Can the US Lawmakers do anything about the US companies harvesting my data and selling it off… please?
Yes, they can make more money from it.
Can they? Completely wrong question.
"Will they" is what you wanted to ask but the answer is still firmly no
Honestly it might be "Can they" given how partisan issues like industry regulation are.
So when do they plan to do something about those domestic businesses trying to manipulate citizens of America?
Capitalism abusing citizens? Just fine.
"Communism" abusing citizens? Avengers, assemble!
They're prospective communists. Supposedly they're going to get there by 2050, but they just built a new massive luxury tower for their ultra wealthy so...
It's just like Marx said: "If you do an oppressive oligarchy for 100 years, it magically transforms into communism"
If that were true then the United States would have been communist by now
I think they're more worried that it's a foreign corporation going after their citizens and not a domestic corporation.
More of a capitalistic dictatorship
I mean, the domestic businesses are the ones who own Congress and are using it to get rid of a competitor.
After the thousands of years of human history I've read about, getting rid of competitors seems to have been the primary concern of most of the ruling classes all over the world. Way back to Ur.
Rulers don't play fair, because power corrupts.
As soon as the foreign businesses get better at harvesting data than the domestic ones, of course.
While you're not wrong about double standards, anything that discourages the use of vapid social media platforms is a win in my book. Use whatever backwards logic you like to make it happen so long as it's effective.
Well this goes into the direction of social media monopoly so I'm not sure
He says, on a social media platform
Lemmy is a message board, not social media. Like fark or something awful. You have no idea who the duck i am. How is that social?
Unless you think something is missing from that definition, Lemmy is social media. It is pseudonymous, but it is still social because of the users.
Since when did that define social media? That's the same thing as IRC. is IRC social media?
ICQ had message boards where people would chat about the news. Was that social media?
Again, fark is a place where people share content and discuss the news. Is that social media?
Yeah, I suppose those would. I wouldn't have thought it, but definitionally, it would be! I mean, heck, some of those are listed by Meriam-Webster! Isn't language neat? You learn something new every day.
It is social media, just because your talking anonymously doesn't mean you aren't interacting socially. Jesus Christ your talking to people. Right now. Your being social media'd. Stop acting like your above it.
forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)
My tiktok account is also anonymous.
Your Lemmy account can likely be used to identify you, given a big enough data set.
Undoubtedly, especially since I haven't taken particular steps to obfuscate my identity here.
But as I said in a comment below, I'm more worried about some unhinged nutbag online randomly targeting me than being a person of interest by any nefarious groups or organizations.
No it isn’t.
When you download the app you let them have the following information/data about you:
Purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers (!!), diagnostics, financial info, contact info, user content, browsing history, and usage data.
Please tell us how any of that is “anonymous”.
Cool dude, you've identified that big corporations data farm.
Random bloke user with a vendetta still doesn't know who I am, and that's who I'm more worried about on the personal scale.
Cool dude. Well you said your account is anonymous, and it isn’t. Words mean things.
This was a committee vote. The bill now must advance to the floor, pass a vote there, then go through the same process in the Senate.
Many bills are passed out of committee but are never given an actual vote.
Especially in the least productive congress in US history, the odds of any actual vote are low.
Technically, while that might have been true at the end of 2023, the US House of Representatives of the 118th congress have voted 796 times with 126 items passed, according to Govtrack.us with at least ten vetoes by the POTUS.
So not really the worst by any measure.
But also not functional by modern measures.
Yeah for sure I'd love to see more progress. I'm glad at least the House Republicans have taken a very brief break from impeaching their own speaker on repeat.
Oh that's coming. He had the audacity to applaud Biden. His days are numbered.
I wonder if this could also be applied to games owned in whole or part by Tencent...
i hope they sell conan exiles to someone else, because then the shitty monitization that is destroying the game will end.
Wishful thinking I'd wager.
yeah
Or websites? Like Reddit? No, never mind, that's silly talk.
Many users called lawmakers' offices to complain, congressional staffers told Politico. "It's so so bad. Our phones have not stopped ringing. They're teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app and we can't take it away," one House GOP staffer was quoted as saying.
and they still voted 50-0. really tells you something about how much these politicians are willing to listen to their constituents.
It was a 50-0 to pass the commission and then go to the House floor for a vote and then the Senate for a vote and finally signed into law by the president unless he vetoes it, which is possible imo.
Honestly, teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves, I might just call in to my local representative to voice my support of forced sale, operating restrictions, or even outright ban.
EDIT: I sent him an email.
Now do Facebook.
Love to, I think the 5 Bn USD FTC fine was a little light considering no jailtime was given. I hope their recent lawsuits lead to breaking the company up again.
what are you even trying to say here? that it’s okay for politicians to ignore entire demographics? or that it’s only okay for them to ignore entire demographics if, ultimately, it’s left up to a different group of politicians to pass the law?
i don’t use tiktok or have any interest in the app itself, but it’s still very alarming to see a vote go through 50-0 despite a “nonstop” flood of calls opposing it.
Ignore them? Gosh no. Protect them. Literally what I said.
“protect them from themselves” is what you said. which carries the connotation that they don’t know what’s best for themselves and aren’t qualified to make judgments about those things. this is different from simply “protecting them”.
To be fair, a big part of a functioning society is a government with proper regulations in place so that people are not expected to be experts in literally every field before making a purchase or performing some kind of action. Obviously, calling it "protect[ing] them from themselves," is dismissive and patronizing, but it's pretty much why we need government in the first place.
For example, the EPA recently issued a recall for ground cinnamon from certain specific (dollar store) brands due to unacceptably high levels of lead. Without the career scientists (and yes, bureaucrats) working for that regulatory agency, millions of people would have continued consuming the product and feeding it to their kids (low-income folks too in this case, given the brands) literally indefinitely.
Without the EPA, every person who buys cinnamon is what, expected to use mass spectrometry to determine the exact molecular make-up of every spice (or in the case of the EPA, literally any food or prescription drugs you may ever consume) before using?
If they didn't do their cinnamon research, then they deserved it, and the government should have no involvement? What happens in cases where companies hide dangerous issues in their products to avoid losing profits?
What if there's literally no way for anyone but a scientist, with extensive lab access and at least 4+ years of university to know that there is an issue with a product (or a construction site, or a drug, or water treatment, etc)? They're the only ones who should be able to properly avoid using a product that may kill them and their children? And even then, only when it's a product they're an expert in?
Not saying you're a libertarian, just like pointing out the obvious things that make it so so stupid.
i agree with everything you’ve said here. and i liked the EPA example. sorry if what i said came across as libertarian, that was not my intention.
i was just trying to push back against the “young people don’t know what’s best for themselves” mentality in the other post.
although, to be clear, i think the current state of social media does have quite a few problems that need addressing, and more regulation on that would certainly be welcome.
Would love to see the science or other expert opinions that is being used to justify this ban then.
I haven't heard anything except politicians making vague references to spying or other things we allow from domestic services.
Yeah honestly if a bunch of addicted teens and old people were calling me screaming that I can't take away their drug of choice when that's not even what's happening, and it's not being taken away just moved to where there can be more control on quality.... Then I would be really considering the damage this is doing to them.
I don't know if supporting the junkies being taken advantage of is the altruistic take that these "absolute freedom" supporters think it is.
From what I read, the calls actually evaporated opposition to the bill.
Which, I'm NGL, if you're worried about an app being used by a foreign adversary to encourage anti-social behavior in your youth, a bunch of people calling in acting like drug addicts getting their drugs taken away is only going to erase doubts.
It doesn't help that they'd even be more justified when it's known that it was caused by users getting pushed notified by Tik Tok to do it.
Encouraging people to contact their representatives and demand action? Congress clearly can't have this. How will they do their jobs if they are constantly forced to engage with their constituents?
Call to action from, say, activist groups is very different from call to action from a billion-dollar company. This does make me really worried about how much influencer TikTok has on people ngl
How many of us stood up for net neutrality at the behest of Reddit?
In my opinion, considering Tiktok's algo they had the best circumstance to notify a mix of their users more aligned with the actual electorate. The fact they ended up with the worst representation of their user base when it came to confirming the suspicions of politicians says everything.
It also tells you something about all the supposed gridlock in Washington that can magically evaporate when there's money and power to be gained from it.
Are they "taking it away" though? Do normal people care about who owns it? Are they just worried about an unlikely ban?
you’re taking it as a given that bytedance will sell the app if this law passes. there is a chance that they won’t want to sell and then the app will be banned. (but i think this unlikely.)
also, if i’m understanding things correctly, there’s the possibility that they do sell and the app still gets banned. the article says
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."
depending on who the next president is, there’s no guarantee that they’ll say any sale will result in the company not being controlled by a foreign adversary. (although this past is just speculation.)
anyways. this bill will certainly raise the chances that the app will be banned in the US. (and it opens the door for other apps to get banned if the US doesn’t like the country they were developed in.)
I also just noticed in the article:
TikTok urged its users to protest the bill, sending a notification that said, "Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok... Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO."
Also from a BBC article about the same thing:
Earlier, users of the app had received a notification urging them to act to "stop a TikTok shutdown."
So they were literally sending out misleading notifications (because a forced sale is not a total ban), and then the users wrote to Congress based on that...
The probability that they will sell seems really high to me, as the same thing almost happened back in 2020.
There's no guarantee that making the sale will prevent the ban.
Yeah but if they sell then it's someone else stuck holding the bags so why wouldn't they?
because its not in the corporation's interest to incur the expense and organizational disruption if they're still going to get banned anyway - profit is maximized by continuing with business as usual instead of spending resources attempting to reach compliance
What I mean is that Facebook for example is aimed at and consumed by older adults in the first place. Most young people in fact see it as a boomer platform.
When I was a kid and Facebook was new, I remember everyone wanting an account. The way I see it, Facebook just kept those users who wanted it when it was new. Who's to say that the same won't be true of TikTok later?
Who’s to say that the same won’t be true of TikTok
Who knows but we are talking about the negative effects TikTok has on society right now.
How?
By design. Especially the format (short video clips) and the optimization for being used on phones (not computers) makes it attractive for kids.
I tried googling, can’t find anything that supports these claims
Seriously? it took me one google search to find an endless list of such articles. Also, did you not notice all the kids outside filming Tik Tok dances with their phones, it has been going on for many years now, how is it possible you did not notice it?
Kids using tiktok and tiktok specifically targeting children to use their platform are distinctly different. Just because kids use tiktok doesn't mean it's because they were lured there. Those metrics only identify that tiktok is popular among youth, which is not an indication of malice whatsoever.
I appreciate your opinion, but short video clips on Mobile devices are nothing inherent to children. Now if tiktok was giving you pokemon for signing up or posting of their platform, then there'd be a valid argument that they're targeting children. (I feel like there was a pokeball collaboration with tiktok once, but I can't find a source to support it)
Getting back to the original context - the argument that Tiktok should be shut down because "it's short videos on mobile platforms that's popular among teens" is lunacy. Everyone is throwing shade at me and not realizing how absurd their argument is.
I'm not acting in bad faith either. I don't care about the fate of tiktok, but I'm seeing a trend of vilification without proper logical discourse. It's disconcerting to say the least.
I respect your opinion and don't think you are arguing in bad faith. However, I think you are missing the central point. Which -in my opinion- is that a social media platform that turns out to have extremely negative effects on society and especially kids, should get shut down. If it happens with intent or without is not particularly relevant as far as I see it. I apologize if my initial comments were phrased in any misleading way, I am not a native speaker so I sometimes miss the finer nuances of certain formulations.
No need to apologize, you're the first person to actually calmly and willingly discuss the topic without completely dismissing being disagreed with.
I know you're not the originally comment I was replying to, but you conveniently moved the goal posts. The context of the entire conversation is whether TikTok specifically should be shut down because it targets children for it's own gain. You're now arguing that social media in general has negative impact on society and children, which I agree with, but is completely skewing the conversation and was, in no way, the central point of the discussion.
So your opinion is that all social media platforms that deem to have negative affects on society should be shut down? Do you not see what's wrong with that? You're saying humans can't decide whether or not they want to use social media. You should understand how absolutely absurd that is - that is a completely dystopian totalitarian dictatorship idea. It sounds like a chapter in 1984.
Advertising.
Source? Examples?
I tried googling, can't find anything that supports these claims
Edit: third party advertisers abusing tiktoks advertising algorithms is not on topic to the original comment that tiktok itself specifically targets children, and tiktok has addressed these issues.
You can downvote all you want, but I've still not been provided any proof that tiktok specifically targets or intends their platform to be for children.
I'm not dismissing the original claim. I'm genuinely curious, but I need logical discourse, not users with mental illness going off on complete tangents.
If you have any cognitive thought or opinionated source that tiktok is a bad faith actor towards the safety or health of children, I'd love to read it. My company builds software, so knowing the failings of tiktok to protect children is in my interest.
This is about advertising to children within the platform and how tiktok intends to protect unethical advertising to children
Again - take the L.
I'm sorry you are getting downvoted, because technically you are right. TikTok will never claim to aim at children or advertise as such because they know they can't provide a safe environment and will open themselves up to lawsuits.
Tiktok's stance is rather meaningless because they'd never admit wrongdoing. I'm more curious how does tiktok target children with their platform? How do they lure them to it and why?
Then the conversation becomes: What standards should social media platforms be accountable to?
Should I keep finding relevant links for you or do you feel sufficiently foolish enough?
The comment was
Yes but UNLIKE Facebook and other platforms, Tik Tok is aimed at and consumed by minors specifically.
That study shows the opposite. YouTube benefited from minors over 2.5 times more than TikTok. And it shows every other platform is benefiting similar amounts. In fact, Snapchat has half the number of monthly users as tiktok but has almost identical ad revenue from minors. All the major social media platforms suck and are trying to take advantage of us, especially kids
I'm not arguing it's only tiktok. They all fucking suck. The question was how does TikTok benefit off children and the answer is advertising. That's a fact.
But the original comment you replied to (edit: not that you replied to, the comment you replied to was replying to a user saying that) WAS saying it's only, or at least primarily, Tiktok.
I only commented because, especially among the reddit and fediverse demographic, there's a fervent dislike of TikTok specifically. I think some people have lost sight of the larger issue, that TikTok is a symptom and not the disease. But it's an easy target because of its early reputation as a dance app for younger users, its alleged ties to the CCP, and its popularity.
Unrelated
I tried googling, can’t find anything that supports these claims
I watched that commercial - I guess banning TikTok is gonna work, huh?
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.
For the commercial yeah, real life is more of a no.
Good. Fuck them and all social media controlled by any big mega corp. But fuck the CCP especially.
The fucked up thing is they don’t seem to have a problem with rich 1%ers owning and manipulating millions of people. Only when it’s the Chinese. Facebook, Twitter, instagram are just as harmful. Although the delivery method of the content isn’t exactly “tailored” on those services like TikTok. I dunno how I feel about this. I mean, I think all social media services should die out. This just seems like an uneven hand.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
This is a really great way of putting it. I’d never heard that before, but it’s a truly apt way of summarizing one of the biggest problems I have with fellow leftists. However, I think I’d argue this is a slightly different situation.
Yeah, it’s a start toward something good. But it’s still sticky in its spirit.
It’s sort of similar to the complaint against incrementalism. It’s true, incrementalism is not a healthy solution to the problems we face. But fighting against good steps forward because you’re against the concept of incrementalism is…foolish…right? Or is it? Because sinking our efforts into incrementalism takes away effort from broad advancement. And incrementalism has been our MO since forever. And it’s only brought us further down the road to ruin.
But, again, fighting good incremental changes is nonsense. I dunno, it’s a nuanced issue and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. It’s interesting. And as someone who doesn’t use the more “standard” social media and never has, I’m all for erasing social media from existence. I’ve seen what it did to everyone in my life, and I was the perfect age for every step of social media’s growth: xanga/livejournal in middle school, MySpace in middle school/early high school, and then Facebook came about in my senior year, instagram in college and while i traveled in my early 20s…but I was an anti-anything-popular emo kid and goddamn I’m glad I was. But I also saw first hand how much social media changed my interactions with everyone in my life. It wasn’t pretty. People were addicted, constantly being just floored that I wasn’t on FB, countless people threatening to make me a Facebook page? It was severely strange behavior. And now tiktok is like all of that on goddamn super steroids. But it’s less people shoving it down my throat, and more just completely sucked in by it. Which is honestly scarier.
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.
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.
3 months later:
Hottest trending new app: TokTic
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.
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.
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
So we're censoring political speech?
Foreign adversaries don't have 1st amendment rights.
Insert astounded meme when a shell partner aquires the Brand and now, (pick your)company is now a known CCP co-conspirator.
Bytedance needs to figure out which congresspeople Meta has been bribing.
Need to donate a couple hundred mil to Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and see if he'll give up his strategy.
Oh man, is this a game? Are we supposed to name all the reasons this is dumb? The first two are obvious.
MSFT was famous for not taking lobbying seriously until they started getting anti-trust action against them. They quickly became good at it.
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.
On this particular topic, I think "both sides" is true. Both sides want to proceed down this "ban websites by name" road.
Bold move. Who are they going to blame all the online privacy issues once they cant yell about the Chinese? Or are we going to start pretending everythings fine then?
Why do you think that they give a shit about online privacy? This isn't a privacy bill, it's a bill stopping another government from doing exactly the same shit that the US government does through domestic apps. They aren't looking out for people, they're afraid of the competition.
This is exactly the take I find the most interesting.
This is what the US has been doing everywhere for a decade+ now and suddenly it's not ok? It's because the grip is loosening and the sense of control and power is absolutely slipping and while it's late to be grasping to get it back, it's not unwarranted.
I actually don't think it's a bad idea cause seriously creating an addiction that can only be served by other countries is not good for a healthy and good local populace. Is it a bit karma sure but I'd rather not live it as the same non addict if we can help it.
I expect the latter
So NSA backdoors are mandatory but Chinese ones are bad.
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
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...
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?
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.
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.
Sure bro, it's the CCP out to oppress Americans and arrest and assassinate reformers and journalists, because they hate our freedom!
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.
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.
the second paragraph, that's satire, right?
It's what American politicians actually believe
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.
Sooo... How do Republican's square being the party of "Small Govt" and then interfering in a private business?
Is it a private business if it's owned by the Chinese government?
It's really not though? The Chinese government has a 1% stake in ByteDance. Meanwhile ~60% is foreign investors – believed to be mostly American.
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.
That's literally the same thing the us government is doing here....
They don't. It's all bad faith to get what they want - control.
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..
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"
...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.
Oh no. Where would children act out jokes they stole from old tweets?
So many out of touch people in every thread that mentions TikTok. The same shit we did on YouTube , FB , Twitter, vine, etc is the same concept on TikTok. Memes evolve or new ones are born, that is nothing new
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.
And the cycle of infantalizing women continues...
Lemmy does draw a certain crowd unfortunately.
That's mainly the internet, not just Lemmy
Everything will keep going as planned /s
Highschooler here, everyone already uses vpn's to bypass the school firewall to view blocked sites and stuff while on school wifi.
The kids are gonna be alright
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!
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”.
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.
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
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.
Most people can’t install a VPN,
My guy, do YOU know how to set up a VPN?
This shit is like saying most people can't connect to wifi. It's not exactly rocket science.
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.
I don't see why users would even have a problem with this. Same services, more competitive market, and with less ties to an evil dictatorship should be celebrated, right?
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.
I feel there's a lot of China influence in this thread. I wonder why that is...
sinophobia
CCP-phobia, I think. It is inappropriate to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people.
Tik tok is at the root of so many of the social issues we're facing today. It's absolutely worse than Facebook, although both need to be addressed.
How?..
It has a huge hold over our youth today, even folks up to 30. It’s so ubiquitous it’s used as a replacement for Google to find new information including political.
Problem is it’s absolutely chock full of misinformation and propaganda, which doesn’t just exist on the platform, but is actively pushed on American youth today.
It's full of misinformation and propaganda unlike... You know... All those super reliable objective sources of information that you use?
Oh yes VERY unlike those. Anything that can be traced and verified, aren’t read to you by an AI voice or a white person claiming to be an American while trying very hard to suppress an Eastern European or East Asian accent. Another good trait to have would be anything that isn’t verifiably false.
You know the algorithm shows you what you interact with the most... Right?
Among other things.
If it only showed you what you interacted with the most it'd be less of an issue but that's not how it works. Thats not even how it works on YouTube.
Well that and whatever will keep you addicted and hopefully spending money.
Rage, bias confirmation, propaganda that hits the class or group you belong to. And the more you trust it the more they can use that trust.
Thanks for proving why that platform is just so damned dangerous. The ignorance it inspires is shocking.
It sure does, but it doesn’t only show you what you interact with the most. It shows you lots of other stuff too. The exact algorithm of which neither you or I are privy to so don’t get too cocky thinking you have it all figured out. After all “interacting with” can be something as small as lingering on a video just a bit too long. One second longer than your usual average view time. That’s all it takes for an algorithm to decide it’s worth it to push more content like it at you. And given that it’s a priority goal for propaganda, bots, and misinformation posters to craft their video in a way to maximize your engagement, that’s a trivial thing to accomplish.
Algorithms are by design, a way to remove your agency in finding information for yourself, and instead give the platform control over the information you see. This is very handy and even innocent when you just want to see memes that you personally think are funny, but very dangerous when it’s used to mislead you or influence your behavior and thinking. And most people aren’t smart or tech savvy enough to know how any of this works, which makes them very easy to manipulate.
Sorry but this is giving 'old man yells at clouds' energy. How is tiktok any worse than any other social media platform? They're all echochambers filled with misinformation, it just what happens when you get a lot of people online.
That you're trying to 'they're all the same' bs shows how ignorant many people are on this. They're not all the same, this one is especially bad and it's not JUST because it turns you into a fucking retard when you use it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The House Commerce Committee today voted 50-0 to approve a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the company or lose access to the US market.
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.
These applications present a clear national security threat to the United States and necessitate the decisive action we will take today," she said before the vote.
Gallagher also said his bill puts the decision "squarely in the hands of TikTok to sever their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party."
While the bill text could potentially wrap in other apps in the future, it specifically lists the ByteDance-owned TikTok as a "foreign adversary controlled application."
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."
The original article contains 601 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I want my data to be centralized, profiled and used against me, but I want it by American corporations, dammit!
Lemmy.world has horrible takes as usual when it comes to censorship of a platform lmao
Who knew the magical word was China to turn everyone here into a meta lapdog
I'm pretty confident in saying the majority of users here don't like meta either -- the userbase on lemmy is predominantly people trying to avoid corporate social media.
ByteDance and Meta both privacy nightmares, it's just a question of what fucked up things they doing with the data.
That is true, and we can bemoan the privacy concerns of tiktok and meta and such but this right here isn't a fix to privacy. It's just a change in who is abusing it. In that case, Id like to keep it with the Chinese. They have less control over my life than America already does. Let's spread it out a little bit lol.
The red menace has always been a winner.
The world police is scared about the competition lmao, "only us should violate worldwide privacy!"
Can they do that with a Chinese company?
Technically, they're forcing the US Based shell company, which the Chinese were using, to sell out to some other American, or maybe just shut down.
Seems pointless.
Well in that case, no harm no foul. Let them be forced to sell.
Yeah I'm not bothered. I've got nothing to do with them and generally think they're detrimental as a whole.
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.
The world is on fire but lawmakers are doing petty antagonistic policy and turning a blind eye to atrocities.
That's right. What's important is TikTok and Chinese interests of course. /S
The free market economy for you
Never has been.
🧑🚀 🔫 🧑🚀
But....how will we dance to save Roe vs Wade now????
Ahhh....hmm. Kindof a point-and-shoot sort of thing, isn't it? Blow away/take over (well, "unrelated parties may buy," ha ha) any app associable with Russia, North Korea, Iran, or China 🤔 'Course, they can edit that list too.
Nah, I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong. US government never abuses powerful, broad powers it gives itself 😃👍
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.
If the Chinese government believed that why do they ban so many US apps in their country?
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.
Even if China has access to my data, that's way less scary than Zuck, musk, Bezos or any other tech bro.
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?
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.
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.
Though possibly US operations could be sold off, whatever that would mean.
Also, what’s with the “foreign adversary” status of China?
China is attacking us by having a bigger economy
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.
Unironically, so much of US/China hostility boils down to corporate market share
Can the US Lawmakers do anything about the US companies harvesting my data and selling it off… please?
Yes, they can make more money from it.
Can they? Completely wrong question.
"Will they" is what you wanted to ask but the answer is still firmly no
Honestly it might be "Can they" given how partisan issues like industry regulation are.
So when do they plan to do something about those domestic businesses trying to manipulate citizens of America?
Capitalism abusing citizens? Just fine.
"Communism" abusing citizens? Avengers, assemble!
They're prospective communists. Supposedly they're going to get there by 2050, but they just built a new massive luxury tower for their ultra wealthy so...
It's just like Marx said: "If you do an oppressive oligarchy for 100 years, it magically transforms into communism"
If that were true then the United States would have been communist by now
I think they're more worried that it's a foreign corporation going after their citizens and not a domestic corporation.
More of a capitalistic dictatorship
I mean, the domestic businesses are the ones who own Congress and are using it to get rid of a competitor.
After the thousands of years of human history I've read about, getting rid of competitors seems to have been the primary concern of most of the ruling classes all over the world. Way back to Ur.
Rulers don't play fair, because power corrupts.
As soon as the foreign businesses get better at harvesting data than the domestic ones, of course.
While you're not wrong about double standards, anything that discourages the use of vapid social media platforms is a win in my book. Use whatever backwards logic you like to make it happen so long as it's effective.
Well this goes into the direction of social media monopoly so I'm not sure
He says, on a social media platform
Lemmy is a message board, not social media. Like fark or something awful. You have no idea who the duck i am. How is that social?
Users create and/or share content, check. Users discuss content, check.
Unless you think something is missing from that definition, Lemmy is social media. It is pseudonymous, but it is still social because of the users.
Since when did that define social media? That's the same thing as IRC. is IRC social media?
ICQ had message boards where people would chat about the news. Was that social media?
Again, fark is a place where people share content and discuss the news. Is that social media?
Yeah, I suppose those would. I wouldn't have thought it, but definitionally, it would be! I mean, heck, some of those are listed by Meriam-Webster! Isn't language neat? You learn something new every day.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social%20media
It is social media, just because your talking anonymously doesn't mean you aren't interacting socially. Jesus Christ your talking to people. Right now. Your being social media'd. Stop acting like your above it.
Bruh.
My tiktok account is also anonymous.
Your Lemmy account can likely be used to identify you, given a big enough data set.
Undoubtedly, especially since I haven't taken particular steps to obfuscate my identity here.
But as I said in a comment below, I'm more worried about some unhinged nutbag online randomly targeting me than being a person of interest by any nefarious groups or organizations.
No it isn’t.
When you download the app you let them have the following information/data about you:
Purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers (!!), diagnostics, financial info, contact info, user content, browsing history, and usage data.
Please tell us how any of that is “anonymous”.
Cool dude, you've identified that big corporations data farm.
Random bloke user with a vendetta still doesn't know who I am, and that's who I'm more worried about on the personal scale.
Cool dude. Well you said your account is anonymous, and it isn’t. Words mean things.
Whatever Tiktok is doing, the correct response is to write enforcable laws to prevent ANY company from doing what Tiktok is doing.
This is bad governance.
This was a committee vote. The bill now must advance to the floor, pass a vote there, then go through the same process in the Senate.
Many bills are passed out of committee but are never given an actual vote.
Especially in the least productive congress in US history, the odds of any actual vote are low.
Technically, while that might have been true at the end of 2023, the US House of Representatives of the 118th congress have voted 796 times with 126 items passed, according to Govtrack.us with at least ten vetoes by the POTUS.
So not really the worst by any measure.
But also not functional by modern measures.
Yeah for sure I'd love to see more progress. I'm glad at least the House Republicans have taken a very brief break from impeaching their own speaker on repeat.
Oh that's coming. He had the audacity to applaud Biden. His days are numbered.
I wonder if this could also be applied to games owned in whole or part by Tencent...
i hope they sell conan exiles to someone else, because then the shitty monitization that is destroying the game will end.
Wishful thinking I'd wager.
yeah
Or websites? Like Reddit? No, never mind, that's silly talk.
and they still voted 50-0. really tells you something about how much these politicians are willing to listen to their constituents.
It was a 50-0 to pass the commission and then go to the House floor for a vote and then the Senate for a vote and finally signed into law by the president unless he vetoes it, which is possible imo.
Honestly, teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves, I might just call in to my local representative to voice my support of forced sale, operating restrictions, or even outright ban.
EDIT: I sent him an email.
Now do Facebook.
Love to, I think the 5 Bn USD FTC fine was a little light considering no jailtime was given. I hope their recent lawsuits lead to breaking the company up again.
what are you even trying to say here? that it’s okay for politicians to ignore entire demographics? or that it’s only okay for them to ignore entire demographics if, ultimately, it’s left up to a different group of politicians to pass the law?
i don’t use tiktok or have any interest in the app itself, but it’s still very alarming to see a vote go through 50-0 despite a “nonstop” flood of calls opposing it.
Ignore them? Gosh no. Protect them. Literally what I said.
“protect them from themselves” is what you said. which carries the connotation that they don’t know what’s best for themselves and aren’t qualified to make judgments about those things. this is different from simply “protecting them”.
To be fair, a big part of a functioning society is a government with proper regulations in place so that people are not expected to be experts in literally every field before making a purchase or performing some kind of action. Obviously, calling it "protect[ing] them from themselves," is dismissive and patronizing, but it's pretty much why we need government in the first place.
For example, the EPA recently issued a recall for ground cinnamon from certain specific (dollar store) brands due to unacceptably high levels of lead. Without the career scientists (and yes, bureaucrats) working for that regulatory agency, millions of people would have continued consuming the product and feeding it to their kids (low-income folks too in this case, given the brands) literally indefinitely.
Without the EPA, every person who buys cinnamon is what, expected to use mass spectrometry to determine the exact molecular make-up of every spice (or in the case of the EPA, literally any food or prescription drugs you may ever consume) before using?
If they didn't do their cinnamon research, then they deserved it, and the government should have no involvement? What happens in cases where companies hide dangerous issues in their products to avoid losing profits?
What if there's literally no way for anyone but a scientist, with extensive lab access and at least 4+ years of university to know that there is an issue with a product (or a construction site, or a drug, or water treatment, etc)? They're the only ones who should be able to properly avoid using a product that may kill them and their children? And even then, only when it's a product they're an expert in?
Not saying you're a libertarian, just like pointing out the obvious things that make it so so stupid.
i agree with everything you’ve said here. and i liked the EPA example. sorry if what i said came across as libertarian, that was not my intention.
i was just trying to push back against the “young people don’t know what’s best for themselves” mentality in the other post.
although, to be clear, i think the current state of social media does have quite a few problems that need addressing, and more regulation on that would certainly be welcome.
Would love to see the science or other expert opinions that is being used to justify this ban then.
I haven't heard anything except politicians making vague references to spying or other things we allow from domestic services.
It's just politics.
TikTok Data Harvests: Report by AU Cybersecurity Firm or if you can't be bothered to get past the paywall the news coverage of the event.
Misinformation on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpurol.2022.03.001
Adolescents more susceptible to product placement on TikTok: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107723
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
news coverage
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Those things are exactly the same and it is indeed what I just said. Problem?
Yeah honestly if a bunch of addicted teens and old people were calling me screaming that I can't take away their drug of choice when that's not even what's happening, and it's not being taken away just moved to where there can be more control on quality.... Then I would be really considering the damage this is doing to them.
I don't know if supporting the junkies being taken advantage of is the altruistic take that these "absolute freedom" supporters think it is.
Please, big daddy government, protect me from the freedom of choice. I cannot be trusted to consume without your permission.
LMAO pay attention in school, kid, you seem like the type who is going to need it.
They should really educate people about foreign threats like the CCP and Kremlin.
Me when I find out that it's illegal to sell your organs for profit
From what I read, the calls actually evaporated opposition to the bill.
Which, I'm NGL, if you're worried about an app being used by a foreign adversary to encourage anti-social behavior in your youth, a bunch of people calling in acting like drug addicts getting their drugs taken away is only going to erase doubts.
It doesn't help that they'd even be more justified when it's known that it was caused by users getting pushed notified by Tik Tok to do it.
Encouraging people to contact their representatives and demand action? Congress clearly can't have this. How will they do their jobs if they are constantly forced to engage with their constituents?
Call to action from, say, activist groups is very different from call to action from a billion-dollar company. This does make me really worried about how much influencer TikTok has on people ngl
How many of us stood up for net neutrality at the behest of Reddit?
In my opinion, considering Tiktok's algo they had the best circumstance to notify a mix of their users more aligned with the actual electorate. The fact they ended up with the worst representation of their user base when it came to confirming the suspicions of politicians says everything.
It also tells you something about all the supposed gridlock in Washington that can magically evaporate when there's money and power to be gained from it.
Are they "taking it away" though? Do normal people care about who owns it? Are they just worried about an unlikely ban?
you’re taking it as a given that bytedance will sell the app if this law passes. there is a chance that they won’t want to sell and then the app will be banned. (but i think this unlikely.)
also, if i’m understanding things correctly, there’s the possibility that they do sell and the app still gets banned. the article says
depending on who the next president is, there’s no guarantee that they’ll say any sale will result in the company not being controlled by a foreign adversary. (although this past is just speculation.)
anyways. this bill will certainly raise the chances that the app will be banned in the US. (and it opens the door for other apps to get banned if the US doesn’t like the country they were developed in.)
I also just noticed in the article:
Also from a BBC article about the same thing:
So they were literally sending out misleading notifications (because a forced sale is not a total ban), and then the users wrote to Congress based on that...
The probability that they will sell seems really high to me, as the same thing almost happened back in 2020.
There's no guarantee that making the sale will prevent the ban.
Yeah but if they sell then it's someone else stuck holding the bags so why wouldn't they?
because its not in the corporation's interest to incur the expense and organizational disruption if they're still going to get banned anyway - profit is maximized by continuing with business as usual instead of spending resources attempting to reach compliance
Tik Tok pushes so much toxic content towards children and teenagers it should be shut down in my opinion.
The can very easily apply to every single social media.
Yes but unlike Facebook and other platforms, Tik Tok is aimed at and consumed by minors specifically.
Unlike? I think you mean they're JEALOUS of TikTok's appeal to minors...
I think people forget that Meta owns Instagram which is known to have a very young user base.
They are even currently Suing the FTC because they want to monetize minors more
What I mean is that Facebook for example is aimed at and consumed by older adults in the first place. Most young people in fact see it as a boomer platform.
When I was a kid and Facebook was new, I remember everyone wanting an account. The way I see it, Facebook just kept those users who wanted it when it was new. Who's to say that the same won't be true of TikTok later?
Who knows but we are talking about the negative effects TikTok has on society right now.
How?
By design. Especially the format (short video clips) and the optimization for being used on phones (not computers) makes it attractive for kids.
63% of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 used TikTok on a weekly basis
Report Estimates One-Third of TikTok Users Are Children Age 14 and Under
TikTok reportedly has 18 million users who are 14 or younger, renewing concerns for children's safety
A Third of TikTok’s U.S. Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions
Seriously? it took me one google search to find an endless list of such articles. Also, did you not notice all the kids outside filming Tik Tok dances with their phones, it has been going on for many years now, how is it possible you did not notice it?
Kids using tiktok and tiktok specifically targeting children to use their platform are distinctly different. Just because kids use tiktok doesn't mean it's because they were lured there. Those metrics only identify that tiktok is popular among youth, which is not an indication of malice whatsoever.
I appreciate your opinion, but short video clips on Mobile devices are nothing inherent to children. Now if tiktok was giving you pokemon for signing up or posting of their platform, then there'd be a valid argument that they're targeting children. (I feel like there was a pokeball collaboration with tiktok once, but I can't find a source to support it)
Getting back to the original context - the argument that Tiktok should be shut down because "it's short videos on mobile platforms that's popular among teens" is lunacy. Everyone is throwing shade at me and not realizing how absurd their argument is.
I'm not acting in bad faith either. I don't care about the fate of tiktok, but I'm seeing a trend of vilification without proper logical discourse. It's disconcerting to say the least.
I respect your opinion and don't think you are arguing in bad faith. However, I think you are missing the central point. Which -in my opinion- is that a social media platform that turns out to have extremely negative effects on society and especially kids, should get shut down. If it happens with intent or without is not particularly relevant as far as I see it. I apologize if my initial comments were phrased in any misleading way, I am not a native speaker so I sometimes miss the finer nuances of certain formulations.
No need to apologize, you're the first person to actually calmly and willingly discuss the topic without completely dismissing being disagreed with.
I know you're not the originally comment I was replying to, but you conveniently moved the goal posts. The context of the entire conversation is whether TikTok specifically should be shut down because it targets children for it's own gain. You're now arguing that social media in general has negative impact on society and children, which I agree with, but is completely skewing the conversation and was, in no way, the central point of the discussion.
So your opinion is that all social media platforms that deem to have negative affects on society should be shut down? Do you not see what's wrong with that? You're saying humans can't decide whether or not they want to use social media. You should understand how absolutely absurd that is - that is a completely dystopian totalitarian dictatorship idea. It sounds like a chapter in 1984.
Advertising.
Source? Examples?
I tried googling, can't find anything that supports these claims
Edit: third party advertisers abusing tiktoks advertising algorithms is not on topic to the original comment that tiktok itself specifically targets children, and tiktok has addressed these issues.
You can downvote all you want, but I've still not been provided any proof that tiktok specifically targets or intends their platform to be for children.
I'm not dismissing the original claim. I'm genuinely curious, but I need logical discourse, not users with mental illness going off on complete tangents.
If you have any cognitive thought or opinionated source that tiktok is a bad faith actor towards the safety or health of children, I'd love to read it. My company builds software, so knowing the failings of tiktok to protect children is in my interest.
Didn't look very hard
https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-US
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/22/tiktok-eu-consumer-protection-commtiments/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2022/06/22/tiktok-agrees-to-improve-protections-for-children/?sh=11be59fe459b
This is about advertising to children within the platform and how tiktok intends to protect unethical advertising to children
Again - take the L.
I'm sorry you are getting downvoted, because technically you are right. TikTok will never claim to aim at children or advertise as such because they know they can't provide a safe environment and will open themselves up to lawsuits.
Tiktok's stance is rather meaningless because they'd never admit wrongdoing. I'm more curious how does tiktok target children with their platform? How do they lure them to it and why?
Then the conversation becomes: What standards should social media platforms be accountable to?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-instagram-tiktok-snapchat-children-advertising-2022-harvard-study/
Should I keep finding relevant links for you or do you feel sufficiently foolish enough?
The comment was
That study shows the opposite. YouTube benefited from minors over 2.5 times more than TikTok. And it shows every other platform is benefiting similar amounts. In fact, Snapchat has half the number of monthly users as tiktok but has almost identical ad revenue from minors. All the major social media platforms suck and are trying to take advantage of us, especially kids
I'm not arguing it's only tiktok. They all fucking suck. The question was how does TikTok benefit off children and the answer is advertising. That's a fact.
But the original comment you replied to (edit: not that you replied to, the comment you replied to was replying to a user saying that) WAS saying it's only, or at least primarily, Tiktok.
I only commented because, especially among the reddit and fediverse demographic, there's a fervent dislike of TikTok specifically. I think some people have lost sight of the larger issue, that TikTok is a symptom and not the disease. But it's an easy target because of its early reputation as a dance app for younger users, its alleged ties to the CCP, and its popularity.
Unrelated
https://appradar.com/blog/how-to-use-tiktok-ads-for-mobile-games
https://fivechannels.com/not-just-for-kids-the-ultimate-guide-to-advertising-on-tiktok/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/
https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-US/blog/privacy-updates-improved-data-control-transparency-tools
No seriously -- did you even try or did you just want to bloviate online to randos for... no reason at all?
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/how-to-successfully-grow-your-game-ft-senseideveloper-vikinglaw-promoting-and-advertising-your-game/2535279
You just ignore anything you dont like. You're not arguing in good faith.
https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-slammed-in-europe-over-hidden-advertising-to-kid-1846277642
Are you a GOP candidate? You seriously couldn't find any of these links?? I didn't even use Google.
My prediction is coming true: https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/10ofony/anything_to_protect_the_youth/
I watched that commercial - I guess banning TikTok is gonna work, huh?
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.
For the commercial yeah, real life is more of a no.
Good. Fuck them and all social media controlled by any big mega corp. But fuck the CCP especially.
The fucked up thing is they don’t seem to have a problem with rich 1%ers owning and manipulating millions of people. Only when it’s the Chinese. Facebook, Twitter, instagram are just as harmful. Although the delivery method of the content isn’t exactly “tailored” on those services like TikTok. I dunno how I feel about this. I mean, I think all social media services should die out. This just seems like an uneven hand.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
This is a really great way of putting it. I’d never heard that before, but it’s a truly apt way of summarizing one of the biggest problems I have with fellow leftists. However, I think I’d argue this is a slightly different situation.
Yeah, it’s a start toward something good. But it’s still sticky in its spirit.
It’s sort of similar to the complaint against incrementalism. It’s true, incrementalism is not a healthy solution to the problems we face. But fighting against good steps forward because you’re against the concept of incrementalism is…foolish…right? Or is it? Because sinking our efforts into incrementalism takes away effort from broad advancement. And incrementalism has been our MO since forever. And it’s only brought us further down the road to ruin.
But, again, fighting good incremental changes is nonsense. I dunno, it’s a nuanced issue and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. It’s interesting. And as someone who doesn’t use the more “standard” social media and never has, I’m all for erasing social media from existence. I’ve seen what it did to everyone in my life, and I was the perfect age for every step of social media’s growth: xanga/livejournal in middle school, MySpace in middle school/early high school, and then Facebook came about in my senior year, instagram in college and while i traveled in my early 20s…but I was an anti-anything-popular emo kid and goddamn I’m glad I was. But I also saw first hand how much social media changed my interactions with everyone in my life. It wasn’t pretty. People were addicted, constantly being just floored that I wasn’t on FB, countless people threatening to make me a Facebook page? It was severely strange behavior. And now tiktok is like all of that on goddamn super steroids. But it’s less people shoving it down my throat, and more just completely sucked in by it. Which is honestly scarier.
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.
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.
3 months later:
Hottest trending new app: TokTic
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.
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.
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
So we're censoring political speech?
Foreign adversaries don't have 1st amendment rights.
Insert astounded meme when a shell partner aquires the Brand and now, (pick your)company is now a known CCP co-conspirator.
Bytedance needs to figure out which congresspeople Meta has been bribing.
Need to donate a couple hundred mil to Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and see if he'll give up his strategy.
Oh man, is this a game? Are we supposed to name all the reasons this is dumb? The first two are obvious.
MSFT was famous for not taking lobbying seriously until they started getting anti-trust action against them. They quickly became good at it.
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.
On this particular topic, I think "both sides" is true. Both sides want to proceed down this "ban websites by name" road.
Bold move. Who are they going to blame all the online privacy issues once they cant yell about the Chinese? Or are we going to start pretending everythings fine then?
Why do you think that they give a shit about online privacy? This isn't a privacy bill, it's a bill stopping another government from doing exactly the same shit that the US government does through domestic apps. They aren't looking out for people, they're afraid of the competition.
This is exactly the take I find the most interesting.
This is what the US has been doing everywhere for a decade+ now and suddenly it's not ok? It's because the grip is loosening and the sense of control and power is absolutely slipping and while it's late to be grasping to get it back, it's not unwarranted.
I actually don't think it's a bad idea cause seriously creating an addiction that can only be served by other countries is not good for a healthy and good local populace. Is it a bit karma sure but I'd rather not live it as the same non addict if we can help it.
I expect the latter
So NSA backdoors are mandatory but Chinese ones are bad.
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
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...
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?
Ha, that's a decent point. I don't really care for either. I think about these things among others:
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 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:
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.
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.
Sure bro, it's the CCP out to oppress Americans and arrest and assassinate reformers and journalists, because they hate our freedom!
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.
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.
the second paragraph, that's satire, right?
It's what American politicians actually believe
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.
The former is more pressing than the latter.
Both are bad but fuck Xi and the CCP 🖕
Sooo... How do Republican's square being the party of "Small Govt" and then interfering in a private business?
Is it a private business if it's owned by the Chinese government?
It's really not though? The Chinese government has a 1% stake in ByteDance. Meanwhile ~60% is foreign investors – believed to be mostly American.
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.
That's literally the same thing the us government is doing here....
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.
Do you think that They could avoid doing something that the Chinese government tells them to do?
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.
Yes, why not let everyone do it if someone else is already doing it.
No. It's a malicious foreign entity.
They don't. It's all bad faith to get what they want - control.
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..
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"
Foreign policy
Oh no. Where would children act out jokes they stole from old tweets?
So many out of touch people in every thread that mentions TikTok. The same shit we did on YouTube , FB , Twitter, vine, etc is the same concept on TikTok. Memes evolve or new ones are born, that is nothing new
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.
And the cycle of infantalizing women continues...
Lemmy does draw a certain crowd unfortunately.
That's mainly the internet, not just Lemmy
Everything will keep going as planned /s
Highschooler here, everyone already uses vpn's to bypass the school firewall to view blocked sites and stuff while on school wifi.
The kids are gonna be alright
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!
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”.
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.
Anyone who can read and follow directions is capable
Most people can't install a VPN, including hot or cold girls
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.
My guy, do YOU know how to set up a VPN?
This shit is like saying most people can't connect to wifi. It's not exactly rocket science.
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.
I don't see why users would even have a problem with this. Same services, more competitive market, and with less ties to an evil dictatorship should be celebrated, right?
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.
I feel there's a lot of China influence in this thread. I wonder why that is...
sinophobia
CCP-phobia, I think. It is inappropriate to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people.
Tik tok is at the root of so many of the social issues we're facing today. It's absolutely worse than Facebook, although both need to be addressed.
How?..
It has a huge hold over our youth today, even folks up to 30. It’s so ubiquitous it’s used as a replacement for Google to find new information including political.
Problem is it’s absolutely chock full of misinformation and propaganda, which doesn’t just exist on the platform, but is actively pushed on American youth today.
It's full of misinformation and propaganda unlike... You know... All those super reliable objective sources of information that you use?
Oh yes VERY unlike those. Anything that can be traced and verified, aren’t read to you by an AI voice or a white person claiming to be an American while trying very hard to suppress an Eastern European or East Asian accent. Another good trait to have would be anything that isn’t verifiably false.
You know the algorithm shows you what you interact with the most... Right?
Among other things.
If it only showed you what you interacted with the most it'd be less of an issue but that's not how it works. Thats not even how it works on YouTube.
Well that and whatever will keep you addicted and hopefully spending money. Rage, bias confirmation, propaganda that hits the class or group you belong to. And the more you trust it the more they can use that trust.
Thanks for proving why that platform is just so damned dangerous. The ignorance it inspires is shocking.
It sure does, but it doesn’t only show you what you interact with the most. It shows you lots of other stuff too. The exact algorithm of which neither you or I are privy to so don’t get too cocky thinking you have it all figured out. After all “interacting with” can be something as small as lingering on a video just a bit too long. One second longer than your usual average view time. That’s all it takes for an algorithm to decide it’s worth it to push more content like it at you. And given that it’s a priority goal for propaganda, bots, and misinformation posters to craft their video in a way to maximize your engagement, that’s a trivial thing to accomplish.
Algorithms are by design, a way to remove your agency in finding information for yourself, and instead give the platform control over the information you see. This is very handy and even innocent when you just want to see memes that you personally think are funny, but very dangerous when it’s used to mislead you or influence your behavior and thinking. And most people aren’t smart or tech savvy enough to know how any of this works, which makes them very easy to manipulate.
Sorry but this is giving 'old man yells at clouds' energy. How is tiktok any worse than any other social media platform? They're all echochambers filled with misinformation, it just what happens when you get a lot of people online.
That you're trying to 'they're all the same' bs shows how ignorant many people are on this. They're not all the same, this one is especially bad and it's not JUST because it turns you into a fucking retard when you use it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The House Commerce Committee today voted 50-0 to approve a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the company or lose access to the US market.
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.
These applications present a clear national security threat to the United States and necessitate the decisive action we will take today," she said before the vote.
Gallagher also said his bill puts the decision "squarely in the hands of TikTok to sever their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party."
While the bill text could potentially wrap in other apps in the future, it specifically lists the ByteDance-owned TikTok as a "foreign adversary controlled application."
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."
The original article contains 601 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I want my data to be centralized, profiled and used against me, but I want it by American corporations, dammit!
Lemmy.world has horrible takes as usual when it comes to censorship of a platform lmao
Who knew the magical word was China to turn everyone here into a meta lapdog
I'm pretty confident in saying the majority of users here don't like meta either -- the userbase on lemmy is predominantly people trying to avoid corporate social media.
ByteDance and Meta both privacy nightmares, it's just a question of what fucked up things they doing with the data.
That is true, and we can bemoan the privacy concerns of tiktok and meta and such but this right here isn't a fix to privacy. It's just a change in who is abusing it. In that case, Id like to keep it with the Chinese. They have less control over my life than America already does. Let's spread it out a little bit lol.
The red menace has always been a winner.
The world police is scared about the competition lmao, "only us should violate worldwide privacy!"
Can they do that with a Chinese company?
Technically, they're forcing the US Based shell company, which the Chinese were using, to sell out to some other American, or maybe just shut down.
Seems pointless.
Well in that case, no harm no foul. Let them be forced to sell.
Yeah I'm not bothered. I've got nothing to do with them and generally think they're detrimental as a whole.
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.
The world is on fire but lawmakers are doing petty antagonistic policy and turning a blind eye to atrocities.
That's right. What's important is TikTok and Chinese interests of course. /S
The free market economy for you
Never has been. 🧑🚀 🔫 🧑🚀
But....how will we dance to save Roe vs Wade now????
Ahhh....hmm. Kindof a point-and-shoot sort of thing, isn't it? Blow away/take over (well, "unrelated parties may buy," ha ha) any app associable with Russia, North Korea, Iran, or China 🤔 'Course, they can edit that list too.
Nah, I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong. US government never abuses powerful, broad powers it gives itself 😃👍
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.
If the Chinese government believed that why do they ban so many US apps in their country?
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.
Even if China has access to my data, that's way less scary than Zuck, musk, Bezos or any other tech bro.
U.S. lawmakers can't force anything on foreign corporations.
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?
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.
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.
Though possibly US operations could be sold off, whatever that would mean.
China is attacking us by having a bigger economy
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.
Unironically, so much of US/China hostility boils down to corporate market share