Save me from TikTok because of what? I mean, we know the hidden reasoning, but what is the official concern?
officially: data mining and algorithm manipulation to promote propaganda
unofficially: data mining that hasn’t been approved by the US government and algorithm manipulation to promote propaganda that hasn’t been approved by the US government
Chy-na!
Is the distribution significantly different on other social media platforms? Because if not, what you’re insinuating might not actually be real.
People acting more terrified at the loss of tik tok from their lives than they did during covid, while losing people from their lives.
Tik tok might as well just change their name to empathy box, because they have convinced their users that the act of watching content on empathy box makes them more moral and politically aware than the rest of us.
At the end of the day, we have to be nervous when a foreign nation has content reach to 80℅ of Americans. This foreign nation is banning Americans from accusing it of genocide while allowing an economic incentive for Americans to accuse themselves and everybody else of doing it.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
American social media companies are also controlled by foreign powers. I have no interests in common with the ultra wealthy and massive corporations that control this country. They are just as foreign to me as anyone in another country. I trust them less than I trust TikToc.
Right, but if you know all of them can’t be trusted than the only logical thing to do is leave them behind, all of them.
Have you done so?
Actually, yes. The only exception would be YouTube, but I don’t let the algorithm tell me what to watch. I have a handful of channels I follow, and sometimes look up a howto video.
you can subscribe to channels locally via newpipe or freetube, in case you want to degoogle.
So glad to see this argument here.
Don’t use TikTok, don’t really care too much either way, but watching this whole thing unfold is starting to open my eyes to the ways these companies can shape public opinion.
They’re apparently sending notifications to people to contact their reps and it seems very likely that they’re promoting content that advocates against the ban.
I’m not a fan of censorship or blocking internet services but TikTok really seems to trying to make a good case for it.
My understanding is that while rights are inalienable, meaning we recognize that Chinese citizens have the inherent right of free speech as well, not just in our direction, I’m not sure we grant free speech to mean a foreign state gets to use its technology to determine our national conversation.
I’m sure there would be teenage trans kids who through confusion ended up pro hamas, but I think tik tok could almost be accused of creating and fostering a movement that is certainly close to that very thing.
Wait. Are you blaming China for the anti Israel movement in politics?
That’s… Impressive. Hilarious too but also impressive.
I never conflated a pro-hamas movement with an anti-israel one.
If there are leftists or vulnerable minorities who have become indoctrinated into pro-hamas rhetoric, yes, I clearly think tik tok is responsible because these kids certainly aren’t reading it on on storm front.
I am not interested in having a conversation where you pretend I am talking about the pro Palestine/anti Israeli government movements.
My dude. No leftist is pro Hamas. Hamas wants to create a religious ethnostate just like Israel wants to create a religious ethnostate. We ARE pro Palestinian freedom. But Israel is the one who keeps making Hamas the dominant Palestinian political party, in order to use them as an excuse to continue their genocide.
Stop pretending to know what the left thinks when you’ve clearly never actually spoken to their members.
If something a person says that wasn’t personally directed at you doesn’t actually apply to you, they probably weren’t talking about you.
Sure and my racist uncle’s joke about drowning a random person totally isn’t just his black guy joke barely concealed.
The narrative has for months been that anyone who is critical of Israel is Pro Hamas. And now you want us to believe that’s changed when someone is defending the most breathtakingly xenophobic bill in modern times?
Lmao. No.
You aren’t talking to a narrative, but rather a human being. You understand that, yes?
This isn’t the first time a company has done that. Uber famously used pop up ads to get people to vote for a ballot proposition. Enron went so hard on PR that everyone blamed the government for people losing the pension that had already been embezzled by the executives.
Yeah but that’s okay because they’re American, right?
If you’re gonna ban this speech, then you should ban all speech from foreign governments, including the propaganda Israel is filling our country with for their genocide.
But this same congress who is so ready to silence China is unwilling to silence Israel. And Israel is not our ally. Our allies don’t try to drag us into genocides.
As an Australian who gets bombarded by the US point of view and agenda from their tech companies - I think America could do with an outside influence undermining the government’s point of view.
As the post points out - the US government is doing an incredibly shitty job looking out for its citizens, and if they were afraid of a propaganda machine holding them accountable and creating civil unrest it might be for the best.
It’s just a shame the power that owns the means to do that happens to be china. I wonder if things will return to normal once the citizens pack away the guillotine
The government does a shitty job, but it is representative. American culture is dominated by billionaire worship, consumerism, and greed. We shouldn’t be so surprised when our elected officials share our values.
Undermining the US government’s point of view is one thing, but the argument could be made they are undermining your viewpoint more than the US government’s.
Oh for sure. I guess I despair because I don’t see a way out of the bullshit without civil unrest, but I think we have all grown weak and soft in the middle and are just willing to take it. I’m not sure it’s possible anymore and feel like the human race as a whole are just becoming slaves.
I used to think the USA at least had a semblance of justice and fairness especially compared to China, but I think it really is just every man for themselves now and greed is all that matters.
It’s not much better here in Australia either. There is no sense of community, or trying to build a better society. It’s almost applauded to be corrupt and selfish.
I am much less concerned about foreign news reaching the American people than the outright lies being spread in the American news without people batting an eye. And the fact that a foreign government (Israel) literally owns our government.
Oh so a chinese news source pointed this out to the youth? Good. It shows that we are so sick of not being able to trust OUR news that we’re looking elsewhere. Banning TikTok won’t fix that. I won’t go back to CNN or Fox if you take away that option. I’ll continue to look elsewhere
Who’s next? Al Jazerra? The hindustan times? The BBC?
Are you actually fucking insane? How does the Israeli government literally own the US government? That’s not even true figuratively. What the fuck are you saying
?
AIPAC bragging about how they lobby (which we all know to mean bribe) every US leader. Doesn’t get more blatant than that.
A promotional video of a lobby organization says they’re doing a good job, therefore the Israeli government owns the US government?
So when are we shutting down Facebook for their 2016 targeted ad campaign specifically meant to fuck with an election?
I’m 100℅ in favor of breaking Facebook into 912 separate companies.
But not having the current political power to get that done doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it to tik tok while we still have the power to.
Most companies in all industries should be broken up.
That’s not what they’re talking about doing. They want to sell TikTok to a US interest. Not 900 of them. This is literally a chance for Musk, Zuckerberg, Apple, and Alphabet to grab up the best short form video app for cheap.
That’s all it is. It is incredibly corrupt and the state department calls that out in other countries all the time.
China doesn’t allow US social media in their nation, specifically for this reason.
There is no reason two belligerent states shouldn’t be protecting their citizens from each other.
But I agree the citizens need to protected from their own governments as well.
How does us banning TikTok make us any better than China then? How does it make us any more free?
The whole point of freedom of speech is that everyone has it, even that speech you hate. The answer is more speech.
Lets see Biden grow a pair and go on new media and answer actual questions, not softballs. Then maybe people will start listening to him. And maybe he’ll learn what we’re actually concerned about.
Deep down, every one of us knows tik tok is a power nobody can or should be trusted with.
I disagreed with you up until this point. You’re exactly right about this.
The problem is that nobody should have this kind of power. But our government thinks this kind of power is just fine as long as it’s a US company they can control.
If nobody should have this power than nobody should have this power. Not China. Not Musk. Not Zuckerberg. NOBODY.
But we have a feckless, ineffective government written by racists 250 years ago and this is literally all they can do.
It’s not about protecting the people. It’s about who gets and controls the data. Data is the new oil.
Yeah the information age is turning into the profit maximized end game.
We all had access to information, then gave up our own in response. And now having specific data to find truly only the most useful and profitable people and marketing is the new gold. But honestly I think the data isn’t actually as useful as oil. It’s more like gold. And these companies are trying to sell shovels. Tools for scraping and using the data but eventually people must realize that it isn’t enough.
Waiting for ban on Australian infiltration and manipulation of the American populace.
If that’s Rupert Murdoch, he had to get US citizenship to be allowed to own Fox.
Quick Google search: “Generally, there are no restrictions on foreign ownership of a company formed in the United States. The procedure for a foreign citizen to form a company in the US is the same as for a US resident.”
Broadcast news is one of the exceptions:
Under federal regulations an alien may not own more than 20% of a broadcast license.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-09-04-mn-23112-story.html
ok, to be fair. There have been recent investments into people generally in poverty, in regards to improving their financial situation, as a means to improve their overall health, it’s still in trial stages, and very new, but it IS happening, and it IS positively affecting people.
Also, “we” aren’t really witnessing a genocide, i’m assuming to this is referring to war, if not, I’ll take my leave.
There’s like 8 recent ‘genocide emergencies’ declared by Genocide Watch not including Palestine and Ukraine
While interesting most are far smaller. The Manipur one has 200 deaths. Which is bad but more of a war crime than full blown Genocide.
Should have said while approving/enabling of a genocide.
The current administration has vetoed multiple UN drafts for a conflict resolution over Gaza as well as other UN resolutions proposed. We’re still sending the Israelis weapons. Neither congress nor the current administration care.
Uh 50 hr work week and $7.25/hr wage is where you lost me. Nobody is getting paid that minimum wage. That’s just bad faith.
It’s admittedly low, but not nobody – 1.3% of hourly workers from this report: https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/
This post is inaccurate. It fails to state that you actually work 2 jobs each at 25 hours a week so neither megacorp has to provide any benefits, and you’ll be fired from one next week because despite requesting otherwise they keep scheduling overlapping shifts and you can only go to one job at a time.
Two genocides actually. The Russian and the Israeli one.
Is Russia doing a race thing? I thought it was an imperialism thing, needed access to Crimea for the black sea and needs to get that pesky foreign government out of the way to ensure that access
Ukrainians have their own culture, language, religion, and ethnicity distinct from Russia. Russia is killing the native population to replace them with Russians, they are abducting Ukrainian children to raise them as Russian, and they are destroying Ukrainian art, museums, and churches. It is a genocide.
The Ukrainian thing is more of a cultural genocide with Putin having a plan on “integrating” all current Ukrainians into Russian society, but it checks out, because “integration” means “throwing away their own culture for the holy Mother Russia”.
One is doing conquest while the other is doing cleansing. We all know which of those is the most evil one
Russia has killed over 30000 civilians, they have abducted 20000 ukrainian children and assigned them to Russian families, they have destroyed Ukrainian museums, churches, and art. It’s just as much of a genocide.
It’s … It’s the cleansing, right? Or … Maybe, just don’t… Just don’t do wars?
You forgot the Uighurs, that is still happening
As someone who’s never used tiktok, has no interest in doing so, and finds the whole platform + 99.99% of the content dumb as all fucking fuck:
The US government can eat my shit and hair
…and TikTok will still have horrible data privacy and domestic spying capabilities, it will just be owned by US Big Tech instead of Chinese Big Tech.
Glad we can keep Chinese billionaires from influencing politics for cheap, they will have to pay an American billionaire to do it like Russia does.
Don’t forget this part
yeah this bill is not about tiktok at all. they’re just using tiktok as an excuse to setup internet censorship for the future
Yep, this is McCarthyism and the Patriot Act all over again. We’re really naive if we believe this is just about Tik Tok.
Hey, at least they got one thing right.
Honestly the genocide part of this meme bothers me. It’s not just one after all.
Helping the working class doesn’t net them a fat profit.
how does this give them a fat profit?
Moreso gives google and meta a fat profit, and they bought congress. I personally also think that suppression of info about Palestine is a driver of the bill as well, and that rewards congress through the legal bribery that is lobbying.
How is TikTok helping the working class? It’s an app that wastes your time and sells you products. There is no intent to help the working class. Stop glorifying governments. China doesn’t want to help liberate the working class or anything like that, if that’s what you’re implying.
TikTok doesn’t help anyone but that wasn’t the point of what I said. I was saying that the US government doesn’t actually help its citizens because it’s not profitable for them. The reason the government even cares about “banning” TikTok is because it means their tech buddies (specifically people like Zuck) can benefit from it. It’s corporate greed. TikTok doesn’t care about anything other than profit and data hoarding.
TikTok != China.
That said TikTok is a corporation that isn’t trying to help either.
Absolutely, but I have seen people say China is using it to liberate workers before, as if they care. There are a lot of misinformed people out there.
Because we deserve a little god damn joy in our life without some asshole billionaires paying to eradicate it for their own gain. That’s why.
TikTok isn’t going away. It’s just being forced to be sold off. Yeah, it’s for profit, but it already is for profit. You’ll still be able to get whatever kind of enjoyment can be had from there. It’s just going to be controlled by a US company.
