Opposing this ban isn't "malicious intent" lots of people think it's an infringement upon their rights for the US government to decide what they can and cannot see.
There's definitely areas of advertising that are banned/controlled so that comparison seems more damning than beneficial (e.g. alcohol to minors, medication in any country other than the US
It's not useful though. I actually think it's very cool that TikTok got a bunch of young people to contact their representatives. If this ban goes through, the political blowback is going to be extreme. It will be like the Streisand effect x100,000,000.
People aren't fools. They know that TikTok is being put into this position by the US government. You can go on any social media platform right now and see how outraged TikTok users are. This is going to have incredible political blowback from the younger generations and there won't be any "lawyering" around that. Even if the ban doesn't go through, a lot of damage has already been done.
The bill is overwhelmingly bipartisan though. There isn't anyone for some kids to go after, if it's almost a unanimous bi partisan effort.
Those kids lost. It's over.
And if people are this upset, then that is all the more reason to pull the trigger now, instead of giving our foreign adversaries more time to retaliate.
Anyway, tiktok almost divested the last time this happened. Unless they are OK will losing 10s of billions of dollars for nothing, well chances are they'll just divest, despite the current posturing they are doing.
This level of censorship isn't good, it's very bad. It's also concerning the speed at which the government mobilized to do this. It's a rapid crackdown on free speech and individual freedom.
Nothing is being censored. If ByteDance refuses to sell, TikTok will be removed from App Stores and have to find new web hosting. TikTok.com will still resolve fine.
> Could you help me understand how that isn't censorship
Censorship bans the speech. If we were censoring Bytedance, we’d block TikTok.com.
This is more in the vein of “you can’t advertise your brothel at the elementary school.” You can still advertise your brothel. The distribution and amplification is just being regulated.
If we stretch your argument to absurd then we can say that putting a political prisoner in jail also doesn't limit his free speech: he is still able to write letters.
> putting a political prisoner in jail also doesn't limit his free speech: he is still able to write letters
Free speech is a big topic. I would argue that yes, that person’s speech has been curtailed, but depending on what they were jailed for (saying something offensive versus stabbery) it could be reasonable.
Unless they were jailed for their speech, what you describe would not amount to censorship.
Trump tried to do this 4 years ago, how is that a "concerning" level of speed? The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been reviewing Tik Tok's Project Texas initiative to handle US data separately for 2 years. This was not an out of the blue move. The citation for those claims are in the linked article.
I disagree. It looks like they're fighting for the rights of US citizens. If you were one of the millions of people who use and like the app, you might feel the same way.
I use and like the application. I'm just skeptical of a government that doesn't allow any of our social networks in their country and expects us to allow their social networks in our country.
> The pressure campaign puzzles me. I wonder how anyone at the firm could have seriously imagined such a naked and all-out assault would help their case.
In a democracy the will of the people should be driving policy, not the irritation level of elected officials. I would assume getting millions of people to advocate for your cause would be the single most effective tactic (in a functioning democracy).
We live in a democracy. It's not the job of these government agents to ignore their constituents, it's their job to listen to them. This is demonstrating that TikTok should not be banned.
Correct. We live in a democracy. TikTok just demonstrated it is an existential threat to that democracy by conducting a DDoS directly against Congress at the behest of a very non-democratic Chinese government.
We all like to believe this, but practically it’s not always true. With enough resources you can make a significant part of the population act in your interests and against their own. Now I won’t get into the argument that each and every soul is able to reason and defend their interests at all times or whether if they did what you pushed them to do, it’s because your interests were in fact already aligned, there are countless examples to the contrary.
So if you, as a foreign entity, can exert your will on a democracy this directly, yup, I’d ban you.
But that would violate the free will of all of the people who have no problem with China owning the app that they use. There's endless propaganda and advertising we are subjected to in the west. Second guessing people's free will because of influence destroys democracy.
or the free will to not use seat belts, to speed, to blast your loudspeakers to your neighbors, to walk around with a contagious disease because you're immune...in the end why do you live in a society where you rely on others if you should just be allowed to do every single thing you want to do regardless of how it affects said society? Perhaps the some situations need to be more carefully considered and agreed upon by the whole?
Censoring information is not in any way comparable to the items you list. It's also disingenuous to ignore the motivation behind this suggested ban. It came about from Zionists who are convinced that TikTok is the reason younger generations don't support Zionism. This only happened because of Oct 7th. It's a violation of the rights of US citizens.
I don't know enough about that to speculate. If what you say is true, then it should likely be addressed in another way, not by arguing that there should be no order in a society.
I don't think any website or app should be banned just because the owner is accused of having an agenda (foreign or domestic owned). That's not society having "no order", it's basic freedom of speech and personal liberty.
I don't disagree with you. It seem the difference here is that it's a foreign app/entity, and governments seem to have the authority to decide unilaterally on giving such entities access to it's people/economy/etc. This is done by every country, democratic or not. Think import controls, tariffs, and direct bans. The fact that people will lose access to said app is a consequence, but I'm not sure we can claim it's infringing on a freedom. Telling you not to use the app would be infringing. Banning the app is not really. Now, it'd be a different issue if they banned Facebook. The freedom infringed here would likely be facebook's and not yours.
The users who want to use that app, should get to use that app. If there's content on the app that breaks the law, that content can be addressed directly. This thankfully will be a very politically costly move if they pull it off. Millions of people will be pissed, and they will be right to be.
That is misleading. What some in Congress want to do is require the company that owns Tiktok to create a US subsidiary, then the company gets to sell shares in the subsidiary and keep the money it gets from that sale. It could also keep the shares. As long as it owns the shares, it gets to collect all the profits made by the new US subsidiary.
Tiktok would get to continue operating in the US, which is more than fair IMHO given how harmful (addictive) Tiktok is: I'd be sorely tempted to shut it down, which would be a lot like stealing or confiscation (of revenue potential), but that is not the bill actually before Congress.
