will just lead to another foreign data-harvesting social media app popping up to fill its place.

PriorityMotif ,
@PriorityMotif@lemmy.world avatar

It's not about data harvesting, it's about targeting users with political ideas. If you watch a video for a certain amount of time then they will continue showing you those types of videos. There's tons of bad faith political targeting on TikTok just like every other platform. The issue is that it's difficult to avoid because the platform decides what you look at unlike other platforms.

BreakDecks ,

So we're censoring political speech?

PriorityMotif ,
@PriorityMotif@lemmy.world avatar

Foreign adversaries don't have 1st amendment rights.

furikuri ,

This is why I'm having trouble understanding why people are confused about the bill's purpose, especially in the context of the last dozen years or so. Allowing a political rival to maintain control over a platform like this is granting them soft power. Even if I agree that companies like Meta should be more heavily regulated (though not in this manner), I can see why they've put a bandaid on the issue given that there's a non-zero chance that TikTok's content has been actively in the past few years

febra ,

The free market economy for you

Veraxus ,

Never has been.
🧑‍🚀 🔫 🧑‍🚀

Delta_V ,

An app would be allowed to stay in the US market after a divestiture if the president determines that the sale "would result in the relevant covered company no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary."

So apps can still be banned after divestiture, based on an arbitrary decision by one corrupt and potentially insane and/or senile person?

After all the talk of a "rules based order", I'm disappointed - this isn't a rule, its a leap of faith into the arms of serial liars.

yamanii ,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

The world police is scared about the competition lmao, "only us should violate worldwide privacy!"

MargotRobbie ,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

So TikTok is sending out app notifications that they are at risk of being shut down and urging their users to call their representatives right now. They are not going down without a fight.

The 165 days time limit would land the deadline in August-ish, right before the most intense phase of election season in the States, and I do think TikTok would be a very influential part of the election strategy this year.

Buttons ,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

On this particular topic, I think "both sides" is true. Both sides want to proceed down this "ban websites by name" road.

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