I would say make laws about data collection, usage, etc. instead of banning TikTok.
Heck, fix more important problems like income disparity, hunger, homelessness, healthcare, our wasteful spending, so many things more important and yet we’re wasting time on TikTok.
I don’t think people think this is a good use of time.
Seriously, it’s government overreach and ignoring freedom of speech, etc.
We can agree that there is at least a slight difference in having your own (or a friendly nation’s) Government tracking you, versus allowing a competing nation to have direct access to over half of the adult US population (as per their recent push-notification stunt), as well as a robust collection of their interests and preferences.
There is a reason China has banned most US-based software in the mainland (Meta, Google, etc.); in favour of self-developed alternatives. This is just treatment in kind; it’s not an outright ban, rather a forced sale to prevent more of that user data falling into dubious hands.
I’m not really ok with that type of anti other country behavior in (edit to add the word: almost) any case. Heck, I want cheap Chinese EV options in the US too.
Make government (and other) tracking opt-out-able by law. That is the law we need. Not this bs version.
This current bill literally sounds like it’s written by American companies to squash a foreign competition. You know Facebook, YouTube, etc. are biting at the teeth for more users (and ad revenue) of short form content; especially if TikTok users scattered to other platforms.
Once again: give users the freedom to chose what they want. This is a government overreach.
Yes, there is a difference. Having your own government spy on you is way worse because it has the monopoly on violence over you. No one protects you from that. But your government will (try to) protect you from foreign influences.
There is a reason for the outrage when PRISM came out of the closet.
But your government will (try to) protect you from foreign influences That’s what this is, though.
Take a step back and consider for a moment the absolute mayhem TikTok was able to cause through one single push notification to their US user base (>170m, over half the adult population). That is not a power that should be wielded lightly, and definitely not one in the hands of a foreign adversary ready, willing and capable of weaponising it at their whim.
Think of the power that affords them to put their finger on the scale when it comes to the critical upcoming Presidential election, not just directly - but through slight manipulations of the algorithm to engage one political cohort and disenfranchise another.
My point was that there is some institution on your site of that standoff. This will not be the case if you have to fight against your own government. So it’s better to have to fight a foreign government, rather than one’s own.
TikTok is a dangerous influence, yes. I wasn’t trying to argue against that. But then, so are Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter and similar social media. Maybe even all social media.
Other than fighting with shortsighted regulations I don’t know how one would fight such an influence other than widespread education of the people. But that would make them more resilient against any propaganda.
Yes, my point is in this scenario there is a heavy hitter (government) on your site, which makes it a better sutuation than to let your government just prey on you.
Although I would put this under the “try to” category. In my opinion it’s way better to regulate methods rather than names. Then again I would not know how to implement this thought in this scenario.
Probably a bad translation from German. Maybe a better translation would be “force” instead of “violence”. It means only the police is allowed to use force.
Still can’t understand the point of it. Like, is the state ordering that civilians must be defenseless in the face of crime, for example? But yeah in general it just sounds like the usual “I am the Senate” fascist kind of takeover and control of power.
It means pretty much that, I would say. The reasoning is that in the case of a conflict you have to solve it by involving police and advocacies ( I think this is the right word ). The senate is only involved in setting the ground rules for the conflict in front of a judge.
Of course, there is stuff like self defense (so one is not completely defenseless), but anything like revenge is heavily pursued.
Imagine spending the time and effort to make that perfect whatabout meme you spent all day thinking about- only to have people tell you that all of them should be shut down.
The USA has a very strong first amendment. Cruise social media and you can find Americans literally calling on fellow Americans to overthrow the government. And these people are largely left alone by the government. Heck, a fair number of folks who were involved in the January 6th insurrection are still walking free.
Advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have called the bill “censorship plain and simple,” arguing that “jeopardizing access to the platform jeopardizes access to free expression.”
At 27 years old, Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost is the youngest member of Congress, and he opposes the bill.
“I think that it is a violation of people’s First Amendment rights,” he said. “TikTok is a place for people to express ideas. I have many small businesses in my district and content creators in my district, and I think it’s going to drastically impact them too.”
The fact that Republicans started it is enough for me to be at least suspicious of why its even being considered.
EDIT: Also lol at “strong first amendment rights” when redneck states ban any books with queer or black characters. And lmao at “Strong first amendment rights” when people get fired for talking about forming a union, let alone even trying to make one.
I think the comment shouldn’t have been removed, but principally because it is trivial to refute. The US is well aware of the fact that people calling for revolution have no teeth, while the people who actually did substantial law-breaking on Jan 6 (which itself had no teeth, but I digress) were indeed arrested.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s list of Chinese"dissidents" includes blatant fraudsters like Miles Guo, who fled China to evade capture for financial crimes before being imprisoned in the US for continuing to commit financial crimes, to say nothing of the “dissidents” involved in actual insurrectionary activity that killed PLA soldiers.
If all you did was drop a wiki link that’s a pretty worthless comment. Do you think China is the only country where dissidents get in trouble with the government? Do you think the U.S. doesn’t harass (or worse) dissidents?
My main reason is I’m an American, China (probably) can’t do shit to me. But here I’m subject to so much shit America can do legally and illegally, with zero repercussions.
If China fucked me in particular over, odds are it would at least spark debate here. If America spied on my messages and stopped me from protesting something, that’s just a Tuesday afternoon here.
The only reason why Congress wants to ban it, is due to pressure from news agencies and the government, because TikTok can’t be controlled by the CIA. You can’t manufacture consent of the people if the content comes from someone else you don’t control.
Makes me sad to see people acting like the simple act of saying “Jews” is offensive. We survived thousands of years of persecution, the fucking holocaust, and you think this is where we draw the line? Come the fuck on lol.
Jew is the correct word to refer to a member of the Jewish faith. I don’t think anyone would suggest that it was derogatory unless they themselves were hateful toward Jews. It’s kind of like how people who hate Americans use the term “Americans” hatefully.
I stand firmly on the side of not stifling hateful use of “Jew” to avoid the risk of stifling regular use of it. They can’t make the correct descriptor of my identity into a derogatory word. I won’t let them.
That is technically true, though the dynamic of pointing at and labelling a minority who have historically been subject to persecution is its own message on top of that. As usual, context is everything, and this meme depends on the reader being aware of the history of Jews being singled out for persecution for its transgressive frisson.
Oh really? This ban won’t effect people who use (for example) F-Droid to get the app?? That’s great to hear tbh. Hopefully this stupid ass decision will have the effect of turning more people on to FOSS stuff more than it will actually prevent people from using TikTok.
I don’t think they will put it on fdroid, because it has to really be open source to be there, but there’s certainly other app stores which will have it.
How can a ban be enforced? It’s always thru Google app Store or IP, and you can always bypass both.
In Aurora Store there’s TikTok. You can install aurora store here:
ok, thanks for the info. I don’t know a lot about how this kind of thing works (clearly), I just try to use and support FOSS and “piracy” whenever possible.
You can use VPN (paid or free) for instance and if the ban is really badly done even by changing the DNS server (which is free) access can be restored.
Nope. You can’t access tiktok through vpn in India. You need a patched/modded app. I live in India and I’ve tried doing that. It’s a non-existent platform here. Bans will affect user engagement.
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