https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/us-likely-enact-law-soon-ban-tiktok-nationwide-rcna148391
House Speaker Johnson plans to package TikTok legislation with critical aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and send it to the Senate. President Joe Biden vowed to sign it into law.
Since when does Congress ban websites or dictate what apps people can have on their devices? Regardless of how you feel about this particular company, I feel like no one is talking about the internet-killing precedent that's being set here, and that should be concerning.
To be fair they didn't actually name TikTok. That would be clearly Unconstitutional. Instead they made a bill that will only apply to one company. So unconstitutional but most people won't notice.
And even better Meta, Alphabet, Apple, and GM are all busy selling China your information as fast as they can anyways.
It's being used as an infiltration device by the Chinese government. Not that I agree butvits not just a website. Same as Twitter and Facebook bit we have more control over those.
It's being used as an infiltration device by the Chinese government
Please prove this.
There's obviously not going to be proof, it'd be huge news if there were. At the same time, I also wonder why people so adamantly defensive of TikTok in particular? It seems trivial enough to establish that they could exert an undue influence on a global audience through social media with just a few (I would think uncontroversial) assumptions
With a state ownership stake in the picture, it creates a pretty uneasy tension, right? If they know (1), they could just push ads and content which would help prime you emotionally and mentally to receive that advertising via mechanism (2). This is their actual business model.
Alternatively, if so motivated, they could just as easily use that same profile and mechanism to push content which nudges the content consumer in any myriad ways (politically, socially, etc.). Start with something that's "close" to the viewer's existing views, and cumulatively keep pushing content which leads folks down pipelines. They don't even need to make the content. The users create it; the sentiment, quality, and popularity data informs which shorts to push where; refine the model based on receptivity; repeat as necessary.
Given (3), especially at the scale we're talking about with TikTok, I think it's obviously possible that the platform could be used to meaningfully influence public opinion, sow discord, spread misinformation, whatever. Whether they actually do this is purely speculative, but I also have a hard time thinking people would be quite so enthusiastically defensive of a similar social platform under direct influence from their own government?
I'm pretty sure an American company already reviews all their code - Oracle, iirc. They already did this after people complained last time. The CEO isn't even Chinese.
Platforms such as TikTok operate on "pushing" content the algorithm wants instead of users "pulling" content they want to see
This is just outright wrong, like hilariously wrong and if you used the platform for more than 10 minutes you'd see that. Tiktok is the ONLY social media that feeds me content I want to see as accurately and often as I want. It will even adjust the videos I see within the same 30 minute session to feed me more of what I'm favoring within that 30 minute session.
There is not any other single social media that does this.
Please don't take my post as a claim that the algorithm isn't absolutely amazing at what it does. All I'm saying is that it is, by nature, pushing you content rather than serving you content which you actively seek out. I don't believe the things we're claiming are mutually exclusive here.
Same as Twitter and Facebook bit we have more control over those.
Only in the sense that the people using them to manipulate us are the same ones making the laws. They're leveraging it for their own ends, not stopping it.
The correct course of action (from the perspective of the American people, in stark contrast to that of the American government/oligarchy) would be to ban TikTok as the threat it is, and also ban Facebook, Twitter and Reddit for the threats they pose as well. The trouble is that it won't, because it is the entity wielding that weapon against the American people and will not voluntarily disarm itself.
Banning them is the exact wrong way to go about the problem. That just gives the government the power to ban apps that contain information that doesn't fit the narrative the government wants to put out. It gives them control over the consumer.
What should happen is comprehensive privacy protections for consumers and extensive fines when companies don't abide by them. That way, the consumer benefits and the government has more oversight over companies, not people.
The way I see it, the problem is centralized social media with opaque engagement and content-boosting algorithms. Think of it not as the government banning apps with content it doesn't like but instead as enforcing anti-trust law.