House Moves Toward Bundling TikTok Bill With Aid to Ukraine and Israel

holo_nexus@kbin.social to Technology@lemmy.world – 186 points – House Moves Toward Bundling TikTok Bill With Aid to Ukraine and Israel
nytimes.com

A new measure attempts to force the Senate’s hand on passing legislation to ban TikTok or mandate the app’s sale.

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American politics really is one of the dumbest, most corrupt things out there. Good god.

This feels like trying to trick your dog into taking his medicine, by hiding it in its food. So apparently your average US Senator is as dumb as a Golden Retriever if they need this tactic to actually get shit done.

It’s insane that Americans still tolerate this. Clearly they don’t have your best interests as their main focus.

None of the fuckers want to change the voting system either. They just blame the other guys.

Wish someone would take STV and everyone woukd follow

It’s insane that Americans still tolerate this.

A consistent viewpoint I see on America, is the assumption that if we don't like a politician we can simply say so and they're out of office. One of the biggest problems here is actually that most people feel lacking in their personal control on the government, even local. Everything is such a large scale, that 'speaking up' not only feels like it does nothing—it really does nothing, unless you're famous or something. No one here is happy about how our government works, we just don't have control over it. It's an illusion of control, while the people at the top make the actual choices.

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WHY IS THIS STILL ALLOWED

Because it’s the only way to get things done in a divided government?

Well, it's clearly not working.

There is certainly a level of disfunction that it can’t overcome and we may have reached that.

My state has a rule restricting bills to one thing, and it seems to work pretty well.

Well I don’t know which state you mean but a lot of them are not divided the way then federal government is.

Sure, and mine is definitely not divided. But there have been contentious issues despite being predominantly one party.

I'd honestly rather a bill take much longer to pass than have a bunch of nonsense thrown in.

I think it’s a good method for achieving compromise. If the various factions perceive more benefit than cost, the bill passes. Obviously some bad things get snuck in, but you get good things out of it as well.

Even if your personal calculus is that this bill does more harm then good, I don’t think banning this method is a good idea.

I'd be okay with a Congressional rule that makes passage of one bill contingent on another bill to allow for compromise, but each bill should be tracked separately so it's transparent to voters what's being passed. There should also be a requirement that the title of the bill sufficiently describes the purchase of the bill.

That way we could still have bundles of bills, but the content of that bundle would be a lot more transparent. Seeing something like "Aid to Ukraine and Israel" also allowing the government to ban adversarial apps does not give constituents the appropriate information to contact their representative, and it's quite possible the representatives themselves haven't actually read the full bill if it's large (but might read relevant portions if they were broken up into reasonably-titled bills).

I could see that being an improvement, although it’s not terribly different from the current system. It might be clearer for the public to understand.

On the other hand, reps would have to explain to their constituents why they voted for the kicking puppies act which people might have trouble grasping.

On the other hand, reps would have to explain to their constituents why they voted for the kicking puppies act which people might have trouble grasping.

And that's the important part. Right now, the rep can say, "oh, I didn't realize that was part of the bill, those sneaky Dems/Reps." But if they're all clearly named with individual votes, there's no hiding behind the "they snuck stuff into my bill" excuse.

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Package a TikTok bill along with aid for Ukraine, Israel AND Taiwan? Even lumping the aid bills together for 3 different countries is odd but the hell does TikTok now have to do with any of it? This is a weird system you guys got there.

Bernie Sanders has been saying for 30 years that the bill is too damn long! Representatives get very limited time to read bills so they usually don't and just vote along party lines. This is a form of deception and it's intentional.

They're taking clues from Hungary. Our "child protection" (sic!) law bundled a pedophile registry (which is useless at best) alongside the censorship and de facto ban of sex education in schools, so Fidesz and Mi Hazánk (Fidesz satellite party which is a bit more honest about it being far-right) called the opposition pedo-defenders for not voting yes for it.

It's not a system so much anymore. It's more of a death spasm.

Political compromise is the process of inventing and enforcing policies that both parties can hate.

Hahaha you should see our omnibus bills. They’re THOUSANDS of things bundled. It’s a complete joke.

Even this one will likely have little things unrelated added. It’s wild how much is in these bills.

the hell does TikTok now have to do with any of it?

Military spending bills will benefit the military industrial complex, and banning TikTok will benefit the military industrial complex.

It sucks I know, but if it gets Ukraine aid passed, lump in everything together. That's the most important piece of legislation needed right now and we need it to pass.

Ukraine at least has an army to defend itself, so i would rather see neither have aid than bith Israel and ukraine having aid

How does aid for Ukraine change the fact I work 50 hours a week and can't afford a studio apartment?

It doesn't because you not being able to afford a studio apartment doesn't plunge NATO into a war.

I gotta be honest, this is probably the stupidest comparison I've ever heard.

The fuck do I care about Nato if I can't afford housing and food? Fuck NATO

Ukraine is a major global food supplier. The war has directly impacted food prices. And if Russia succeeds, it will only encourage more conflict of this kind. And that's ignoring the possibility that this will escalate into an even larger conflict because Putin decides that NATO's resolve is weak enough that article 5 is no longer a plausible threat.

Also, that stupid argument applies just as much to funding schools, cancer research, fighting climate change and basically all other functions of government that serve the public good. We should do more to address economic issues, but that doesn't mean we should stop doing everything else.

Have you tried turning your job off and turning it back on again after 15 seconds? Worked for my wifi.

TikTok is controlled by the CCP which will happily push propaganda that impacts all three countries.

First off it's not owned by the CCP and 2nd off almost all media you consume in America is American propaganda.

China is the one aspect that unites all three. They are supporting Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, they are running a massive pro-Hamas disinformation campaign on social media, they are ramping up for an invasion of Taiwan and TikTok is their most effective propaganda and espionage tool to date.

Real shit, how can I bypass article paywalls/sign up requests? I click the link, paywall. I find an alternative link: paywall. The internet is so shit

Also as much as I hate TikTok, and the amount of time people spend on it, I think the government starting to censor what applications we can and can’t use is a scary thing. Congressmen have already stated “As soon as the TikTok legislation takes effect, we are going after Facebook and the others”

Can’t remember which one said it but it was an interview on NPR with a congressman.

Look into noscript (Firefox extension), seems to work well for my local papers website (they use some js to hide the page after it loads, noscript blocks scripts from running).

I say this all the time, and people say: "impossible, news outlets need revenue". To which I will say that is entirely bullshit. We could easily afford grants for news, and provide continuing grants to news sources that rank the highest in 3rd party consumer evaluations.

But they don't currently.

So if you read it you should pay for it, or someone else will.

We really need to ban adding unrelated things into one big bill.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated that he intends to package the measure, a modified version of a stand-alone bill that the House passed last month, with foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The move “to package TikTok is definitely unusual, but it could succeed,” said Paul Gallant, a policy analyst for the financial services firm TD Cowen.

TikTok has said that the national security concerns are unfair and that it has spent more than $1 billion on a detailed plan for its U.S. operations that would wall off user data and offer third-party oversight of its content recommendations.

“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill,” Alex Haurek, a spokesman for the company, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Last year, a federal judge temporarily blocked a statewide ban of TikTok from taking effect in Montana, preventing the nation’s first such prohibition.

Officials from the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed lawmakers in the House and Senate about their concerns, adding fuel to the effort to pass the bill.

The original article contains 765 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

"TikTok changed my life for the better" Jesus fuck

Honestly did for me. I love TikTok, and it feels like the social media app with the best news and conversations. Seriously.

I say this on Lemmy a lot and welcome the down votes. Although it seems more and more tame lately. I really think people are understanding the value of tiktok. I find out news on tiktok quicker than anywhere else, I don't ever trust the details, but the events are always actually happening and usually they even have a relatively factual take on it.

Also, if anyone hasn't tried out Donghua Jinlong food grade glycine, they really must.

It's pretty good but lately I've been looking for some organic fair trade food grade glycine.

It's so frustrating, people are saying the same lines as the Senate trying to get the tiktok ban through.

I got into a Tiktok algorithm bubble for a while where it was just constantly people reporting on congress critter trades in almost near real time... no idea how they did it, but like a week or a month later I would see some publication reporting on it after. So I could definitely see why politicians want to ban it.

Wish I could find that again... I liked to many comedians and now my feed went into another direction

to the person in the image. no, tiktok ruined your attention span and helped ruin your life, same if it gets sold or you switch to something else

Fun fact: these days, Tiktok is the main social media outlet for uncensored pro-Palestine activism, owing to the fact that Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube tend to censor most criticism of the Israeli apartheid government.

THAT'S why they're suddenly pretending that its spying on users is any worse than that of the others (it's not) now of all times: AIPAC and other major donors are feeling the heat and want to shut people up.

That and because it's an election year and the combination of xenophobia and pretending to care about online privacy appeals to a wide selection of gullible prospective voters.

It's not for "uncensored pro-Palestine activism", it's a primary vector for distributing blatant propaganda and misinformation. China is one of the big three who are aggressively pushing a pro-Hamas narrative on social media:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-information-war.html

In case of paywall:

https://web.archive.org/web/20231103162338/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-information-war.html

the NYT is a pro-Israel newspaper. See their recently leaked guidelines on covering Israel.

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/a-secret-internal-nytimes-memo-reveals-the-papers-anti-palestinian-bias-is-even-worse-than-we-thought/#:~:text=Arguably%20the%20worst%20example%20of,to%20being%20stunned%20by%20this.

They can be pro or against Israel, but this article, which you likely didn't even read, is entirely factual.

Their news is biased, I do not trust the NYT on Israel as you seem to blindly do. This is like linking a Fox News article on trans people.

it's a primary vector for distributing blatant propaganda and misinformation.

And Facebook and Twitter aren't? 🙄

And nope, not taking the NYT's word on anything related to the ongoing genocide in Gaza before they retract their thoroughly baseless "Screams without voices" propaganda piece.