What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it?
Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
Fiduciary responsibilities make it unlikely that many companies would risk it.
There’s always a chance you don’t come back, and there’s likely to be a loss of marketshare for simply being unavailable for a period and forcing users to trial alternatives.
But, TikTok is not purely commercially focused. A majority of the voting stock of ByteDance is held by the Chinese government, who clearly see non-financial strategic value in controlling it.
Otherwise, they likely could have negotiated a spin out the US operation, whereby they retain most of the equity upside but give majority voting control to a US buyer.
The Chinese government carefully controls foreign access to its market already (unlike the US), and already bans quite a few foreign companies from operating on the Chinese Internet (again, unlike the US).
I imagine Apple already complies with whatever they need to comply with in order to make the Chinese government happy.
> 'cos we're all equal, no?
No, we absolutely aren't. The Chinese government has ensured for decades now that foreign businesses have only tightly controlled access to the Chinese people while Chinese-owned (i.e., easily controllable by the Chinese government) businesses have advantages not given to outsiders. (And those outsiders need to open up a Chinese subsidiary that is majority-owned by Chinese investors/companies.)
On the other hand, most Western countries have given Chinese companies near-unfettered access to their markets.
If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.
> If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.
I do t use tiktok and have no skin in the game as an EU resident, but setting a precedent for this kind of behaviour to permit clthe government to simply block anything it wants is basically following in CCPs footsteps, that's certainly not a good thing in my eyes.
This is not a new precedent. The US government has placed foreign-ownership restrictions on media companies since before the public internet was a thing. The only difference here is that it's targeted at a specific company, but I'm not really up in arms about that, even though I think they definitely could have written the law without naming ByteDance or TikTok specifically.
Not just media companies, the government block a Japanese company from buying US Steel. Not out of antitrust concerns but due to the foreign ownership aspect.
I feel like takes like these are coming from a place of extreme naivete, or worse, nihilism. Either people don't understand why it's problematic that our most influential social media platform among basically everyone age 0-30 is fully controlled by the CCP, or people really think the CCP wouldn't use its ability to control any Chinese company to aggressively mold US public opinion in concert with their inevitable invasion of the democratic country Taiwan,
or... the nihilistic option:
People know China would engage in information warfare using TikTok in a situation like that, but they foolishly think the CCP is on even moral ground with free democracies so none of this matters, and we've gotta keep the funny musical memes flowing.
For all one's misgivings about the US -- and there are many valid ones! -- before deciding these governments are equal, talk to a Chinese political dissident, if you can find one, since they sometimes disappear.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the EU blocked a number of outlets for spreading pro-Russian disinformation (RT, Sputnik for example) so this would be nothing new.
IAPP isn't a bad source IMO but hard to evaluate their methods, but lets see.
> Level of understanding about data collection and use
Netherlands : Weak - 14%
USA : Weak - 24%
Not great, I could spend time finding more, but the summary is that the EU has regulations that require companies to limit the useage of consumers information and privacy. The EU is consumer privacy focused, wheras the US seems to be Enterprise & Organisation focused, also it's state level enforcements fracture enforcement even further.
Lets look at the US CCPA vs GDPR :
A crucial difference is that GDPR requires individuals to opt-in before businesses can collect data while there is no opt-in condition in CCPA.
That should say it all.
Edit : I forgot to add, outside of Sanctions the EU has no control to simply decide to ban a company when it feels like it.
You start off sounding like you're arguing against the idea that the EU exerts more control over media than the US, but then most of what you said seems to support the fact that they do so.
Protecting people is always the justification. “We aren’t restricting your freedom, we are protecting you.” That governments seek to “protect” people from words on a page is wild to me.
> regulations are for the companies. But they’re not banned.
So if they don’t follow the regulations they simply keep paying fines indefinitely? Until they run out of money? Until the company goes out of business? We aren’t banning those companies, instead we’ll attempt to bankrupt them if they stay in our markets; unless they do what we say. In other words, extortion?
Numerous examples of China-says-jump-everyone-says-how-high.
NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".
1bn customers = a lot of money. A company that will kiss the ring will do the right thing by its shareholders and a nasty thing against humanity. I am 200% sure that Apple has given the keys for all users/phones/servers in China to the gov/CCP and nobody complained.
If North Korea had 1bn potential customers, we would be seeing Kim very differently.
We are cattle. It's all a 1984-ish sham.
Historically China has been so large and 'diverse' (not to be confused with DEI) (like India and Russia). It's not "one chinese person is just like anyone else". There are multiple Republics/States/etc. It takes an emperor to keep together an empire. And that usually requires (plenty of) violence.
Communism is built to make people suffer, remove individuality and requires total obedience and personal reformation to be the 'good citizen'. You and me both are EU citizens. We are all different and we respect/accept each other. In China if you disagree, you disappear. They would very much like to do the same to the rest of the world. And one day they will, just not yet. I hope they implode before they do (like all empires).
> NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".
John Cena was probably the wrestler HenryBemis was referring to. Although he started learning Chinese a long time ago, not for the purpose of apologizing. A couple years ago he called Taiwan a country, then issued an apology.
Actually what’s scary for Apple, and really for all companies with assets or factories still in China is that recently China prevented Apple from shipping its own equipments out of China to India. China is so fearful of even more unemployments that it is now willing to upset one of its largest employer.
Foxconn stops sending Chinese workers to India iPhone factories
In addition, equipment shipments are delayed, potentially disrupting next-generation iPhone production in India.
The US is not a master piece of freedom. Want to market or own foreign shares? Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
Yes, China is absolutely worse. But the US is not a good example.
I never claimed the US was perfect, just better. I think using it as an example is fine. No country is perfect by any metric; everything is a matter of comparison over who is better or worse on a particular thing.
> Want to market or own foreign shares?
ADRs work for that, no?
> Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
I agree those things are bad, but they have nothing to do with market access, which is the topic at hand.
I have a London stock exchange trading account with Schwab. I think I opened it online. The only catch is that I can only deposit or withdraw funds via my US Schwab account.
Well if we aren't going to get the actual fruits of capitalism I'm for damn sure going to fight it tooth and nail at home. Shit sucks and I can't think of anyone I trust less than an American capitalist.
> The Chinese government carefully controls foreign access to its market already (unlike the US)
Is there any reason you’re skipping the past 40+ years of turmoil in the Middle East purely from the US trying to control oil fields? Because Iran would like a word with, and there’s a hell lot of other countries behind them waiting their turn
Perhaps I misunderstand your point, but the US obviously doesn't have any issue meddling in other country's economies or political systems. The US also obviously allows foreigners to business in the US without many restrictions. Is this the "free market" I keep hearing about? I don't know.
The OP was contrasting this with China, that does not allow foreigners access to their markets. As a regular American, quite honestly, I would like a bit of protectionism from the US, as I recently bought a house and had to compete with cash offers from Chinese banks. It's insane to me that we allow foreigners to buy property here, while our own citizens are being increasingly priced out of our own country.
Isn’t that how laissez faire capitalism works - the person with the higher bid gets the sale, not based on central planned rules of which country the current administration is beefing with that day?
I'm pretty sure Meta apps, at least Facebook, are banned in China still. Apple complies with the Chinese government and removes banned apps otherwise it can not operate there. I think even Tiktok itself is banned in China, there is a special version just for the Chinese market so their consumers can not see global content.
There is no such ban. Microsoft operates tons of services in China. Internet companies just need to host all Chinese in China using an approved provider. This is the exact same requirement extended to Tiktok, for ages US tiktok data is stored in Oracle cloud with full audit access by appointed American firms.
Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. They are not in the same business. Meta is in the social networking domain, which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security. The "color revolutions" and the "Arab Spring" gave them good reason to believe that online social networks were a driver of societal change too powerful not to control. And they control it very very tightly.
> Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. Meta is in the social networking domain
Microsoft operated its own popular social network in China, called MSN Messenger. Tens of millions Chinese users were on that platform for like a decade until the release of mobile based WeChat.
> which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security
It is a matter of national security, we all saw what happened on twitter shortly before the 6th Jan 2021 attack.
That is the exact reason why everyone agreed that TikTok must host all US data and its deployed recommendation algorithm code in the US with 3rd party audit access by an appointed US entity.
The only question here is why should Meta and Google be exempted from the exact same rules if they want to operate their services in China.
MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_China
They were defeated by the QQ app and shut down in 2014.
> MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law)
Microsoft retained a 50% ownership of MSN China, just check the link you cited. Microsoft also retained the full ownership of the MSN messenger software while MSN China was just in charge of its day to day operation in China.
Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
> Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
Why are you making it sound like China doesn't restrict Tesla for "national security"?
Tesla was asked to complete a comprehensive review to ensure its data compliance. Tesla did it and has been cleared for such data security issue, that is how Tesla sold 670k units in China in 2024.
Im pretty sure there is no ban per se. They just say: "either put your servers in our jurisdiction or gtfo of here", to which Meta and co. voluntarily decide to not enter the market. CCP still advertises as open to foreign companies though
Chinese government demands a lot from US companies. Google left for a reason.
Apple is quite a special case since iPhone ecosystem creates many jobs in China. If Apple managed to move jobs to India (or wherever cheap labor is), Chinese government will stop being nice to them.
And even then, right now in China, iCloud service is run by Guizhou cloud, not Apple.
Can you imagine any other country making this demand and it being taken seriously? It is negotiation by means of extortion. Why are American tech companies entitled to the profits of an internationally used app?
You can’t claim this is unfair to China, when China requires foreign companies enter into joint ventures which give the Chinese partner majority voting share.
I don't think it's unfair to China, I think it's unfair to European countries, Canada, Australia, and the rest of the world that uses TikTok who are watching the U.S. demand it is entitled to run and control TikTok.
This would be like the U.S. forcing Spotify's Swedish headquarters to accept U.S. ownership.
Then Europe should grows some balls and ban TikTok. China is literally a foreign invader not just a foreign adversary, aiding in Russia’s conquest of Europe. And trying to destroy Europe’s car industry via state subsidized EVs
India literally banned TikTok overnight when China killed Indian soldiers in 2020
Every state to a different degree subsidizes its automobile industry.
Living in Australia now with access to Chinese EV's is eyeopening. It's great for the consumer. To the extent you accept EV's as a solution for reducing GHG's, the cheaper prices are making it easier to end our reliance on oil. Americans don't realize what they are missing out on.
Better than Tesla-quality vehicles for half the price.
Why exactly are they half the price? What are the externalities of Chinese EV manufacturing. They may be half the price, but I doubt they are half the cost.
Because if there are two subjects HN cannot resist pontificating on at length, it's social media/the modern web and Sinopolitics. Add a dash of red team/blue team sniping and it's the perfect storm.
I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.
And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US, even with someone like Trump in power.
> I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.
I can't speak for most Westerners, but I fully believe the United States to be an empire in decline already. Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves.
> And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US
I don't really think about it in terms of "my interests." My ideal incoming superpower would be any superpower that's ready to deal with existential threats to our species like climate change, along with our global social ills like over-reliance on social media and the year over year alienation of everyone from everyone else. If that country comes with me needing to learn Mandarin then that's what has to happen.
I'm highly disillusioned with both the "West" as an idea (which can include any number of countries depending how racist the speaker is feeling at the moment). I still believe in Democracy, representative or otherwise, but I don't see any of those in your "West" anymore. I see a collection of ailing, aged empires full of greedy old men stealing as much money as they can so they and their families can coast out the collapse they have engineered. I contrast this with China, which certainly has problems too, and the CCP gets up to some nonsense, but their ability to exude top-down control also makes them more able to actually solve problems instead of endlessly bickering about them. And with respect to the notions of individual liberty and freedom that I do want to see in the world, it's clear that the West is too focused on maintaining the rights of the individual to do what they so please, and not enough on maintaining the planet upon which they would do it. How free is anyone if we can't leave our homes due to smog or unlivable temperatures/weathers?
Not saying it's an overall improvement. I am saying that the U.S. is on it's way out, and China is the likely incoming global superpower. We can do precious little to change this if we even want to, and I'm not rushing for a fire extinguisher here.
> Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves
With the exception of the USSR, every superpower’s decline in history has involved a burst of violence. China or India won’t take over if America collapses because America collapsing (versus slow fading over lifetimes) almost guarantees nuclear war resetting the table.
If anything, WW1 happened because there were too many empires rather than a lack of any dominant powers.
Unless you’re suggesting that what the world needs is a single dominant empire? Which would be an odd position to take because history has proven that monopolies are much much worse for abusing power.
Maybe if/when we colonise other planets we can think of the Earth as a single government with countries acting like states (kind of like the EU but with less sovereignty for each state). However that’s only going to happen if we work together and generally cooperation is viewed as counterproductive to empire building. So we come full circle back to my original point.
It's not very clear, but the US version is more freedom plus killing more people, and the Chinese version is more servitude plus killing fewer people.
I think people who have seen one up close claim to prefer the other (but thets meaningless) while people who have seen both start to lean toward servitude, unless they are highly religious.
Since we all live in democratic regimes, maybe, just maybe, the will of the people should matter here at least a little bit? Banning TikTok is a deeply unpopular idea, across all party lines. It's only popular among the anti-democratic elites, from Trump (who first got this ball rolling), to Biden, to European leaders playing their "high-level" games.
You're lumping "not sure" in with "oppose the ban". You could just as easily lump "not sure" with "support the ban" and conclude that not banning it is deeply unpopular.
If you're trying to argue that a majority favors banning it, then, obviously, all opinions other than "favor banning it" have to be lumped together as "don't favor banning it"
It does not say they have to sell to the US. Only divest as to no longer be considered controlled by a `foreign adversary` of the United States.[0] The bill also gives this power to future administrations.
It was literally called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
More fair would have been a restriction based on some framework like...
+ Public forum or utility
+ Userbase greater than 1% of the adult population
= Majority Ownership of corporate division and management, plus regulatory oversight, must be held within country OR a security partnered country (the easiest criteria for that might be they have an obligation to fight along side 'our' troops in some way).
That way it isn't specific about any given platform or company, and it allows anyone trusted as an ally to comprise the ownership or legal jurisdiction.
EU countries are asleep at the wheel on matters of national security and sovereignty. Spotify is not a matter of national security. TikTok, and social networking in general, has been one for some time now. Misinformation, conspiracy theories, actual conspiracies to overthrow govt, etc have all found renewed vigor thanks to social networks.
US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.
If that’s your position, then you would be fine if EU countries were to pull out all US telco infrastructure because of their previous abuses towards European citizens?
I'd be mindful that having a NATO partner be able to spy is maybe better than having Huawei spy if you have to choose, but yes, I think it's a risk that EU countries should be aware of and probably are more aware of than with social networks.
That has nothing to with them being US companies. Or are there any jurisdictions where Bolt/(other local company) is allowed to freely operate but Uber is banned?
Those are just examples. Whatever the reason for each, sovereign jurisdictions don't allow free access to their resources/markets just out of spite. That includes Europe.
That’s only partially true though. I don’t think Uber itself is not allowed to operate anywhere. Rather it’s business model is illegal in some cities/areas. Usually you can still use Uber to hire actual taxis there.
However exact same rules apply to its European competitors like Bolt. Make it entirely unrelated to this situation.
They’re not. Why are you making that assumption? The US is saying that in order to access the US market they have to divest. They’re free to sell at a fair market price - including to European buyers. They can also choose not to and leave the US market and keep operating elsewhere. They can also just sell the US business and keep everything else the way it is.
Well, that's pretty much how China behaves with respect to foreign companies operating in China. They all need to be joint partnerships with owners in China.
The world is more than just China and the United States. That was the point of my original comment. The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world. No other country could get away with demanding this.
> The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world.
This isn’t correct. The US law only applies to the services provided within the US.
ByteDance could spin out the US userbase while retaining the rest of the userbase. Many US companies already have to do exactly this for their Chinese userbase. Spin it off to a JV with a Chinese partner.
I’m not aware of anyone doing this, but you could even have a content syndication model whereby the global TikTok and the US TikTok share a common pool of content and username reservations so that both services appear global to their users, but with separate companies controlling distribution of their own apps and the recommendation model used to serve content.
That's false. The US law requires TikTok to be sold to a non-adversary. A US company could buy it, or some German or Spanish company, and either would fulfill the requirements to avoid a ban in the US.
> No other country could get away with demanding this.
TikTok is already banned in India. Brasil banned Twitter for a while until they caved to Brasil's demands.
India banned TikTok a few years ago. Brazil banned X until it agreed to take down posts in violation of Brazilian law. The European Union fines US-based tech companies frequently.
"Entitlement" in the context of nations is irrelevant. Nations exercise power in accordance with their interests.
> The world is more than just China and the United States.
But this particular situation is not. A Chinese controlled company that operates in the US. If you want access to $CC market you are subject to $CC's rules. Other countries do exactly the same thing (aside from China, GDPR comes to mind) so it's unclear what the basis for your complaint is here.
> You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.
I'm not sure how generally you meant to speak, but this is no longer true as a general claim.
"As of November 1, 2024, China has removed all restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, allowing foreign investors, including Americans, to own up to 100% equity in Chinese manufacturing enterprises."
True. I missed that. Operating an online social network has nothing to do with manufacturing though.
And investments into various telecommunications related areas are still restricted or outright banned. So foreign founded/owned TV stations like Fox News could never exist in China (for better or for worse).
What's your source on that? Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon all operate in China and I don't believe they had to give up 50% of their local subsidiary. Google withdrew from China because it didn't want to comply with local laws (e.g. censorship).
They changed it last year. Prior to that you generally could only have a 50% stake manufacturing companies (obviously doesn’t apply to Apple cause they never did any).
> .. (ii) news agencies, (iii) editing, publishing and production of books, newspapers, periodicals, audio-visual products and electronic publications, (iv) all levels of broadcasting stations, television stations, radio and television channel and frequency, radio and television transmission networks and the engagement in the video on demand business of radio and TV, (v) radio and television program production and operation as well as (vi) film production companies, distribution companies, cinema companies and the introduction of films are still prohibited.
So good-luck to any Australians and Brits who want to operate Fox news style networks in China.
There are other telecommunications related areas which are restricted and not prohibited.
Not sure where would TikTok fall into exactly but it’s probably bot manufacturing.
Seems like the policies used by the Chinese government for decade are becoming more internationally popular (for better or for worse..).
I can’t really feel bad about when it’s the same deal they offer Western companies. Well.. to be fair Google or FB couldn’t even get anywhere close to where TikTok is.
Because it deals with an actual enemy pumping propaganda into your country's citizen's ears. It's a legitimate threat to national security. And no, not just the US does this. (I assume you mean free countries, not dictatorship like China, Russia or North Korea that ban everything they don't like).
Europe banned Russian propaganda outlet RT a couple of years ago, on security grounds. It's just that US prefers the soft-soft approach. Don't ban them, let them "divest". No. It doesn't work. It should be banned end of story. I guarantee a genuine competitor from the US or an allied country would make an alternative quite soon. Would be so addictive and equally brain rotting? Probably not, so people who enjoyed it before would complain. Fine, let them go join Douyin or other Chinese platform and see for themselves how "freedom of speech"looks like in China.
As for anyone who might come and say "they're not doing anything wrong". They are and you're naive for not seeing it. Every company in China is an arm of the state. As an example see how Bytedance released an ebook reader in the US with an AI assistant that tells you things like "nothing happened in 1989 on Tiananmen square", there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it is inappropriate to question and critique the Chinese communist party, China never attacked anyone,ever but it's perfectly fine to criticise every other single country on earth and it is ready to give you a litany of misdeeds any other country on earth ever did. Except China. Do you think a company like that owning what's essentially a monopoly on news for the young people is good? No it is not, and any sane politician would ban it long time ago. The fact Trump did this move worries me for his other decisions in future .
The law didn't require them to shut the service off for those who already had the app installed. It just prevented new updates or downloads. Shutting off the app immediately was just theater and reinstating the app with no changes to the law is just the second act.
The law says that US cloud providers are fined if they continued to provide services to Bytedance.
As far as we know, Tiktok is operated on US servers by Oracle. While it might have been possible to find another cloud provider and move all US data there, I can see them not wanting to do that given that there was no point if the app isn't distributed in the US anymore.
There's currently no evidence pointing towards Oracle shutting down cloud service to them though. TikTok appears to have just preemptively shut down the app before they were obligated to, complete with dramatic messages telling users what to blame and who to thank.
Even without following the letter of the law it's entirely rational behaviour for a popular market leader to foment outrage by fully blacking out services. 150 million users (in the US alone) is a very powerful political influence. Politicians frequently fold for a few thousand vocal people complaining on the internet.
Of course it's rational behavior. Nico was the one claiming that they were just "following the law", that's what this subthread was about. If you agree that TikTok was making a political point by shutting down, then you agree with the person you're replying to.
Such compromises happen between companies as well when a particular app is popular. Facebook and Uber accessing private java apis which meant Google couldn't change the internals as these apps are popular.
I believe Tiktok shut down the app in India in the same way without being "obligated to" either before the order came into effect, albeit without the dramatic messaging.
(The latter part is probably because Tiktok's banning was not particulaly divisive within the population as it is in the US.)
I don't know exact figures, but when Tiktok was banned, Instagram was really popular - due to being pushed by Facebook, which was really really popular in India by then. None of my friends were on Tiktok, but all where there on Instagram. The reels thing was not popular but Facebook linked the account automatically and you just keep adding Facebook friends there as well.
Tiktok had a better algorithm (to get hooked) but Instagram eventually caught up (with algo)..
The dramatic messaging was entirely the point. India probably did not have an easily exploitable target for such a message, so there was no point in trying that there.
Oracle did shut them down last night, if Google and Apple have to drop their apps on the apps store, Oracle and other providers have to drop them too. Btw, the app won't function even if parts of the infra is down. Btw, business is risk averse, they don't want to give any excuses for government to fine them. Bytedance should definitely shutdown everything and blocked all US users unless they have explicit, written and legally bidding instructions from the Justice Department. Only an executive order is enough. They asked Biden to give that, but Biden just smirked
I’m not sure this is correct. I see where you’re coming from, but there was a clear date that the law was going to be enacted by, and tiktok simply followed that date. Pretty much everybody expected tiktok to be required to shut down. The law is clear that there are penalties for tiktok continuing to operate past that date, so it’s not really surprising.
They were telling users who to blame and who to thank because in this specific case, the blame and the thank are pretty clear. The Biden administration approved the ban, and the Trump administration reversed it. Blaming one and thanking the other is also hardly surprising.
Well, "the law" is a shorthand for "how the police behave" and there is a certain amount of realpolitik here. The basic argument here would be that the US Congress made a scary growling sound and TikTok folded immediately because the Congress is terrifying. But then Trump made more of a friendly sound and so they think they can operate a bit longer with some level of safety.
There is no question that TikTok is a politically sensitive app and the US/China are very nearly in the funnel to a major war so a lot of the usual niceties are questionable. Previously the US has attempted something that looked a lot like a black-bag kidnapping of a Chinese industrialist [0]. I'd imagine that the TikTok people are acutely sensitive towards how the law is actually going to be interpreted and enforced in practice.
This is basically the same tactic to the SOPA/PIPA protests [1]. I don't know why people are bending over backwards to pretend it was something other than a political stunt. Also, Trump's rhetoric has remained unchanged since well before this - a 90 day extension. They wanted to flex their muscle to show the US political establishment how many US users there were and how much sway they had to give them more leverage in their negotiations. That's about it.
Jan 17: Biden administration says it will leave TikTok ban enforcement for Trump [1]
Early Jan 18: Trump says he will 'most likely' give TikTok a 90-day extension to avoid a ban [2]
Late Jan 18: TikTok makes app unavailable for U.S. users ahead of ban [3]
Midday Jan 19: TikTok begins restoring service for U.S. users after Trump comments [4]
They already knew what was going to happen. They also changed the message shortly after disabling it from "We're working to restore service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned." to "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Stay tuned!" [5]
If your cloud provider tells you they are shutting you down on date X, you want to fight as hard as you can until X and then shutdown gracefully to have a chance to explain to your users why your system is going down. If you wait until you get shutdown, you have no way of pushing a graceful shutdown anymore.
Oracle has no interest in running afoul of the US government at all. Their internal culture in many ways views them like that of a quasi-government institute. So in thus case they probably are feeling responsible to actually be the ones enforcing the law.
I imagine shutting down ByteDance is not like flipping a switch. They have a mountain of infrastructure and “shutting down” could mean nuking the data or otherwise getting it out of their cloud entirely. If it has to be done by a certain date you’d need to start nuking things well in advance to be absolutely certain you’re in compliance by the deadline. I’m surprised the shutdown happened as late as it did if this wasn’t a completely staged crisis.
That’s a trivial problem to solve though. Just push an update to the app that shows the „we were banned“ message if a specific API endpoint isn’t reachable anymore (and general internet connectivity is still there of course). Then you can operate as normal until your servers are forcefully shut down.
That's not true, distributors of the app are fined. Meaning, very specifically, app stores.
From (2)(a)(1):
> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
>
> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Possession of and providing non-distribution ( / maintenance / update) services to a "Foreign Adversary Controlled Application" are not in any way a part of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Operative services are specifically and intentionally excluded from the list, to ease the burden of enforcement.
I don’t use TikTok but the “down” page mentioned you can still login to download data. What’s the cost and scope of providing that feature without US cloud providers?
They reopened with formal understanding that there will be an executive order tomorrow to suspend the enforcement of the ban. That is a big deal and it's something that they can point to to defend themselves in court should that happen. When President Biden signed the bill, it gave him the ability to extend the deadline by an amount which he declined to do (beyond saying "I'll let Trump admin deal with it"); and soon-to-be President Trump is saying he will do it tomorrow.
Are you privy to the private discussions between Trump and the heads of TikTok, Apple, Google, and Oracle? Or are you simply assuming there have been no such private discussions?
Not actions, but legally binding statements of intent. If Trump offered a binding statement to the heads of all major players that he intends to offer TikTok the 90-day window and work out a "deal" once in office would be more than sufficient justification for these companies to ease enforcement until things become more resolved.
There is no mechanism by which Trump can offer a statement of intent that legally binds him to following that specific course of action after he becomes president.
That's not how the law works, though. Let's say Trump goes back on his word and doesn't sign this executive order, and then ByteDance (etc.) get into legal trouble. If they can convince a judge/jury that they had a strong reason to believe that they'd be acting within the law as they believe it would have been executed by the incoming Trump administration, that could be a persuasive defense.
That doesn't mean TikTok would be able to continue operating, but it could mean the parties involved wouldn't have to suffer penalties for their operation up to that point (past the ban date). But maybe it wouldn't work, and a judge/jury would throw the book at them. We just don't know until and unless it goes to court.
I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to argue? Obviously you understand that that if you create a contract stating that you agree to do [x] in the future, then you are indeed legally bound to that agreement.
If you're arguing that qualified immunity would enable Trump to break the contract if he so chose without consequence, then that is probably true, but I see no reason that would imperil the companies having a rock solid defense against enforcement penalties in the interim period.
Such a contract - where someone promises to use their (future) presidential powers in exchange for some consideration from the other party - would be illegal and unenforceable, because someone paying the president to exercise executive powers to their benefit is literally just bribery.
In what universe does this apply to the president? If the president promises a company to do X, it’s not a contract. I’m not even sure the president is allowed to make a contract with a private entity to give them a political favor.
There is no law or precedent to prohibit someone from engaging in contracts because of holding public office. In fact there is even an ongoing movement to try to get more politicians to do exactly this so that campaign promises would be more likely to be executed. Again qualified immunity would probably make these contracts impossible to enforce against a politician, but in this case the agreement would work as a defense if for some reason Oracle et al faced legal threats or fines for continuing to work with TikTok.
Trump => Agrees to avoid interim enforcement against companies facilitating the operation of TikTok + legally clarify matters when he gets into office.
Companies => Agree to temporarily facilitate the operation of TikTok until matters are further clarified.
I don't see anything particularly controversial here.
I'm pretty certain an executive order cannot overrule a law. So they're just hoping to either get an actual reversal of the law while Trump is in term or just hoping nobody after him will care.
It's like betting on jury nullification but without the benefit of double jeopardy protection. It's unclear if any of the US companies the law is aimed at will risk it.
Which would be an EO counter the constitution and obviously not durable itself. In 4 years the next DOJ can just enforce the law on the books with 4 years of evidence of companies openly breaking it. It'd be a slam dunk case
Most famously Richard Nixon received a pardon by Ford immediately after his resignation but before any prosecution. Also, it’s any federal law, the exception is impeachment and nothing else.
So, pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution. They may not pardon someone for something that hasn’t happened, but as long as there in office when the crime is committed that’s more a technical issue.
After President Gerald Ford left the White House in 1977, close friends said that the President privately justified his pardon of Richard Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of the Burdick decision, which stated that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt.[6] Ford made reference to the Burdick decision in his post-pardon written statement furnished to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives on October 17, 1974.[7] However, the reference related only to the portion of Burdick that supported the proposition that the Constitution does not limit the pardon power to cases of convicted offenders or even indicted offenders.[7][8]
> pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution
Is this really the case? Has this specific situation ever been ruled on by the Supreme Court? Burdick v. U.S. doesn't address "pre-pardons" or blanket pardons. Nixon was never prosecuted or tried.
The court ruled they could reject a pardon given before prosecution thus avoiding the need to testify about someone else. It would be a moot point if the pardon was invalid.
Presidents can pardon classes of people. Carter pardoned all people guilty of evading the draft during the Vietnam War. So Trump could pardon everyone involved in certain companies or involved in a specific act.
This feels like a stretch, I don’t think it’s a pardon they are after. Pardons don’t really work like that.
TikTok I think was going for more of a shock factor. Maybe even without talking to Trump they have credited him as restoring it, might seem weird for him to “go back on it”.
Trump issued a statement saying that he would issue an executive order after he became president that retroactively would dismiss any fines which satisfied both TikTok and the app hosting providers (Apple, Google).
The President can offer pardons for criminal matters. However, he is required to uphold laws passed by Congress, particularly bipartisan ones affirmed by the Supreme Court.
For example, why would the President have a veto power if he can simply post-facto ignore laws they pass?
He's only accountable to Congress (SCOTUS also affirmed that) and good fucking luck ever getting the required votes to remove him from office. He can do whatever he wants with impunity.
SCOTUS pointed out that they weren't crimes committed by Trump. We then saw the political prosecutions of Trump backfire spectacularly in a way that strongly suggests that the balance of the US population agreed with the SCOTUS call that the prosecutors didn't have a case that Trump had to answer for.
There’s a bit of a “live by the sword, die by the sword” situation going on here.
Presidents can’t just ignore a law categorically (although they regularly do, e.g. DACA, DOMA, etc.) On the other hand, presidents can certainly decide not to prosecute a particular entity under a particular law. That’s the heart of the executive power versus the legislative power.
Here, Congress wrote an extremely specific law that applies basically to one company. Which isn’t impermissible. But it’s also not clear to me that Congress can insist on immediate enforcement of that law without crossing effectively usurping the executive power and directing the President to prosecute a specific company at a specific time.
Technically, the President + Executive can do whatever they want, including prosecute parts the Executive!), until the President is either impeached or replaced by election or incapacitation.
Technically yes. But what I mean is that, even in terms of the spirit of the law, the situation is a bit murky, because Congress effectively wrote a law that requires the executive to prosecute a specific company on a specific deadline.
That's actually one of the reasons the president has a veto. If the president doesn't want the law to pass, then there isn't much point in passing it unless Congress makes a show of force with the 2/3rds majority, which is also the majority needed to remove him from office.
Similarly, one of the reasons the president has a pardon power is because he doesn't have to enforce those federal offenses. E.g. imagine that a president without pardon power instead offers "plea deals"/settlements for a $1 fine or concocts vacuously lenient house arrest enforcement.
The original constitution basically accepts that there is very little you can make a president do, and it instead formalizes what would otherwise be a gray area (it does have plenty about what he can't do). Some of this has changed over time especially as the judicial branch has granted itself more power.
The entire system is built on checks and balances. For instance even a simple district attorney can choose to effectively nullify laws within his jurisdiction by not prosecuting violations - something that has regularly happened in contemporary times. Even the final check - the lone juror - can also nullify laws by similarly choosing to acquit alleged violations regardless of the evidence.
You could obviously create a far more functional system but it would probably be far less stable. The reason you have all these checks and balances, from top to bottom, is that the Founding Fathers were obsessed about the risks imposed by both a tyranny of the majority and a tyranny of the minority. And non-enforcement of something effectively comes down just a continuation of the status quo, making it difficult for any group to [openly at least] impose their will on others.
You're not wrong but the only real recourse for an executive that fails to uphold the laws created by Congress is an impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate.
Theoretically that's true but in practice there is ample precedent for Presidents refusing to enforce specific laws. In one instance (DACA) the Supreme Court ordered a President to continue a previous President's official policy of not enforcing certain laws against certain people!
Don’t confuse the oath of office for a binding agreement. The president is supposed to uphold the law, but they are only held accountable by impeachment.
“Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), is a landmark decision[1][2] of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate[1][2] such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch.”
It obviously irrelevant whether the law was bipartisan or not, and the Supreme Court never "affirmed" the law--it denied a preliminary injunction.
As to upholding laws passed by Congress--just two days ago, Biden did his last round of student debt forgiveness, bringing the total up to $188 billion.
I’m not trying to “both sides” this. I’m just saying that the standard you’ve articulated for how promptly the president needs to act on a law like this isn't the standard we apply in practice. The government tries to reach deals like this in lieu of enforcement actions all the time.
Did they shut down at the last moment necessary or did they shut down during what is likely a peak browsing time in the U.S.? Did they need to include messaging about political figures to notify the user of the reason of the ban?
I understand that there was this law. It's a political statement because of the political message being sent out to the user base. The act of shutting down on its own is not a political statement.
The law requires Oracle who hosts their data companies that provide cdn services to stop working with them. The law did require them to suspend service, but not quite as soon as they did and nothing had changed legally
The law required them to choose from among several options, one of which was suspending the service. The law did not permit maintaining the status quo as an option.
No, it does not at all require ByteDance to suspend service.
It requires Apple and Google to stop distributing the app on their app stores, and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
ByteDance could shut down any US-hosted services and serve from outside the US, and be entirely compliant with the law. The TikTok mobile app might become out of date and stop working (for people who already had it installed on their phones), but www.tiktok.com would continue to work just fine.
>and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
And they were forced to use those hosting providers (oracle) by the US.
It's not like investing loads to bring all the data over to singapore or so would serve them well either. They'd still lose the US business relatively quickly and with lower chances of turning things around like they might've. Why bother?
A) Behavior and statements are different things.
B) Biden also said he wouldn't enforce the ban (and also, it was the last day of his administration, so enforcement by Biden wasn't even possible)
This was a political gift to Trump, as the messaging in TikTok's app makes perfectly clear.
It seems like striking fear into the hearts of users to make them realize a ban is really on the table is in their best interest. They want to not be banned, and giving everyone a 48 hour show of users on the platform counting down to the end, then being really upset when they think it's gone is a great demonstration that people want their Tiktok.
* Trump gets a free layup to look like the hero for unbanning it
* Trump will think hard and heavy in the future about banning it again, knowing there's a lot of passionate young people that will reconsider voting for him next election if he does
Plus has there ever been a US president that came back after a term away? Usually when a "new" president comes in you figure they'll be running again next time.
Grover Cleveland also had two non-consecutive terms, and the twenty second amendment is pretty clear in it's language that you can only be elected to the office of President twice.
They shut down before the law required them to (by a few hours), and now they’re back despite no changes in law or action by the president. Biden had already issued an executive order, nothing changed
That would be my question also. You can't explain the shutdown as following the law if the law didn't change between the time of the shutdown and coming back on. It seems to me like the more accurate assessment here is an anticipation of policy changes, which however fruitful do not reflect any change in law, but perhaps some change in the degree of reassurance that the law won't be enforced.
If it's not that, it may well be as the original commenter in this thread suggested a stunt to make a point.
In 2012 a coordinated action by 100,000 sites (including major platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia and Google) all went dark for 24 hours to protest SOPA, which was successful in killing the bill. Some only changed the color scheme and added a message but others shut down.
Sorry what?! I was in Australia and even from here it was obvious it was happening. Maybe go back refresh your mind on old HN posts. Sorry not meaning to be rude but the digital protests of the day were very significant. Lots of media coverage and site blackouts and banners and average punters waking up to the interruption. Stacks was going on. You can even watch Internets Own Boy doco where it’s covered.
As for your claim they had no effect, that's not what the sources from the time say—on the day of the protests 13 senators announced their opposition, including 5 former co-sponsors:
When you lose five co-sponsors in one day and that day happens to coincide with the internet shutting down, I don't find it very credible to try to claim that there was internal dissent all along.
Uber has used this tactic many times in their early days. It mostly worked because citizens got used to cheap rides and got mad at their government for taking it away.
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
That wasn’t a political statement. Per your link, it was a belief that that could not continue the credit card payments while staying in compliance with the law.
The timing and phrasing make it clear that this was planned and negotiated in advance, and the shutdown was just for show in order to be able to post a memo about how "President Trump" saved it. If actual negotiation had to occur, it would not have happened in the twelve hours between midnight and noon on Sunday morning.
The point of the stunt was to persuade large numbers of younger folks that the Ds are the bad guys and Trump in particular is the hero. And it'll work as designed.
My partner uses TikTok and was greeted with a message today saying that DJT saved the app. That isn't possible because he isn't president yet. It's all very embarrassing.
I'd pay good money for a newspaper that would go out of its way to avoid mentioning Trump, Musk, and all these other highly exasperating people, unless it's completely unavoidable (e.g. "Trump declares war on California").
Also the CEO of TikTok is going to sit directly behind Trump at the inauguration. It's not even subtle and half the point is that it isn't subtle - bend the knee to Trump and you'll be taken care of, is the message. We operate just like Russia at this point.
Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
We’ve also started seeing TT ads on Reels, and a brand new blue-checked Facebook account appeared on TT yesterday and rapidly gained 100Ks of followers.
> Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
Well, that makes this interesting. The bill also allowed a 90-day extension if they found a buyer and were in the process of finalizing it.
This may put this cringe ByteDance stunt and Meta/Zuck's pandering to Trump into more perspective. The Hero coming to save the day with a magical 90-day extension. As long as everyone plays their scripted part. On the other hand, it's probably just a funny timed coincidence that will pass in 3 months
[added] The president would have to approve any sale of apps caught in this law
> Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
Wait, if this is truly what this outcome was about, this seems.. huge? Can you share more information about that?
There isn’t enough time for the current President to enforce this. A convincing pledge from the incoming guy that he’ll allow them to continue operating is all it would take. How you get a convincing pledge out of this guy, I have no idea, but apparently they believe it.
He's also telling them to buy a shitcoin. It's all very well believing he magically saved TikTok, but I think there's a lot that will be real hard to swallow. The cycles between FA and FO are getting really, really quick…
TikTok operated in a way that did not need to happen. Biden's administration was explicit in that the enforcement of the ban were to be performed by the Trump administration. Trump signaled that he would sign an EO allowing a 90 day extension to the ban terms on Monday. TikTok are now operating based on this information.
Who is currently in charge of the oval office is an irrelevant quality.
Note that the ban was not really on TikTok, but the ownership. TikTok could be owned by many other parties in the world. It just can't be ByteDance or parent/subsidiary which has ties to China.
> Trump signaled that he would sign an EO allowing a 90 day extension to the ban terms on Monday
How does that work? If congress passed a law banning TikTok how can the president just override it for 3 months? What's to stop him from overriding it for the next 4 years?
I read the bill and didn't see it stated anywhere. I'd genuinely appreciate a link or even a copy/paste with the relevant section that I could look up on google.
But that is essentially what is happening. There is long-standing convention for the president elect to not step on the sitting president's toes prior to inauguration, but Trump has been bucking that convention this time around. This is just an impossible to ignore example.
He's bragged several times that he saved TikTok. Trump also said the Israeli peace deal wouldn't have happened with him, which is an admission of breaking the law that states you cannot act as president without being president.
But Trump already knows he is above the law, so none of this matters.
Doesn't the law explicitly require TikTok to have a convincing deal in place, and to be able to show proof of that to Congress, before such an extension can be granted?
At 17:05 in this video (and I believe discussed once elsewhere but I can't find it/don't want to rewatch it): https://youtu.be/pZkoV5UnPvw
Yeah... there's no such provision. The only mentions of the president in that bill are:
1. In the definition of a "covered company". The bill itself already saus that TikTok is covered; this is only a provision to add other companies to the list.
2. In determining what qualifies as "divestiture" to have the ban lifted. That's described as happening when -
> the President determines, through an interagency process...
"TikTok wrote me a big check and said nice things about me" isn't an interagency process.
Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.* He has literally zero power until tomorrow afternoon. He can't grant pardons, he can't lift law enforcement decisions, and he can't write executive orders. The promise of an executive order, even if such an order would be lawful tomorrow (which I can't understand how it would be), is not a legal document that can make something legal today.
Since you ignored the passage I linked, let me qute it for you and the surrounding context if it helps you learn to read:
(a) Right of action.—A petition for review challenging this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act may be filed only in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
(b) Exclusive jurisdiction.—The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any challenge to this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act.
(c) Statute of limitations.—A challenge may only be brought—
(1) in the case of a challenge to this Act, not later than 165 days after the date of the enactment of this Act; and
(2) in the case of a challenge to any action, finding, or determination under this Act, not later than 90 days after the date of such action, finding, or determination.
^ That is where the 90 day stipulation came from.
===
> Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.
Right okay, what does one do with that information? It's common practice for Presidents to collaborate with their successors during the handoff period. Both the Biden and the incoming Trump administrations collaborated on the Gaza ceasefire, as way to help gradually transition power.
Bro is upset about Trump using a clause in a law, but has no problem with Biden and Kahmahlah declaring that something is part of the constitution based on absolutely nothing. Bro … after what Biden and Kahmahlah did, there is no valid criticism that any Democrat can have of Trump. Anything short of abolishing the constitution, as Biden and Kahmahlah tried, is less bad than what Biden and Kahmahlah did.
> Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear
> In response to an NPR question about whether the archivist would take any new actions, the National Archives communications staff pointed to a December statement saying that the ERA "cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions."
If a president can decree amendments, the Constitution means nothing. If you can break the constitution to change it, as Biden attempted, then how do you have a constitution?
paste your article into chatgpt and tell it your thoughts. I've very curious if you can convince it you have a valid point. More so, you may come out more educated and everyone wins
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
Pointing out that Biden, in contradiction the the US constitution, tried to alter the US constitutions. I don't make the facts, they are what they are.
I’m not sure what to say other than that you have a bizarre interpretation of the article. I mean in no way, shape or form is Biden trying to abolish the US Constitution.
If the ERA was dully ratified, then it would not need Biden to decree it law. If Biden can decree an amendment to the constitution as law, then the constitution has no meaning.
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
If you mean because they used the term "President Trump", that honorific is for life. See, for instance, the recent passing of President Carter for a million examples. If you mean because he couldn't have executed legal actions yet - he could have offered private and legally binding statements to all the major players - Oracle, Apple, and Google.
I don't know why you think he couldn't. A legally binding statement of intent to offer TikTok the 90-day window and work out a "deal" once in office would be more than sufficient justification for the heads of the various companies involved to ease enforcement until things become more resolved.
Calling it a political favor is quite silly. He stated he was likely overturn it for months now, but the public indirect phrasing was probably not sufficient for the involved actors to feel was sufficient to act on, a private statement of definitive intent would be.
Oh maybe the very clear messaging in the app and by the inbound administration, who is heavily supported by tech elites.
The same people who have been very open about their feelings towards opposition and who and what they support. No one will come out and claim this was the case, but its not like they are trying to hide it either.
Isn't it enough to see, smell, you have to touch and eat it repeatedly so you can conclude: yes, this is shit. You are now expert in shit eating and the professional opinion is that this is really shit, no mistake is made here!?
If that’s the case this was totally bungled, the app was down for less than 12 hours, overnight during a weekend. If they wanted maximum effect Trump wouldn’t have tweeted until 5pm eastern to give people a chance to come to terms with the shutdown actually happening.
The Tik Tok in-app notes for "shutting down" and "we're back" both referenced Trump by name. I doubt they would do that without his explicit consent.
Trump beamed his name and heroics directly into the eyeballs of 50m people before he even took office. That wouldn't have happened without the brief blip going dark.
Odds are good he said he'd pardon them (which is a whole different story) but ensured they'd go dark for a few hours, either by withholding his guarantee or by directly coordinating it with them.
This is Trump. It's always about him. If we haven't learned that we haven't learned anything.
> The goal was always to get TikTok divested of Chinese ownership, not to ban it.
Seems like the goal pivoted recently - the goal is to keep TikTok Chinese and have them supporting the corrupt regime taking over the US, similar to other foreign adversaries have in the past
> ByteDance surprised almost everyone in choosing the stick.
shortly after Trump tried to force bytedance to sell its shares during his first term, the Chinese government passed laws to include the recommendation systems used in social media into the export control list. bytedance thus won't be able to sell tiktok without approval from the chinese government.
Does anyone have a citation for this? Probably higher quality if it's in Chinese even if I have to machine translate it. Because that would be a clear pointer of suspicion.
Agree, and the velocity is amazing, it's really hard to keep up with the shenanigans. In my opinion, it will have a negative impact on the economy, education, birth rates etc.
Government should stay out of the way, and I don't want to hear about it every ten seconds, on the other hand, I don't want to have to read the news every five minutes to audit what they're doing.
I think it's obvious that US lawmakers were somehow convinced ByteDance would absolutely divest from TikTok if threatened with an ultimatum. They were never prepared for an actual ban and the resulting fallout. Now that it's obvious they won't divest (which should have been obvious the entire time), they flipped
> US lawmakers were somehow convinced ByteDance would absolutely divest from TikTok if threatened with an ultimatum
I worked on the bill. Everyone assumed it would hit the ban, get an extension, and then either remain banned or get sold to Elon, Ellison or a Brexiteer.
"It's clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers" [1]
The deal was divest or ban, not look for "more time to find a buyer". My point is they were never prepared for an actual ban.
I think the bigger point is there are a lot of young people making really decent money on TikTok. (I know a few of them.) The result is a lot of push back from a lot of people who are effectively loosing their jobs. This is probably more clear to politicians now than it was a year ago, since the actual “threat” of the situation set in for more people.
As popular as the platform is with the younger demographic and the voting preferences of said younger demographic it's political malpractice for democrats to not try to at least salvage some face in this whole ordeal, whether you think the blame is misplaced or not.
Here we have a group of people that have given up on their duties re: checks and balances because following orders is easier. What a surprise that they're spineless in other ways too.
> What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it?
There's too much effort and uncertainty involved in actually creating a problem and then actually fixing it.
It's much easier and more reliable to create the perception of a problem by promulgating lots of FUD, then engage in performative theatrics to nullify the FUD and proclaim the problem fixed.
What's the difference between the perception of a problem being present and the existence of a problem?
If you create an issue, and solve an issue, indifferent of the issue being real, you'll be credited with solving the issue. It's ridiculous at this scale
The phrase is not a defense of some hyper relative worldview. It’s commentary that the perception of the many facts, which of those are highlighted, which are ignored, which biases shine through and which narrative wins, etc., at the end of the day, is the reality you must deal with. Reality is downstream of facts.
According to the people I work with, all they care about is kids in cages. They value “tough talk” on immigration above anything else. Being influenced by Russia or China don’t even register.
Heh; I thought you were talking about trump the first few times I read this.
He appointed a bunch of corrupt Supreme Court judges, and they upheld an obviously unconstitutional law (bill of attainment). Now, on his first day in office, he gets to be a hero by unilaterally deciding not to enforce the law.
So, moving forward, (1) we should expect increasingly unjust and draconian laws, and (2) as long as you do what Trump asks, you can break whatever federal laws you want.
(Zukerberg, Bezos and Trump have already gotten in line for this.)
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
A number of internet services (e.g. Wikipedia) shut down temporarily on Jan 18, 2012 as a political statement against SOPA.
> it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly
I wish people would understand that Trump has no ideology. Over a span of decades, Trump has been critical of liberals and conservatives, often at the same time. He's praised conservatives and liberals, often at the same time. His political positions are aligned with whatever benefits him the most.
He doesn't care about making life better for the middle class. He doesn't care if immigration restrictions are relaxed or tightened. He doesn't care about whether or not transgender people have access to health care or can or can't serve in the military. He only cares what positions on those issues will benefit him and his friends at any given time. And if tomorrow holding the opposite position will benefit him more, he'll switch, just like that, and somehow convince his base that's what they believe too.
Trump is the one who was championing the idea of a TikTok divestiture or ban, back when he was president the first time. He's only changed his mind on that because opposing the ban is better for him now.
100% it's what happened. And the craziest part is that it worked because Biden went along with it. It's easy enough to argue Trump played hardball to negotiate for any divestiture that may occur; because that was his goal all along. The narrative/pundits can spin this easily in his favour.
Either because they gave in to the ploy, or because they were unable to close a TikTok deal, the Democrats look incompetent here. And Trump gains favour in the younger demo (that he's already pretty strong in) AND with SMB because he gave TikTok more time.
oh - and his true audience all along: an American oligarch is about to get at least half of TikTok for a steal.
Anyone doing graft, corruption or just questionable wealth accumulation in the millions or single billions is going to look like small ball for at least the next four years.
Yeah it's just decent strategy on their part (I hate to say). Even if they don't profit directly off of the TikTok deal they look like absolute bosses for being able to "give" Americans what they wanted all along.
Already do and users are noticing. Ads have been introduce in a really obnixious facebook/instagram style and contebt moderation is more facebook/instagrem esq as well. It would surprise no one on the platform if meta has already aquired it, and it just needs to be announced.
No. It's a big political statement to include political messaging and plead to political figures when you shut down. Then to praise those political figures afterwards is additional political messaging.
No, many users are sharing the theory that the downtime was to allow meta or google to take over the backend. Content delivery is different on the app now. For example, ads being served during videos not between videos.
There was no deadline, the app stores didn’t need to remove it.
The Biden administration said it would be left to the Trump administration to review, they had no reason to shut it down. It’s purely to force Trumps hand a bit.
> As of January 19, the Protecting Americans from Foreign
Adversary Controlled Applications Act will make it unlaw-
ful for companies in the United States to provide services to
distribute, maintain, or update the social media platform
TikTok
That is simply a topical remark within the judgement denying the injunction. It isn't relevant to what is enforceable or being enforced. The Act in question doesn't contain wording that implies that TikTok would have been required to be taken immediately offline, as the act requires enforcement by the FTC, which hasn't yet moved on the matter.
“It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”
Please do some research next time before accusing people of spreading lies.
Thanks. So that was between friday night and today, that means it would also be true that Bytedance could not rely on the autonomous aspects of the US government to not create liability, unless given an explicit assurance.
I wouldn't say following the law would be purely to force a hand, I would say multiple things can be true at once. They still had liability.
Other government agencies, like the SEC, has been filing court cases all the way till the last minute even though they’ll likely get dropped tomorrow. It is understandable to take a risk averse approach for a company.
The Biden administration said it wasn't going to initiate enforcement proceedings in the last 24 hours of their administration.
It did not, nor did it have the authority to, waive the apps stores requirement under the law to do that. To remove the potential for future enforcement actions (up to 5 years in the future) punishing them for failing to comply with the law. Neither will Trump even once he is president unless and until amongst other things ByteDance signs legally binding documents that they will divest from TikTok within 90 days.
People need to understand that politicians (dare I say everywhere?..) are just business man with dressing. They simply put up a show for people to win the votes and once they get elected, do whatever they can to make an extra buck. Trump, a convicted felon is certainly no different..
Was it? Apart from Elon’s dependence on China market for Tesla sales, I didn’t think so. Trump has been talking a lot about going hard against adversaries.
The TikTok ban is something he supported. And it’s more popular on the right than left.
The US presidency fully devolved into a mafia this time around, no more mincing words or operating behind the scenes. Just like a mafia don demands, all fealty should be in public and fully subservient, no half measures.
Till now, commenting or criticizing someone was fair game, not anymore. Musk and trump have shown they can petty and vindictive. So no more commenting in public too. Not sure what this does to the press. Over time people will be trained to think free press is bad too.
The US president is not all-powerful. If he was, Trump would not have been forced to hand over power to Biden in 2020.
Certainly he is petty and vindictive. But there have always been petty and vindictive people in power, and people that were too scared of them to speak their mind. But there have always been those who still dare to criticize people in power.
Trump resisted handing over power after the 2020 election, and to date, he has faced no significant legal consequences for those actions.
Given that lack of accountability, is it unreasonable to suggest the stakes will be even higher in 2028? If there were no consequences last time, why wouldn’t there be an even greater effort to challenge the outcome, should the need arise?
This isn’t a binary issue of whether the president is all-powerful or powerless. It’s a spectrum, and since 2020, we’ve objectively moved further toward the "all-powerful" end. The absence of meaningful checks and consequences has set a precedent, making it harder to draw the line in the future.
> Trump would not have been forced to hand over power
Can you re-read your sentence and ask yourself if this is a normal thing to say in a working democracy? That this is even on the table means Trump IS a dictator. He was just too dumb to know how to make it work in 2020. From a non American lens, it actually looks like you handed power to a dictator because he won "fair and square" this time. I have trouble believing the US will have another genuine vote in my lifetime.
It does mean he will behave dictatorially, and make dictatorial decisions as president as far as the system will allow. Previous experience (his last presidency) shows he will take every opportunity, and has a lot of leeway in your "democratic" system.
Surprisingly it doesn’t take a lot more when the political opponents don’t do shit (Biden x Garland, anyone?) or when the people either actively supports dictature or decides not to vote for… reasons.
Republicans have learned to weaponize attention far better than Democrats. Negative attention is still attention, and where Democrats shrink from "gaffes" or criticism, Republicans just recognize that public criticism is still a form of attention. Even among each other. Whoever gets the most eyeballs, top stories, and headlines for longest wins this game.
Vicious, vindictive, petty, nonsensical, random, and trolling tactics are all strategically useful in this media landscape.
Republicans have the benefit of not having guilt around saying things that are patently not true while the Democrats are still trying to act within norms.
Democrats literally just lost an election because of their tremendous ability to lie to themselves: Biden isn't incapacitated; selecting candidates based on race/gender doesn't compromise on quality; immigration has no drawbacks; etc.
I take the sharp as a tack comeback, that is fair.
Regarding selecting based on gender compromising or not compromising candidate quality is a vastly more compex question. It is sad that a lot of people have a simple answer to themselves. That immigration has no drawbacks I have not heard anywhere, seems like a position you assign to democrats, not one they hold.
> Regarding selecting based on gender compromising or not compromising candidate quality is a vastly more compex question
Except Kamala Harris put the correct answer to that question into stark relief. Everyone knew from 2019 that she was a terrible campaigner and manager. But Biden picked her as VP and then Democrats picked her as the nominee because they were able to lie to themselves that she was an accomplished individual rather than someone who had moved up within California uniparty politics because of her race and gender. Selecting people considering race and gender in an effort to “make history” or correct past wrongs is a deeply misguided practice. But I didn’t expect it to blow up in people’s faces quite so quickly and spectacularly.
I will add that the media infrastructure around the Republicans have also managed to convince most of their viewers that "up is down" in a way that I would not have believed possible (but should have from reading many books about the Third Reich etc.)
You cannot reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into.
Politicians lie, constantly. All of them. Yes, even the ones you like. Saying Republicans lie and Democrats don't is practically self-propagandizing, convincing oneself of something they'd prefer to be true.
ALL politicians are equal-opportunity liars: if there's an opportunity, they will lie. Sometimes for power, sometimes for money, sometimes because they owe a favor. It's a big club, and we aren't in it.
> Politicians lie, constantly. All of them. Yes, even the ones you like. Saying Republicans lie and Democrats don't is practically self-propagandizing, convincing oneself of something they'd prefer to be true.
> ALL politicians are equal-opportunity liars: if there's an opportunity, they will lie. Sometimes for power, sometimes for money, sometimes because they owe a favor. It's a big club, and we aren't in it.
If you genuinely believe this, how do you determine which way to vote?
It's not like you can call a particular set of politicians (country or party) pathological liars and then take seriously election promises from any member of that set.
I vote for those who lie to me the most convincingly about having my family's best interest at heart, and who claim to have goals for the country that align with my values.
Well, it's coherent I guess. But you are just selecting for being convincing. Why not try to decide what you think each candidate will actually do, rather than caring about what they say, when you describe their lack of honesty in terms I would reserve for just the worst of them?
(Considering where I grew up, "the worst of them" would mainly be Boris Johnson: even if I don't like many of the other better-known UK politicians, they at least seem to say things that reflect their actual value systems, whereas Johnson… https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-qa-what-di...).
It's a response to the fact that democrats can create widespread misperceptions through their control of traditional media. For example, in 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies to get Donald Trump elected President." https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/20383-russias-imp.... Hillary Clinton never went out and said quite that. But the barrage of coverage from all angles in the media created the same impression as if she had said that.
In another example: how many people know that, after the 2000 election, the Supreme Court found 7-2 that Al Gore's proposed recount strategy was unconstitutional? Nobody knows that Al Gore had employed a strategy of hand-counting ballots only in counties he had won to find more countable votes that would swing disproportionately in his favor.[1] The media completely blacked that out, and everyone now only remembers the 5-4 part of the decision addressing how to fix that constitutional violation. There's more people under the misimpression that Kathleen Harris or Jeb fixed the election in Bush's favor than understand the sneaky maneuvering by Gore that precipitated the whole mess.
[1] E.g. if Gore won a county 2:1, then statistically, every vote rejected by the machine that could be hand counted would be twice as likely to be a Gore vote than a Bush vote. Gore found a loophole in Florida election law that allowed him to use that principle to find more votes in his favor by seeking hand recounts only in two large counties he had won.
Another example of whataboutism, this time about a guy who ran for presidency many many years ago. He's the one who gave attention to this now obvious unconvenient truth. Back then they criticized the energy use of his house, which still compares very pale against the consequences of this, still swept under the carpet today, inconvenient truth.
MAGA didn't happen in a vacuum. Two republican presidents have been elected in the 21st century, and after both of their first elections, the media fostered widespread misperception of the legitimacy of their wins through selective reporting of the truth. For people coming into the leadership of the GOP now, folks in their 40s and 50s like Vance and Johnson, remember the 2000 election very well, but not the Walter Cronkite era when the media was more even-handed. That inevitably shapes their own approach to communication.
Correct, but now there will be not even a semblance of bipartisanship. It's not even enough to be a member of the same party, you must pledge full unwavering loyalty and never criticize the administration or face the consequences of being ostracized, attacked, power revoked, and prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ. The media, both social and legacy, are fully on board now too, the gloves are off.
Also, you can now commit crimes and then pledge loyalty in exchange for a pardon. See Eric Adams.
>you must [...] never criticize the administration or face the consequences of being ostracized, attacked, power revoked, and prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ.
It's not "never". JD Vance published a book criticizing Trump, and still got picked as VP.
By contrast, Tulsi Gabbard--who was the vice-chair of the DNC at the time--was run out of the party and tarred as a foreign asset for opposing Hillary Clinton and her desire to start a war in Syria.
> > Musk and trump have shown they can petty and vindictive
This is great. Sociologist tells us that any given person can only have 150 friends maximum, same goes with enemies , it will be very long 4 years for whoever sits in the 150 enemies at any given time, but all things considered they aren't people too dissimilar compared to Musk and Trump.
While petty revenge goes on, policy as always gets ignored and problems emerge (inflation, other pandemic etc) and the whole thing will collapse because at the end of the day even a perfect and experienced captain won't be able to steer perfectly a 400M people strong super tanker such as the US, let alone a vindicative one busy lashing out on his enemies aboard.
It will end up like the Evergreen in the Suez canal.
Trump said yesterday in his speech that they want a model where the US owns 50% of Tik Tok and has some oversight.
This is pretty much the exact same setup that US companies get in China. This seems like a pretty decent compromise actually. Free speech advocates win because people still get to use the service, but national security folks also get a win because they can monitor its use by a foreign government and shut things down if it’s being used maliciously.
I mean it’s a compromise, usually both sides are unhappy when a compromise is made haha.
There are real concerns that the CCP could use it as a tool to manipulate and spy on the American people. There’s a good reason why Tik Tok is being banned in many countries around the world. Also a good reason why China bans and tightly controls American social media companies in their country.
But if we agree to compromise, we can ideally find a balance where the average American is best served.
Well I think people at the top consider China to be special, same thing happened with the sale of Grindr to a Chinese company. That was stopped by the US government because it could easily be used by the CCP to do bad things like blackmail Americans.
I do believe that both sides of the political spectrum agree that there is a special threat posed by Chinese involvement in American social media. This TikTok ban was pushed forward by both sides of the aisle and has had support from people in both administrations.
Social media in general is ofc toxic and terrible for all kinds of other reasons, but WRT national security TikTok is so huge now that it’s getting special treatment.
How is this at all related to what the person was saying? They made no mention of financial corruption. They're explicitly talking about speech and press.
> You may want to become concerned when the president can unilaterally contravene laws passed by congress and validated by the Supreme Court.
It seems prudent to say given this seems to the prevailing narrative: this did not happen. The law is still in effect and Tiktok is still banned[0]. The service shutdown that many experienced yesterday was one Tiktok performed voluntarily, presumably in protest of the ban. Tiktok's decision to restore the service was one they could have made at any point after the shutdown, regardless of any statements made by the then-President-Elect.
0: If you don't believe me, uninstall it from your phone and re-download it. ;)
additionally, wasn't the "whistleblower" who made many claims about Hunter Biden's laptop found to be blatantly fraudulent? dude was later convicted for making false statements.
IIRC the Romanian and Kazakstan ones were also heavily thrown into doubt.
That's exactly what it is. The people breathlessly compiling a list of "what abouts" for this type of corruption need to look past their nose. 2 things can be fucked up at the same time, and one of those things being fucked up isn't an excuse for the other thing to continue being fucked up.
Also, when one of those "what abouts" is verifiably false, as in the case of the guy who made claims about Hunter's laptop, it's completely meaningless. Those people are comparing to something that doesn't even exist.
It's a stupid, losing game that way too many people want to play.
At the risk of "what about"-ing, this list is laughably small compared to the Trump's bribe docket.
Neither of these are acceptable, a president and their associates should not be able to personally enrich themselves from the office. I know this disclaimer won't matter to someone who just really wants to argue, but this does absolutely nothing to move the needle for me. Pointing to someone else's corruption to excuse Trump's corruption is just a losing battle, you will never convince me to care about one when the other is just allowed to fly.
That's a unfair comparison towards President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. Didn't he give up his position in the end towards the more qualified main character of the movie?
Or way older and much more eloquent (albeit less digestible) "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. Or even older "The Medium Is the Massage" by Marshall McLuhan.
It's a film that was intended as a joke, and uses Eugenics as its premise. Yes, the Internet has made idiots louder, but it has also helped intelligent people become smarter. The next 4 years will be like the last 8, minus the pandemic.
We still haven’t restored the part of the US federal government that stopped SARSv1 (they operated out of China and other countries with the cooperation of local authorities). Trump disbanded them before SARSv2 (aka COVID-19), so they weren’t around to respond to it.
Also, we’re still funding the biological weapons research programs that almost certainly created COVID (according to documents from multiple departments in the Biden administration).
On top of all that, RFK’s trying to switch everyone to raw milk in the middle of a bird/cow flu pandemic. That creates a new disease transmission vector that’ll probably help it cross to humans.
I like the movie a lot, but the beginning is a little problematic from a modern viewing iirc. It discusses how the poor and uneducated produce more kids than the higher classes, thus a dumb population after many generations.
Factually true about the correlation between higher standard of living and having fewer kids. However, that exact discussion has been used as a dog whistle against other "undesirable" groups in the past. The movie's beginning implies it would be better if we decide who gets to have kids.
Overall a great movie, but I think that part has aged poorly.
How you go from "smart people should reproduce more" to "cull the population of the unfavorable" is on you, but thats certainly not the conclusion I would draw.
His main policy seems to be to show the world that he's a big man with big genitalia. And in fairness, he is quite successful at that because much of the world thinks him a gigantic dick.
I'm not really joking, because that really does seem to be the underlying philosophy in what he does: it's whatever he thinks makes him the "big man tough guy". Trying to analyse things beyond that just doesn't make much sense.
Not particularly "show the world" because he's been very demonstrably weak internationally. He's a showman who makes very bold sounds, but his actions show that he will give in to China on Taiwan, like he gave into them on Hong Kong, like he gave in to Russia on Ukraine, like he gave into North Korea on nukes...
Now on Taiwan, he's already stated previously that he will _tax_ China if they invade Taiwan. This contradicts long standing US policy of not stating exactly what action the US will take in the event of invasion, and has had the result of pushing up projections of exactly WHEN China will invade Taiwan to be within the next two years, during Trump's presidency.
The only thing that will possibly make this change is as a condition of financial supporter Elon Musk, who needs those NVIDIA cards that come out of Taiwan so he can pursue his religious mission of winning the AI race. And that's only if TSMC manufacturing capabilities can't be dragged out of Taiwan and set up elsewhere in a sufficient timeframe to reduce the impact if China were to invade Taiwan.
> he's been very demonstrably weak internationally
What you or I view as "big man tough guy" doesn't necessarily align with what Trump views as "big man tough guy". In Trump's view, "solving" the problem of Taiwan one way or the other, when so many other presidents have "failed" to do so, makes him the big man. Whether he completely screws over American interests in the process – never mind the people of Taiwan – doesn't really enter in the calculation.
That's only before the ban, not after. The ban is already in effect. This is a violation of the law, plain and simple, and the law does not allow for an unbanning after the fact. The 90 extension could have been done before the 19th, but not after.
Simply put, this is law breaking. The President-elect is making promises to break the law day one. This is not surprising.
Look I don’t want to carry any water for him whatsoever, but I think it’s going to be essential to couch criticism in the rule-of-law setting we think should prevail. To that end, the text of the relevant section is:
> With respect to a foreign adversary controlled application, the President may grant a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days with respect to the date on which this subsection would otherwise apply to such application pursuant to paragraph (2), if the President certifies to Congress that, […]
where “would otherwise apply” is pretty clearly not predicated on the preceding section having come into effect or not.
>the President may grant a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days with respect to the date on which this subsection would otherwise apply to such application pursuant to paragraph (2), if the President certifies to Congress that--
(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
>(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
>(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
It seems highly unlikely any of those criteria are being. Trump is not even suggesting it, never mind providing receipts.
Both liberal and conservative presidents have made choices about whether or not they will enforce particular laws passed by Congress. This is nothing new. It's just getting a lot more media attention than most instances of this have gotten.
(A very common example: many people in the US can walk into a store and buy marijuana without fear of prosecution because the last several presidents -- from both parties -- have chosen not to enforce that particular federal law.)
Certainly the courts can (and sometimes do) get involved, but the only thing that can force the executive branch to act is for the House to impeach the president, and for the Senate to convict. And the House is not going to impeach Trump over this, or pretty much anything.
Scenario one: We get an FDR style leader to fix this stuff after a massive economic collapse and public backlash. (As Biden posited in his farewell address.) This will either lead to court packing or (like last time) the lapdogs on the court will accept their new leashes.
Scenario two: The federal government suffers a partial or complete collapse, and the US ends up being city-states or like the former USSR. (I think this is more likely, and also what Putin wants, assuming he can’t keep Trump under control.)
It’s also possible we’ll continue to have fair elections and the courts will stop abusing their power. This seems the least likely to me.
Under all other scenarios, we’re completely screwed and the current courts will already go along with it.
Its a stretch to consider this law breaking. The president either does or does not have authority here, but the only one breaking the law would be ByteDance.
Biden wasn't considered to have broken the law when courts threw out his plan to forgive school debt. The president tried something, the courts found the order to be invalid as the rule didn't fit the current laws, and everyone moved on about their business without claiming the president broke the law or implying he should have been charged.
This was a pretty big talking point during the election, towards the end I didn't go a day without hearing about how Trump will end democracy or how democracy was on the ballot.
What the hell happened? For anyone that honestly believes that, why pack up and go home when Trump wins the election?
The question is about how we handle the coming elections four years from now, not the previous one. If he's going to be a dictator it will only be possible when he's in power.
I was specifically talking about claims that Trump is going to end democracy though. There wouldn't be elections in four years, that's a moot point.
By what the hell happened I mean what happened to those claims? Did people not believe then, or are they resigned to the election results meaning we just accept the end of democracy?
> If I revolt against the government that is 100% breaking democracy.
If you're revolting because democracy is already lost, or the loss is imminent, you weren't breaking it.
> You can think DJT is bad for democracy and also think it is more bad to try to toss out an election he won.
Not if you truly believe democracy is doomed with his election. I don't believe that, but if someone does I don't see how waiting for it to happen helps.
America spoke and said they wanted it, what more is there to be said? If there was marching in the streets, it would be torn to shreds by the online grift sphere.
If I honestly believed democracy would be ended by the next leader I would be marching in the streets, or better yet finding a group forming a rebellion.
Ending democracy is a very serious thing. It shouldn't have been used hollowly by either party, and if it wasn't hollow then people should be standing up to stop it.
We did stand up, that was the entire 2024 campaign. We really truly believe the guy who incited the insurrection in 2021 that ended the history of peaceful democratic transitions of power in the USA is going to do more of the same damage to democratic institutions in 2025. Given what happened on 1/6 I don’t know why you see that worry as hollow.
I see it as hollow mainly because the democratic party and many of its supporters seemed to go silent after the election. I can only speak for myself, but if I truly believed he would end democracy in a few short years I'd be doing whatever I could to stop it. I say it seems hollow because I just can't imagine it being a serious, real threat and also rolling over.
> I can only speak for myself, but if I truly believed he would end democracy in a few short years I'd be doing whatever I could to stop it
We did do whatever we could to stop it. We tried every avenue available.
We tried impeachment twice, but he was protected by his party. The first time they protected him for extorting a bribe from a foreign government. The second time they protected him for inciting an insurrection. We tried the DOJ but he was protected by a federal judge he appointed, and supreme court justices two of which he appointed granted him sweeping immunity from prosecution. We tried to constitutionally disqualify him from running on the basis he incited an insurrection, but again he was protected by judges he appointed. Our last recourse was to run on a pro-democracy candidate during the election but the people rejected her.
So we tried everything. But the election was fair. He won. That's that. We tried everything else, and anyway at this point it's too late without resorting to a violent coup, which supporters of democracy won't do. There are no other pro-democratic avenues left to protect democracy from Trump. Sucks it turned out this way, but at least you can't say you weren't warned.
The missing piece of the puzzle is that the DNC does not represent the people, it represents corporations who are just fine with Trump. Your average person is very concerned and is likely to think that Trump does represent a very real danger to democracy. The corporate apparatus that is the DNC made some noise about it to see if they could rile people up into voting for them and that failed.
People expect liberals to align with the left because that's where they've been in recent times. But liberals align with globalists, police, and corporations. Leftists always predicted that when the time came, liberals would run to the fascists. And what do you know there they were: Biden, Obama, Bill, Hillary, Kamala sitting right next to Trump at the inauguration in unity. Message received.
> or better yet finding a group forming a rebellion.
You mean like the two assassination attempts vs Trump? Which only made Trump's power greater and consolidated more support?
Aggressive actions literally make Trump stronger. That's literally failing to work and we're living in the fallout of that. I'm not sure how to stop Trump but inciting violence seems like the wrong answer to me.
Besides, its the US Military. We all know that its impossible to actually rebel vs the Army. What do you want a rebellion to do? Grab a couple of AR15s while the Army literally brings in tanks?
-----------
Aggression is a failing move. But so was a political campaign that tried to convince people of Trump's dangers. So that's that. Or are you seriously trying to bait people into arguing that more violence was the answer here? Did you literally forget the election already?
Aggression is often a failing move, yes. And I'm not saying we should go there. What I am saying is that I don't understand what happened to everyone claiming democracy would be over, and that if the threat is real I don't see marches solving it.
What more "marching" do you want? The only escalating point now is violence because all the marching from 2024, 2020 and all other years accomplished nothing. Indeed: even just "marching" in 2020 was apparently "too violent" as Black Lives Matter (a march to protect African American lives) somehow got twisted by Donald Trump and his politics into a "violent" march.
I think it makes sense that people are cautious about the next steps. But what the hell are you wanting people to march for? To deny the election and cause a liberal Jan 6th event? What are you even talking about? Even if people did that, it'd only play to Donald Trump's persecution complex and he'd get more power anyway. And its not like anyone would be marching to force Biden or Kamala back into office, neither candidate is popular enough.
------
The actual move is to retreat from Federal level politics and hold firm at the State-level side. If the Federal Government is lost, the focus should be on more local bastions and defenses.
The fact remains: the resistance wants to be peaceful and non-violent. You've taken away the voice of the peaceful ones by labeling them as violent at every turn. So we know marching doesn't work anymore. Its not like the movement is dead, its just resting for now as people figure out what the new plans are. But its clear that a direct assault vs this ideology isn't working.
My point at the start of this thread was that, in my opinion, the level of certainty with which people claimed Trump's election was directly voting for an end to democracy does not align with actions since the election results were in. Either people didn't believe those claims even while saying it, they have since been convinced otherwise, or they rolled over knowing full well that democracy is over within a matter of years.
> they rolled over knowing full well that democracy is over within a matter of years.
My point is why is the latter so hard to understand?
There isn't a way to resist directly anymore (especially as both Biden and Kamala are insufficient to serve as the focus of a hypothetical coup). There are other plans in place to have resistance at the State levels, where it will be more obviously beneficial.
Any most of the escalations we can do are once again, counteracted by the simple history that is the assassination attempts. It's clear that the path to violence to stop this madness is closed.
--------
It's not the time for direct confrontation at the federal level on this subject. It's the time to pull back and defend at the State level.
Have you seriously thought about how to stop this in any way in the past few months? Your questions are so shallow it's making me think you only have talking points to share. After an election loss like that (not a landslide, but still an obvious loss), there is no coup potential or other kind of way for the Democrats to even try to hold onto power.
> Have you seriously thought about how to stop this in any way in the past few months? Your questions are so shallow it's making me think you only have talking points to share. After an election loss like that (not a landslide, but still an obvious loss), there is no coup potential or other kind of way for the Democrats to even try to hold onto power.
Not quite sure what talking points you think I have to share here, I thought I was laying out a logical flow that doesn't make sense to me.
Circling the wagons at the state level is a good short term approach, though if successful I don't see how it doesn't first run into the unfortunate need for violence.
As a country we have spent the better part of a century moving a large portion of powers to the federal level. States can't just ignore that and do what they want without repercussions. Maybe more importantly, I don't see how a stage could continue to run democratically as part of the union if democracy is destroyed at the federal level, there would just be too much conflict there.
> they rolled over knowing full well that democracy is over within a matter of years.
This point. The point I've been quoting specifically.
I've stated why this is an incredibly shallow perspective on repeated occasions. I'm not going to repeat myself.
> As a country we have spent the better part of a century moving a large portion of powers to the federal level.
Tough shit. Democrats lost the Executive, both branches of the Legislative, and the Supreme Court. Democrats have literally nothing in the Federal level anymore. Or have you forgotten how this election has gone?
Its all Republicans here on out at the Federal level. The ONLY plan is to fight at the state level to protect those close to us.
The Federal level has been completely and totally lost. The ONLY plan that makes sense is to build bulwarks at the state level, and if that isn't enough then maybe even at the municipal / city level.
Because it was mostly being astroturfed. Democracy obviously isn't going to end in any way, shape, or fashion under Trump.
And so the organizations pushing these lies need to move onto the next lies to keep the rage and fear going. Maybe this time around it'll be Trump is secretly controlled by China - must be why he reversed the TikTok ban.
His campaign is large enough that there's probably some guy in it, no more than a degree or two separation away, banging a Chinese spy a la Eric Swalwell. Tie it to Trump, start a new committee of absurdity and away we go.
It'd actually provide some logic to banning TikTok which was just politically absurd when Trump would predictably reverse that, to much fanfare.
Trump incited an insurrection based on lies in 2020. He's on tape demanding a state election official 'find' the exact number of votes he needed to win. His appointed judges have preemptively given him immunity from criminal prosecution. He routinely calls for physical violence against those who loudly disagree during his rallies. He has said he's willing to use the military against political opposition. He offers to deregulate (selling the health of the people) in exchange for campaign funds (which he spends like his own personal bank account). There has never been a president so openly corrupt and vitriolic in the US.
Trump is the most willing and equipped to strike a fatal blow to Democracy.
People have already marched against him. Now they rightly fear for their safety.
> His appointed judges have preemptively given him immunity from criminal prosecution.
I get your point here, though if I'm not mistaken they defined the boundary of what any president can be legally held accountable for while in office. It wasn't a blank check or a one-off rule only for Trump.
> People have already marched against him. Now they rightly fear for their safety.
Marching really isn't the answer if democracy truly is at stake, unfortunately. I very much dislike Trump and don't expect him to do well by our country, though I don't personally see enough to think he is actually going to tear down our democracy. Hopefully that's right and we don't get to the point of actually having to defend it.
I’m really curious what kind of activity someone could exhibit that would cause you to believe they could end democracy.
Genuinely. Because for me, it’s enough for someone to incite an insurrection, and to argue in front of the Supreme Court it should be legal for him to use the military to murder his political opponents. Why does that not read “wannabe dictator” to you?
Because I gotta say, if you’re wrong and he wants to tear down our democracy, the time to defend it was the election. Now we just have to deal with the fallout.
A president can't end democracy just because they want to. There have probably been many presidents in the past that would have liked, in their secret heart of hearts, to be dictators. But they didn't end democracy because they couldn't, because our Federal government has a system of checks and balances that limit the power of the president.
He was president once, and was not able to pull off a successful insurrection, or murder any political opponents. And he probably won't do so this time.
The whole point of starting an insurrection, sending the vote back to the states, and using alternate slate of electors was this was something that is so far outside the reach of normal courts that it would have stalled the process enough to possibly grant him emergency powers, declaring himself as president.
Trump doesn't need go full militant to end democracy. He could literally just cause enough bullshit in the process to where the two choices are either let things continue as he wants them two, or mass civil unrest and economic shutdown, and most people don't have a sense of nationalism to pick the latter. So US dies a death by 1000 cuts.
The only hope is that there are more people like Pence on the Republican side that when duty calls, they do the right thing.
> But they didn't end democracy because they couldn't, because our Federal government has a system of checks and balances that limit the power of the president.
Checks like Congress, a majority of which is terrified to stand up to him even after an attempted coup and comically bad cabinet appointments?
Or the courts, many of whose judges he appointed and shamelessly render verdicts (often on his behalf) without recusing themselves over conflicts of interest?
Or the executive branch, of which he is the head, and can cycle department heads like an episode of The Apprentice?
> He was president once, and was not able to pull off a successful insurrection, or murder any political opponents
The US passed an entire amendment to its constitution to prevent insurrectionists from repeated attempts to take over. The fact that he attempted to do so is already treason. One doesn't have to succeed to be disqualified. Otherwise what's the point of the amendment? Just keep trying until you succeed.
Yes exactly those checks.
Even if your characterization of the independence of the three branches of government is valid, the circumstances are far from unique in history.
In the past, there was always a threat that if a president got out of line, he could be impeached. But the impeachment clause has been rendered inoperable by Republicans.
The first time Democrats tried to impeach Trump, Trump argued in front of the Senate that he's allowed to commit crimes, including extorting bribes, as long as he does it for the good of the country. On that basis, the Senate acquitted him. So now the the standard set by Republicans is that even in the case of extortion and bribery, the president should not be removed from office as long as he had a patriotic heart.
Worse than that, the Supreme Court affirmed that the president has sweeping executive immunity, making any prosecution of an impeachment case impossible; the Executive controls all of the information Congress would need to prosecute the impeachment, and as we saw during Impeachment I, Trump is fine to just flout congressional subpoenas. Furthermore with the new doctrine of Presidential Immunity there is no judicial recourse for them to compel production of the documents they would need to prove an impeachment case.
Finally, we further know impeachment is impossible because when they tried it, Trump argued the correct recourse was the courts. But when we tried the courts, Trump argued the correct recourse was impeachment. That cannot be the case in a functioning system.
Any president could end democracy, as could a many other groups. I really don't have a checklist of behaviors a la the DSM-5 that would allow me to know someone is likely to end democracy.
I do think trump is capable of it, as where others in the past. I just haven't seen enough to think its an legitimate enough threat to have made me warn others that it will happen. I could always be wrong.
But you would agree that making the argument that it's fine for you to assassinate your political opponents would be a flashing red flag that person does not believe in the the ideals of democracy. I mean, generally someone who agrees with democracy would not argue, even for hypothetical purposes, that the highest power in the land reserves the right to murder with impunity people they don't like for personal political gain.
And so if someone does make that argument in front of the highest court in the land with the intent to avoid accountability for inciting an insurrection, as Trump did, maybe that person would be a bad person to give immunity from criminal liability because of their outlook on the scope of their own power.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump said. He added: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Do you understand what others (who may not agree with you) think of your arguments when you use extremely hyperbolic language to describe things that do not appear to justify such?
The Boy Who Cried Wolf is an excellent tale I regularly read to my children. The moral is one of the utmost importance.
Trump argued in front of the Supreme Court that his notion of presidential immunity covers the right for the president to use Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rivals:
I also see it as astroturfing or a hollow threat of not voting for the "right" person. That said, if anyone honestly believed it I don't see how they could not sit by and watch it happen.
There are plenty of examples of the people stopping their government when it went to far. Its not easy and should always be a last resort, but the people should never just roll over and give up if the threat is real - especially when a seemingly large portion of the population viewed it as a real threat.
This was clarified on Snopes; he was referring to groups such as fundamentalist Christians who rarely vote, urging them to come out this one time and vote. Not very eloquently worded, perhaps, but certainly his intent, as explained by spokespeople and by himself in subsequent interviews, was not to shut down voting.
Anyone trying to make sense of Trump's words has as much credibility to me as people who interpret tea leaves, or the Bible. Judge his actions; trying to divine anything from his words is about as effective as chasing wild geese.
I judge every politician by their actions, not their words. In Trump's case, his words are more "salad-like" than most, but his actions generally speak pretty clearly.
Where is it going to come from though? The news networks that propagated this nonsense seem to have realized this election cycle that its over for them. Comcast just spun off MSNBC and CNBC. That means they are going to milk it for whatever scraps are left and then toss it in the trash. The neoliberal left does not really have an effective online platform like the right and the progressive left have because they spent years dismissing online.
If results of elections aren't respected then the democracy is already over.
Pro-democracy people will want to find ways to strengthen or preserve democracy (or at least limit the damage) in the face of threats to it, not blow it up themselves.
Elon Musk literally held an illegal sweepstakes paying people to vote in Pennsylvania. And given Elon Musk's position in the new government, its clear that his sweepstakes has led to direct benefits from Trump. It was direct quid-pro-quo and no one is doing anything about it.
The courts were too slow to stop the sweepstakes and now that Trump is in power, we all know Musk would be pardoned of this crime. So no one is bothering to prosecute.
The election fraud already happened. Now tell me who the hell is going to punish the troublemakers?
It seems USA is completely blinded by some immaterial force. How can people not see all the blatant lie from Trump and his bootlickers? Why is USA refusing to fight (or at least help allies substantially) against Russia, which commits crimes on the level of Nazi Germany in WWII?
>. How can people not see all the blatant lie from Trump and his bootlickers?
Because the reality is, a good majority people in the USA have a very good life, even the lower class, contrary to what the media may have you believe. So when the majority doesn't show up to vote, its because they think it doesn't matter who is in charge.
These are the people everyone should hold primarily responsible for whatever bad things happen. The MAGA type crowds are always going to exist in one shape or form, and its everyone's responsibility to vote so that the bad side doesn't take power.
> How can people not see all the blatant lie from Trump and his bootlickers?
Not sure if you are serious, but the problem on both sides of the disagreement is caused by the illusory nature of consciousness, and is exacerbated the fact that our culture does not study that phenomenon despite how incredibly important it is.
This is what people should be arguing over rather than yet another consequence of it.
You're still thinking of him as a president and not as the new monarch of the US. I wouldn't be surprised if he is around for more than one term and incrementally greater and greater authoritarian powers.
The surprising part is that people are still surprised. Trump can do whatever he wants and there will be no pushback. We are talking about the guy who launched a meme coin a few days before taking office and made $50B+ overnight.
I think those chickens just haven’t come home to roost yet. His wife launched her coin today. There is no way this isn’t being looked at closely. Impressively quick start to the new shit show.
He is now immune from prosecution, financial crimes will be pretty low on the list of things that would breach the Supreme Court’s ruling on this matter.
I could see a world where the lawyers have cooked a progressively more egregious set of legal violations to test the bounds of the new authority granted by the Supreme Court. Up next is probably a mandate that foreign diplomats/us government employees stay at trump properties at exorbitant prices for “security purposes”.
Up next? They already did that the last term, when Pence was forced to stay at a Trump property in Ireland. They actually had to go out of their way to stay there, so it cost all of us more in taxes, and Trump ended up with the profit. Totally fine, some consternation in the press, but ultimately Trump profited and no one did anything. So yeah we will see more of that in the next term.
Closely by whom? Tomorrow, Trump and his sycophants will control the DoJ.
If you're talking about a future administration, we've already seen what happens when Trump leaves office and people try to hold him accountable: absolutely nothing.
Exactly. He’s a convicted felon, and so what? It doesn’t matter. What’s an investigation into a meme coin going to do, other than cost taxpayer money and give Trump the chance to say more sound bites?
If you're comparing against other major fiat currencies that's a pretty easy bet. The only way the dollar loses meaningfully, or fails completely, is if it is no longer the reserve currencies given priority over those other fiat currencies. This has to happen eventually but it seems pretty safe to say it won't happen within four years.
No, Trump can’t legally postpone or give reprieve to TikTok. The time has passed for that.
Once Congress has enacted a statute and the President has signed it into law, the executive branch must enforce it. An executive order cannot override or suspend a duly passed law unless Congress included an explicit waiver or suspension provision in that law. Nothing in the text of this act appears to grant the President such discretion, so there is no straightforward way for the President to “undo” or pause the ban by executive order. The only way to alter or lift the ban would be through new legislation or a valid constitutional challenge in court.
That seems unlikely considering the Supreme Court already rules on the matter.
That's not the law that passed. The law that passed is https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815
(lengthy law -- see DIVISION H—PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS ACT), page 62 in the PDF.
Also, both the House and the Senate have pending legislation to extend the deadline.
* Legally the executive is not granted this power.
* But in practice they are because who's going to make them?
The entity responsible for enforcement always has this power. It's why DA races where the platform is essentially law nullification by way of non-enforcement have been happening for some light criminal justice reform that can't get through the legislature.
The executive branch has a clear history of selectively not enforcing laws, so there is clear precedent. The most notable recent example is that the last three presidents have all chosen to not enforce federal law on marijuana in states that have chosen to legalize it.
That is a somewhat different scenario as the battle over marijuana laws would boil down to a state's rights issue. Many states have claimed authority over deciding whether marijuana is legal, effectively claiming that the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction on the issue.
A little bit difficult to get the president elect who is to be inaugurated today (the 20th) when that same president elect in his own words reasonably believes that the 2020 election was stolen.
I think we're all very certain that a thorough investigation into the 2020 election will clear up any concerns about it.
But that's the point isn't it. He's testing the waters.
There will be no consequences and therefore few limits to his power.
Welcome to the new dictatorship.
I'll post this here for posterity:
He'll find a way to get a 3rd term in power. Maybe he'll claim the constitution means no 2 consecutive terms, maybe he'll just ignore it, start a war, whatever.
But I'd be willing to bet on it. In fact, I just might...
It's not illegal, nor a high crime. It is in fact established precedent that this is in the purview of presidential power. This is why FBI agents are not raiding every marijuana shop in DC or the states that legalized it: since Obama, every president has chosen to instruct the justice department not to enforce federal law in this matter in those states.
Marijuana shops were deemed legal on the state level, you are comparing a real conflict in federalism to ignoring a congressional and supreme court ruling with massive national security implications on day 1.
Again, you picked an example of a real conflict between state and federal law and compared it to an unambiguous law passed by congress confirmed by the supreme court that the incoming POTUS will simply ignore.
No, that is not normal. Feeling like i'm going to be gaslit everyday for the next 4 years so i'll save that statement somewhere in a word doc.
As opposed to the Democrats that refuse to enforce immigration law, or refuse to prosecute all sorts of crime they don't feel like (Except when they have to "Get Trump by all means")?
We can play this game all day, so let's just agree Democracy is broken.
Immigration isn't a democrat issue. From where I sit both parties are actually pretty well aligned on that one.
Obama was surprisingly tough on immigration. ICE was doing raids at the time, I remember hearing about raids at the industrial chicken farms not far from where I live. Obama was also working heavily with Mexico to stop immigration at Mexico's southern border.
Illegal immigration is going to be an unsolvable problems regardless of party, as long as we have the incentive of welfare programs that make it financially lucrative just to physically be in the country. I'm not arguing to get rid of those programs, but the incentives are there to come illegally and there's just no feasible way to secure such a large border with land, air, and sea travel.
In my city, a great deal of laws are not enforced. Enforcement is a policy at most levels, it seems. The interesting thing, to me, is that there’s no fear of future administrations enforcing, or even Trump pulling a 180 and using the law being broken as leverage.
See my comment above. This is a misunderstanding of how the executive branch works. Once Congress has enacted a statute and the _President_ has signed it into law, the executive branch MUST enforce it. An executive order cannot override or suspend a duly passed law unless Congress included an explicit waiver or suspension provision in that law. Nothing in the text of this act appears to grant the President such discretion, so there is no straightforward way for the President to “undo” or pause the ban by executive order. The only way to alter or lift the ban would be through new legislation or a valid constitutional challenge in court.
In essence, the executive branch already had a chance to veto the law, but didn’t do so. The signature of the President (whomever that is at the time) seals the fate of the law.
You're ignoring established precedent. Look at Obama choosing not to enforce federal bans on marijuana use in states that have legalized it - that is a policy of not enforcing well established federal law that has been reinforced by every subsequent president for the past 12? 16? years now.
Now that we have seen Trump's executive orders, it's clear he is taking the route of non-enforcement. However, TikTok remains unavailable on the Apple App Store and given that the support article [1] remains unchanged since Monday, I'd say it's likely to stay that way until a court rules on the matter.
"Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025."
It will be interesting to see how this plays out from the perspective of the major App Store providers who are the ones with serious money on the line. If they reinstate the app, then they risk being prosecuted at some future date, which could even be after Donald Trump leaves office. But if they keep it banned, then they risk attracting the ire of the administration and its heavy powers of regulation.
Donald Trump is very unpredictable, but one thing seems to be clear from his behavior. Anything that serves to benefit himself or his family tends to receive his favor. And there are billionaires swirling around him ready to do him favors two of whom are potential buyers for TikTok.
Or nothing. Literally! No GOP representative will dare go against the Trump, or else they will be primaryied. The law only applies if there are consequences, and in this case there aren't consequences. If you don't realize this is how US operates, you are living in some la-la land like the democrats that insist on decorum, norms and such other BS.
Your understanding of the law is incorrect when you say "the executive branch MUST enforce it". Administrations of all political stripes have decided not to enforce parts of particular laws. And this is precisely because "enforcement" means you need to use limited resources to prosecute someone for breaking the law, and the executive branch has always had wide latitude deciding who they prosecute. If Congress decides the president is not faithfully enforcing the laws, their option is impeachment. Well, we all saw how that went the last few times...
The thing that is shocking to me about the current TikTok situation is that while Trump may be free to say "I won't enforce this law", he can't write any sort of executive order overturning the law, and I think it's pretty disgusting the media isn't pushing back against this more (except for Kara Swisher, who made this exact point) and saying this isn't possible.
The law is explicit that any company (like Apple, Google or Oracle) that provides services for TikTok would be in violation of the law and subject to large penalties. Nothing Trump says as president can change that without Congress acting. So it is simply baffling to me that these major companies would be willing to put themselves in serious legal jeopardy with just what amounts to a pinky promise and a wink from Trump.
It's President Trump, what are you going to do about it? The man has been regularly breaking the law since 2016 and there is never any political will to stop him.
Trump v. U.S. established it's not illegal when Trump does it.
Trying and doing takes a minute for him, fixing it is a long process with consequence on all others mostly.
All those opportunist-narcissist shit-stirrers out there rely on the prudent and consequently slow self fixing mechanisms of societies (beyond the dumb and lazy childish masses vegetate below these figures and so looking up to them) like viruses on the delayed adaptation of the immune system. The host that feed them may easily die this way? Not their problem!! They have their shine and rule moment and they do not have much of miserable and futile life left anyway, f*ck others!
If this stands, it certainly is. It’s a mockery of the whole of the system. Congress better act on overturning it post haste or enforcing it post haste.
I think apps like TikTok or YouTube Shorts literally brainwash people. It’s one of the dumbest things ever invented on the Internet, yet incredibly addictive at the same time.
Never had TikTok, but that's exactly what I thought when Youtube introduced Shorts and I found myself spending long sessions in them.
However, now I think it's the same infinite scroll we already had in twitter and reddit -- but instead of text and images, now it's just videos.
At the beginning the content was really dumb and bad, but after some time it became way better. Now my feed is basically cooking recipes, chemistry experiments, interesting physics facts, bits from my favorite comedians, etc. Maybe Youtube learned my tastes, or maybe the content creators learned how to exploit better the platform. Either way I'd say I'm happy with the result now.
I still think some people are getting brainwashed by certain content, but in the same way as they were getting brainwashed in twitter and reddit.
For me, in reddit (and hacker news), I tend to actually read the actual video, read the comments, sometimes even leave a comment. Much more time spent on an actual item.
For short videos, it is a continuous stream of video's where a new video is automatically started after the last one. This is what makes shorts so horrible. You are forced to watch a new video every 15s to 1 min. Versus actively deciding yourself how long you look on a particular item. It becomes bad as your brain gets trained to loose interest after 1min.
I'm so tired of the Internet turning into the Internet of Faces. I feel like I see faces plastered all over the Internet now, eager to take only ten minutes to explain one minute of information to me.
Probably not a coincidence that the Internet became a lot less nerdy and cool around the time HD streaming was viable. Modern social media shows that people want the next evolution of TV not books.
Some of it is that for sure. But you could also make the counter argument about long form content. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to explain how to make a cake.
Definitely two sides of the same coin, struggle not to have a YT video playing if I’m alone and doing something else that should be enough for my focus.
Except I can read much faster than a video can convey information to me, almost always - I suspect the popularity of video to deliver information at least in some part stems from declining literacy. Whenever I have to watch a poor reader read something, I am honestly amazed they can function at all.
I frequently give up on reading a thread midway down the page because it's requiring *too much focus*, and, get this, I might even interrupt my break and just go back to work early instead!
I don't think that would ever happen on a neverending infinite scroll of hyperengaging video.
This type of comment comes up here a lot, but maybe you should show us what exactly you mean?
Because at least for physics and chemistry, those are topics where, in my experience, you need deep, sustained engagement to make any personal progress on them.
Sure, you can probably learn a few fun facts through TikTok but really what's the point?
There are only 24 hours in a day. The hours you spend doomscrolling through - in the best case - fun facts about physics and chemistry are hours you spend not doing anything of value, like learning about actual physics or chemistry.
I get that you don't need to be doing something super productive all the time, what I'm saying is that I think you're fooling yourself if you believe that TikTok and co. are anything more than the shallowest form of entertainment available.
Can you provide a ranking of entertainment from most “deep” to most shallow please since you seem to be an expert on what entertainment is OK to consume?
That is exactly what TikTok does, they are more popular because their tastes algorithm is even better than Shorts for figuring out what you actually want to watch
its like how 30 years ago when people would numblessly flip through hundreds of cable channels for hours, but with endless tailored content and extra dopamine shots on top from social feedback
its very telling how, while youtube (classic) also has these same ingredients, the ux of looking through a menu is far less addicting than the slot machine mechanism from swiping up
yeah but cable was limited by channels and by producers. now anyone can make a video and it's possible to tailor that to tiny niches that would have never been served by cable.
It's a slot machine, a scroll is an arm pull. Sometimes you get a brain tickle and you keep on scrolling to get more. I'd bet money that the brain activity is exactly the same.
100% agree on this and go further; it rots their brain. We have to have the societal courage and guts to admit that it is conceptually the same as things like drugs/alcohol/smoking.
Then again, we lost that battle with misogynistic, language-rotting, and violent rap music because we were too worried about being called racists, so there might not be hope we'll do better this time around.
Your facetious comment is essentially correct. It all comes down to culture and parenting. The 'gutted' education system where I live spends 25k per student, which doesn't matter if kids never read a book.
I'd be pulling something out of thin air, but my opinion is that yes so far it has. Facebook and TikTok, and other social media, has served as an amplification mechanism for various things, including rap music.
But at this point, we also have a separate category of things that pretty much on their own are having a negative effect on society. That would be things like TikTok (including Instagram Reels, and Youtube Shorts).
The fact that they're not trying to come up with a new UI paradigm, or discovery mechanism is very telling. They keep focusing on semi-random swipe-directed discovery, and that tells me they're not interested in making the best content available to you as the interested-consumer. They want you wasting time and generating N-counts of redundant ad views/impressions/things before finding that one thing you wanted or might find interesting.
Youtube is probably the best at at-least trying to not force you to swipe (when watching normal videos). But even there, we can see how much people complain about "The Feed" or "The Algorithm". With all of Google's money and effort, they couldn't (or chose not to) find a better way at matching viewers with good content.
No, because reading is more healthy than mindlessly watching short videos. There is only so much content on the front page, it's not a slot machine you can pull for hours like tiktok.
Give it a few months until somebody rigs an open-source video generation model to generate a "Short" from any frontpage article, and then several "reaction videos" based on the top comments... and maybe a frontend UI that turns the frontpage into an infinite scroll of those Shorts... and bam, HackerReels will be born
Having some amount of utility doesn't contradict it possibly being used for nefarious purposes by it's owners though. If I intentionally wanted to design an information warfare weapon, I'd make sure to sugarcoat it with interesting/funny/useful content to make it palatable. Just like putting the soldiers inside a giant wooden horse.
Not that I really care enough to ban TikTok, but the value demonstrated here is pretty spurious. You could swap "TikTok" with "socializing", and I'm sure these people would've had similar outcomes.
Socializing is indeed of great value to people; not at all spurious. You're helping prove OP's point.
And OP didn't even mention all the small businesses that took off due to TikTok giving them an avenue. This notion that people have to dismiss TikTok as merely mindless dopamine is really just wilful ignorance.
My point is that none of this is truly dependent on the existence of TikTok, which OP does not be seeming to be arguing, even slightly. The internet is a revolving door of gathering spaces that enable people to do nice things for each other. People can do nice things for each other anywhere, even when surrounded by the digital equivalent of two-way mirrors.
Citizens have a right to assemble and speak to each other. Foreign corporations don't have a right to own the feeds of huge swaths of the population. Hence the rules around newspaper and TV ownership.
Is anyone aware of any opinion poll among US population about banning tiktok? This to me feels like one of the issues with potentially largest disconnect between voters and politicians
Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
Support has declined and opposition has increased. I don't think there's much of a disconnect here though, since it doesn't seem there are many people with strong opinions counter to what Congress chose to do.
"Not Sure" != "ambivalent". It's a mistake to lump "Not Sure" and "Opposed" together and declare a majority, as the group as a while does not represent a specific stance. Any attempt at nuance for either side gets bucketed into the largest category.
That group seems like the most interesting question... what sub groups do they fall into.
Anytime there are such large numbers of "undecideds" it's likely they are low-information, and an opportunity for Trump (or any unscrupulous politician, but really, Trump) to lie to them and turn them to whatever side they wish.
Since 170M Americans look at TT, I wonder of how much of it was TT propaganda itself.
The amount of propaganda on TT is rather huge, though I won't say any different than US media, just more of it these days oriented to how 'good' China is.
But that's why it isn't a direct democracy. Sometimes government needs to do things that are not popular.
But of course this is always going to be an opportunity for a populist to take advantage of the disconnect. Sometimes, as in this case, that is damaging. But of course it's well within the rights of politicians to play that game.
I assume most americans today are already under the impression their government spies on them and facebook/google will gladly give anything that is asked for, how does the chinese spying on them make any difference for the average citizen? If I was a regular american and had to choose I'd take the foreign spy 10/10 times. What will the chinese do to the regular american citizen compared to what his own contry could do with this information?
If you're diaspora and other smaller interest groups for sure, but the general citizen probably wouldn't care at an individual level. I'd argue that the NSA revelations and how everything just got worse and worse since then killed any chance of the public caring about this kind of stuff.
> how does the chinese spying on them make any difference for the average citizen? If I was a regular american and had to choose I'd take the foreign spy 10/10 times
You’re overestimating the number of people that care about it. A good chunk of people really don’t care about privacy, data security and potential exposure to propaganda, no matter how much we (engineers who actually care about it) tell them to.
Lots of people do care about the propaganda thing. Like, most normie voters I know definitely don't give a crap about the data privacy stuff, but they haven't forgotten about the cold war and are not bought into this "maybe it's fine if the Chinese government can control what all the kids are seeing" narrative.
But it's a big problem that the framing has often been about the data privacy thing.
A lot of normie voters care but they are at least one if not two generations removed from the median TikTok user. Generational divides can be pretty stark and it's clear that future generations increasingly don't care as much about internet privacy. In fact, being a public figure on the internet is a good thing these days since you can make a career out of it.
Again, I don't think it is ever again going to be mainstream to care about the privacy thing.
But I think older people do care now about the potential for hostile foreign propaganda affecting our politics, and I think the younger folks who (reasonably!) care more now about losing their favorite entertainment app will grow up and understand the propaganda problem when they're older. That is, I don't think it's a generational thing, I think it's an age thing. And politics is driven by people over the age of 30.
Yes, but you don't have to be alive to understand the problem. I agree with you that the cold war is very old news to the TikTok demographic, but it isn't to people who were born in the 80s and before, and that is who drives politics. By the time the current young people grow up more, they will have their own direct experiences with geopolitical struggle. It remains to be seen where that will lead.
You bring up valid point. Did the legislators lie en masse to us about national security to remove a competitive app from the American ecosystem or not. If the national security issues exist, where is the outrage from our elected officials? If not, our government is for sale.
A lot of people hold the view that privacy isn't important unless you have something to hide. They likely wouldn't care about some government on the other side of the world knowing what stupid tiktok videos they watch.
They probably would. But so long as the decisions are made using secret information, how can we know? We can only assume they are lying to us, until they show the proof.
The problem with a poll is that the general public is likely not privy to all the information that the people in charge have. I think the best thing to do here is just come out with all of it, lay it on the table, and see what the public thinks then. If you have a good reason then show us.
That is exactly what the government has not done all these years. Why be tight-lipped if there is solid evidence and data, its not some issue of nuclear weapons/military-strategy.
I've suspected that they have evidence that China is using the platform for social manipulation, but we're using the same techniques on other countries and possibly domestically and the government doesn't want to make the general public aware of it. Or it could be that they don't have evidence of actual wrongdoing, but feel that the risk is too large to allow it to exist.
Whatever it is, this has gone off the rails and the public is going to need a real explanation if they decide to move forward with the ban.
>Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
The relevant poll would be one right after the ban was enacted on bipartisan support. It's far too politicized now meaning that a huge percentage of people will simply support/reject it purely based off of "their candidate" being for/against it.
You know polls are a rotten way to make policy. Easily manipulated. In fact, Hitches said in "Letters..." that any time you see a poll just realize it's someone trying to change your mind with the bandwagon fallacy - isolating your own opinion as wrong and outside the norm or trying to reinforce the "right" opinion by confirming that you're part of the cool-kid club.
Yes, polls are an imperfect tool. But I think they remain the only tool we have to gauge what decisions coming out of Washington are product of broad popular support vs ones product of intense lobbying from shadowy powers.
Most policies aren't the sort of thing that is going to attract broad popular support (or opposition.) Did you look at the opposition numbers? Who are the "shadowy powers?" Lawmakers say that China is the shadowy partner here doing bad things with Tiktok. I don't necessarily trust the US government on this issue, but I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed.
I think there are probably some people who are pushing this for self-interested reasons (American social media apps) but also I think the stated reason for the ban is probably the truthful motivation, and I'm ambivalent about trusting the US government and US corporations not to spy on me, but I tend to trust the US government when they say they are trying to stop China from spying on me. And if zero people spying on me is not an option, well, fewer people would probably be an improvement.
> I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed.
Right. If the Chinese government is not using TikTok to spy on citizens of their adversaries -- or, more likely, influence citizens of their adversaries -- then the Chinese government is full of incompetent fools. And I think it's safe to say that the Chinese government is not full of incompetent fools.
It's not that polls are imperfect, it's that they're often entirely misleading and incorrect. And if the only tool you have to do a job isn't fit for purpose, then that just means that you aren't equipped to do the job properly.
If the only tool we have for measuring Washington's behavior against public opinion is one that doesn't accurately reflect public opinion, then that means that we just don't have a reliable way to measure Washington's behavior against public opinion.
The previous commented made an on-target point about how polls can often be manipulated to produce contrived results. I've seen plenty of cases that corroborate this: differently constructed polls showing wildly different breakdowns of opinion on the same issues among the same population, surveys full of obviously leading and loaded questions, etc.
So given all of that, I think the burden of proof is properly the other way around. Why do you think this particular poll is reliable?
It is not clear if it would have passed if not that procedural trick...
So one has to take this into account when considering 'bipartisan support' of the thing.
This is a misleading view of history. It is true that it was included in the foreign aid package, but the TikTok ban was also passed in an isolated bill in an overwhelming bipartisan manner beforehand.
90% of Republicans in the House voted for the TikTok ban alone. 73% of Democrats.
And? The history of media companies operating in the US to have US citizens owners is likely much longer than you've been alive, just ask Murdoch about is US citizenship.
You're highlighting a completely different problem that's longstanding and happening regardless if we're talking about enemy states. Be nice if we could solve the Musk/Zuck issues, but I don't suspect we will as we worship the altar of money.
> media companies operating in the US to have US citizens owners is likely much longer than you've been alive
You do realise that, should US allies apply this principle themselves, US companies will suffer? Most UK media is foreign owned at this point. As is our water supply, transport and energy
And Elon’s rampant disrespect and general behaviour are inviting that day.
They don’t actually, the only British ‘social network’ is OnlyFans and it’s allowed in China.
As for the rest, what is the relevance?
US money influences our politics through shadowy think tanks and pushes it to the right. US-owned water utilities take on loans, use them to pay dividends and drive themselves into bankruptcy.
Being a US ally doesn’t buy us better treatment from US billionaires, they are still predatory vultures.
>so one has to take this into account when considering ‘bipartisan support’ of the thing.
I do not. I can hold a person accountable to their vote on this legislation. Their vote on this legislation caused the Supreme Court to release an opinion that affects every citizens 1st amendment rights. Now if they released a statement at the time condemning this while also talking about the importance of the aid they might have some leeway.
Congress has a limited amount of time and attention unfortunately, so omnibus bills are very common. That doesn’t invalidate the contained legislature.
I don’t agree with the widespread usage of such “tricks”, but I do understand the harsh reality and limitations of representative democracy.
Yes it was included in a foreign aid package to make it more palatable to Congress. Advocates of the bill on this site are not bringing that up because they support the bill.
> but was instead included in the foreign aid (including Ukraine) package
I don't know why these kinds of shenanigans are still possible. It makes a complete joke of politics and legislation (and by extension: law).
I know I'm shouting at clouds here, and I know the reason is: the sheeple don't care enough to change this thing for the better. But I still feel the need to point it out.
I don't think the sheeple can, sadly. Govt has been so thoroughly captured by corporate interests that I think the fall of America will happen before the govt starts governing for the people
While it’s back in the US, it seems to be a separate version from the rest of the world. My account is European and I can no longer log in within the US without a VPN out of the country. My GFs account is American and she can login but has lost access to some accounts and the ability to watch livestreams which my version of the app still has. I wonder if the 13 hour “outage” was for a larger scale data migration for a separate US version
I also can not see livestreams. It says "Unstable Network Connection". And I have 2 separate "air gapped" phones and TT accounts - no shared details and both behave the same.
There are lots of conspiracy theories online. However, I think it is just that the process of bringing the stack back up may be difficult. They also have a huge shopping network, that has also been down, and there are emails/communications to shops saying they are working on fixing it. Also, when I take a link from TikTok and post it in a downloader app, it no longer works since the URL is broken.
Maybe some microservices did not come back up (outage), or maybe they were knowingly compromised as part of the extension deal. While I can see that Lives can not be censored, I do not know the reason for shopping to be disabled, so I suspect it is an outage.
[ Actually shopping is also "live", so maybe that's why ]
Glad lives are back, I was actually inspecting the traffic using my PiHole from when my GF's US tiktok was browsing and when my European account was attempting to connect. Both of them his a CDN within the US but after that it looks like we had traffic going to different versions. Her's was routing to a tiktokv.us while mine was sending traffic to tiktokv. I'm not sure if this has been in place before or if I'm just realizing now but I believe a split-brain scenario is pretty likely.
Maybe it’s intentional, maybe it’s just the technical reality, it’s a bit early to call. We on a tech site ought to know what a shitshow split brain scenarios can be.
The people pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue are ignoring that no one was requiring TikTok to change their content at all. The law was written to allow for 0 impact on users if the CCP-connected parent company simply divested.
Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. But ByteDance’s allegiance isn’t to their shareholders.
It seems to me that they aren't "pretending" they honestly believe the issue is about free speech. Laws that does not explicitly curtail free speech but effectively still does just that can certainly be created.
I don't know if it's a free speech issue but legally speaking it's definitely not a first amendment issue because the law targets foreign corporations and the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities
But there are American users making and viewing content on that platform.
The physical equivalent would be if China was hosting a TED-talk-like conference where anyone can come and hold a presentation, and after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in, neither to hold presentations nor to listen to them.
Technically that doesn't violate the constitution, but it's not difficult to argue that it does violate the spirit of the constitution
That's true and that's actually something the courts consider. The standard is unreasonable burden. So it's not necessarily anything that makes speech harder, but if it does make speech unreasonably burdensome then it would run afoul of the first amendment.
So if the alternative places where such speech could be hosted were extremely limited, expensive or very difficult to use then the law banning a platform could create an unreasonable burden.
Suggesting that a shuttering of TikTok represents any impediment to your First Amendment rights — even if no comparable alternative existed — is to misunderstand what was promised by the Constitution.
Of course, plenty of comparable alternatives do exist.
Correct, but requiring American content creators and consumers to move to a different platform (when those platforms are already large, have huge reach, and have low switching costs) would likely not meet the bar for an unreasonable burden. I don't think the courts would strike down this law on first amendment grounds.
For the sake of the one downvote, please allow me to complete the implied dialogue tree:
>>>> It would be harder for me to learn piano if my teacher was convicted of murder.
>>> Nonsense. You can easily find another piano teacher.
>> Right, just like people who use TikTok can easily find another short form video platform.
> That's a terrible analogy.
Nonsense. If TikTok was convicted and shut down because of rampant financial fraud, your First Amendment rights would be similarly unaffected.
TikTok was told to close because they refused to bring their corporate ownership in line with requirements set out in US Code passed by Congress. The content of any video was never at issue.
Just as a thought experiment, take your reasoning and try to ban as much speech with as much specificity as you can. You can't ban the content of the speech but you can ban venues where speech takes place and and means of transmitting speech so long as at least one venue and means remains.
> after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in,
I think if that were the situation then yes the first amendment would be in issue. But I don't think anyone is saying that this is happening here. As I understand it this has nothing to do with what anyone is saying on TikTok and there are no social or protest movements gaining ground on TikTok that the government is trying to suppress. The only issue here is the foreign ownership and how that ownership is used. I don't think anyone is saying the government is doing this to silence any TikTok users
An issue arises when popularity is manipulated through artificial boosting by an adversarial government.
At some point, it becomes State Propaganda masquerading as grassroots activists.
Control over content can influence and distort public discourse and understanding. This is also against the spirit of free expression envisioned in the constitution and instead injecting an intentionally divisive voice.
The physical equivalent would be if the Chinese intelligence apparatus opened an auditorium where they said "come sit here and let us read your mind and we will feed you what advances our national interest".
> the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities
Sort of true. Sometimes the constitution just says "persons", which has generally been interpreted to anyone.
But it's not material, because the 1st amendment is a restriction on congress. That's why it starts with "Congress shall make no law...". The argument isn't about if TikTok has rights, it's about if congress is authorized to take this action. They're inter-mixed a bit because if TikTok does have the rights they claim, then congress automatically isn't authorized, but they are separate.
you're right, my statement is an extreme oversimplification and there are situations where the constitution does apply to noncitizens (like due process during deportation) or places where things are unclear (if speech of foreign nationals were being regulated). But this case where we are talking about a foreign media platform's right to operate in the US without any reference to the content they are broadcasting... this seems to be one of those rare clear cut cases. I mean no one saw any issue with America effectively banning RT.
There were some people on here saying that national security is just a pretense and the government is actually doing this because they dislike some of the content being posted on TikTok. I don't know if that's the case but if it were then I would concede there is a first amendment issue. But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.
> But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.
I still think it does, but it's Apple and Google's right to propagate the app, not TikTok's right to be on the app store. And since neither Apple nor Google are party to the lawsuit, nobody really has standing to take that particular line of argument.
Yes, of course Congress has the authority to restrict foreign companies purely from the Commerce Clause alone. Their power over restricting foreign entities in the U.S. is nearly total. The U.S. is under no obligation to host speech or operations from any foreign business, entity, or application for any reason whatsoever.
No, they couldn't ban just one book printed by a French company. They'd have to ban the company entirely. And that's what happened here too. It's not just TikTok that got banned, but all of ByteDance's other apps too, e.g., Marvel Snap and CapCut.
And it's also important that divesting was an option instead. In your analogy, they couldn't ban the books outright, but could demand they be published somewhere else.
No. But they could ban American companies from providing services directly to that French publisher (e.g., a US company couldn't print books for or sell paper to that French publisher). However, a US law could not stop me from legally reading a copy I owned, or from selling or giving that copy to someone else within the US...
The First Amendment case would be much clearer if this was actually about banning access to TikTok (it's not: TikTok self-blocked US users, Amazon/Oracle shut off servers, and app stores stopped distributing to US users). TikTok could choose to operate their service (like many other Chinese companies) using only non-US infra and without relying on American companies to distribute their app; indeed, the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, hosted entirely from Chinese servers, continued to work just fine.
This case is also a reminder of why the iOS App Store is so bad for rights: at least on Android, you could sideload a 'banned' app; Google can comply with the law and US users can still download TikTok. On iOS, you don't have that option.
Using such restraints on foreign trade to censor publications is a very transparent end run around 1A.
It is a big sign that we live in a police state that the courts are willing to be politicized to the point that they are willing to ignore this obvious trampling upon the human rights of both the app publisher and the app’s users.
Also, iOS users can go buy a tablet or phone that can sideload. Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.
This isn't an "end run around 1A" - the law doesn't target any speech or content at all. TikTok can keep operating with all the same content, they just need to separate from Chinese ownership first. If this was about censorship, why include that option?
This isn't about censoring content, it's about preventing ByteDance from collecting personal data from 170M Americans that Chinese law requires them to hand over to their government.
It's not end run around 1A. 1A is a law protecting the people (and their various forms of organization) of the United States. Congress has every right to regulate or ban foreign entities of any kind for any reason from operating in the United States.
The rights enumerated by the constitution are human rights (“endowed by their creator”) and are not specific to americans.
Furthermore, the 1A is a restriction on the government and isn’t related to whether or not someone is a citizen.
There are lots of things congress is prohibited from doing under the constitution, including against foreign entities. Congress can’t ban a foreign religion operating in the US, for example.
So not "rights enumerated by the constitution." Which is why the degree to which the First Amendment provides protection does turn on legal status with America [1].
Oh please. TikTok isn't a publication. The individual creators on TikTok have not been censored; they've merely been told that TikTok is not permitted to operate in the US, and that they will have to post their creations -- unedited, unaltered -- on other services. And those other services exist, and have wide reach, so it's not like saying "sure, you can continue to create, but your audience is now 5% the size it was before".
> Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.
Sounds like you're arguing against yourself. TikTok hasn't actually been banned.
The constitution applies to American users and to non-Americans on American soil. It's not like the cops can execute you for being here on a tourist visa.
The constitution applies to the government. It establishes the government and defines -- and therefor limits -- what the government is allowed to do.
Corporations are considered "legal persons" for the purpose of applying the law to them in a convenient and organized way, but in real life, corporations are just organizational models employed by human beings for the purpose of coordinating their activities.
The restrictions applicable to what the government is allowed to do to "people" as defined in the constitution apply regardless of what organizational models those people are using to coordinate their activities. Ultimately, everything in society reduces to people, and the government is not entitled to use reified abstractions to escape the constraints on its authority.
Corporations have First Amendment rights as ruled by Citizens United v. FEC. Even though corporations don’t have a vote (which is its own can of worms because of their economic power, money = vote), they still enjoy some of the same constitutional protections as individuals do.
No, there's no such reasoning in that decision, which confirmed that speech itself is protected by the first amendment, regardless of who originates it.
And this ruling had little to do with any of that -- the first amendment challenge was that the ban imposed content-based burdens on the speech of the users of TikTok, and the court ruled that it did not. So the ban therefore survived the challenge under intermediate scrutiny.
The domestic vs. foreign ownership element of the ruling only pertained to the evaluation of whether there was a compelling government interest in enacting the ban, not whether the government was exempt from first amendment scrutiny at all.
The constitution applies to the people of the United States. It's in the first line: "We the people of the United States..."
That Constitution also includes numerous clauses granting Congress the authority to regulate international commerce (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3). TikTok is a foreign commercial enterprise. We have restricted foreign products and services since the Boston Tea Party.
But wouldn't you be infringing the rights of the US users if you ban the platform they want to message other US users over? Isn't that indirectly infringing their free speech? Or does the first amendment not protect stuff like this?
But can the government actively interfere with my communication by banning the platform? If the government notices that a lot of critics are organizing over Discord, can they ban Discord, because they're not banning speech specifically, only a platform used to spread the speech?
I think what you raise is something the courts should consider if the government were trying to shut down a platform because of what it's users were doing on it. But it's not a live issue in this case. There is no allegation that the US seeks to suppress TikTok because of what Americans are posting on it. TikTok isn't saying the government is doing that and I don't believe the government is seeking to control the speech of TikTok users. The consern seems to be more about who controls the algorithm and data collection (a foreign state with adversarial interests) and it seems to me that it has nothing to do with anything Americans are posting on TikTok. I mean the content on TikTok isn't all that political or revolutionary
Because the drafters knew they wouldn't/couldn't/aren't allowed to/would only be able to do so to someone more under the thumb of the US government?
The actual purpose of a law or system is the actual outcome of it and not what it's dressed up to say its purpose is. A law that says "we don't allow mosques unless they're owned by people not descended from countries on a terrorism watch list" is still an infringement of the freedom of religion. We don't have to pretend there's good faith here.
> Because the drafters knew they wouldn't/couldn't/aren't allowed to/would only be able to do so to someone more under the thumb of the US government?
This is at best vacuously true. Since China is the most powerful adversary of the US, you'd say that literally anyone else is more under the thumb of the US government than they are.
Given how laws and American rights have been established to work. Yes, absolutely. They just need a legally acceptable reason to do so separate from the speech. Banning a platform because of speech they don't want isn't allowed, but banning a platform for other reasons is, even if that platform also happens to facilitate speech.
Like with tik tok, the ban itself isn't a speech issue because there's nothing bytedance can change about it's communication to not be banned, it's an ownership problem.
By your very broad definition of infringement if a newspaper refuses to pay it's taxes, and then the government shuts down the newspaper down for that, this would be infringement.
Clearly it's not.
Yes, the government can make laws that effect speech platforms just like we can make them pay taxes.
He wouldn't have had to resort to complex modes of influence, that's for sure. It's very scary that we've gotten to the point where people are claiming to "protect democracy" by proposing to allow institutions controlled by incumbent politicians to regulate who is allowed to say what in the lead-up to elections.
Go read the SC unanimous judgment. It’s very clear and lays out exactly why they’re wrong.
In fact they do a lot more than that because they state off the bat that there isn’t even a first amendment question (a Chinese corporation doesn’t have first amendment rights in the U.S.), but they go beyond, assume the first amendment does apply, and still explain why that isn’t valid.
SCOTUS, as they've done in many recent cases, is artfully skirting the substance of the issue.
How is this ban actually enforced? By fining American companies for serving specific content. That is the First Amendment issue. SCOTUS simply asserting that it's not in order to make their ruling convenient does not actually make it so.
Copyright (in the US) was literally created by the same people who wrote the 1st Amendment. Copyright is in the Constitution itself. It was very obviously an exception from the start.
"Foreign governments saying things" also existed at the same time the 1st Amendment was written, and there were no carveouts from 1st Amendment in light of that.
In any case: If SCOTUS during its early cases on copyright law (or copyright on the Internet) simply asserted "this has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment," they'd also be wrong. That would be a clear avoidance tactic not to wrangle with the substantive issue. In reality, the big cases on copyright are riddled with 1st Amendment questions, considerations, and constraints.
They ban American companies from distributing or maintaining the application, not specific content. More of a "criminal conspiracy" type of behavior rather than something that would relate to wikileaks or whoever. Can as well argue what is being banned is the data-collection side of the operation since it's the part that depends on using the app. Those companies still have the freedom to publicly state whatever the CCP has to say.
The law indeed needed to be carefully written to "skirt" any first amendment violations, and SCOTUS unanimously agreed it had done so successfully.
"Content" is narrower than "speech". In that case the restriction was described as "content-neutral". Hence it didn't require strict scrutiny, only intermediate scrutiny. Which seems like the blueprint for how they wrote the TikTok law.
I don't think that is clear at all. Refer to their amicus brief where they explain their reasoning in detail: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/brief-amici-curiae-wr... The gist of it, which you missed, is that they think the ban violates Americans first amendment rights.
Tiktok definitely isn't press and algorithm-powered social media feeds can hardly be considered free speech. It's not even speech - it's broadcast! We've regulated broadcast since its' inception.
While Tiktok doesn't have literal printing presses, neither do TV networks.
How can the first amendment be interpreted so broadly that large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians is considered free speech, yet so narrowly that social media isn't part of the media?
Oh I agree. Citizen United was wrongly decided, and the only people who agree with it are those who benefit from the corruption it has enabled. It's far from settled law, though obviously it's not changing in the next 4 years.
As for social media - it's an advertising platform. The algorithm is deciding what you see based on what sells ads. Who is exercising free speech there? Tiktok and Meta are exercising corporate speech in the name of profit making. They have no right to host such a platform, and the government certainly has the right to regulate it if they do have one.
The government can't compel Meta, Tiktok or individual users to say X, Y, or Z, they can declare the ads-based algorithmic-content business model illegal or subject it to strict regulation - especially when its in the furtherance of free speech, like preventing Facebook from deplatforming people for having the wrong opinions that advertisers don't like.
> large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians
You do realize that Rupert Murdoch was forced to become a US citizen because of the same laws that are in question about US media ownership.
Social media is 100% the media. Social media has freedom of speech. Businesses don't have freedom of ownership, including media business. Kinda fucky, but this is very long standing law.
As I understand things, they tend to leave gun rights stuff to the enormous and well-funded NRA.
In cases from "Roe vs Wade" to "Masterpiece Cakeshop" and "Hobby Lobby" the ACLU came out against things supported by the religious right. And although the ACLU regularly supports the free speech rights of swastika-tattoed nazis - Republicans don't see that as supporting their side, because no reasonable person wants to think people with swastika tattoos are on their side.
Unfortunately so. It didn't use to be that way - the ACLU used to be so principled that they would defend literal Nazis' rights. But they've fallen a long way since then.
Especially when individual liberty is in contention with collective liberty. This is the "hard problem" for organizing a free society.
Eliminating traffic laws would make individuals more free in a literal sense, but those rules also make it so people can get from place to place quickly and safely. The liberty interpretation is that what people actually want is to travel, not to drive however they like. So you trade a freedom most people don't miss to enable another.
Vaccine mandates are a great example of this contention where under normal circumstances nobody cares about having to get vaccinated but they do care about not getting polio. Covid was strange in that the number of people opposed was significantly larger than I think anyone expected.
Agree, but (and yes, whataboutism ahoy!) one can make observations about a similar lack or principle on the right.
It always seemed to me that the US was fuzzy when the very clear text of the Constitution rubbed up against the realities of a complex State. For example,
- the 1st Amendment doesnt say the speech can be overridden by a compelling national security interest, which is the argument here. But the US has security services, and legitimately there are cases where to allow speech does harm. But if you are going to be honest, shouldnt there be an amendment giving the State an override of 1A?
- 2A is infamous, of course, and for the love of $deity lets not discuss it here, but why does "not abridged" get overriden by bans in, say, machine guns, which have been on the books since the Chicago gangster era? Either you abridge or not. Or at least be honest about it .
- Some speakers in the covid era made a very strong appeal to personal bodily autonomy when it came to vaccine mandates. Ok, let's follow that. Does it not then also follow that a woman cannot be forced to carry a baby to term? That would seem logical, but the connection is not made. Conversely there is no "commonweal" override written into the Constitution and we are left with random SCOTUS decisions over the last 240 years.
Both of these I suspect are handled sorta explicitly by giving the state the power to do whatever it wants if it is important and essential enough.
The courts have various categories for how important something needs to be to allow certain levels of unconstitutionality, eg suppose I have "legally" built the nuclear device featured in a recent kurgesatz video with enough kiloton to start by itself a nuclear winter kill every person on the planet... I seriously suspect SCOTUS will be ok with the state taking the ignition keys away from me
Because the people 250 years ago could not have imagined the problems that we'd have invented for ourselves in these days. It was always meant to be a living document with a process of adding and changing amendments. And in between that time the the way people interact has grown more complex. If you took those same intelligent men and dropped them into today, the Amendments would look different.
It’s not a certain company, it’s a whole class of them (partially defined by POTUS’ whims)
Sure, the government can do that, and when doing so infringes on Americans’ speech or access to information, it introduces First Amendment questions that must be addressed.
“The government says CNN can’t post stories from BBC” isn’t immediately resolved by “it’s a foreign company.”
It sounds like you're saying that there's some content on TikTok that Instagram Reels/YouTube Shorts/etc. won't allow on their platforms. Is that correct? If so, can you give an example?
In the sense of an adherent to Nazism, yes, neo-Nazis are Nazis.
In the context of "literal Nazis" the ACLU had argued for the rights of - like the German American Bund, which contained actual members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, not exactly.
For those unaware of ACLU's change over the last 10 or so years, here is an example:
In September 2021, the ACLU wrote a New York Times op-ed defending vaccine requirements, arguing they actually advance civil liberties by protecting the most vulnerable and allowing more people to safely participate in public life. David Cole and Daniel Mach, the authors, wrote that individual liberty isn't absolute when it puts others at risk.
Surely, one can be pro vaccine mandates. But I would not expect a civil liberties organization to hold this position.
Pretty much every measure taken against COVID had been taken many times before during the numerous epidemics of cholera, typhus, yellow fever, bubonic plague, smallpox, and influenza that plagued (no pun intended!) the US since its founding.
Requiring inoculation/vaccination, shut downs, masks, and quarantines was generally considered a legitimate use of state power to prevent the spread of deadly diseases and not an infringement of civil liberties.
Actually this goes back to even before the US was founded. George Washington imposed mandatory smallpox inoculation on his army during the revolution. This probably contributed significantly to his victory because both the British army and native tribes that had sided with the British were heavily weakened by smallpox but Washington's was not due to that inoculation requirement.
Please share any pre-Covid example of the government shutting down all public gatherings including weddings and funerals and closing the vast majority of businesses for a substantial period of time.
There may have been isolated examples in the past, but the degree was not the same.
You wouldn't expect a civil liberties organization to have an opinion on containing a dangerous pandemic? In addition to working at the ACLU the people doing their work are also humans.
Should the ACLU defend the rights of someone to blow up nuclear bombs in their backyard?
That’s a clear curtailment of their civil liberties. And assuming they’re in a rural area may not harm anyone else either.
This is an obviously extreme example but the point still stands. Any civil liberties organization cannot focus absolutely narrowly on that question in every situation but has to apply a broader approach.
Surely you see the difference between someone having Strategic weapons in their garage, and the government forcing someone to take a medicine that they don't want to take, right?
All individual rights are balanced with the rights of other individuals/society. You can be given the choice to vaccinate or be forcefully quarantined. This has occurred many times in the US and the right of the state to do this has been upheld.
While corona was weak we will eventually seem some dangerous bullshit spread and the anti-vax dipshits are going figure out exactly what their rights entail as they are being drug from their house at gunpoint with the express will of the majority of the population.
Quarantine powers are subject to the “strict scrutiny” standard. Freedom of domestic travel is as fundamental as freedom of speech in Constitutional law. This has been thoroughly adjudicated many times and in many contexts by the US Supreme Court, including many attempts by the government to exploit regulatory and taxation loopholes to indirectly effect that outcome.
It is unambiguously unconstitutional to prevent everyone from traveling, even for quarantine purposes. It must be evaluated on an individual basis subject to judicial review to establish that the individual presents a clear and present danger, and only for a very limited duration. No different than restrictions on speech.
This is the reason no State anywhere, regardless of who was in power, instituted hard lockdowns during COVID. This is known to be settled law to such an extent that attempting to prevent the population from traveling without clearing the strict scrutiny standard would be met with an instant Federal court injunction, likely coupled with a withering public statement questioning the competence of the State’s Attorney General. There was no upside in taking that risk.
The idea that you can forcibly quarantine someone solely because you don’t like their choices is wishcasting, not based on credible Constitutional foundations.
There's a big difference between quarantining people who you know have a dangerous disease for a few weeks until they're better, and quarantining the entire country for years because you're not sure who has a dangerous disease.
Unlikely, freedom of domestic travel is subject to the strict scrutiny Constitutional standard (international travel is a more open question). Banning freedom of travel for the entire country would be equivalent to banning freedom of speech for the entire country, from a Constitutional perspective.
Interestingly, the myriad freedom of travel cases happened so long ago and were so decisively settled as a strong right that everyone has kind of forgotten about them because there is little interesting left to decide. Not as controversial as questions around the meaning of speech. But I think the last significant questions were addressed around the Second World War.
Yes, the government has quarantine powers, which have been broadly established. They did not necessarily have the right to go about it how they did in 2020, which was through OSHA rules and other "soft power" rather than through their power to quarantine people. Almost nobody was actually quarantined in relation to COVID.
A broad, sweeping quarantine in relation to COVID would have been so unpopular that you can see why they went about it in a "softer" way, but sometimes the government can't have its cake and eat it too.
Those vaccine mandates were broadly ruled illegal, even in light of the quarantine power. These sorts of civil liberties are complicated, and the ACLU found themselves on the wrong side of this one.
> Should the ACLU defend the rights of someone to blow up nuclear bombs in their backyard?
If someone actually went to court over this, I would hope/expect that the NRA would send some lawyers. The ACLU isn't that into the second amendment and has never been. However, nobody has gone to court over this. They did go to court over vaccine mandates.
By the way, the only grounds the government would have to stand on here are radiation-related. It is broadly legal to use explosives on your own property unless you're too close to someone else's property. It is also broadly legal to build your own weapons.
Advocacy organizations shouldn't aspire to extremes. The ACLU should offer reasonable and practical help and commentary on civil liberties. Otherwise, you get the modern NRA that fights every law about firearms.
I keep seeing this type of comment here, like a sell is the obvious thing to do. Why? Selling / divesting TikTok US under these circumstances would surely not fetch the best price. In addition they would immediately create a global competitor that have the same product. Why would ByteDance the company or its investors want that?
Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole? The incoming head of state doesn't exactly have a great track record of seeing through on promises to pay and is threatening tariffs against all and sundry.
Anybody with that kind of financing readily available is throwing it at AI and not another social network, no matter how useful it might be for domestic propaganda.
> Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole?
Don’t need trust when you have the second most powerful state entity backing you. Corporate America has a complete jammed full history of its interests getting screwed over by foreign entities only for the US government to step in either with military force or some coercive measure resulting in a corrective action. Im sure China is well aware of this playbook and are probably apt to copy it too.
Which makes no sense. Meta wouldn’t sell “meta Uk”, data product, algo and all to a competitor for 20 billion or whatever the number floating around is.
Divesting the US operation would be pointless, the goal of the law is to control the algorithm, and that isn't something that the US office has access to. If they did they could simply be poached like Uber did to Waymo.
It's a distinction without a difference. Musk is effectively an agent of the state, with billions in subsidies he wants to protect, and a Chinese auto market he is desperate to be allowed into.
The CCP would not miss out on taking advantage of the situation and demanding trade concessions for agreeing to sell. US government would absolutely be involved in raising the necessary finance, as banks won't be bending over backwards to lend Musk money for another speculative venture.
* If ByteDance divests their US TikTok operations, they create a new competitor that could potentially out-compete them in other (non-US, non-Chinese) markets.
* Whatever amount of money they get for this divestiture would be much lower than what the business is worth to ByteDance (when your options are sell or shut down, potential buyers will not feel the need to bid high).
* ByteDance's US TikTok operations are certainly of non-financial value to the Chinese government. That value is likely orders of magnitude higher than their financial value to ByteDance. Selling that user base is probably not preferable to shutting down. Influence campaigns are certainly easier to run on a platform you own, but certainly those campaigns are already running on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Why add another platform that they can't control where they have to run influence campaigns?
Why is Tiktok US no longer worth $10 billion or so?
Why wouldn't American investors still want to buy it?
My guess is that American investors would want to buy it, but want the algorithm, but ByteDance is not willing to sell the algorithm out of fear that sharing it would degrade its competitive position outside the US.
In practice, US social networks usually promote content that is aligned with US cultural values and geopolitical interests. Whether this is because the government is actively leaning on them or just because being run by Americans colors them with those values, I don’t know. But the fact is, it’s not a coincidence that TikTok is the main place pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral, and it’s likely that changing owners would change the content on TikTok even if the law doesn’t actually require it to do so.
> Whether this is because the government is actively leaning on them or just because being run by Americans colors them with those values, I don’t know
Look up Mitt Romney’s comments where he plainly says they need to ban TikTok because they can’t control the narrative on Israel-Palestine. Narrative being his word.
I'm not defending them here, but the laws in China prevent a sale, so technically they have a duty to uphold China's laws first before upholding their fiduciary responsibility. Same with any American company and following American laws.
The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.
I believe the law mentioned here isn't focused on which organization it is. The law itself basically said you can't export recommendation algorithm. Yes, in the very similar wording as in "you can't export certain GPU chips".
That's a policy decision by the Chinese government. They still have the authority, but the Streisand effect makes blunt censorship counterproductive in an open society. For example, TikTok took down the viral "Uighur makeup tutorial" but quickly reinstated it after the backlash. That backlash couldn't occur in China, but it can in the USA for as long as uncensored outlets exist.
Subtler manipulation still works great, and the opacity of algorithmic content recommendation makes that an ideal instrument. Nobody outside ByteDance knows to what extent the CCP is putting its thumb on that scale already, but they certainly have the power to.
A different account operated by the same user was banned for something relating to an image of bin Laden in a different video. I've been unable to locate that video. I haven't found any reference stating that she praised him. She described her use of that image as satirical, and TikTok itself seems to recognize that (but stands by that ban):
> *While we recognize that this video may have been intended as satire, our policies on this front are currently strict.
In any case, the video in question is the Uighur one. TikTok quickly stated that one was a "human moderation error" and reversed it. My point is irrespective of whether their rules were morally correct or correctly applied, though--whatever those merits, they clearly drew more attention to the topic by censoring here, not less. So it's not surprising they don't apply blunt Chinese-style censorship outside China, since it's counterproductive without Chinese-style control of all major media.
Shares aren’t the sole mechanism for influence though. In Russia there are open sixth floor windows one could fall out of. In China you could disappear to a camp for a few months. Shares are kind of soft in comparison.
This is correct. His power is effectively absolute. Any time his eye focuses on an issue, the issue is resolved to his specification or heads roll and another puppet is appointed to resolve it so.
I spoke a few years back with a tech analyst who specialized in Chinese equities. She herself is a Chinese ex-pat living in the states. She, quite exasperatedly described investing in Chinese equities as "you basically need to guess what Xi is thinking".
One day test prep schools are illegal and immediately shut down. Tech CEOs suddenly became pariahs and started getting carted off to re-education camps. Etc.
You never know what could happen to an executive, company, or sector.
I think that's a major part of the concern. Their first duty is to the Chinese Communist Party. Historically all sources of information in communism have to serve the goals of the party above all else, and this is tightly controlled.
China is technically a multi party democracy, however the CPC does control the PLA (imagine if Republicans controlled the military, and that would be like China).
This is well outside my area of expertise, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding was that the legal parties are all subservient to the CCP and acknowledge their primacy.
So functionally maybe a little like Albertson's is the only legal party, but if you prefer your region can have a subsidiary of Albertson's like Safeway or Shaw's.
Officially no, effectively yes. It is not like they have meaningful elections, so a lot of power brokering is done behind doors. They do, however, provide minority parties with a quota of seats, although they effectively don't have decision making power (like the governor of a province vs. the CPC chairman of the province).
China is authoritarian no doubt, but clearly there are different forms of authoritarianism. Monarchy isn’t communism either. In principle, communism can’t exist under an authoritarian state, since that would create two classes; you’d be looking at some kind of socialism. Either way, I’d just point out that China has a brutal capitalist market. I feel like that kinda precludes communism.
Communism is whatever someone says it to be, so it isn't a very meaningful label. The term socialism is used a lot more than communism these days, although the party hasn't changed their name.
If you read Marx, communism isn't possible to achieve until after capitalism has run its course, so the way things are in China ATM are perfectly at harmony with that.
Communism has a definition. In the same vein, when someone says “democracy,” you can know roughly what they mean without knowing, eg, is it a representative democracy, is it a republic, does everyone vote together on all issues in a town square. Communism has basic characteristics involving the abolition of private property (not the same as property) and class. China has moved away from socialism to a kind of state capitalism over decades, and I don’t remotely understand why we’d call it communist.
Again, if you read Marx he claims that successful communism comes after capitalistic development. The communist party can take communism as an eventual goal instead of as a necessary truth right now, since the latter has always ended in disaster and the former puts off communism until later. The communist party is most definitely focused on communism as a goal, its goal is turn China to communism when its ready, China is not communist ATM.
Yes, that’s why I said at the outset that the CCP doesn’t run a communist country. That’s also a pretty funny idea; the CCP is cultivating a brutal capitalism to encourage a worker revolution into socialism against, uhh, themselves? By this logic the US is communist.
I think the same way we can talk about monkeys or squirrels. It's a family tree of related ideas. But there's no official checklist of features it has to have.
To give an example for comparison, a lot of people want to say socialism is about workers controlling the means of production. But that doesn't come close to covering all of the things that were called socialism that existed before someone proposed that definition.
With communism it's similar but at least I'm not aware of any one jingle that people are pushing as the one true definition.
But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc. it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
For what it's worth I'd argue that capitalism is even less well defined and I've heard it used to describe every economic system that's ever existed including all communist countries.
>it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
That’s not what I did, and I’m not a communist. I’m specifically talking about China because people use the label, deeply incorrectly, to portray them as a threatening other, as though they work in a super different way to us and threaten our way of life.
> But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc.
Im no scholar, but I’m pretty damn certain you can’t have a strong free market, alongside the consequent wealthy capitalists, under communism. Words have meanings, and that’s not what anyone or their mother would think of as communism.
It’s not a hidden statement about anything. China is not communist; communist means something. North Korea isn’t a democratic republic; that also means something. We can go into definitions if you want, but I think this is trivial to observe for China.
Edit: I think the distinction is important because the US has a tendency to label things communist before it goes to war with them, whether cold or hot.
I do not understand this line of argument. On the one hand there is a political decision to ban-or-annex a foreign company, on the other hand the reaction should not be political and in general political implications should not be discussed?
And if anything, if tiktok US is sold it will be way below its actual value, so there are many reasons to resist this apart from the political ones. And I assume they expect they will come to a concession in the first place.
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
This is not strictly true - when a company leaves a huge market, it is imprudent to leave behind a well-resourced competitor in place. If I were a ByteDance shareholder, I'd hate if it spun off TikTok America LLC, and then having TikTok America compete against ByteDance in Europe and the Rest of the world on an equal technological footing, but perhaps even deeper pockets from American markets.
>Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
Would you argue for Tesla or Apple to sell to China? Do you think Musk would divest his China business? The parallels are almost identical
1. Tesla cars collect a huge amount of data.
2. Tesla is already banned from being driven by government officials.
3. Tesla has the best self driving algorithm
4. Chinese cars are already banned in the US
5. China is Tesla's second largest market
6. Tesla is the 3rd largest EV company in China
Would you be surprised if Elon decided to exist China instead of "receiving tens of billions of dollars" from China?
Bytedance is privately held. With a 20% stake by founders and employees.
Divesting according to the bill terms would have them giving away portion of their most precious IP that is the fyp recommendation system. Any reasonable company would refuse to totally divest and create a competitor just because a government said so. Also TikTok makes money for advertizing to the entire world not just the US.
It's not "give away" when they get to charge the market price for it. They presumably also wouldn't inherently even have to split up the company, rather than e.g. do an IPO for the entire global enterprise.
The valuation and acquisition process of the US branch of TikTok would take more than 8 months as outlined by the language of the bill. So it's already forcing them to receive chump change for it. Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.
"Free enterprise" is a fantasy. We don't have that, pretty much never had. And I think that's a good thing. Free enterprise/free markets tend to monopolize and prey on workers and consumers.
This has been a possibility for a lot longer than 8 months. Trump was talking about it during his first term more than four years ago. You can take the time to line up buyers even if you don't end up having to sell, but if you have the time and then don't use it, whose fault is that?
> Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.
Of course it's not free enterprise. It's a government regulation.
If the US passes a law that says US companies aren't allowed to do business with Russia, that's not free enterprise either. Should those laws be unconstitutional? Maybe, but not any less than this one.
Except now they get to remain the owners and they don’t have to sell at fire sale prices, so it turned out to be the best possible outcome for their shareholders.
I’m not arguing it’s a restriction on TikTok’s speech or bytedance’s speech.
It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law doesn’t fine TikTok. The law fines the people who let me download an application I’ve chosen to use. At $5,000 per instance.
It’s not about TikTok’s rights being violated. It’s about mine, and yours.
No court in the land will agree with your interpretation. The first amendment protects speech, but it doesn't grant you the right to publish that speech wherever you want. If it did then Facebook couldn't ban people from its platform, for example.
The Supreme Court with its unanimous decision made it very very clear it’s not about freedom of speech, but about foreign adversary having access to data profile of 180 million US citizens. And believe in lawmakers argument of foreign adversary propaganda to those citizens.
Why do people on hacker news keep drudging up freedom of speech ad nauseum??
I wouldn't be surprised if the freedom of speech nonsense is an influence campaign by the PLA.
It is just such a ridiculous argument but if you repeat nonsense enough times, people start repeating it back as if it is real.
We never had to deal with this before because the WW2 generation was obviously not stupid enough to let the KGB publish children's books and Saturday morning cartoons inside the US and have a KGB influence campaign that says to ban the books/cartoons would be a free speech issue.
Obviously a non-starter. What you see with Tiktok is how completely infiltrated and corrupted things are in the US in 2025.
The unrestricted war from China started a long time ago and the IMO the US has already lost.
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
― Sun Tzu
It's really about how the US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is not 100 percent beholden to the US gov and stock market regulation, by a company that doesn't have to instantly respond to pressure from the Executive branch, could possibly refuse to instantly comply from pressure from US intelligence agencies, could refuse to comply with search requests from US law enforcement, and extensive lobbying from Facebook to cripple a competitor that Facebook ignored until it was too late.
It's not a free speech issue.
Given that the infra for serving US tiktok customers is in the United States(inside of Oracle Cloud), I am curious if Tiktok/bytedance responds to US law enforcement requests.
> the US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is not 100 percent beholden to the US gov
You have it backwards. The US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is 100 percent beholden to the Chinese gov.
Did you read the opinion? It did its analysis as requiring some level of scrutiny because of the free speech implications under intermediate (and in Sofomayor’s concurrence strict) scrutiny. It held the national security concern outweighed the free speech concern but it absolutely did not say it was relevant in the analysis.
“ At the same time, a law targeting a foreign adversary’s control over a communications platform is in many ways different in kind from the regulations of non-expressive activity that we have subjected to First Amendment scrutiny”
And the opinion talks about foreign adversary, those exact words, at least 30 times. It mentioned freedom of speech twice
Show me where it is an infringement of your 1st amendment right to a private platform? You’re free to criticize the government however you see fit, but you’re not guaranteed the right to a microphone and stage that isn’t yours. There are plenty of other communication channels you can use to express yourself. Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok, just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.
> You’re free to criticize the government however you see fit, but you’re not guaranteed the right to a microphone and stage that isn’t yours.
So if I wanted to hold a speech how corrupt the government is and then the government passed a law that a PA supplier isn't allowed to sell me a Microphone or speakers, that wouldn't infringe my first amendment right because I don't have a right to a microphone or a stage? (Im not American so I don't have any first amendment rights anyways but for arguments sake.)
It's the PA supplier would be in a better position to argue that their rights are being violated. Especially if a single customer was targeted because of their political views / protected characteristics etc.
The problem with the TikTok scenario is that no specific group is being targeted for restraint. And the government does have the right to regulate trade. E.g. there are embargoed countries, export controls, etc. The fact that you can't sell raw milk across state lines is different from a hypothetical restriction on selling raw milk to, say, people named Todd.
No, it wouldn’t. Congress could pass a law that we’re not going to import microphones and speakers from China. The Constitution explicitly gives them the power to do that. You could then purchase them from any one of a number of other companies and your speech is unaffected.
Look, my point is that the first amendment is in play here and it’s not ridiculous to suggest a free speech analysis is required to hold the law as constitutional or not, which is what the court did and what reasonable people can agree or disagree around to what extent that speech should or shouldn’t be protected. (I personally think, as I stated that the free speech harm is a stronger case from the users who have now been restrained in their ability to use the platform and software distributors who are now restrained from distributing specific software than it is as applied to TikTok where the legislation is content neutral and so the free speech analysis is less relevant.) I’m not even claiming that this law should be found unconstitutional, just that there are free speech issues to adjudicate and the less obvious ones are probably more relevant than the one people are citing where the restraint is content neutral.
Your comment however draws a weird parallel later on though but first let’s take a moment here:
> Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok
That is what the court found but it opens some interesting questions that really do have impacts.
I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.
As would a law which banned foreign ownership of venues while also introducing a regulatory scheme for domestic ownership stakes of sensitive industries and defined news and commentary as a nationally security sensitive industry. (Which this law essentially does for certain types of apps.)
So at some point a law can be “content neutral” and about access to venue not content but I bet almost any reasonable person would agree it’s an unreasonable restraint.
Now for a situation you draw the above as a parallel with but is very different:
> just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.
Bluesky can do whatever they want but if the government were to get involved in defining regulations around which users could use BlueSky… yes absolutely I would expect it to be thrown out on first amendment grounds and expect it’s a significantly stronger case than any of the examples above.
It’s a much weaker and almost irrelevant case when directed at a non-governmental organization in which some folks are using “free speech” as an argument over what entities which are not enjoined from almost any actions may do with their own venues. But yeah, if it was the government telling BlueSky who to ban? You bet that’s got first amendment implications and I’d expect a court to review it under strict scrutiny. (And I wouldn’t expect it to survive.)
> I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.
That's a poor analogy, because allowlists and blocklists are not the same thing and do not have the same effects. The government only allowing a list of certain approved media outlets would be an obvious 1A infringement. The government blocking certain media outlets is not.
It’s not meant to say they’re the same thing, it’s meant to demonstrate clearly that venue restrictions even when content neutral can impose restrictions on speech and those restrictions must be balanced and scrutinized appropriately under our system.
I think that’s a huge difference, yes. And about what apps my phone is able to download, and what servers it is able to access.
Another huge difference is broadcasting is about usage of a shared resource and has always had regulations on who is allowed to do what. They don’t ban RT from setting up their own venue or printing a newspaper. RT and other outlets are able to operate in the US and people are able to chose to watch them.
Graffiti laws are also evaluated under heightened scrutiny due to free speech implications. A law having an impact on free speech does not mean it never holds, but it must be analyzed in that context. Here’s an example: https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
> Graffiti laws are also evaluated under heightened scrutiny due to free speech implications
Graffiti bans are unquestionably constitutional. Graffiti laws that regulate the content are not.
Telling people where they can speak is precedented, legal and necessary. Telling people what they can say is against the principles of free speech; the government doing so is illegal.
I get that you believe that's what's happening, but I can't imagine any US court agreeing with you.
The law (and the US constitution) does not guarantee any particular platform for your speech. It just guarantees that you can speak, and courts have interpreted that to mean that you need to have some reasonable platform, and that laws can't put an unreasonable burden on your ability to speak on some platform.
As an aside:
> Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law does not target internet providers at all. They are not required to block traffic to *.tiktok.com or any of their IP addresses.
> It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
You are being ridiculous now. None of those are forms of speech.
And restrictions on your ability to perform certain actions is literally what being in a society is about. If you don't like it then find another society. Just like you can find another ISP, place to publish your video or platform to use apps you want to use.
Whether you think it’s ridiculous or not, restrictions on distribution of software being a violation of US free speech rights has been an established part of US case law for around three decades now: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
I'm skeptical that Bernstein vs DOJ would apply, to a [foreign-controlled] company that is not publishing their algorithm, on the idea that allowing their [trade-secret] code to control how hundreds of millions of people interact with each other is somehow free speech on ByteDance's part.
The foreign-controlled part in particular implicates Congress's obvious and explicit power to regulate international trade, and it seems obvious to me that there would be something less than strict scrutiny applied to alleged violations of the 1A when that Congressional power is in play.
Yes, most of the court felt intermediate scrutiny was the appropriate standard in part because of the reasons you outlined.
(I also agree that this is a different case, I only point to Bernstein because it is a clear part of case law which states that software distribution is and can be a free speech issue and restraints on it would be expected to be evaluated with some level of scrutiny.)
I also feel you are being a bit absurdist fwiw. I am know the be a principled devils advocate sometimes, so I'm reading you as that, otherwise your position as an American makes very little sense to me
The justices on the Supreme Court analyzed the constitutionality of this law under a free speech basis. The Per Curiam opinion of the court suggested the correct standard was intermediate scrutiny as an abridgment of free speech. Justice Sotomayor suggested in her concurrence that strict scrutiny (the highest standard) was appropriate.
They concluded that these regulations were okay at those levels of scrutiny, but it is not absurd or ridiculous to analyze these as forms of speech, and indeed, our courts do so.
That said, just because there is a conflict with freedom of speech doesn’t prevent all government regulation, it just means the laws involved must pass an elevated level of scrutiny. That applies here, for multiple reasons, and with multiple parties.
Source code you can argue is a form of speech versus a packaged product.
Not that the case is relevant because restrictions on the availability of products is well established under the law. I can’t just buy nuclear weapons for example.
>"If you don't like it then find another society. "
Isn't use of any non-violent means to advocate one's belief to change the society is the whole point of the democracy? Your point is rather very totalitarian.
I’m not, for what it’s worth. I’m arguing that I think the free speech case is stronger for the users and software distributors who are enjoined from the platform or distributing certain software applications than it is for the platform whose ownership but not content or speech is being directly regulated. (The law doesn’t fine TikTok it fines the people providing services to TikTok. Their speech rights may be more relevant in this case.)
I also see why people are interpreting my comment to mean that because it’s a restriction on my speech it’s not constitutional because that’s how people usually act on the Internet. But I don’t and didn’t. What I said was it was a restriction on my speech and I believe that’s more of interesting case than the restriction on TikTok’s speech. The ramification of that is that the courts would adjudicate the free speech restriction at an appropriate scrutiny level and determine whether that restriction is allowable. As we all know, some restrictions are allowable and constitutional. Others aren’t.
It’s not unreasonable, wild, or strange to point out that there’s a restriction on speech here, and to point out that conflict needed to be resolved to determine constitutionality.
Most are handled at the district level, if the court felt there was no legal issue at play, they would have denied cert. Their opinion did end up being per curiam which suggests the court feels clearly about the case, but does not suggest they never felt there was an issue worth arguing.
> What I said was it was a restriction on my speech
I don't agree that it is, though. The restriction is on where you cannot put your speech[0], not on the speech itself. If there was nowhere that you could put your speech (or if the available avenues became much much much smaller in reach), then I would say that your speech is being restricted.
But that's not the case here. You can publish that same speech on YouTube, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Twitter, and a host of others where you can reach more or less the same audience you can reach on TikTok.
You also mention elsewhere about not being permitted to download a particular app onto your phone (and/or that a service provider isn't allowed to provide it to you). That just isn't a free-speech issue at all. And besides, if you have an Android phone, you absolutely still can install the TikTok app on the phone, because Android allows sideloading. If you have an iPhone and can't sideload, then your beef is with Apple, not with the US government. Beyond that, www.tiktok.com still works just fine, and will still work fine even if/when it ends up hosted on infra owned by non-US companies.
[0] Note that I did not say it is a restriction on where you can put your speech; it is a specific restriction on where you cannot, which I think is an important distinction.
It’s a restriction either way. Whether it’s a reasonable one or one that meets elevated scrutiny is a separate second question. Your points are arguing that question and are reasonable context for that debate.
The government isn’t banning TikTok, the law only requires a change in ownership. The current owners are choosing to performatively shut down in an attempt to bully their way through that requirement
The US need not restrict any of your speech. You’re not directly communicating with any of TikTok’s users when you post to it, TikTok is. In the Internet age, even apparent one-way communication is handshakes upon handshakes. Consider this: You’re free to send whatever messages you want to ByteDance. They’re just not allowed to reply (or have anyone reply on their behalf). The app is a useless binary blob if it can’t set up a TLS connection.
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company
This is only true if you assume the US is the only market that matters. But TikTok is very much an international phenomenon, and selling would likely harm the company far more than a couple billion. Firstly it would give another company everything they need to run a global competitor to TikTok, including software, infrastructure and userbase. Secondly it might encourage other countries to also force TikTok to sell.
Giving in here would be the beginning of the end of TikTok and could well be argued to be a violation of the company's fiduciary duty to shareholders. It would be the ultimate version of chasing short-term gains by selling the long-term future.
Interesting position. I wonder if another country could just force Musk to divest himself of Twitter in the same way. Could solve a lot of headaches that way. Maybe the EU could force the issue.
Depends on the political power of the entity and it's existing laws.
In your example, Musk could stop the app in the EU, much like TT is/was doing.
With this said, is the EU law written like the long standing US laws that give the TT law the power it has? If they have to enact new laws that would conflict with its member states wishes/dealings with other nations, expect it go to nowhere.
Possibly they could force him to divest from whatever legal entity Twitter operates under in that country, or force Twitter to stop operating in that country, but they would have no authority over the US corporation.
It won't. It would be fantastic if the EU banned Meta or X. Instead they're suddenly scared of continuing to fine them for their endless illegal data harvesting and gatekeeping to cozy up to Trump.
That's somewhat of a myth that lets these companies off easy, there's no ruling that says you have to maximize profit at all costs, or at all to an extent. The sole motivator is greed.
The former does not imply the latter. Look at Bezos, he spent years re-investing in Amazon to provide long-term financial benefits to his shareholders. Pressure for short-term gains comes from shareholders on Wall St, it’s not a fundamental property of shareholders.
It's a complete myth used by the greedy to justify corporate greed. The only way someone would ever be succesfully prosecuted for this is if they'd clearly intentionally crash the company. Go do a search, you won't find a single other prosecution.
I really hope this changes your mindset. The number go up mentality is purely a result of avarice from those enacting it, it has 0 to do with any laws, it's all personal greed.
"Shut down in the US" not shut down everywhere, if I'm not mistaken. It also doesn't seem like an obvious violation of their fiduciary duty. The eventual growth in all other jurisdictions could easily be claimed to be worth more than the sale price, and it could also be argued that selling to US holders would harm the platform internationally.
This does not make sense, it is like saying that requiring bezos to sell his newspapers is not a free speech issue (I might or might not support such action as I am not a free speech absolutist)
>"Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders"
Because seems insane to think that only because U.S says that Bytedance need to be divest or be banned, that any company will prefer to divest... And if the company doesn't do it, it's because of "hidden reasons"
everything… the world does not revolve solely around USA. the EU should ban all US social media companies too unless they are sold to one of EU countries, that makes sense, right?
You joke, but with the power these companies have over peoples minds (enough people to sway elections) it is a reality we may be going towards; each power constellation a different social media universe.
TikTok has the power to sway any election how they want. The data available to them about what reels sways what people in what direction is immense. The only question is if they are doing it.
In 20 years I expect either democracy to vanish, or algorithmic social media to be widely banned, or control over algorithmic social media to be viewed more like control over nuclear weapons...
This is like saying that closing all churches of a religion is not a big deal as the people can perfectly pray by themselves. (Also since they can pray in their head why not making that religion's prayers illegal to speak aloud)
If you used to assemble at a public park, and the city closes the park entirely to turn it into something else, does that violate your right to assemble too?
Even if it was the town square, if the property went from public to private ownership property ownership laws trump your free speech laws. You cannot come on to my properly and say whatever you want, more so you can't say it's not trespassing because of freedom of speech.
If the city sold the public property with the specific intent of having a private entity stop protected speech they were powerless to stop then yes, it would be a free speech issue
I'm not buying this drivel - the company stands to make way more than one rushed and limited buyout would garner.
Your argument is a false dichotomy, and it's made in bad faith. You argue that they should have taken a 10B pay day, meanwhile they are alive today and arguable worth over 100B.
That would be if they were American, even if they were not Chinese, not every country puts shareholders capitalism above everything else a company is suppose to decide upon.
But those running corporations are fiduciaries - the have a legal and ethical obligation to their shareholders. If those shareholders want to not maximize profits and have other objectives, then that's totally fine and then the managements obligations are to those aims of the shareholders.
> pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue
A lot of folks here are saying that the TT ban had nothing to do with free speech. A couple of indirect rhetorical questions that might be relevant to help illuminate opinions about TT:
1. If there were a single newspaper (in the pre-internet era) that developed and printed a lot of reporting with a particular political outlook and was the home of many columnists known for being the premier thinkers with that outlook, and a law were passed that had nothing to do with the content but had the effect of shutting down that paper, and only that paper, would this be a speech issue?
2. If a political rally were assembling to petition for redress of their grievances, and a law were passed that told them they could say what they wanted but the rally was only allowed to occur in a specific field 30 miles outside the city and 3 miles from the nearest paved road, would this be a speech issue?
3. Given that deadtree-books-in-physical-libraries are not the primary point of reference for most people anymore, if you wanted to block access to certain kinds of information and/or make a statement about doing so, what action would you take in the 21st century to do the equivalent of a book burning? And would this be a speech issue?
There are obvious and easy things you can point out about how the TT law is different from each of those three scenarios, don't @ me about that. But it seems to me that most people who are serious (or, publicly serious, which is a little different) about supporting the TT ban give reasons for it that would be inconsistent with their answers to one or more of those three questions.
(1) Doesn't match the situation at all, because the law didn't require the paper to shutdown - it required a foreign company to divest so that it is US-owned, and the paper could continue operations as normal.
That's a pretty substantial difference.
(2) Also doesn't match the situation, there is no requirement that TikTok restrict the reach or audience of their content in any way AFAIK.
(3) The situation is more akin to "foreign government owns the local library, and can decide based on the identity of the person walking in which books the person is allowed to see and check out" - seems obviously problematic at least /if they do that/
As many have pointed out it is not only titok's free that is in question, but rather the free speech of its users.
As an analogy you could imagine that all the people in the cases above are neonazi pedos and you might conclude that they do not deserve free speech, but the point of the parent is that in all of those cases the free speech of the people was being infringed upon (the question is whether that is justified or not)
Which of these examples includes the parts about foreign control? This is the primary issue as far I was aware. The chinese state does not have first amendment protections because they are not american citizens.
I don't remember the last time either party called out their colleagues for questionable use of executive orders, but to do so would require principles, and we haven't seen those in decades either.
I downvoted your comment because you're wrong. The constitution defines treason pretty clearly, you're not going to get a treason conviction without the US being in a legally and officially declared war with China. There has never been a treason conviction for any act committed after WW2, the last time the US was officially in a declared war. The Rosenberg's selling nuke secrets, the Walkers who decrypted Navy communications for the Soviets, those guys who went over to the Taliban or ISIS... all highly illegal but NONE of it was treason.
Furthermore your comment is poorly thought out. Impeaching Trump would be very bad for the popularity of Republican senators, anybody should be aware of that regardless of how you personally feel about the people involved.
Colloquially "treason" fits many of trump's actions, and the comment did hedge and mention "high crimes and misdemeanors" which trump has certainly been guilty of before (but I'm not convinced he is here)
Despite my own feelings on the ban, this kind of royal court politics is the worst potential outcome. Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path. Not to mention the prosecutorial discretion may be creating massive liability that the new administration could use to extract favors from some of our largest tech companies.
>Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path
I don't understand why this is not the primary takeaway. Regardless of the specifics of this issue, it is objectively a huge power grab for a president to vow to not enforce a law that had bipartisan approval of both the legislative and judiciary branches.
> Regardless of the specifics of this issue, it is objectively a huge power grab for a president to vow to not enforce a law that had bipartisan approval of both the legislative and judiciary branches.
Isn't that the road we've been walking down for a while now with the proliferation of executive orders?
I'm not a fan of this outcome either, but it doesn't strike me as a revolutionary departure from current norms.
Executive orders have historically been a way to get things done when the law is ambiguous. It has not, as far as I know, been used to try to directly contradict existing law that has been upheld by the judiciary branch. I don't even know how that would be legal - if it were then it upends literally the entire basis of our government.
We're essentially saying the president is a dictator - which I know is what the current president wants, but I sure hope the rest of the country doesn't.
> Executive orders have historically been a way to get things done when the law is ambiguous. It has not, as far as I know, been used to try to directly contradict existing law that
Isn't this the case with the federal government not enforcing its own marijuana sale, possession, and use laws for at least a decade now (in states that have legalized or decriminalized it), across several presidents from both parties? I don't think it's ambiguous what's supposed to happen legally when it comes to Schedule I controlled substances.
The federal government deciding to bring charges or not are a completely different matter from an executive order. If you can point to an executive order that "legalizes" marijuana when there are laws explicitly making it illegal, cite away. It would be news to me.
I think this is different. I generally feel like executive orders are 1) used to take some kind of affirmative step that the dysfunction in congress is blocking 2) have some level of defensible legal theory. This feels like the opposite. My understanding of the 90 day extension is that it's supposed to be there to allow a deal to close, but there is no evidence I've seen of a deal being worked on so the legal theory seems to be really flimsy. Disregarding a law, while not unprecedented, is not a great sign given some of the incoming administration statements on a ton of other topics.
>My understanding of the 90 day extension is that it's supposed to be there to allow a deal to close
It is also important to recognize that Trump isn't just talking about invoking the 90 day extension. He is promising companies they won't be held responsible for the fines they should be accruing for violating the law before he even takes office.
Biden is still the president and he’s not enforcing the law. It’s not clear to me that the president can’t grant an extension later once all the statutory requirements are met. What’s the difference between one day and say 10 days?
Putting that aside, the legal theory here—where an exception is there for this purpose and we’re quibbling about its application—is nowhere close to “flimsy” when it comes to constraints on executive prosecutorial discretion.
Biden's ability to enforce the law seems to be pretty constrained given the amount of time left in his term. Like asking Garland to start a prosecution isn't exactly practical. I think it's also worth noting that TikTok was complying with the ban until they were given a signal by the incoming administration that they weren't planning on enforcing it.
The text of the law isn't totally unambiguous, but I still think it's quite clear that the conditions where a 90 day extension could be granted aren't being met, so we'll have to agree to disagree on how flimsy it is.
Because not all presidents have served for two full terms. Examining things while ignoring the time period over which they happened does not a meaningful analysis make.
It depends on what happens after the litigation over it. It will be a revolutionary departure if the law continues to not be enforced, after the courts demand it be, if they do.
Couldn't agree more. Each incoming administration since Bush has only expanded executive power, despite decrying its usage in the admin they replaced. This is a very predictable outcome even when looking ahead from 20 years ago, and its easy to see where things will stand in another 20 years.
The current norm that comes to mind is Biden trying to cancel student debt, to which the SC said no.
It's nothing new in that it's something that should have been decided by Congress, not the executive. But I think it's new for the executive to ignore the SC like that. Any counter examples?
This should be a lesson: most prosecution and enforcement is discretionary.
This isn't a power grab. That already happened when the Supreme Court invented out of thin air the idea of presidential immunity. There was no basis for that.
Supreme Court justices are political operatives and the conservative supermajority has gone on a spree of overturning precedent and inventing law on a scale not seen since Marbury v Madison.
“Historical tradition” as a legal doctrine is completely invented. “Major Questions Doctrine” is a massive power grab over the other two branches. Presidential immunity is simply the “unitary executive” doctrine, also completely invented.
The law has a provision permitting the President to grant 90 day exceptions. Trump has indicated he'll sign one tomorrow. This isn't going around the law, it's just the law as written. We can debate whether the law was good or bad, but this is an outcome the law directly supports.
Except it doesn't sound like he's satisfied any of the criteria, unless he's promising to buy it himself:
(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has
been identified with respect to such application;
(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing
such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect
to such application; and
(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agree-
ments to enable execution of such qualified divestiture
during the period of such extension
His administration will lie, because TikTok has made it clear they will not divest in order to stay in the USA.
But so what? His administration, and he himself, lied about a bunch of stuff during his previous term, and what happened? Nothing. Never tried, never convicted (he was impeached, but so what?)
We do not have a mechanism for dealing with a president or administration that is willing to just lie. Even if the SCOTUS were to determine that the administration did in fact lie about certifying those things, so what? Nothing will happen.
(A) is intentionally vague and deferential. The possibility of a Trump Presidency was in everyone’s mind in drafting; he’s not a guy you tell what to do, he’s a guy you give discretion to with an opportunity to blame unsatisfactorily deferential third parties.
It says the conditions of the extension must be certified to Congress. That means the deal is identified, has been significantly executed, and legally binding. I doubt Trump has any of that, which is probably why he’s resorting to an executive order.
More worryingly he stated in his Truth social post that he’s seeking 50% ownership. That doesn’t meet the definition of divestiture in this bill, since China would still effectively steer operations, including content recommendations.
He's not resorting to an executive order to ignore the law. He's using the loophole in the law that allows him to grant a 1-time 90 day lift of the ban, given that he certifies that certain conditions have been met.
The conditions have not been met, but he will lie and state that to his satisfaction, they have. Nothing will happen to challenge that except some noise from a couple of Democratic senators.
Sure, the loophole is a part of the law, as I (and others) stated. Congress passed the law, which included a simple and easy way for a president to suspend it once of 90 day, with weak and unenforceable requirements to invoke it. Given that this is an unusual clause to have in a law, I feel comfortable calling it a loophole.
That's not a loophole. It was intentionally designed the way it's been written to be used the way Trump is using it--to give the President leverage and the ability to save face for Beijing.
It's a potentially successful power grab because the law isn't widely supported by the populace. Trivial to say "those eggheads can pass what they like, I will protect you from them"
There is no way the President can commit that these services will not accrue massive fines throughout his non-enforcement period.
And actually your read is wrong: the President does have an obligation to enforce laws, it's just in practice there are all sorts of ways one can effectively bury this obligation under claims of different prioritization. They are not really allowed to come out and just say: "I am choosing not to enforce this law because I disagree with it."
> the President does have an obligation to enforce laws
This is only true as far as other people are ready to keep the president in check. I only have the surface knowledge of US politics, but from the outside, it seems like the American institutions that were supposed to balance the executive power are all being quite successfully sabotaged.
The Executive Branch (President, White House) has a responsibility to execute the law as legislated by the Legislative Branch (Congress) and judged by the Judicial Branch (Supreme Court) if applicable.
Trump is citing House Resolution 8038[1], Division D, Section 2, subsection A, paragraph 3[2] which states (emphasis mine):
>(3) EXTENSION.—With respect to a foreign adversary controlled application, the President may grant a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days with respect to the date on which this subsection would otherwise apply to such application pursuant to paragraph (2), if the President certifies to Congress that—
>(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
>(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
>(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
In plain English, this means Trump once he is President will have authority to order a one-time up-to 90-day extension to enforcing the ban if TikTok can present evidence that they are in the process of selling to an American entity.
If TikTok cannot present the evidence or they still do not complete a sale within the 90-day extension, the ban will apply and must be enforced by the President.
As the law in question was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President (Biden), the President (Biden and Trump) cannot overrule or otherwise refuse the law with an Executive Order. The President must enforce and act within the powers vested in him by the law.
It is questionable if Trump's claim of not penalizing violators of the law prior to an approved 90-day extension is legal; the law allows no such powers to the President.
> It is questionable if Trump's claim of not penalizing violators of the law prior to an approved 90-day extension is legal; the law allows no such powers to the President.
The president has the power to pardon, which could be interpreted in that way.
I'm no legal scholar, but I think offering the pardon up front with the intention of circumventing the law would itself have been a crime up until the recent July supreme court ruling that now appears to make it perfectly legal: absolute immunity for all official acts including pardons.
Yes, the legal question was decided last year by the Supreme Court (and it will work in all Presidents' favors going forward, Trump included). The question of duty however lies with Congress. The Executive Branch is tasked with executing the laws passed by Congress, and Congress always has the option of impeaching a President who refuses his duty to execute and enforce the law.
>To be impeached, a President or other federal official must have committed one of the violations described by the Constitution as “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” But history shows that if a President is to be impeached, the biggest factor may be political will — whether members of a President’s own party are willing to turn against him, and whether enough members of Congress believe that trying to remove the President is worth the risk of losing popular support.
>To impeach an official, the House of Representatives must pass articles of impeachment, which formally accuse the President of misbehavior. Once the House votes to impeach, the Senate must hold a trial to decide if the President should be removed from office.
So no, Trump (nor Clinton nor Johnson for that matter) was/were not impeached. They were all acquitted of the charges presented and even foregoing that the Senate ultimately lacked the political will to impeach them.
They were all tried for impeachment but they were not "impeached". To be impeached means they were found guilty of the charges (article(s) of impeachment) levied. It's like calling someone acquitted of murder a murderer, that's not how this works at all.
And yet the paragraphs I cited from the very article you keep linking dispute that statement.
Again, I cite:
>To be impeached, a President or other federal official must have committed one of the violations described by the Constitution as “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” But history shows that if a President is to be impeached, the biggest factor may be political will — whether members of a President’s own party are willing to turn against him, and whether enough members of Congress believe that trying to remove the President is worth the risk of losing popular support.
>To impeach an official, the House of Representatives must pass articles of impeachment, which formally accuse the President of misbehavior. Once the House votes to impeach, the Senate must hold a trial to decide if the President should be removed from office.
Further, citing Clause 6 of Article 1 from the Constitution[1] (emphasis mine):
>The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.
A President (or former President) is only "impeached" if he is found guilty by the Senate of the charge(s) levied against him by the House. To date that has never occured, all impeachment trials against a President to date have concluded in acquittals.
Factually, there has never been an impeached President in American history.
The use of the term "impeached" to mean a President tried for impeachment is confusing and misleading, perhaps deliberately so given the individuals concerned in all the impeachment trials.
"The most recent was the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump."
"What does impeachment mean?
Impeachment means charging a public official with misconduct. Like in the justice system, charges alone do not lead to consequences. Instead, there is a trial, during which the official is convicted or acquitted."
While there have been demands for the impeachment of most presidents, only three — Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1999 and Donald Trump in 2019— have actually been impeached. A second impeachment of Donald Trump was adopted, making him the first US President to be impeached twice.
I reiterate that "impeached" means to be convicted of charges levied in (an) article(s) of impeachment.
Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1[1] of the Constitution (also cited in your links) states (emphasis mine):
>[The President] shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
For there to even be a question of a presidential pardon applying to impeachments that necessitated such a clause, being impeached implies being convicted. The Justice Department considers pardons without convictions as "highly unusual"[2].
I thus reiterate: There has never been an impeached President to date, and the use of the term "impeached" to mean a President merely tried for impeachment is very misleading. Again, you don't call someone merely tried for (let alone acquitted of) murder a murderer.
>In plain English, this means Trump once he is President will have authority to order a one-time up-to 90-day extension to enforcing the ban if TikTok can present evidence that they are in the process of selling to an American entity.
There is zero chance he can satisfy A, B, and C tomorrow. Zero.
I agree, the realistic chance of TikTok providing evidence of an active and ongoing sale process when they hadn't entertained even the mere thought of a sale is astronomically low.
Then again, reality can be weird sometimes. Never say never until the fat lady sings.
Why are they not able to not enforce the law? The right for law enforcing entities and persons to not enforce the law due to personal discretion has been upheld many times in the past. Cops don't have to do it, prosecutors don't have to do it, not even judges have to do it although they almost always do because otherwise it creates friction between prosecution and the judge and the judge is likely to get booted for it eventually because successful prosecutions is how law enforcement and courts earn most of their money and unsuccessful arrests and prosecutions is how they lose money. I don't see how or why the executive branch is under any obligations to enforce any laws, feds don't often enforce marijuana laws in legal states despite being federally illegal still is an easy example.
The only real check against the president/executive branch is the legislative branch having the power to impeach the president and get them replaced, or by legislatively dismantling or changing the internal rules of a department. They lose their jobs, but aren't liable for anything or breaking any laws I know of. Just the same as states can boot out judges or prosecutors if they don't like how they operate, and police departments can fire officers if they don't like how they operate. At no point did cops or prosecutors or judges break the law by not enforcing the law, they merely piss off the state that is funding them and now losing additional money due to lack of enforcement and prosecution, and I don't know how the president or executive branch is any different.
Go look it up instead of having me explain it to you. You're just verbosely asserting your opinion, and at least in the US, your opinion does not map to how the law actually works.
US Constitution Section 2 Article 3: "[The President]... shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed..."
So when past presidents have said they wont prosecute marijuana laws, what was that?
Your argument reminds me of the clip where the guy who had his license revoked for DUI is surprised when the car starts anyway. Just because a law says a thing, a person still has to action something. If the boss says don't do it, you don't do it. Don't rightly matter if the law says you should.
> So when past presidents have said they wont prosecute marijuana laws, what was that?
Can you cite an example? If you're talking about the Biden admin, here is what the AG said:
"I do not think it the best use of the Department’s limited resources to pursue prosecutions of those who are complying with the laws in states that have legalized and are effectively regulating marijuana..."
I.e. exactly what I said is defensible in certain scenarios
– and indeed must be defended, potentially in court. It is not POTUS simply saying "I won't do it."
I'm not sure how you can hold that position; the AG is the arm of the president. If the AG says "I won't do it", then that is, by extension, the president saying the same.
And I don't think Garland's longer, winding way of saying what he said doesn't reduce to "I won't do it".
So under this logic, the president can decide not to enforce the laws that require they and their family, friends, associates, and allies to pay taxes?
Still not quite right, not in a modern state. Law has always been sovereign power, and in the modern period the entire state is the sovereign (think Leviathan.) It is strange that Americans seem to think these are personal powers.
> the law as agreed upon by Congress designates it as a personal power
No, it does not.
The extension is discretionary, the liability is not. (And the liability specifically accrues to the operators of the app stores and hosting companies.)
In context, you're both wrong. You're correct that § 2(G)(3)(A)(i) and (ii) explicitly name Bytedance and TikTok [1], so it is not up to presidential discretion to add more apps, but § 2(G)(3)(B)(ii) indicates that it is within the president's discretion to not enforce.
There are some paperwork qualifiers that for certain have not been met (the not-yet president almost certainly could not have briefed Congress as president 30 days prior) -- but they seem trivial to satisfy, and it would be pointless to initiate enforcement actions for an event nobody intends to follow through on
> but § 2(G)(3)(B)(ii) indicates that it is within the president's discretion to not enforce
Wrong.
That § lets the President designate other entities. That’s why we wrote “any of” at the top—Bytedance, TikTok or any of the things the President may designate.
Maybe I'm in over my head, but that's how I interpreted it too. It's annoying how every news source and even Wikipedia doesn't make it clear what this law does.
I'd just recommend reading the full bill. It's not that hard to understand and it's fairly short. I used a GPT to parse sections which seemed a bit complicated
Yep, that being said I'm not mad at ignoring this part.
Of all the shittyness of this bill, least of which giving the president pretty much unchecked power to ban foreign social media, the fact that it named a specific entity is to me just bad form. Law shouldn't ever include "fuck you in particular" even if the effect of the law when applied will be that.
> Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path
The very dangerous path started a long time ago, or at least that's how it feels from abroad. "He can't" followed by "He wouldn't" then "He did".
IMHO this is the reason things should be laws not weird tradition and conventions if they really matter, (same reason that the fault of things like SCOTUS upturning Roe v Wade is in Congress for never making it a law instead of just a precedent
really? cos I feel old, but as far back as I remember usa's vaunted democratic institutions have been a sideshow while the wealthy favour global militarist domination over the needs of ordinary american people.
I dunno about worse, but wildly more ridiculous. Not sure how to measure, but the scattergun disinfo is certainly another level beyond targeted lies.
maybe we need to undermine it? if the institutions of 'democracy' that tower over us are not working we might need to build some from the ground up that do.
It's both. It gives the President the authority to designate an app as controlled by a foreign adversary, forcing it to be banned or sold. It also names TikTok in particular. I didn't know about the second part until I read the original text* just now, since every summary missed that, but I'm not happy about that part either.
> The "uncensoring" is done by the executive branch.
Interestingly, the executive branch is still under Joe Biden at the moment.
TikTok content has changed in tone and tenor since President-Elect trump's policy reversal. Looks like he'll have ByteDance working for him like he did Russian fake news during his last regime.
Yes, and what's even worse to me is Trump's explicit motivation for supporting TikTok now. Like there are some interesting philosophical, moral, and maybe legal arguments against the TikTok ban but what he's seized on is simply that TikTok was a useful tool (as far as he's been told) for gaining votes. Keeping it around just benefits him politically and personally, so that's it.
Mechanistically, the law applies to the app, not the service. It's not clear to me that serving videos to users that already have the app is a violation of the law.
Yeah, a.1.B, (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
The provision requires the president to tell congress that a deal is in the works. Either the executive order makes no such claim and is unlawful, or there really is a deal in the works, or the president is unlawfully making an untrue claim.
There is likely to be no punishment for either of those unlawful outcomes, but they are still unlawful.
I won't argue against the idea that Trump is on a dangerous political path based around patronage and personal favors, but the law does grant him the authority to give TikTok a 90 day extension. If TikTok has not sold by then and he fails to enforce the law, that's a bigger problem.
> Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority
I wonder if there was actually a bipartisan majority in favor of getting rid of TikTok?
Yes, the bill passed by a bipartisan majority, but TikTok was not the only thing in that bill. Previous attempts to advance a standalone TikTok bill had failed to get majority support.
This time it got attached to a bill that provided $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, $26 billion in aid for Israel, and $1 billion of additional humanitarian assistance for food, medical supplies, and clean water for Gaza. There was also $8 billion for security in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.
A lot of Congress considered that aid (or parts of it) to be critical, and it had taken a lot of time to get there. I bet as a result of that a lot of Congress members would vote "yes" even if they disagreed with the TikTok part.
When Biden signed it he spoke about the importance of all the aid provisions and didn't mention TikTok at all.
Only four more years of this stuff to go. In other news Trump coin has plummeted by a few billion as Melania launched her own meme coin with a ~4bn market cap.
> Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority
It was a rider tacked onto a must-pass bill. There’s nothing about the manner it was passed that makes it special or particularly blessed. This was classic congressional sausage-making.
I'm not saying the extension is unlawful. The person I replied to seemed to imply an addendum to a law should be less enforceable than the primary focus of the law. I was simply addressing that statement.
I didn’t say it was unenforceable, just pointing it there’s nothing special about which parties voted for it out by how much.
But also at the end of the day the executive branch has sole power to enforce it or not, and if the president doesn’t want to enforce it there’s really nothing Congress or the courts can do about it other than impeaching him, which realistically won’t happen. The two parties have captured the system of three-way checks and balances, and a cult of personality has captured the party with trifecta power. That’s the game, folks. We live in an autocracy now.
How do you figure? The explicit domain of enforcement is the executive branch, so if the new guy coming in says something akin to "They've made their decision, let them enforce it" that's somewhat by design even if you may not agree with it.
The system was designed with these checks and balances in mind explicitly.
> if the new guy coming in says something akin to "They've made their decision, let them enforce it" that's somewhat by design even if you may not agree with it
It’s absolutely not. Which is why non-enforcement doesn’t release liability; if you break a law that the President declines to enforce, people can sue the government to force enforcement today and the next President can enforce tomorrow.
The ultimate consequence of that interpretation would mean that the executive does whatever it wants since all enforcement of court rulings or laws fall to the executive.
Yes, this is how government works if the judicial + legislative branches have no enforcement power. That is not at all how this government works however. I suggest taking an American civics course if you want to learn more.
Yeah, I think that's bad. Some level of prosecutorial discretion is obviously needed but furthering a state of affairs where laws are meaningless depending on if you have the favor of the executive is dangerous. The checks and balances in the passing of the law make sense but there should be a strong norm towards actually enforcing things and pushing the legislative branch to change the law if there is something wrong with it or the judiciary to rule on if it is actually legal.
There's anecdotal evidence that something funky is going on in the background. More so than usual.
A handful of very prominent creators critical of the US (or other) governments have had their accounts just disappear. The algorithm is also showing decidedly different type of content.
I quite dislike the hysterical rhetoric too. That being said, I get why people ascribe it to Donald Trump. I will never forget turning on the TV on Janurary 6th to see the President of the United States inciting a riot on government property that had already killed multiple people.
This is going to be a pretty miserable administration and I expect a complete reprieve of the "stop the steal" bitching and moaning that we sat through the first time around.
Exactly. We could have had a discussion about whether a executive order can override house of representatives had such order be issued by Trump post inauguration yet overriding it prior to that should be the bigger deal here.
It's unfortunately not news that a Trump presidency doesn't respect the mores of the office.
The president can pardon people for breaking federal law and can stop the enforcement of federal law[1] so as president elect it makes sense that he can effectively neuter any federal law short of congress deciding he has gone to far and impeaching and removing him.
[1]i.e. federal agencies no longer prosecute personal marijuana use by executive order
Looking this up, is this [1] the bill? Cuz it turns out this bill was sponsored by a Republican and passed during a Republican controlled House in 2023, by a supermajority 352 - 65.
People always blame Democrats for things that Republicans do.
It also passed a Democrat controlled Senate and was signed by a Democrat president, who then elected to not even attempt to enforce the law today, his one day to do so. Either of those could have blocked it. It's at the very least bipartisan and the talk at the time of passage was that the Dems could deliver on Rep promises. Neither side seems to want to be the ones holding the unpopular bag.
You are correct. Our entire government looks like a clown show over this. National security issues that we couldn’t see banned it and now it’s still here. I better see some members of the legislature fight this misappropriation of power that was upheld by the Supreme Court. If a president can come in and hand wave away a law just passed and implemented(by a huge majority mind you), then the rule of law is gone. I hope that Cook and Pichai stand firm and not let these apps back into the store until the government fixes this shit show through the proper channels. Those who flip flop their votes should have their reasons spread across traditional and online media. If our entire government will flip flop on an issue so quickly after the Supreme Court suppressed the 1A a little further, I feel the corpo state has taken us another step towards the cyberpunk dystopia that I prefer to cosplay in my games not reality.
Republicans probably love to see Trump ignoring Congress even if it's a law they passed. Now you've essentially got a large chunk of the population (youth especially) cheering that Trump saved the day by acting like a dictator. Gives him opportunity to do more of the same.
And there is always a Hasbara drone who lies, deflects, and conflates Israel with Jewry so they can insinuate that any criticism of Israel == antisemitism.
AIPAC is funded by Israel, and by it's own description AIPAC is an organisation made up of pro-Israel zionists. Oh, and the "I" in AIPAC stands for "Israel".
Oh yeah "immigration". Can't wait for the immigration discourse in 10 years time, when people all over the world, rich and poor, christian, muslim and jew, white and black, are being displaced because they're homes are literally uninhabitable because the frequency of out of control weather events has gone up.
Will you allow "climate refugees" into your neighbourhood? Will you be a climate refugee yourself?
But TikTik is an important forum for the people of the world to solve our thorny issues! In the days before social media, our world was a mess. Today we are awash in sage, well-reasoned discourse: a new Age of Enlightenment! What fools we'd be to tinker with this valuable information ecosystem. /s
The incentive structures inherent in modern politics encourages all politicians to alternately champion or repudiate unworkable solutions to problems that themselves are likely exaggerated or fabricated from whole cloth.
The parties are just brands competing against each other to appeal to different segments of the same market, offering essentially the same product in different packaging. Getting your competitor to adopt a market position that you've already prepared a response to is a neat trick.
This is par for the course, and I don't understand why anyone would expect anything different.
As if that would even have any effect in that situation. No amount of audits and rules would prevent TikTok from collecting data and manipulating the public opinion.
Why not monitor it? Create thousands of read-only accounts that "prefer" content with all kinds of ideological viewpoints and statistically analyze whether the algorithm is being biased to promote certain viewpoints. I'm not smart enough to implement something like that but it sounds like a solvable problem to me.
I thought about this too. In no way do I suggest it's an actual solution, but I wonder if some kind of reporting could be used as leverage to help appease US leaders towards a solution that doesn't require banning the app or handing it over to them.
I don't think I need a citation to say that it's feasible for China to inject malware via the TikTok app on people's phones. Would it be difficult? I imagine so. But, I think the risk is such that the onus is to prove that it's not possible, not the other way around. China is a hostile power and an authoritarian regime. It's a different risk calculus than Facebook, which is not controlled by a dangerous foreign adversary.
The alleged national security implications of Tiktok are not based on spreading propaganda, but on gaining access to information about Americans. A privacy law would address that issue, as well as protected Americans' privacy from other companies, regardless of where they are based.
> The alleged national security implications of Tiktok are not based on spreading propaganda, but on gaining access to information about Americans
What? Doesn't the opinion itself literally say that the threat of "covert manipulation of the content" was one of the government's justification? Never mind the millions of times that Chinese control over the content people view has been brought up as a rationale both inside of Congress and outside? Haven't these been beaten to death already?
There is no "algorithm": the policies of a service like Tiktok are spread throughout its entirety. The only meaningful way to "release the algorithm" would be to release the whole source code.
Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means; and there is no way to verify that the released source code corresponds to what is actually being run.
It would be great if there was some way to verify that a service you're using matches some published code, but we don't have that.
> Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means
Releasing the code does help. Joe can't open up his car and fix the engine control code, but the local repair shop can and they can also understand it and raise to a journalist "huh this manufacturer pushed a new version that'll make it stop driving if you service it at the workshop of a competitor" or whatever the car equivalent of this tiktok algorithm concern would be
The second problem you mention, I fully agree with: verifying whatever they publish. Client source code, you barely even need because it'll just be a front end for what the servers decide to show you. Verifying that what they say the server code is, is really what the server runs, that's the hard bit. But claiming to be open could be a start; something we can find discrepancies in and push for further openness
Whether this will solve the national security concerns and help with the youth mental health crisis that's often linked to social media, that's all way beyond my expertise and I have no opinion on the matter. Just that, in general, not everyone needs to understand everything in the world for it to be useful to publish
The code has been available for years. Bytedance published their recommendation engine as an arxiv paper in 2021 and the code is available on Github, https://github.com/bytedance/monolith. The power is in the weights of the live-trained model.
DEM looks bad now bc they just lost power. DEM did not solve it earlier bc an unpopular party can't do hard/unpopular things. GOP may have a shot, if they will be as popular as they looked in November. End of day it's about popularity and power.
The outgoing Biden administration actually stated that they wouldn’t enforce the ban for just one day, choosing to leave implementation of the law to the incoming Trump administration.
Efforts to save TikTok have been bipartisan (“Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.”) and efforts to enforce the ban have also been bipartisan (“Democrats had tried on Wednesday to pass legislation that would have extended the deadline, but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked it. Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that TikTok has had ample time to find a buyer.”)
Trump was banging the drum regarding banning TikTok, then changes his tune in the 11th hour, and will now use this to come out as the hero and savior. Not to mention how many republicans supported this.
But also scary how much people are willing to swallow
Edit: wanted to elaborate but wasn't sure how to put it best. Then two comments down there is exactly what I'm looking for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759761 So many people (in absolute numbers at least, maybe not in relative numbers) seem to just eat it up like kids eat candy
Anecdotal, but I see a ton of people who were anti-trump and protesting just a couple years ago celebrating and thanking Trump for saving tiktok and making them happy again. It's wild.
If someone banned youtube or HN, I'd be upset, but I wouldn't be depressed and suicidal over it like some of these people were publicly
My 12 year old daughter was cranky this morning about Tik Tok being banned, then walked in ecstatic it was working again. I’m like “I wonder if Trump fixed Tik Tok,” and sure enough. She gave me a high five. My 6 year old son is already MAGA because the boys in his class love Trump.
Like inflation, this was a problem Trump created and now he’s getting credit for fixing it.
She watches videos about ancient Egypt, her friends lip syncing to songs, and knitting. The content on Tik Tok is way better than the trash on network TV or Hollywood movies.
I consider the Chinese oversight a plus. It’s much more sensitive to Asian values for the most part.
There are no “Asian values” on TikTok. TikTok is banned in China.
If it had values your 12yo wouldn’t be on it as Douyin has an age restriction of 18+, and prenatal consent if 13-17. Under 13 is prohibited. It also has time restriction of 40 minutes per day for 13-14yo and only accessible between 6am till 10pm. Not only that content is highly censored and restricted.
But keep living in a bubble that TikTok is totally fine.
I don't have a 12 year old (yet) but my 8 year old has mood swings when they're too cold, too hot, have a headache, the tv remote doesn't work, their tablet runs out of time, their tablet runs out of battery, when they're hungry, thirsty, and/or tired (the preceding is non-inclusive, sometimes they have a mood swing for no perceptible reason).
Yeah, but the times I've seen parents actually address/redirect bad behavior or of their kids in constructive ways are few and far apart, many sort of gave up or go to the other extreme. Small kids lack a great deal of emotional empathy and can wear a decent adult down very fast if right buttons are pushed at right time, so thats tricky to say at least. But then again its the greatest achievement in most people's lives (to raise their kids well just to be clear) so some proper effort long term should be spent here.
Good parenting consistently is hard, very hard and sometimes basically impossible, but the difference between parents who at least try hard to raise kids well and those who sort of gave up on their kids is striking (tiktok and other digital stuff is a good yardstick of overall state of this, when I see kids of other folks using it and clearly addicted I am losing all respect for those folks as parents, and its always a big bag of various failures and neglect coming along). Its heartbreaking to experience, especially the powerlessness.
Yea if I see a 4 year old with an ipad in a restaurant I lose respect for the parents. Parenting is hard, and everyone fails at some point but there are certain things I have never comprised on and social media/digital crack at a young age is one of them.
Well this attitude is why millennials are both failing to have enough kids and miserable as parents.
We had kids in our 20s and my daughter has been glued to her iPad since she was 2. Her grades are better than mine were at her age, she has artistic hobbies (makes jewelry, paints). She’s maybe a tidge slower than I was on reading, but that might be pandemic.
Note that Tik Tok is different than “social media” in that it doesn’t really allow for the gossip and backbiting within enclosed groups that typifies say Facebook. The most emotionally upsetting thing for her seems to be normal girl-girl social conflict, especially through her iMessage group chat.
Whats far more important than academic skills are social skills, how she fares on that aspect? Thats where real threat of this lies, not general population having IQ 80.
Life without good or at least normal social skills is pretty miserable in many aspects, almost can't be fixed once adult, and has much larger impact on what I call 'life success' than career can ever have.
4 year olds have always gotten some amount of TV time, right? Is it that horrible for a parent to give them the TV time at the restaurant so they aren't running around / screaming / bothering other patrons instead? (Which of course you can also judge a parent for, but then the only answer may be for one parent to have to leave with the kid).
It doesn't mean the kid is also using the iPad at home for hours on end. Or consuming anything other than Bluey / Paw Patrol / Sing 2...
> so they aren't running around / screaming / bothering other patrons
Going to a restaurant when I was a young kid was considered a treat and special occasion, and if I misbehaved, I was out of there immediately. I quickly learned to sit in my chair, eat my food, and not be disruptive.
I think people in general these days act with a higher sense of entitlement, and that translates to parents believing that it's fine for them to go to restaurants because they want to, ignoring whether or not it's appropriate for their children, somehow also believing that they "deserve a break" and their kids' disruptive behaviors in public aren't their problem. But no, screw that: if your children won't behave at restaurants, don't bring them along. If you can't find a sitter, then you don't get to go either. (If you can't afford a sitter, then you probably can't afford going out to a restaurant either.)
> ...to give them the TV time at the restaurant...
I would have less of a problem with this if the kid was using headphones (I know, risky for their ears at a young age if they also have control of the volume), or if the tablet could be kept quiet enough so I can't hear it at my nearby table. But that's rarely the case.
But hey, sure, if you can give your kid TV time at a restaurant without me having to listen to it, I guess that's fine. I think that's a poor substitute for actually teaching kids how to behave in public, but I'm not that kid's parent, and that's just my opinion.
Pretty sure I had a meltdown when my parents took away a copy of Lord of The Rings I was reading for the 4th time that week instead of doing my homework. Kids freak out about all kinds of stuff. Maybe it's more that 12 year olds are kids and not whatever bugbear you're worried about this week.
That's the relatively harmless bit! You left off "[banned for half a day], then being indoctrinated into supporting an anti-democratic despot for the rest of their lives".
Yeah, as a 12 yr old, I would've reacted completely calmly to Counterstrike being banned, or ICQ being banned, or MySpace being banned, or, worst of all, my access to lingerie models from clothing catalogues being destroyed...
She already doesn’t trust politicians, and knew that. We think he changed his mind because he was flattered by the girls lip syncing to his funny quips.
But it remains the first time in her life that a politician listened to a concern she had, and acted on it promptly to fix the problem.
I'm sorry, your SIX year old is MAGA? I mean maybe this is an America thing, but my 6 year old knows literally nothing about any politician. How are 6 year olds even aware of Trump?
Trump isn't just a politician, he's a showman. He had a TV series for years. He has effectively hijacked US media to ensure that there is constant news about him.
Looks like you’re getting downvoted, but this exactly matches my kids’ HS friends who said “now I finally get MAGA - let’s make America like it was before the Tik Tok ban!”
There isn’t too much teens really feel on a day-to-day basis with politics and this is one of them. I’m not a Trump fan at all but his ability to spin things like this and the stimulus checks will need to be studied.
I doubt a study would be helpful for anyone else, except that he had a good read on when his chances of winning were best back before 2016.
Aside from that his popularity -- and ability to lie shamelessly and have enough people ignore it and vote for him -- is wrapped up in the entity "Trump". His play book is age old.
Trump gets away with lying because he also tells truths on important issues where others tell lies to force a false consensus. People are very sensitive to this stuff.
It seems like an oversight to me that all the discussion about political impact leading up to this has focused on consumers. Statements like "Gen Z likes TikTok, so banning it risks alienating them", "Gen Z will forgot about TikTok and move on to the next thing in due time", etc.
I think this overlooks one key detail. The focal points of the new online world -- "influencers" -- rely on TikTok for the lion's share of their income. Taking away a fun toy might not radicalize someone but taking away their livelihood might.
And even if these users are a tiny fraction of a percent, they wield outsized influence (obviously). They are the new media. Risking losing these people, many of whom have been largely apolitical, seems like a huge tactical error in retrospect, and one that Trump would predictably take advantage of if given the chance.
Reddit is a lost cause. They totally got the election wrong and the day afterwards they broke their mind trying to justify the loss with whatever conspiracy theory they could come up with. Combine that with overzealous mods and you'll eventually end up in a situation where the majority of people left are just bots. Bots talking to other bots.
What I learned the hard way this cycle was that I and all the people supporting Kamala were duped into repeating 2016 all over again. The lack of a primary, all the games being played culminating in an 'anointing'. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
Anyone putting any trust into Reddit is fooling themselves. Its not only political subs, other subs are also astroturfed, they are just more subtle about it. There are plenty of examples from places everything like /r/buyitforlife(where you discover the lies after you get burned), to bigger subs like /r/technology(which push certain agendas devoid of facts). You'd have to go sub by sub and piece out the blatant lies, or you could walk away from the platform understanding that the design is fundamentally flawed and was designed for an era of the internet that no longer exists.
I vote democrat, but then I'm a rich, educated, knowledge worker coastal urban elite so I'm supposed to right?
I think the hard answer is - the Dems need to actually do things that dissatisfy people like me if they want to actually win the masses - working class, blue collar, etc voter back.
Currently they are focussed on everything other than class. Identity politics. Race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, etc. None of this is particularly threatening to people like me and is a moral good, but it should be secondary to actually helping the poor regardless of how they identify.
Left wing parties elsewhere push for more redistributive policies than the Dems ever dream of here. Instead they do hand-outs to constituencies that aren't in dire need, and already vote Dem anyway. Student loan forgiveness, EV tax credits, etc.
Meanwhile in UK & EU, even the vaguely upper end of middle class pay marginal tax rates that would make $1M/year US earners cry. This is where the revenue comes for the depth & breadth of their social programs.
Should the US go that far? Absolutely not. It would stifle innovation, growth, and what makes the US far more successful than our rich peers. But Dems need to break free of the thinking that if we just tax a few billionaires, all our problems will be solved.
This is an interesting list that 100% reflects what Republicans in my state ran on and Democrats only mentioned them when on defense (except immigration, which they clearly took point on before trump torpedoed the bipartisan effort to work on it)
> EV tax credits
These were absolutely needed to kickstart the EV market, just like oil subsidies were needed to keep the American economy moving so people and goods could get from place to place.
Left wing parties elsewhere are losing too, mostly because of immigration. Meanwhile the welfare states are collapsing in the UK, Canada, France and Germany because the birthrates and lack of economic growth can't sustain it.
I think globally a lot of rich world left wing parties made similar rhetorical mistakes. Essentially leaning into identity stuff without acknowledging working class people’s challenges.
Also to be fair they’ve been in power globally for some time and so are seen as the status quo party, and largely ran as such. People are feeling economically squeezed and therefore voting incumbents out.
So it sounds as if the left are attempting to cater to issues further up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs than the majority of the voting populace think are important.
That's interesting, because it feels like "the right" (in my experience and whatever left and right mean these days) wouldn't recognise or consider catering to anything above the two basic levels (and to be honest, the 'brutal truth' part of my own personality tells me that anything above those two basic levels is 'cream').
People who worry about the price of groceries or basic car repairs to keep their older car on the road don’t want to hear how privileged they are due to their race (they might not be a minority but they aren’t rich) / how they are destroying the planet (they aren’t flying 10x year) / that kids who took out loans for expensive private college deserve free money (they didn’t even go to college or went to state school) / how democracy is at stake / etc.
It's more than messaging when the rank & file democrats and elite voters walk, talk and breathe this line of thinking. And there are policy choices made downstream of it as well.
I would like to ask Chinese president Xi Jinping when will Google and Facebook be available in China and all the rest of the Western social apps. Can I get any clarity and assurance? Thanks.
Well fifteen years ago Google was available in China. And at that time, while the masses simply used Baidu, among the educated it was well known that Google delivered better results. And that was because Google capitulated to the censors. The government had a direct hotline into the Chinese offices of Google and could demand the search engine immediately ban certain keywords or results. At that time Baidu's censorship was quite a bit more heavy-handed than Google's. It was Google that grew tired of this arrangement and decided to quit. They first moved the operations to Hong Kong, and then later the Chinese government decided to block the Hong Kong version of Google.
As a former Google employee, during my employment I found plenty of internal blog posts from the China team at that time about this arrangement. It was amazing to me that a lot of these internal blogs simply weren't deleted because people forgot about it and storage was so cheap.
Zuckerberg already tried in 2015, went on a tour, gave obsequious speeches, spoke in Mandarin and asked Xi to give his unborn child an honorary Chinese name. Refused on both occasions.
Reminds me of the ultimatum I gave my dog last week: I told him that if he didn't stop pooping on the floor, I would punish him by pooping on the floor myself.
I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps). If America is opposed to the way China handles social media then we shouldn't seek to emulate them
> I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps).
This presumes an assumption. I don't consider the banning as a lever for ensuring US controls Tiktok as bad behavior. America has a vested interest in snooping on and having direct control over popular mediums of communication. Giving Chinese ownership access to the methods used (like the physical devices, et al), is a security issue. It's a cold war game that seems a little sophisticated for this day and age (somehow). The lack of understanding explains a lot of these wandering conversation about tangents.
My dog is a dog. He doesn't see anything wrong with pooping on the floor, so he won't be fazed if I do it too: threatening to poop on my own floor is not going to get him to stop doing it. If I follow through with my threat, not only will I be doubling up on the problem of poop on the floor, I'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for a me than it is for my dog, because we do not hold human beings to the same standards of behavior and hygiene that we expect from dogs.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Their government does not see anything wrong with violating the rights of their citizens, so they won't be fazed if we do it too: threatening to restrict access to social media in the US is not going to get them to stop doing it in China. If we follow through with our threat, not only will we be doubling up on the problem of illegitimate political restriction on public discourse, we'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for the US than it is for China, because we do not hold constitutional republics to the same standards of rule of law and respect for individual rights that we expect from authoritarian regimes.
I think you're perpetuating a false equivalence, though.
The Chinese government kicks out foreign social media because they want to censor a laundry list of topics and have near-direct control over discourse.
If we assume poor intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to prop up the market share of US/Western-owned social media companies.
But if we assume better intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to deny the Chinese government the ability to run unfettered political/social influence campaigns on US citizens. (Instead they'll have to play cat-and-mouse games on Western-owned platforms.)
Even if both intentions are there, I think this is much better justification than what the Chinese government does.
You're talking about intent, but I'm not sure I understand the relevance of intentions here. We're evaluating behavior, which remains the same irrespective of what intentions motivated it. I think it goes without saying that the Chinese government and the US government will invoke quite different rationalizations to explain their behavior, but I'm not sure that any rationalizations are sufficient to justify behavior that is bad in itself.
Or, more simply: no, intent does not matter -- you are responsible for the damage that proceeds from your purposeful actions regardless of what ideas were in your head at the time. Ends are not sufficient to justify means.
And yet you conveniently leave out the part where clearly the Chinese government desires that TikTok continue to operate in the US (under their control). Denying someone something they want is nearly the definition of punishment.
The analogy only works if the US response to banning US social media was to do something similar like banning Russian social media that had no impact on China.
As for whether the ban is legitimate or not, The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it is. We’ve banned foreign governments from owning television stations for decades.
So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's not quite correct to say that the Supreme Court ruled that the ban is legitimate. It narrowly ruled that the immediate first amendment challenge wasn't sufficient to invalidate the law under intermediate scrutiny. The only thing they were evaluating was whether the impact of the ban was biased toward any particular content, which it isn't.
They didn't rule on the overall constitutionality of the act, whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment, or anything else. Those questions might well be evaluated later.
>whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment
The petitioners made those challenges as well. 3 lower courts denied them, and SCOTUS chose not to overturns the law based on those challenges, thus upholding the constitutionality of the law.
Based on your the argument, because SCOTUS didn't rule on the constitutionality of the ban with respect to the 2nd amendment, they didn't actually declare that it was legitimate.
So yes technically you are correct, but SCOTUS certainly choose not to declare the law illegitimate, which is the most legitimating thing they are ever going to do.
>So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's just a bad analogy. Come up with a better one.
> So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
No, I think the way of thinking is that it's irrelevant whether or not China (the dog) does it. If you want to deny the Chinese government the ability to use a Chinese-owned social media platform in a certain way, then you ban it. This isn't a tit-for-tat situation at all; the US is doing something it believes is beneficial for itself; it's not simply pooping on the floor which would serve no benefit.
The overall point is that your analogy doesn't fit the current circumstances, so stop using it to argue against the TikTok ban.
The role of the US government isn't do things it believes are beneficial for itself. It's to administer the law consistently with the constitution. When it behaves in arbitrary way and implicates the rights of its own people in order to pursue geopolitical ambitions on the global stage, it is metaphorically pooping on the floor.
The constitution explicitly gives the government the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Nothing about this is arbitrary, it is merely the government catching up with new technology and bringing regulation of that technology closer in line with regulation of existing technology. Foreign governments or companies controlled by foreign governments have been prohibited from holding radio licenses since 1934.
Did you know that foreign companies are banned from owning more than 25% ownership of a tv and radio broadcast licenses in the US? I'm sure you've spent much effort looking into and trying to repeal those laws too.
China isn't your dog. What if you invited your neighbour over, and they pooped on your floor, repeatedly. And then they said you're not allowed into their house.
No, "pooping on the floor" is the US government is doing to the US, regardless of whether its ultimate aim is to punish China.
I am not willing to give the US government discretionary authority over what software I have access to in order to advance its geopolitical ambitions in relation to China.
The propaganda works well indeed. People taking sides is perhaps the saddest part of this story since the politics can be well understood with just a little review of history. You put it well in saying that none of the two are on your side. Wake up, sheeple; stand for principles, not one or the other government.
Could you potentially see an issue with both countries disconnecting their economies and communication networks? As we do this, I worry a war gets easier to start.
The straight up "shout out" in the pop-up, I almost couldn't believe my eyes.
I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional." Ironically, it probably got them huge bonus points so they know what they're doing.
Damn, this is the simplest, most accurate breakdown on what’s actually happening that I’ve come across. The incoming administration is pretty transparent in the bend toward corruption, and these folks know exactly how to manage that as a business challenge.
> I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional."
Have you been paying attention the last few weeks?
NVIDIA: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/ "As the first Trump Administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach."
Companies aren't stupid. They know that in order to be successful in today's world, you have to personally fellate Trump. Thanks to the American voters for bringing us this reality.
"Sucking up" implies there’s a meaningful choice—that firms or individuals can realistically be expected to show courage now. But voters chose this, knowingly. Blaming firms for bowing to public will misdiagnoses the issue and wastes emotional energy fighting a false battle.
Whats the realistic alternative? Standing up to Trump? The president who has explicitly said he will retaliate against firms and individuals who oppose him.
The same president who was re-elected even though everyone knew this was coming?
If this bothers you, and you want to address it, focus on identifying the real root cause and work toward changing that.
And if you genuinely believe firms would act differently, make the case. But let’s be honest—how many rational people would stand up to someone who:
- Faces no accountability,
- Has the Supreme Court and legislature backing him,
- Is in power for a second term,
- Commands an incredibly effective political machine (Fox-GOP),
- has die-hard voters behind him?
Ah, the propaganda GUI element. I distinctly remember covering it in my HCI class. Right between 'How to Design Intuitive Interfaces' and 'How to Influence Favorability Ratings with Popups.'
> I have no issue with American companies trying to change American policies.
For me that's a naive stance that ignores the problem of corporate influence on politics.
Apart from that, how is US corporate influence necessarily better than foreign corporate influence? Neither care about the US general public. Some US companies knowingly harm their own citizens (Philip Morris, Exxon, Purdue, etc.)
One can argue the problem with TikTook is that it's controlled by the government of an adversary nation (from the viewpoint of the US), but it's not just the fact that the company resides in a foreign country.
Corporations and their wealthy owners have an outsized influence on policies to the near total exclusion of everyday people. Not sure what future you're envisioning here but you might want to consider where you fall in the pecking order before bending the knee to blatant oligarchy.
I agree they know what they are doing by manipulating or perhaps secretly enriching Trump. He posted on Truth social that he is seeking 50% US ownership. That’s very odd. Why not 51% so that there is US based voting control? Or full divesture from China as the law requires?
And then there’s the fact that the conditions for an extension aren’t met as written in the law. There’s no way he can certify to Congress that the conditions are met, which is why he’s trying to use an executive order. But that’s illegal.
The Biden administration signed the thing into law. Of course they need to comply. And people are acting as if somehow TikTok decided to self-ban and have now un-banned. No, it's only those with the app already installed that are able to continue to use it. It's still blocked on the app stores, and will presumably stay that way until tomorrow.
> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.
Additionally, an extract from TikTok's later statement [1]:
> In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.
What the fuck? That's some incredible bootlicking by TikTok. They've done a great job making Biden seem like the bad guy for banning TikTok, while Trump saves the day by rescuing them. This is especially ironic considering Trump was the one who wanted to introduce the ban in the first place until he gained 15M followers on the platform.
How? The law as written only gives the president the authority to give one 90-day extension, only if certain conditions have been met. And those conditions have not been met.
I mean, the promise to boosting Trump in the popup is probably literally what got them the promise of an executive order, possibly with the suggestion that if they wanted to stay on Trump's good side they'd best ensure their algorithm was Trump-friendly in future.
Of course, everything he does is quid pro quo. Now he has a sword of damocles he can hang over their head to ensure he can get anything he wants in the future.
How remarkable that our major geopolitical enemies (with the exception of Iran) support our incoming president. He must truly be a great uniter that will usher in a new age of global peace.
> Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses
It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue. To me it's more like if newspapers were printed with toxic ink or something. The negatives of TikTok have nothing to do with the speech expressed by the "creators" on the platform, but rather with the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose.
It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as well, but banning them isn't a matter of suppressing the speech and letting TikTok continue isn't a victory for free speech. It's just a victory for a gross sort of psychological pollution.
> The negatives of ~Tiktok~short form videos have nothing to do with …
It feels silly with this coloring of TikTok as the evil when meta, Google and a dozen other American companies are doing the same, just less successfully because they let advertisers and corporate interests buy priority in the algorithm which literally just boils down to “you likely like the same stuff as people who like the same stuff as you”.
Of course we can. But the hypocrisy shows how the government doesn't actually care about the health of citizens or society. If they did, they would start with regulations on algorithmic feeds as a first principal, then ban companies that don't comply.
And that could include writing the regulations in such a way that ByteDance couldn't possibly comply, because of their ties to China. At least we would clean up our own home too in the process.
For the most part I don't think there is a difference. It seems like once all the common factors of divisiveness and brainrot are removed, the main difference between TikTok and the others is that it would be harder for certain powers in the US government to corral TikTok into toeing the line on State Department foreign policy goals than western companies. Considering the largely homogenous, biased western media coverage of e.g. the lead up to the 2nd Iraq War, Patriot Act, US-Israel policy that has shaped American viewpoints, I don't think it is obvious why having a major non-aligned media source is a net negative.
It's not like the American companies have their users best interest at heart either! They're literally bound by law to prioritize their shareholders interests.
Well you should be far more wary of what your government will do with such data than a foreign one continents away but i don't think that's the difference you were looing for.
Hard disagree: your own government at least has the incentive to make the country better (or at least appear so) to seek reelection. A foreign adversarial government has the incentive to limit the growth and power of the other country, in so far as it affects their own country.
Should you care about what your own government does with your data? Absolutely, 100%, no doubt, big ticket issue, fly the banners as visibly as possible. But more than an adversary? Not even close.
> your own government at least has the incentive to make the country better (or at least appear so) to seek reelection. A foreign adversarial government has the incentive to limit the growth and power of the other country, in so far as it affects their own country.
"Adversary" is assuming your conclusion. My own government has plenty of incentives to attack my business (I've got plenty of competitors who would support them in doing so), far more so than the government of China.
I agree. I'm not saying TikTok is much different than others. I'm saying when we see TikTok banned we shouldn't feel like "Oh no, not that!", we should feel like "Well, it's a start, but let's do more in that direction."
How do you define this? That's the problem. We should define it somehow, but instead we have a law written specifically for TikTok, making demands because we said so. A proper law is a law for everyone. A law for one company is foolish, wrong, and un-American. Its replacement was already gaining traction before the ban even hit. Without a proper law this is just a hydra waiting to sprout more heads.
The odds [edit: ^W^W^W^Wchances] are just lower that Google and Meta would rig the algorithm to subtly color peoples opinion in favor of China and Russia.
If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it?
Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction.
TikTok has all the data it needs to work with the minds of people and also all the ability. And China has the motiviation..
Of course Google and Meta might promote other goals in their algorithms, but the chances of a leak of that happening is definitely higher in current American companies
>It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue.
The catalyst for the ban was Israel/Palestine. You must consider this - TikTok did not adequately censor pro-Palestine content. This was confirmed as a major problem for Israel by the CEO of the ADL.
When an app gets banned because it is not inline with the US military industrial complex you must consider the spirit of free speech laws.
There is by now "free speech" being published for every single combination of personal interests, demographic, and personal opinion and personality traits.
If you wanted to push, say, white supremacy, to a trans mountain bike riding sci fi fan -- I am sure the content that will do that job is out there. Not with 100% certainty but enough to control a population. The question about controlling the population is only about picking the right reels to show to whom in what order.
If you control the algorithmic firehose and control who sees what, you basically control the minds of the population.
Not by explicit propaganda. Only by nudging and bumping content.
People can make conscious decisions to not want their worldview defined by traditional sources, whether it is Fox News or The Daily Show or whatever. But with TikTok everyone gets something different and who knows how it is geared or rigged.
As a left-ish person, TikTok is genuinely the only place I feel safe from braindead hate. EVERY OTHER platform I've interacted with has a fuckton of hate.
I'm sure it exists in TikTok too, but at least the algorithm keeps those freaks far away from me.
Can you establish somehow how a TikTok ban would help this situation?
> It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as well
Or... regulated? I'd be all for privacy regulations and data handling regulations that would affect the algorithms of everyone but as long as the law is targeting TikTok only and not also FB, Insta, Twitter, etc, the idea that this ban is about "the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose" is a total red herring.
I'm not saying the ban is about that, but it does accomplish something in that direction, and we need more bans that are explicitly about that.
Ultimately though I don't think regulations about privacy and data handling are sufficient. To go just one level deeper, a large proportion of the data in question should not even be collected, regardless of how it's handled or who it's shared with. But many of the problems are even deeper, and have to do with things like how big companies are allowed to get and how much venture capital is allowed to destroy things that work by funding things that don't.
It's not about the algorithmic feed, it's about allowing your #1 adversarial state to have control over that algorithms parameters. They don't let Twitter, Google, or Meta operate in China.
This isn't about privacy; it's about who gets to promote what ideas to Americans. Do you think that a post about Tienanmen Square, about Uyghur persecution, or about Taiwanese independence, will get nearly as far on a Chinese controlled media platform?
Because the Chinese Communist Part is not stupid enough to just exploit their leverage over sovereign nations for shits and giggles. You don't need a smoking gun to understand how corporations in China operate. They operate with the blessing of the CCP, and regardless of whether they've ever done anything, the scale of what they could do if they wanted to would be some spectacular lessons in modern propaganda.
Seconding this: you don't try and fix things after the damage has been done, you try and anticipate _where_ and _when_ the damage could be done. In this case, giving a foreign _adversarial_ (<- emphasis) government significant leverage over citizen sentiment is a massive security hole.
To me it's more like a newsstand selling only aliens magazines, bigfoot books and sexy (but not yet porn) magazines.
Every magazin with a title "bigfoot found!" reveals another "mermaids discovered" magazine, and below that a "tony blair is a reptilian, proof inside", and if people want to stay there and consume all the magazines, why not? In the end, there's more quality content there, than on discovery channels (ancient aliens, mermaids, etc.)
One way the free speech angle might make sense is that TikTok (and other foreign-run social media) normally aren’t as susceptible to domestic pressure to throttle, shadowban, etc certain types of content (like airing of some politician’s dirty laundry).
I could absolutely see that being the case. Trump and the Republican Party now have a solid thumb on US-based social media via Musk/Zuck, which makes lack of control of foreign social media more of a pressuring issue than it had been before. It looks bad if the popular discourse taking place on uncontrolled media differs wildly from that on its controlled counterparts.
> TikTok (and other foreign-run social media) normally aren’t as susceptible to domestic pressure
TikTok has been uniquely subject to political pressure over the last half decade. They didn’t buddy up with Larry Ellison because Oracle has the best servers.
You talk about censorship but if things are happening it will be a lot more subtle than that; more about what you show than what you hide. Peoples opinions are already shifted a lot by what reels they watch. By controlling what people see you control what people think; at least many enough.
Censorship is outdated. With the amount of data and reach TikTok has they have something more akin to mind control.
Principle being the same as traditional politisized media, but the effectiveness of TikTok is just on another level. You see "people like you" sharing what they honestly believe for good reasons. Only thing TikTok did was decide to show that clip, and not the other clip of a person like you saying the opposite thing, also hearthfeltly and for good reasons...
The whole way Tiktok went black and the number of times it has mentioned President Trump in a positive note - to me - reinforces the idea that Tiktok is just a propaganda tool (in this case, for Trump). I would not be surprised if the whole act of going dark last night was because Trump told them that's how it needed to go so he could be a hero by Monday.
The way most of our biggest companies and wealthiest are just lining up to do Trump's bidding is what I would expect from unstable 3rd world countries but never from the US (I know cause I came from one).
By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda? I sometimes cannot believe it's those who so loudly cry about threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process. Rather than tackle the narratives substantively, they'd argue about who gets to manipulate the mob. It's just wild to me. If that's your view of the electorate, then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power. Honestly, maybe there's some truth to that, but it sure flies in the face of the sanctity of voting and "democracy."
> voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda
Who is even saying this is not true? The United States government is more aware than maybe anyone else that influencing human opinion and action is a statistical problem once you have enough scale.
Just look at the history of the USIA [1] and its successor the USICA.
And today's Bureau of Global Public Affairs[1]. Which "engages media to shape the global narrative on American foreign policy and values [and] communicates U.S. foreign policy objectives to the American public." Of course, it's difficult to pierce the veil and determine exactly how they go about doing this. Narratives are propaganda.
I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
Otherwise, if democracy is good and votes should matter and at the same time voters are a mob subject to manipulation... democracy is what? A system of government by whoever can do better propaganda? Why would that be good for anyone except those who do propaganda?
So yeah, I think many people are claiming that is not true.
One question I would ask if people are just a mob, who is actually pushing the buttons? Owners of media, political leaders, are also humans, no? They have the same weaknesses, at least in principle.
If you accept some people are different (those who command and control propaganda) then we must conclude that not all people are vulnerable to it, so maybe it's a spectrum. But still democracy sounds like a bad idea, as a majority are probably on the low end of the spectrum, and the majority rules.
> I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
Both are true. We are individual agents and a mob.
Democracy, as we all know, is the worst political system except for all the others. At scale people on average behave about average and make decisions perfectly aligned with their systemic incentives and available information.
You (and me) are not immune to propaganda.
Strong recommend watching/readingupon Manufacturing Consent and Chomsky’s life work in general.
> Democracy, as we all know, is the worst political system except for all the others.
Honestly it would be about time we stop repeating this Churchill's quote as if it's one of the ten commandments. The man wasn't certainly a god and humans are often mistaken.
The actual meaning of democracy is the "power of the people". Nowhere that implies a western-like electoral system.
I'd argue in your average western democracy the people have very little power, with lots of symbolic processes to reinforce the illusion.
> The actual meaning of democracy is the "power of the people". Nowhere that implies a western-like electoral system.
Correct. “we” used to do it simply by killing the leaders that were disliked. Elections are a bit friendlier than that :)
You might enjoy this Zizek video on the border between the west and the balkans: https://youtu.be/bwDrHqNZ9lo . I think he captures the sentiment well.
> I'd argue in your average western democracy the people have very little power, with lots of symbolic processes to reinforce the illusion.
This was Chomsky’s whole point in Manufacturing Consent.
I think then we can agree that if the people hold very little power, what we have today in the west is definitely not democracy.
A study[0] came to the conclusion that the US is in fact closer to an oligarchy, and I'd extend that to most other so-called democratic countries. The interests of a few always trump the interests of the many.
In this context, that Churchill's quote seems out of place and mostly serves the purpose of shutting down the discussion.
In Russia? Worse in terms of popular participation in the decisional process, but it still works because the majority of people believe (rightly or not) that their interests are protected by Putin. So for all they care, as long as Putin does his job right, it is for all purposes a democracy in its true meaning. Much unlike us, where most of the electorate feels that governments work against their interests and the quality of life stagnates or worsens, life conditions in Russia have improved greatly since the fall of the USSR.
In China? I'd say they have it better than us. Anyone can join the CPC/government and work their way up the decisional apparatus based on an actually meritocratic process, anyone can participate in administrative decisions through consultations. It's what they call "whole-process people's democracy". Do some research on this if you haven't, you'll find out that Chinese people are much more involved in the decisional process at all its stages than we are.
I'll tell you the truth, I sincerely believe that the only true marker of democracy is for the conditions of the people to keep improving constantly, even for the poorest. That is the realization of the power of the people, the only way in which their interests are actively pursued.
Everything else is just fluff that we added on top to make the term better fit us and exclude our adversaries. Democracy can be direct, representative, authoritarian, it doesn't matter so much to me as long as it makes our lives better.
I find this hard to believe. Isn't Western society/democracy ostensibly setup to allow meritocratic advancement as well? Yet I think it's fairly well-established at this point it very much does not work that way in reality. So what is it about Chinese government/society that makes them impervious to the same factors that make meritocratic systems so difficult in the West? Greed, nepotism, and hunger for power to name but a few.
Well for one corruption is punished heavily in China, even with death penalty. Just recently an official has been executed for a $412 million corruption case. So of course there's going to be corruption and greed like anywhere else, the difference is how the system reacts to it. In comparison I believe the hardest bribery sentence in the USA is 13 years of imprisonment.
Another interesting thing is that for their poverty alleviation project, when an official is assigned to a province they have specific targets to achieve. As long as they don't achieve the targets, the official can't be promoted or transferred[0]. Meaning if they ever want to get a better job or earn more they have to actually reduce poverty.
I have a hard time taking Chomsky seriously after he felt his need to make his uninformed opinions on Russia's aggression and AI public.
Was Chomsky ever an expert? Maybe, I wouldn't know because I haven't read what he built his legacy upon. But that he wrote so poorly on two topics he has little experience with does him no favors.
Chomsky is a Linguistics Professor, he has no formal training in media or political theory. So yes, he is not an expert, and funnily enough he's the kind of leftist who straight up admits he is biased and selectively picks facts to support this arguments.
> Was Chomsky ever an expert? Maybe, I wouldn't know because I haven't read what he built his legacy upon.
My entire life anything I hear from him has been misinformed and anything I hear about him is "Chomsky disproven". I have to imagine whatever he was known for happened before I was born - which I've never been exposed to. Granted I've never sought it out either.
To me he feels like an academic Kardashian: Famous for being famous, and it's not really clear how it started.
> I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
I think that is a pretty hardline interpretation, but there's another way of thinking about it:
democracy has worked pretty well up to now and there hasn't been a better replacement.
That doesn't mean it will continue being a good solution as technology and society change.
Democracy is not a new concept, just current implementation is different. Democracy, in some form, dates back over 2500 years to ancient Athens (circa 5th century BCE). Around 1500 years ago (~500 CE), formal democracy as it existed in Athens had largely faded, particularly with the decline of the Roman Republic (509 BCE – 27 BCE), which had elements of representative governance.
It struggled with corruption, inequality and power struggles, so all the problems that are getting stronger with time in our democratic systems.
The idea of democracy reemerged during the Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries) and became formalized in modern political systems - United States (1776) and revolutionary France.
We live in cycles, democracy probably will fade again, and again it will be considered anarchic and unstable until the cycle repeats itself.
Not sure about what's really "typical", nor which name would best describe what direction the USA (let alone anyone else) is even heading in.
The ancient Greeks had ideas about the κύκλος (cycles) of government: Plato's cycle went [aristocracy > timocracy oligarchy > democracy > tyranny]; Polybius' cycle was [ochlocracy -> monarchy -> tyranny -> aristocracy -> oligarchy -> democracy -> ochlocracy] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory
> I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
Disagree. Democracy can basically be mob rule and still be “good” if mob rule is better than alternatives like “divine right of kings,” “rule by military despot” and so on.
I think Democracy is critically important. However, the main reason I believe this is because Democracy allows for the transfer of power without violence. That's THE value prop.
> Otherwise, if democracy is good and votes should matter and at the same time voters are a mob subject to manipulation... democracy is what? A system of government by whoever can do better propaganda? Why would that be good for anyone except those who do propaganda?
Yes. And you are already waking up to that in your next question.
> One question I would ask if people are just a mob, who is actually pushing the buttons? Owners of media, political leaders, are also humans, no? They have the same weaknesses, at least in principle.
> If you accept some people are different (those who command and control propaganda) then we must conclude that not all people are vulnerable to it
Why would those who do propaganda not be susceptible to disinformation, or the Dunning-Kruger or Gell-mann Amnesia effects? Every person is susceptible to disinformation. The difference is that those in power can disseminate disinformation at scale.
> so maybe it's a spectrum. But still democracy sounds like a bad idea, as a majority are probably on the low end of the spectrum, and the majority rules.
Hence "tyranny of democracy". Many places in the First world are now experiencing this, where 'green' programs and and social progress are being dismantled en masse because of a slight majority. Worst of it is, long term these decisions will carry a massive financial burden. The LA fires with $250 billion+ in damages are a herald of that.
Just because you share an opinion does not mean that opinion has not been shaped, directed or influenced.
"The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse. "
Yes. This is well known since Antiquity when the Athenian Democracy voted to condemn Plato to death.
Read more about the period and you will see that the Democratic cities of yore, Athens first and foremost, often swinged towards taking bad decisions, and that a whole corporation of "sophists" manipulated public opinion without shame (read e.g. Gorgias).
The great progress that enabled the restoration, extention and stabilisation of Democracy in the modern era has been indirect, representative democracy and base, written bill of rights/constitutions that aren't asily modified, requiring majorities of 2/3rds or more and constraint what can be voted on.
> ...when the Athenian Democracy voted to condemn Plato to death.
That was Socrates, not Plato.
Socrates was allowed to choose his own punishment too, so he wasn't exactly condemned to death right away. He also had the opportunity to escape prison. He chose not to.
Qhat you doesn't make much sense, starting with your claim Plato was sentenced to death by Athenian democracy, which there is no evidence of that I know of.
I agree with everything you're saying, but I also can't fully square up that the equivalent American apps aren't allowed in China. This is about freedom of speech on app built by a country that has no freedom of speech. I realize this point is orthogonal, but is still an important element of the decision.
At its core free speech is about the freedom from government influence and the complaint is about government influence.
It’s one thing to allow the CCP to say whatever it wants, it’s something else to allow them the ability to manipulate of what other people can say. Allowing such a highly restricted platform seems like it hurts free speech more than it helps.
It's not a highly restricted platform at all, there were literally videos of translated Hitler speeches trending with hundreds of thousands of likes, even though the CCP absolutely hates western nationalism.
This is the platform that led to the proliferation of newspeak terms like "unalive" to circumvent content restrictions. Such speech restrictions were never a thing on FB, IG, X, or YT, yet this form of self-censorship has spread to those platforms anyway, because TikTok users have become so used to it.
While there aren't direct speech restrictions in platforms like YouTube, you're leaving out the crucial detail that mentioning words like "suicide" gets your video demonetized, which directly causes similar self-censorship.
YouTube pays creators based on advertising deals making some topics far more valuable, while other topics have become very sensitive to advertisers. That’s related, but different from censorship.
Creators are still free to use YouTube as a platform to discuss sensitive topics with a very large audience without paying per viewer, unlike say advertising or standing at a street corner talking to passersby. As such YouTube is still supporting the discussion and distribution of said content.
Restrictions become more effective when they are less obvious.
When as has been demonstrated their algorithm ignores the number of upvotes in favor of massively promoting viewpoints it cares about, that’s also vast suppression of opposing viewpoints but in a way o get creators to quietly comply rather than try and push the boundaries.
> Ok, that’s their country what does it have to do with us?
I mean, nothing really. You could say the same about Israel and Palestine, or Saudi Arabia and Iran, or China and Hong Kong. Human rights abuses are perfectly acceptable in today's society, as long as they're out of sight and out of mind. He who controls visibility into human suffering controls the way people perceive his control. Hasbara, in Israeli vernacular.
> Also why do we do this:
Because Zionist lobbying exerts disproportionate control over both the US tech industry and the legislative apparatus regulating it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
You're not going to drive a wedge between people by repeating the Israel stance, though. If you tried to expose China's same abuses for working slave labor to death or suicide, you'd be suppressed in exactly the same way America suppresses your anti-Israel content. From a national security perspective, TikTok's existence is about whether another country can impose their own double-standard on top of America's own populist opinion. Today it's the war in Gaza, but tomorrow it will be about suppressing democracy in Taiwan for the "betterment of global peace" et. al. You can't deny China's plans to use TikTok for war with a straight face - by many accounts it's already started.
People trying to act like this Chinese controlled vehicle supports free speech is so weird to me. They're not "censoring" anything - they're using it as a straight unimpeded funnel to subvert the west.
Rupert Murdoch got US citizenship because of foreign ownership rules. From his wiki page:
> On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.
China doesn’t allow for or recognize dual citizenship, so it doesn’t matter unless they also gave up their Chinese citizenship (rumor has it the CPC relaxed this rule for a certain snowboarder). But ya, that Murdoch is also Australian is probably benign.
Nothing about Murdoch's politics is benign. They've done more damage to democracy worldwide, but particularly in the US, than China ever will.
Speaking of hostile foreigners, a prominent South African was just giving the crowd a few Nazi salutes at the inauguration. Is that also benign? At what exact point do we start observing that the enemies to democracy are inside the house?
They are about as dangerous as Chinese Americans, which is to say, not at all.
Particular people are problematic. But you can only judge that by actions, not by their country of birth.
Which is what makes this foreign manipulation rhetoric and ban rubbish. It refuses to identify what the bad actions it's trying to protect us from are, it's just a lazy, prejudiced rubric that gives the most egregious ones a free pass, because they have the right color stripes on their pin.
I already mentioned that dual citizenship isn’t possible for Chinese. There is no person over 18 that holds Chinese and American citizenship, but you keep somehow ignoring that. Any Chinese can get American citizenship, get rid of Chinese citizenship, and buy a tv station in the states, the process is straightforward, and they won’t deny you because your ethnicity is Han or Hui or whatever.
In founding of the United States lies tariff stories. The United States does not reject government and nations as entities at all. It just asserts rights for its citizens which doesn't include everyone on the planet.
If stooping down to their level is the move we make, then we should immediately stop acting as if we are more “free” or democratic than China. You can’t have it both ways.
you're implying that these elections are on equal grounds with truthful candidates. I think that's a small part why America has become decreaingly distrustgul of politicians but still vote. Many people on both sides of the aisle have admitted 2024 felt like choosing the least bad candidate.
The root cause of this sort of comment is people often equate the outcome of democracy == good or desirable to them or even the majority, which is not necessarily the case. People can whine about the outcome of a democratic process all they want, which even if done perfectly could be a compromise that is distasteful to all parties but still democratic.
You'd normally be right. But the US did just have the richest man in the world setup a lottery to buy votes, and walked it back to "oh it was rigged anyway" when called out on it. Any lawsuits is pennies compared to the results.
It was subtle before with stuff like Gerrymandering that the layman would never notice. But it's so blatant now that the democratic process is compromised.
Yes. I also realize that a democratic system allows for making decisions that do not align with such a system, and can in fact destroy such a system from within.
Is this not what we have all been saying about Trump? Or are you saying that is OK because his moves have been made within the framework of a democratic system?
This isn't blanket censorship, period. Every single user that currently voices their stance, values or opinions can continue to do the exact same thing on any other platform they choose. Just not TikTok, because they are a business owned by an adversarial government that deliberately uses their soapbox to manipulate democratic audiences: https://kyivinsider.com/russia-and-china-just-rigged-romania...
Also don't forget - TikTok has remediation options where they continue to operate in America as an American business instead. They are the ones that refused that and chose censorship. America just forced the choice between eating the cake and having it.
Edit: Correct, it is not. The part that is censorship on China's behalf is the enforcement of the Great Firewall and enaction of laws prohibiting citizens from owning or consuming foreign news or entertainment. China's ban on foreign apps could just as well be explained by a desire for better domestic software markets - the same cannot be said for the Firewall.
Edit 2: Yes, secession would settle this. China has proven that they cannot be trusted to disseminate information through a state-owned apparatus. If the owner continues to be a government entity, then continuing to let them do "business" is like letting the Trojans wheel in their horse so the citizens can marvel at it.
Feel free to record a 30s video on the topic of Tiananmen Square and post it on X, Facebook and Chinese TikTok. Report back with results in 24h. In the conclusions section, point out the difference between censorship and moderation.
I will try to reiterate my initial point since people keep losing track: banning TikTok is a slippery slope that moves us in the direction of China’s GFW, and we can longer claim a moral highground once we do.
You seem to be unable to reconcile that China can use a platform with some positive aspects for ill. I abhor Israel's actions and the role of their extremist sects in rejecting international oversight. But I also abhor China for using prisoners, slaves and North Korean indentures to harvest Xinxiang cotton. These topics won't be given a fair shake on TikTok because China's focus is on which destabilizes America fastest, not which is the most popular among bleeding-heart liberals. Of course they selectively provide moderation support for offensive topics that makes America look bad - do the same thing for China or Bytedance and the double standard rears it's ugly head. It was never about free speech, just creating a cycle of dependency on China for news and opinions.
On this basis alone, American consumer protections should have banned TikTok from the start. There is no tangible outcome where state-owned social media is given a holistic directive, especially not when China is the owner. I pity you for not keeping up with modern geopolitical tensions, but this is just the beginning of the "censorship" if you're reliant on China to voice your opinion. They had their chance to demonstrate detente, but they chose to fight instead.
I understand the nuances just fine. Nowhere have I said that China is innocent here. Does this ban alone make the US as authoritarian as China? Of course not.
But I also understand that an outright ban of a social media platform is an authoritarian practice, and a bad sign for the future of this country. It is an easy way out, but at the cost of introducing a mechanism by which more censorship can take place.
To me, this ban indicates that the US is willing to ban any platform that does not cave into its demands for content “moderation” (if you will) - just like China has been doing for a while now.
We are not “better” than them anymore, and the sooner we realize this, the better of a chance we have of reversing this process.
Not at all. I know that Chinese censorship exists. You - or others, lost track since multiple people are involved here - are the one who’s trying to argue that US censorship does not exist, even in light of this TikTok ban.
Also, you probably don’t realize this, but censorship and moderation are many times two sides of the same coin - depending on the incentives and factors at play.
Censorship is very strictly defined as government’s doing. If this isn’t your definition, we aren’t even talking about the same things. I gave you a very concrete example with potentially serious consequences if you’re a Chinese national posting in China vs somebody getting deprioritized on one platform in yours.
This is an incredible point. Instead of using this crisis to pressure Beijing to crack open the China market to US companies or even just get some concessions, Trump just folded to look like a champ.
Ad-funded social media platforms make money by measurably altering people's opinions and behavior. It's literally their only job—everything else is in service to that goal.
Given that this is what they do day in and day out and that the successful ones are by all metrics very good at it, it seems totally reasonable to assume that one could trivially be turned from manipulating people into buying stuff to manipulating people to voting a certain way or holding certain opinions.
One person one vote is the guiding principle of democracy and, yes, it assumes that no person is able to actively hijack someone else's vote for their own gain. We have systems in place to prevent voter fraud, and I think that we should have systems in place to prevent systematic individual targeting of individuals for algorithmic manipulation as well.
What we don't need is a law that specifically targets foreign companies doing it. Our homegrown manipulators are just as dangerous in their own ways.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
I disagree with this interpretation. It's creating a sort of false dichotomy -- voters can still be individual agents AND ALSO they can be manipulated by propaganda. And the key is that propaganda doesn't have to be wildly successful in order to impact a democratic process. It just has to convince enough people to sway an election. That is, and always has been, one of the trade-offs of democracy. That's why we say "democracy needs an informed electorate to survive" -- because an informed individual is less likely to be easily manipulated.
If I were the CCP this is perhaps the cleverest talking point I could have possibly come up with, propping up TikTok while simultaneously condemning democracy.
But to substantively respond: NO. This is exceptionally naive. Democracy assumes shared fates and aligned incentives among (both voting and communicating) participants. A foreign adversary mainlining their interests into half the population of the US absolutely violates this assumption.
The advantage of democracy is that the propaganda game gets played every few years and current elites can lose. Under a system of freedom of speech, there is very little stopping a decently (but not massively) funded rag-tag group of competent individuals from running a more efficient propaganda campaign than the powers-that-be (think of Dominic Cummings' Leave campaign in the UK for the perfect example).
This is the best system we have found to establish the impermanence of the elite class. Because this is the real beauty of what we in the west call democracy: not the absence of an elite class, for there is no such system, but it's impermanence.
And while that is all well and good within a country, the argument is that it would be unwise to allow a foreign hostile power a seat at our propaganda game. Especially one which does not reciprocate this permission.
This is a thoughtful reply. But, if it's just propaganda games played by the elites, I suppose another way to ensure informed outcomes might be literacy tests. Or property ownership.
I guess more than anything I'm just surprised that it's the "threat to democracy" crowd that would be taking such a cynical view of democracy. They're admitting that Trump's propaganda was just better than theirs. Which is, in some ways, hilarious.
Bingo. I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. If we truly trust in that, the source of the influence - foreign or domestic - shouldn’t matter. People who advocate for censoring foreign sources of influence are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically.
> Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. If we truly trust in that, the source of the influence - foreign or domestic - shouldn’t matter.
Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal? You have the draw the line somewhere.
> are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically.
A democracy that is NOT a direct democracy is already admitting this. This is exactly the reason we have proxies in a representative democracy.
> Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal?
Because those things are not just speech - they're implicit or explicit physical threats.
America runs most of the world's social media platforms and expects other countries to be happy with that, but then panics the moment another country dares to offer them the same thing? I don't know which scenario is worse, the one where this is just an excuse for an America First trade war or the one where the US genuinely believes that controlling a social platform means you control the countries that use it.
> implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically
I think that is the case though. I will come off as arrogant and my lack of vocabulary might make it sound less elaborate, but a huge chunk of the population is not able or willing to so. This is why every time a country is facing a crysis, the populist politicians gain in popularity. People are already stressed out by their jobs, paying the bills, rising cost of living, so who wants to spend time and effort to research the causes of this, evaluate which proposed solution seems most realistic, what the tradeoffs are, compared to the dude who tells them that the problem is very simple and that he has the solution that is equally simple. It's the immigrants stealing the jobs, or the heat pumps forced upon them, or solar cells.
And it doesn't even need foreign social media to come to that.
> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions.
You should invest a minute thinking about the problem. Pay attention to your own opinion: people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. Focus on that. Now, consider that propaganda feeds false and deceiving information to the public. In some cases, the decision-maker is only exposed to propaganda. Even if that decision-maker is the most rational of actors, what kind of decisions can he do if they are only exposed to false and deceiving information?
There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?
>There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?
Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
> Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
The "common carrier" status of services which hold editorial control over the content that's pushed and promoted is highly dubious.
maybe common carrier is not quite right but social media has no proof of identity. hence I cannot sue motorest for libel if you send a nasty personal-attack reply to this :)
This is an interesting thought experiment, but how is it relevant in practice? In free-speech countries, people are not exposed to just a single source of information. That simply doesn't align with reality. It's akin to criticizing capitalism by imagining a scenario where a single company monopolizes everything.
Truth is absolutely _not_ subjective.. a person is either alive or dead, the earth is either flat or not flat, e = mc2 is either true or false, .. I could go on.
Reminds me of a quote from 1984:
"In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it." [0]
opinion is subjective, truth means (can’t believe I have to write this) that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. and it is not objective unless you live in a fantasy world half+ of this country lives in
Truth is absolutely _not_ subjective.. a person is either alive or dead, the earth is either flat or not flat, e = mc2 is either true or false, .. I could go on,
I can agree with you on this point but when someone is standing on the earth they can prove it is flat. Then you zoom out and prove it is not. The flat earth person will just say: "that's not what I meant."
Zoom out to the cosmos and think about the truth available to different observers. This same principle holds across the board. You have to reconcile with each observer, and until you do truth is subjective.
I just have trouble stating that my objective truth is also someone else's objective truth. What if my information is "the Bible." You can split hairs with these people until you die of old age and they can technically be wrong but their truth can work for them.
Just like we have all kinds of wild unintuitive math proofs that are very enlightening once they are communicated to all observers. Newtonian physics are true until they aren't, the same as those Bible "truths."
Given the infinite probabilities of the universe I have trouble declaring a set of objective truths that are immutable and try to give people a pass on what they hold as true. Can anything be known? We settle on some truths that work for us in the little time we have.
> people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions
The problem is that people aren't ideal rational agents. Our collective reasoning tends to be heavily biased by the environment, and that there are actors who abuse this (by injecting ideas that indirectly help their agendas) for their personal gains. And in China's case, they want to undermine freedoms, including freedom of speech.
We can consider ourselves as "rational, critical thinkers" all we want, but we aren't as there are myriads of ways we're gullible in one way or another. Plenty of examples in our history books.
Still, I think that free speech is still more important, as it's the only way for a society to recover. With freedom of speech, an antidote (for a lack of better term) can eventually be found and injected into the public discourse, without it the future looks bleak.
The way I see it, we need to encourage improvement of education on social sciences, human psychology, game theory and so on, encourage critical thinking but forewarn of all possible fallacies, and hope that it will be enough and that the inevitable counter-reaction won't prevail and undermine the effort.
I think there is also a lot to say that your speech is hardly free if you are drowning in tons of bot created content regardless of who is generating that content. I feel there is not to many good compromises that can be made it :*(
Sowing discord is the well-known age-tested strategy. It doesn't remove freedom of speech per se, but it drowns it in the noise.
The very goal of this attack on the freedom of speech is to make people lean towards the easiest and "naturally occurring" pseudo-solution to make those bots shut up. Then abuse the same censorship mechanisms to control the discourse.
Sadly, I don't know how to solve this. Censoring speech is a non-solution. Building web of trusts will inevitably create even stronger information bubbles (making it easier to divide and conquer - we're seeing this happening).
Okay, but why is Chinese influence any worse than that of some Australian billionaire who owns the biggest right-wing media conglomerate that broadcasts an absolute firehouse of damaging, divisive, and self-serving lies?
If TikTok is harmful to democracy, Fox News is more than an order of magnitude worse. A large portion of the electorate watches its insanity like a full-time job.
Most enemies of democracy, when measured by impact are 'domestic' and 'western', not some Chinese boogieman.
My personal opinion? It's not significantly different. Or maybe it is, but, at least, I don't see a need (and a meaningful way) to develop a scale of maliciousness.
Malicious agents have no nationality, race or some single origin. All they share is the mindset and some values, willing to abuse the system for personal gains or flawed misbeliefs (for a lack of better word - beliefs that are known to contradict our collective scientific understanding of the world).
> I don't see a need (and a meaningful way) to develop a scale of maliciousness.
I’m constantly amazed by how easily even smart people will retreat into whataboutism, and this is the most polite way I’ve ever seen to call them on it.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I can see how my poor choice of words possibly led to this interpretation.
I wanted to say that I believe it doesn’t matter who does something, only what they’re doing. So the same standards should be applied uniformly, irregardless of the actors’ identity.
Ideally, by no means entity X doing something we consider negative should absolve or justify entity Y’s negative (similarly or different) actions.
Certainly. I get that, I'm just saying you are remarkably patient to be willing to actually explain this to other people. Maybe you're not familiar with the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Personally I'm inclined to be more blunt and impatient. Whataboutism is intellectually lazy in the best case, in the worst case it means the interlocuter is manipulative or just actually operating at the emotional level of a 5 year old. Good people just don't like bad behaviour.. they won't wait around to find out which team committed the bad behaviour, and they won't refuse to fix 1 evil until another 2nd evil is addressed first, etc. Also relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poisoned_Arrow
I think you mean Rupert Murdoch. He was born in Australia but naturalized as an American citizen, due to restrictions on foreign control of broadcast media.
If TikTok moved to control by an American citizen born in China, then that would comply with the PAFACA. If the people already controlling TikTok naturalized as American citizens then that would also comply (though that's obviously not going to happen).
Restrictions on foreign control of the highest-reach media are nothing new. The PAFACA simply updates them to reflect new viewing habits. "Foreign" continues to be defined by citizenship, not birthplace.
Alt-right billionaires don't depend on democracy, all other things being equal, they'd much prefer an oligarchy with them and their friends at the top, and it's why many of them want to steer towards it.
Throughout history, big business and the mega-rich have regularly backed coups and authoritarians, compared to their democratic alternatives. It's a much better system for them than one where each person gets one vote, because there's a lot more of us than there are of them[1].
As for sworn enemies of democracy, I think the guy who launched a coup, as part of a broader conspiracy to steal the election when he lost would be towards the top of the list.
---
[1] When times get tough, in a democracy, it becomes difficult for them to justify why they get to take three quarters of the pie, while the rest of us fight over scraps.
You make a good point. A crucial difference, however, is the types of entities and their motives.
A conventional U.S. corporation's motive is to generate profits. Efforts stemming from that motive have not always been in the public interest, and such cases are worthy of regulatory attention, but they typically do not present national security risks. In odd cases where pursuing profits could create national security risks, Congress has sometimes intervened, such as when Nvidia was banned from selling certain processors to certain countries.
A geopolitical entity is not a profit-motivated corporation, so the risk model is different, with national security factors being more salient.
Does everyone think critically and rationally? If not how many don't (especially during key election periods) and can this group cast an oversized influence on election results or public opinion?
Having the choice of two options at the ballot box, and social media meaning many people now form political opinions from anonymous accounts online does not fill me with confidence.
Exactly. To the degree elections are not rooted in a competition of ideas and individual agency, but rather are downstream of elite power and influence, then there are other more direct means of controlling populations, all of which tend to be a lot bloodier. All of this strikes me as a really dangerous path.
That angle would work if there wasn't so much disagreement about what constitutes lies. After the last few years, I am definitely not interested in having government actors decide for me what amounts to the truth. Personally, I suppose I much prefer a competition of ideas -- and the ability to decide for myself.
I think there's a reasonable argument that part of that disagreement is a result of the hybrid warfare that is being fought over the information and opinions of citizens in many countries. We know about a few of these where hyper-partisan influencers were paid by Russia (or entities closely connected to the Russian government, if you insist on nuances) to spread Russia's viewpoints and attack social cohesion in the US. Is that a competition of ideas?
Facebook and Twitter have in the past banned networks of account for inauthentic behavior. In other words: individuals (and you can probably narrows this to residents or citizens) are allowed to speak their mind and try to convince others of whatever they believe, but it has to be them, they cannot use bots, multiple accounts etc. It's not an easy thing to filter, of course. But pretend that it was, would you agree with that approach?
Don’t worry, chomskys manufacturing consent is also mentioned as relevant reading elsewhere in this thread, and then rejected, naturally on the grounds that learning stuff about propaganda might be propaganda
I read some, including 1984. What's your point? 1984 portrays exactly the kind of world I’d want to avoid - one where the government controls access to information and rigidly suppresses foreign influence.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
I take the view that the reason freedom of speech is important at all, is that people can be convinced to act in certain ways by speech — if it couldn't lead to action, no dictator would fear it.
We, all of us, take things on trust. We have to. It's not like anyone, let alone everyone, has the capacity — time or skill — to personally verify every claim we encounter.
Everywhere in the world handles this issue differently: the USA is free-speech-maximalism; the UK has rules about what you can say in elections[0] (and in normal ads), was famously a jurisdiction of choice for people who wanted to sue others for libel[1], and has very low campaign spending limits[2]; Germany has laws banning parties that are a threat to the constitution[3].
I doubt there is any perfect solution here, I think all only last for as long as the people themselves are vigilant.
Theres an implication that The Internet meant we have a commons connecting the world that no one country can completely restrict. But a commons too important to all modern societies to blanket ban. In theory we should be less susceptible to propoganda than ever since we can see multiple viewpoints and interpretations in minutes. As opposed to being beholden to maybe 3-4 mainstream news programs on television.
Human nature proves to fall quite short of that ideal, though.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Yes, it is. Always has been.
> threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process
> then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power
You'd have to have fallen hook, line, and sinker with America's propaganda to actually believe that democracy is NOT a cover for retaining control over a population.
The US has been playing this game in other countries for a while now, to keep a check on who comes to power and who does not (always using support for democracy as an excuse). Gautemala, the arab spring, bangladesh - these are just some of the examples. And it's become very blatant of late.
Why is illegal to put false stuff on products label, like food or medicine? Where is the free speech to lie and manipulate the user? With your point of view the EACH user should somehow find the skills to analyze and review each product each time they user or trust some other persons word.
The algorithm is not a person to have free speech, my issue is with the algorithm, I am OK with the village drunk to post his faked documents but I am not O with state actors falsifing documents then same state owned actors abusing the algorithm to spread that false stuff. So no free spech for bot farms and algorithms, they are not people (yet)
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda
Part of the reason Western democracies are failing is we forgot that pure democracy doesn’t work. The founders described this amply in the Federalist Papers. Democracy tends towards tearing itself apart with partisanship and mob rule.
It’s why successful republics have mechanisms to cool off public sentiment, letting time tax emotions to reveal actual thoughts underneath (see: the Swiss versus Californian referendum models); bodies to protect minorities from the majority (independent courts); et cetera.
> By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Well, we don't know what was said in the classified meetings, but yes, we know that propaganda works.
Excuse my European ignorance, but in what way is a system a "democracy" where one person can overrule actual democratic structures? The power centralized into one person is unheard of in what I would call "democracies".
I do find people's faith in Democracy, as opposed to Authoritarianism, somewhat exasperating. Two candidates, pre-selected by the powers that be to lead the nation, compete in inane televised debates, wave flags and make promises that everyone knows they are going to break. This everyone debates hotly, and then lines up to register one bit of Holy Democratic Choice, to be averaged with a hundred million similar bits to determine, by a margin of a few percent, the one and only legitimate Government of the People, by the People, for the People. My Ass.
In the end, "democracy" is about power and control, just like any other form of government, and the TikTok ban is just another power-play, however it may be justified publicly. Not that I'm overly sorry to see it banned, by the way :)
Until very recently, "Democracy" was a dirty way to describe a government. It was in the same class of failed government models as tyranny, the rule of the mindless mob.
Maybe, but my point is that democracy is not even the rule of a mindless mob, more like mob rule theater. Ruling implies receiving information and performing complex actions and giving many and nontrivial orders. From a purely information-theoretical perspective, it requires a lot of entropy flowing from the decision maker to subordinates. On the other hand, national elections collect a tiny pool of entropy from the supposed root source of power and legitimacy, the people. This is not enough to rule a country, by many orders of magnitude. The country is instead ruled by ambitious individuals, who seize power in various ways - connections, backroom deals, backstabbing. Some participate in the election theater.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
If you want to view it that way, sure. But I could also just say you and I are both sacks of blood filled flesh.
> Rather than tackle the narratives substantively,
Meta (et al) are just AS guilty as TikTok. The difference is substantial and subtle - the US government could conceivably sanction a US-based entity to the point of them not existing. A chinese based one doesnt have to play by the rules. Fine them? No problem, their gov has an immeasurable amount of money. The only option is to simply not let them play at all.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
I invite you to consider the possibility that this is true. That at the population level, propaganda actually works. This would support the fact that it's been a key tool used by regimes (including ours) since before the printing press was invented.
I don't really know for certain whether this is accurate, but it's hard for me to look around the world at global politics and determine that it isn't.
This is the fundamental problem with American democracy and democracies all over the world.
It only works if the voters are well informed, educated, and generally competent. Otherwise it’s just a manipulation game where someone can lie and lie and lie and be elected president. And at that late stage phase of democracy, who gets to manipulate these people better is who holds power.
Isn’t that the premise of the Enlightenment? That’s everyone will be well educated, or, if they’re not, at least they were the ones in control of their destiny?
i.e. “You crazy, translating the bible to the plebs? What happens if stupid people get to choose for themselves?”
I assume you are speaking about establishment politicians over the last 40-2000 years, but I suspect you are actually miming talking points about manipulation aimed at 1 very recent election where the established propaganda cycle failed to manipulate enough people and a different brand of manipulation brought in a different set of manipulators. Evidence of your own manipulated belief structures going without serious enough introspection to be held as a competent free agent
Allegedly, the biggest concern this time around was the economy. Millions of people complaining about inflation and the cost of goods voted for a guy promising to raise tariffs, and a party that historically caters to big business. The same big business that has moved a lot of jobs overseas, and has lobbied to relax restrictions on visas to hire more foreign workers for onshore jobs.
To me, this looks a lot like people voting against their own interests. I think that when people vote against their own interests, it's usually because they don't understand what they're voting for, i.e. it's an education issue. And it's not surprising that other people would be perplexed and frustrated by this.
But maybe I've just been misled by the wrong propaganda. I guess we'll find out.
Are you trying to argue that (many) democrats and republicans voters in the recent elections were not generally manipulated by their respective sides? I don't think this holds water.
Examples could be democrats control over Biden's health messaging or republicans repeating the message that the democrats are stealing the elections or democrat's messaging about if their side loses it's the end of democracy or republicans messaging about immigration, crime etc. Generally engaging at a shallow level with the goal of influencing people's emotions.
I don't think this is a 40-2000 years phenomena. It's certainly become a lot worse since Trump ran for president the first time. I remember turning on TV in my hotel room during a visit to the US maybe 8 years ago and switching between CNN and Fox, each of these channels were basically about endless bashing of the opposite side. I wouldn't call the content anything other than brainwashing and propaganda. CNN didn't use to be like that. With social media since every user gets their own view we don't even know what the "hidden hand" is pushing. It's much worse and a lot more dangerous.
No my point was that both sides are frequently manipulated, but I see comments on the Internet EVERY DAY to the effect of 'the other side is being manipulated', apparently oblivious to their own manipulated opinions.
And CNN has ALWAYS been a propaganda wing, they just didn't have a serious competitor during the era when both parties were controlled by the same group. (Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama)
I think it's definitely the case that the group of voters in 1789 was much smaller and more homogeneous than it is today.
I also think the nature of propaganda has changed a little as well. Today, messages can be delivered cheaply to everyone, everywhere, from anywhere, nearly instantaneously. There is far less of a propagation delay, and far less of a natural check on the rate and volume of propaganda.
Maybe not, but it strikes me as a really dangerous path. If we don't believe the electorate acts from a position of moral authority, but rather are downstream of elite power and influence, then there are other more direct ways of controlling populations. And they tend to be a lot more bloody.
It's the path we've been on for a long time and one that is made a lot more dangerous in the era of social media. Today more than ever people live in echo chambers and believe what they want to or what they think they need to so they can conform with their group identity. More than ever a few wealthy people or state actors have direct control over the reality people see without even the pretense of being "unbiased" media or any sort of ethical guidelines which in the past used to semi-exist for the traditional media/news etc.
Propaganda's job is to influence those people who think they're acting from a position of moral authority but lack the education, or critical thinking skills, or access to information, to be able to see through the manipulation.
I'm not sure what's the answer but I am sure this is not what the proponents of free speech had in mind.
The reason the more direct ways are more bloody is why we want to stick with democracy. Democracy is supposed to be based on an exchange of ideas in an open discourse. This is why it’s important to not let any one party have too much control over the discourse. That is also why freedom of speech exists. Somewhat paradoXically, banning a foreign-controlled platform can serve the same purpose as defending freedom of speech.
Yep, it basically amounts to agreeing 100% with the Chinese justification for their great firewall, which is that a free internet is subversive to their national interest and to their citizens. But Americans will argue that it's somewhat different, since when they do it it's not dystopian or something
I have it on personal experience that DARPA seems to be enthusiastically funding more digital twin and collective intelligence projects than ever. Simulated virtual publics are going to become more common in both war and politics. Collectives are going to be the driving force of the coming century, and the sooner the American public evolves beyond fetishizing the individual, the better.
By resorting to walled gardens that by definition have to provide a filtered experience via algorithms rather than raw experience of older internet forums and image boards, haven't many of these voters already made that choice of being wanting to be manipulated?
At least someone has to (currently) manipulate the voters into voting a specific way, instead of just ‘voting for them’, or threatening them at gunpoint.
> voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to
manipulation by propaganda?
That is true, yet it's not incompatible with democracy. In the US
Horace Mann established the foundational link between education and
democracy. It's why civics and other forms of intellectual
self-defence are essential.
The problem with social media (and BigTech lazy "convenient"
non-thought) is not that it's a propaganda conduit as much as that
it's antithetical to critical thinking. It's more complex than simply
the content, it's the form too.
The US gov has just made the case for banning US owned social networks around the world, because they truly believe that social networks is a way for a foreign agents to interfere in local politics.
> By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Did you already forgot about the episode about Haitians eating everyone's pets? Based on that episode alone, what's you observation?
> I sometimes cannot believe it's those who so loudly cry about threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process.
You should take a minute to think about the underlying issue.
Propaganda is a massive threat against democracy and freedom in general. If a bad actor invests enough resources pushing lies and false promises that manages to convince enough people to vote on their agent, do you expect to be represented and see your best interests defended by your elected representatives?
Also, you should pay attention to the actual problem. Propaganda isn't something that affects the left end of the bell curve. Propaganda determines which information you have access to. You make your decisions based on the information you have, regardless of being facts or fiction. If you are faced with a relentless barrage of bullshit, how can you make an educated decision or even guess on what's the best outcome? You cannot. The one that controls the information you can access will also control to a great degree your decision process. That's the power of disinformation and propaganda, and the risk that China's control of TikTok poses to the US in particular but the free world in general.
> By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Yep. Same thing as the people arguing to reverse the Citizens United ruling. Lots of lip service is paid to "democracy" by people who have no faith in the electorate to actually exercise democratic sovereignty.
You're dealing with 64% of the voting population, who inherently lean one way or the other so a small nudge can be the difference between one side or the other winning.
e.g. Candidate swapping might bring votes from minority groups or Women.
Imagine a scenario when even 5% more people voted, suddenly the margins are much wider and the results hold stronger validity.
If those people are eligible to vote but choose not to, than that is their vote. It's not appropriate to second-guess people who abstain any more than it is to second-guess the ballots of those who do vote. There's only a problem if people who want to vote, and are eligible to, are being prevented from doing so.
If you're trying to engineer the process to contrive specific outcomes, that itself is anti-democratic.
If TikTok was only targeted at voters then I think there would be less of a concern. My issue is more with what it shows to children. Science and law recognize that children aren't yet fully individual agents and are more susceptible to propaganda than most adults. Thus legislators and courts have been more willing to restrict commercial speech targeting children.
If that is truly your primary concern, you should be more worried about Instagram. TikTok is much better in that regard. It has parental controls, a restricted mode, screen time limits, etc.
We should be worried about all of them. But a hostile totalitarian foreign government could have motivations that are a hell of a lot worse than maximizing engagement/profits.
If the goal is to cause harm to the population (ala fentanyl distribution) rather than just to make as much money as possible, I’d say parents are right to be correspondingly more concerned.
I feel this is way too optimistic about the typical adult. Adults are most definitely affected by propaganda.
Problem is reality is so complex and usually all sides of a topic are right at the same time, in some way.
For any viewpoint A, there will be reels made by people in any demographic group who cares deeply about it for excellent and solid reasons. The same will be the case for anti-A.
Both of them will be convincing and TikTok can just choose which one of them to subtly nudge.
Your comment made me realize that politicians stopped "think of the children" along with the rise of social media. Before the rise of big tech they would routinely slam their fist on the podium demanding that we think of the children.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Like we've been saying since the founding of the country? yeah
"The body of people ... do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest errors by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise." -Hamilton
The founders did not think that electoral college was a good idea, senators should be appointed and not elected, and only a few citizens should be able to vote generally, because they were feeling mean. They did so because they thought these things and the act of voting itself were simply instruments to produce good government. They rejected a democracy, and favored a republic, for this reason.
Yes. But we're talking about children too - not just adult voters.
And the app collects every click, every face photo, all contacts, every keypress on external links, everything. The full social graph, shaping the trends of the younger generation.
Of course propaganda works. That's why companies spent tons of money on ads.
Of course it also works on politics, especially if people don't trust "traditional" media, but arbitrary publishers (there's room for a guiding which is more trustworthy)
History over and over has shown that a public can be led into their own demise, including brutal war.
How much active influence China takes I don't know (and I never used tiktok) but we are certainly in a time of massive disinformation and denial of facts. Globally.
The existence of democratic sociopolitical structures does not preclude the existence of targeted mass propaganda, or the weaknesses of the human psyche. Nor vice versa.
Why do you think The Rule of Law exists? Large groups of angry people often make bad decisions with long term consequences. We have known this forever.
That’s sort of the ironic bit. IMHO it’s been this way for awhile, but because it was pretty much as you described (“the elite”) with the reigns we pushed the argument that voters were individual agents.
The genius in strategies enemies are using are leveraging the exact same levers already being leveraged against be populous: free speech as a roadway for propaganda, misinformation/disinformation, and widespread social manipulation.
There was a time when it was more difficult to scale these sorts of strategies so there may have been an illusion of agency. Also, a hundred years ago issues were a bit less complicated/nuanced so your voters could probably wrangle ideas intelligently more independently.
I also suspect the corporate undermining of the general population for their own wealth grab has weakened the country as a whole, including the voter base. We want to undermine education at every turn and stability of your average citizen so they can be more easily manipulated. That comes at a cost because once we’re in that position, whose to say youll (the US elite) will be the ones with the reigns? By weakening the population for your own gain, you open up foreign adversaries to do the same and they’re doing just that.
We should focus on improving general education and the populations overall stability/livelihood. That has to do with pushing back on some of the power grab the ultra wealthy have taken, at the populations expense. These are of course just my unsubstantiated opinions.
I'm not sure it is- even if you think the electorate are educated and competent, it still makes sense to delegate the specific decisions to a smaller set of individuals who are given the time and resources to get into the detail. It just scales better.
For more than a century now the advertising industry has perfected mass psychological manipulation that aims to separate the masses from their dollar. These tactics as pioneered by the likes of Edward Bernays were plucked straight from the propaganda rule books, which has been successfully used for at least a century before that. We know that both propaganda and advertising are highly effective at influencing how people think and which products they consume. It's a small step then to extrapolate those techniques to get vast amounts of people to think and act however one wants. All it requires is sufficient interest, a relatively minor amount of resources, and using the same tools that millions of people already give their undivided attention to, which were designed to be as addictive as possible. We've already seen how this can work in the Cambridge Analytica exposé, which is surely considered legacy tech by now.
I'm honestly surprised that people are in desbelief that this can and does happen. These are not some wildly speculative conspiracy theories. People are easily influenceable. When tools that can be used to spread disinformation and gaslight people into believing any version of reality are widely available to anyone, it would be surprising if they were _not_ used for this purpose.
> If that's your view of the electorate, then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power.
Always has been. It's just that now that we've perfected the tools used to sway public opinion, and made them available to anyone, including our enemies, the effects are much more palpable.
I hope Zuckerberg and friends, and everyone who's worked on these platforms, some of which frequent this very forum, realize that they've contributed to the breakdown of civilization. It's past time for these people to stop selling us snake oil promises of a connected world, and start being accountable for their actions.
Really? It is the most base fact that people can be manipulated by the ideas of others. Creatures trying to convince other creatures of one thing over another is just part of being a living animal. But the idea that people want to control who says what is wild to you? It flies in the face of the sanctity of "democracy"? Don't you think that's a bit of a hyperbole?
> If that's your view of the electorate, then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power.
yeah. They don't necessarily want nor care to inform of the truth. they want that sort of manipulation as much as any other billionaire. Heck there's a good amount of people who simply want to be told what to do so they don't have to worry about the big stuff.
There's a reason many almost always choose convinience over anything else when working in practice.
If China had America by the balls half as bad as Israel does, we'd be watching Biden and Trump take turns kissing Xi Jinping's feet on live television right now. It's besides the point and doesn't contribute to better foreign policy choices, just gives justification to the wrong ones.
This is a valid point, and reminds me of those appalling scenes when Netanyahu received a standing ovation from the sycophantic US Congress, in the middle of his genocide of the Palestinian people [0]. And that scene in turn reminds me of old footage of Adolf Hitler being applauded by crowds.
On the phones of Trump and Vance, according to Wikipedia. Let's compose a Trump tweet on the issue:
"I was told that China had Salt Typhoon on my phone. I have always loved Salt Typhoon, it's a good thing. I talked to Elon, he'll fix it by merging TikTok with X paid in X shares. Let's focus now on making America great again."
“Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX), the author of the bill to ban TikTok, owns hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Meta, one of TikTok's chief rivals. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) bought up to $50,000 worth of Meta stock last January before voting to ban TikTok in April."
Couldn’t find recent info but back in 2014, Michael McCaul’s net worth was in the hundreds of millions. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in meta stock doesn’t seem like much for someone worth 1000 times that amount over a decade ago…
Markeayne Mullin’s net worth was ~$50 million a few years ago. $50k is 1/1000th of that networth also…
That’s not to say congress shouldn’t be banned from trading stocks like every other profession that might potentially have insider info. They absolutely should.
> Hundreds of thousands of dollars in meta stock doesn’t seem like much for someone worth 1000 times that amount over a decade ago…
That fact that it was a drop in the bucket for them makes it that much more outrageous, not less. It would have cost virtually nothing for them to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and yet they didn't. And why should they? There was no consequence. They are taunting us.
If you or I trade off anything close to insider information, we'd be in jail and lose most of our (ostensibly much more limited) assets.
“That fact that it was a drop in the bucket for them makes it that much more outrageous, not less”
I disagree. I get the point that you’re making. That they could have more easily NOT done it. But I would be a lot more ensconced if these people were putting up 50% of their net worth on these bets.
And again, I fully agree that they shouldn’t be able to trade individual stocks. In my past I was a dev at a private wealth management company. While working there I was completely barred from trading individual stocks because it’s possible that I could have come across nonpublic info in the company because they would do internal audits for some entities. It made sense. Congress is an even bigger deal because they literally write the rules of companies that can affect stock prices. I was barred because I could have passively found nonpublic info, but they can actively cause the situations that cause price movement.
And in fact, currently 2.5% of the sp500 is meta. So if these guys just have 100% of their net worth in the sp500, they’d have more META than these two transactions.
> His net worth was estimated at $294 million, up from $74 million the previous year. In 2004, the same publication estimated his net worth at $12 million. His wealth increase was due to large monetary transfers from his wife's family.
You do realize these people have friends and family.
> Who cares?
Insider trading deprives _all other_ legitimate participants of the market. That the trade is small relative to this individual net worth is meaningless. That is value that should have been captured by someone else taking a genuine risk. It's a thumb on the scale of the market and it is morally repugnant.
But it's not insider trading at this level, that's the whole point. This is a freakishly small amount of stock. At these levels he would own a lot more META if he just bought QQQ (META is 3.3% of composition) with a fraction of his net worth
The definition of insider trading does not take into consideration "levels."
> This is a freakishly small amount of stock.
That he personally purchased. I don't know what private and public entities he may have shared the information with or what other purchases traded on his information.
> At these levels he would own a lot more META if he just bought QQQ (META is 3.3% of composition) with a fraction of his net worth
At the level of an individual game a card counter is mathematically not a huge problem. They're just shifting the odds by 1 or 2% in their favor. I wonder why casinos bother to kick them out? They'd stand to win a lot more if they just flopped everything on roulette anyways.
I think you're letting the imputed scope interfere with your evaluation and mistaking net worth for liquid assets.
Surely they are doing this to preserve free speech and for the security of hard-working freedom-loving god-fearing americans, and not for their own selfish interests.
I think they are doing it so the CCP doesn't have direct propaganda line into the home of most Americans. imagine how easy it would be to tip the algorithm scales to show, for example, stolen election conspiracy videos.
Here's a video from March 14, 2024 on how Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who sponsored the H.R.7521 - Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, accepted his largest campaign contributions from Palantir, Google, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC):
Looks like Steven Mnuchin, David Friedman and Yossi Cohen were also involved. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said that "we really have a TikTok problem", since it's acting to alchemize the left-right political divide into a young-old one.
The video says that pro-Palestine content is some of the most censored content there is, but despite that, a large number of TikTok users are supporting Palestine and questioning Israel's authority to continue hostilities. It suggests that silencing these objections to the Israel-Palestine conflict by preventing their discussion and spread is one of the primary motives for banning TikTok.
I'm deeply disappointed in members of the Democratic Party who voted for the TikTok ban, whose actions call into question the integrity of their party and its priorities. I'm not as surprised by the actions of the Republican Party, which historically has sided with the establishment (Meta and other social networks under US jurisdiction), but openly voting for censorship in the face of calls to protect free speech from Donald Trump and Elon Musk is suspect.
And I'm profoundly troubled by antisemitism and how whataboutism is clouding journalistic integrity. With derogatory comments about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and wokeism becoming more prevalent, we should be mindful of the slippery slope from oppressed to oppressor. This is why we must always call out injustice in all forms, even when it's inconvenient to do so, or risk sacrificing our principles and eventually our freedoms.
I'm reminded of the Paradox of Intolerance, that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance:
That kind of comment has the opposite effect, it keeps people asleep with lazy (and corrupt) misinformation. Whenever people say 'they are all the same', they help cover for the actual bad behavior - it's now hidden among all the other behavior and not worth examining or pursuing, and rationalized.
They are certainly not all the same. If you don't distinguish them, you cut down the people actually fighting on the front lines. It's friendly fire. They are shot in the back.
At some point you have to wonder if they're just not allowed to exist to allow plausible deniability...
Either way it's clearly not going in the right direction when you have a guy selling cans of fucking beans from the oval office and launching crypto rug pulls
It's so awesome to see the executive branch, in a move for clout, decide to ignore a law passed by bipartisan action in Congress, almost by dictorial fiat.
Don't forget that it was also unanimously upheld by the supreme court!
Maybe this will be the hill he dies on. I can't bring myself to believe that he'll be allowed to literally become the day 1 dictator he that he promised he would.
m8 the only hill he'll die on is one of gold. The stooges have officially fallen in line in all of the places that matter: Congress, state houses, and federal courts.
Clearly US lawmakers were convinced they could easily force ByteDance to divest by issuing an ultimatum. They were never prepared to actually see a ban of TikTok
I feel like the free speech enthusiasts are missing some imagination and failing to see the situation we are in post-algorithms.
By now -- people have used their free speech to make reels for every possibly viewpoint convincing any possible demography about anything. The trail of reels needed to convert a mountain biker to a racist, or a Lego builder to an LBTQ ally, is out there. Making the free speech isn't the issue in 2025.
The question is: Who sees what, and whose opinions are shifted in what direction.
The big social networks controls the algorithms. Controlling who sees what is the new "speak", where you directly influence peoples minds simply by showing the right reels at the right moments.
We have always had propaganda and media leaning in different directions. But people would know they are looking at Fox News or The Daily Show or Pravda. With TikTo... you find that people's opinion change very gradually and without perception over the course of half a year. Never seeing "TikTok" -- only seeing "people like you" (which can be a function of time, and evolve) sharing their heartfelt opinions.
Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction.
TikTok has the means to do it -- all the data about what reels cause what effect on what demographic, if they just wanted to.
If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it?
I am not saying this is definitely happening. But any discussion that isn't treating all the social networks as weapons of mass propaganda that CAN be used is awfully naive.
And focusing on the "speech" thing seems so misplaced. It's all about who is heard and seen, and that is today all about power and algorithms.
> With TikTo... you find that people's opinion change very gradually and without perception over the course of half a year. Never seeing "TikTok" -- only seeing "people like you" (which can be a function of time, and evolve) sharing their heartfelt opinions.
> Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction.
> TikTok has the means to do it -- all the data about what reels cause what effect on what demographic, if they just wanted to.
> If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it?
> I am not saying this is definitely happening. But any discussion that isn't treating all the social networks as weapons of mass propaganda that CAN be used is awfully naive.
Sure. But that's something that applies to every social network. Do you think e.g. Instagram doesn't subtly adjust which videos it shows you? They openly acknowledge that they limit the spread of videos that they consider "hate speech", and of course which videos they classify as hate speech is a politically dependent question. Or maybe you think Zuckerberg's interests are more aligned with what's good for you personally than the CCP's?
Like with your examples of Fox News or The Daily Show or Pravda, if I can see all the networks then I at least can compare and consider. Closing my eyes to one of them makes me worse off, especially when it's the only one that's not run by a handful of very similar people with very similar interests.
I am not sure why you think I think Instagram etc. are innocent. For all I care all social media could be shut down.
My point was that the free speech discourse around this is naive. The "speech" in question is providing ammunition for the owners of the algorithms, who are doing the most important expression through how those algorithms are tuned.
My point was that social media should be discussed more like nuclear weapons are discussed.
It makes strategically sense for US to not have Chinese nuclear weapons/social media deployed on its soil/in the heads of its citizens; regardless of whether US nuclear weapons/social media is morally superior.
> The "speech" in question is providing ammunition for the owners of the algorithms, who are doing the most important expression through how those algorithms are tuned.
Maybe. Or maybe the algorithmic nudges are small (because if they're any bigger they get noticed and become counterproductive), and most of the real signal gets through. Maybe the actual speech matters more.
> It makes strategically sense for US to not have Chinese nuclear weapons/social media deployed on its soil/in the heads of its citizens; regardless of whether US nuclear weapons/social media is morally superior.
At first-order yes. But I think the US has a lot more to lose from a worldwide atomisation of social media. If this kind of thing is normalised then the EU etc. practically have to kick out US social media and we'll end up with everyone having their own great firewall, and that will hurt the US more than it hurts China.
I think it's funny that it's going online because the new President told people to just ignore the law. Interestingly, he is a convicted criminal so it kinda makes sense he would just tell folk to ignore the law. And even more interestingly, the back the blue/law and order type folks will be thinking this is a great move.
Not only that but will American advertisers take the risk of allowing their ads to continue showing to American audiences, or for us based payment processors handle in app payments
Nobody is far enough, not with that actual power. Everything is connected and ripple effects travel far.
Plus our european politicians are weak and largely clueless, we will fold in front of China and let them roll over our automotive industry. There is war at our doorstep and enemy who repeatedly claimed he will wipe out half of our population, yet our reaction is next to 0, both immediate and long term.
Yeah you say that, but I just saw Elonia Musk stirring the pot by calling for MEGA “Make Europe Great Again”, so it seems he’s trying to spread his cancerous views into your political systems now too.
Seems I spoke too soon about the US taking a good decision for once when it comes to cyber and civil security. Well... I wonder what muskov will come up with now that twitter is still at large inaccessible in China but tiktok is welcome in the US.
Douyin is the Chinese TikTok equivalent. China isn't opposed to the concept of short form video, they just want to segregate Chinese users into their own app
That is so embarrassing for the Democrats. Trump comes out that he wants to ban it, Biden finally does on like, the last week of his presidency, just so Trump can come in and save it. Now the millions of people who make their living on TikTok and everyone else who simply likes the app are now thanking Trump for bringing back the app he wanted to ban in the first place.
No, there was a similar one letting the president declare nonprofits a terrorist organization though.
The TikTok one doesn't have input from the president, its all apps of a certain size owned by a country we dont like. Hence, Marvel Snap got banned too in the crossfire
My bad, its both actually. The law lists some criteria, unambiguously including TikTok and Bytedance by name, and then says the president can add more if they want, though this power has not been used yet.
It sucks so hard how the Dems keep expanding the powers of the Pres right before handing it to Trump
It sucks that they're expanding the powers at all. It doesn't matter who has the power today, it matters what the next person may do. Both parties are bad about expanding federal powers, it isn't the fault of one side.
Correct me if I'm wrong but TikTok was never forced to shut down for US users, it was just going to be removed from the stores and unable to be updated.
Is it back on the stores or not? Because if not, nothing about the ban has changed, it's only that TikTok undid the decision that THEY took to shut down.
Yes, this is correct -- TikTok's own "shutdown" was never required by law. I'm not in the US so I can't check for myself, but from googling it still seems to be removed from both the Apple and Google stores.
If Apple/Google don't change their minds, TikTok won't be able to get any new US users, and won't be able to distribute updates to current US users. To continue using it in the current state, US users will have to keep the same phone and TikTok will have to continue supporting whatever last version(s) they're on indefinitely. (Modulo the few that might jump through VPN and app store locale setting hoops.)
And I don't see how Apple/Google could change their minds: the ban bill comes with a 5 year statute of limitations, so regardless of how convincing the Trump administration is in their promise not to enforce the law, the next administration inaugurated in January 2029 would still be able to impose the penalties on Apple/Google for 4 years of non-compliance. Those penalties would be cripplingly massive even for the world's largest companies (I'm reading an estimate of $850B [0]).
As far as I can tell, the only events that could end this are (1) TikTok finding and agreeing to sell to a US buyer or (2) Congress overturning the ban.
It's odd that people are talking as though the saga is over now...
Trump should launch a Tiktok clone on Truth Social in 90 days when the reprieve expires. I'm surprised there wasn't a new platform ready to pounce on new users. Absolutely nuts that one of the biggest refugee destinations is literally named after a Mao-era propaganda tool.
But in all seriousness, there's 3 branches of government and 2 of spoken. Trump's voice should be moot. Hopefully he's put in his place by our institutions and shamed for attempting to subvert the system of checks and balances described by our constitution.
I want you to know that the name of the app is '小红书' (小 little 红 red 书 book), and the name of the propaganda tool is '红宝书' (红 red 宝 treasure 书 book).
I don't think there is such a "name after" thing. There are a lot of mixed reviews on Cultual Revolution, a "name after" would bring a lot of risks during the growth of the app.
>supreme court says that tiktok might be a threat to national security
>yeah, let's just ignore that. Dance videos on tiktok are more important than security
That's so f-in absurd. I can't even wrap my head around why anyone would literally protest against the ban. I just hope that germany, or rather europe, will have such a ban, too, and that it get enforced properly.
National security is a load of crap. How can you still believe anything they say when the entire security establishment literally bold-faced lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction to justify a completely unnecessary war?
The legislators who voted to ban it based on national security better stand up next week. Biden and Trump both look incredibly weak. America looks weak. Democracy looks weak.
Is it too conspiracy-theorist to notice that the timeline for this matches the $TRUMP grift that added significant $billions to our new president’s net worth?
Nobody cares any more. We’re a long way from making Carter sell his farm. We’re a long way from the integrity of Nixon. We’re a long way from the fidelity of Clinton.
Trump and team may be the biggest public relations masterminds of all time. They realize that the populous is fickle and easily won over with obvious stunts. Define the villains and play the hero. It keeps working for him over and over and over. Truly incredible.
There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick".
> There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick".
Four quotes that capture the essence of not letting others define your reality or exert control over your perception:
1. “He who defines the terms wins the argument.” - various thinkers.
2. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “Until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” - Chinua Achebe
4. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
I really hate Trump, but the guy is a media (read: not political) genius. I doubt there will ever be someone like him in the Republican, or any party again.
Calling him a genius isn’t quite accurate. He’s not a genius anything. But he does have orbiters who know what they’re doing. He’s mostly just a puppet.
Also a fan of executive action over congressional consent. And the son of a wealthy father in new york.
And opposed by a Democratic party which was very much controlled (to a fault) by its machine.
That's roughly where the similarities end though. I think they'd have strongly diverged on key points such as a man's duty to his country in war, presidential pardons, and right in the *****.
Ha, I guess Trump is the pro business president after all since he's so transparently open for business himself. At least as of now it seems Bytedance outsmarted the detractors.
That shoutout has the vibe of some Banana Republic corruption…
GOP in the US has constantly been fear mongering about social media bias, but what they really mean is they want their own ideas / bias and nobody else.
From China's perspective, I wonder if there's a workaround to sell 50% of TikTok to a US public company, and then through a few intermediaries purchase a large enough holding in _that_ company to give them a board seat or two.
meh. i always thought the real reason for the ban was EVERYONE in the states who has had to deal with ByteDance walks away from the experience thinking they've been dicked. Or at least everyone I've talked with. In my own experience, we signed a deal with US/TikTok and started spending money on things to uphold our part of the bargain. Then ByteDance steps in and says "no. we're canceling this contract," and we point out, "uh... hey bevis... we just spent money on your behalf," and their response is "sucks to be you." The case has been in California courts for about 5 years. We may get our money back before TikTok/US goes out of business.
The TikTok ban is worse for national security. It's trading in an imagined threat for a real threat. Though Xiaohongshu is having a cute little cultural exchange between Chinese people and Americans, there's so much more Chinese propaganda on that platform. I got recommended a few videos talking about Chinese/American wargames and how Americans were done for due to ultrasonic missiles and naval capabilities. You never see anything like that on TikTok. And the only reason Americans are exploring that platform is because of the TikTok ban.
> I got recommended a few videos talking about Chinese/American wargames and how Americans were done for due to ultrasonic missiles and naval capabilities.
You get those on youtube as well, for every combination of large power, I'm not sure why that its own should be a red flag.
If a significant number of users were to join another foreign-owned platform with similar issues, it is likely that such platform would be banned as well, if it is not already banned under FACAA.
TikTok is an issue in large part due to its popularity.
How is it typical of Western countries, and how is it hypocrisy? US companies already do strange things to comply with China's requirements of them, for example.
The US has already jumped head first into the shit can.
All those ideals of democracy I learned about growing up in the US - checks and balances, the rule of law, land of opportunity. It's all become a massive joke.
Wait till you see US troops on the ground in Ukraine working hand in hand with russians, killing Ukrainians because Zelensky refused Trump "just give up" deal.
That was never the issue, if it was, the US would simply force certain privacy legislation upon companies, like the EU did.
It's about the global monopoly on tech products that the US has, which is obviously threatened by Chinese competitors. You saw the exact same thing with Huawei.
Even if you think this is about protectionism rather than state sponsored espionage (I don't think many would agree with you) your comment makes little sense. Because if you wanted to enforce that kind of protectionism you would still do it under the guise of privacy or security. Meaning you would simply impose such laws that would make it impossible for TikTok to operate, while at the same time being good for privacy.
>Because if you wanted to enforce that kind of protectionism you would still do it under the guise of privacy or security. Meaning you would simply impose such laws that would make it impossible for TikTok to operate, while at the same time being good for privacy.
Well that's exactly what happened. Except it's just a pretense that it's about security or privacy, which is a very easy thing to do.
So Ericsson was banned together with Huawei I take it, and some non-Chinese apps are being investigated similar to TikTok?
No. This whole ”it’s just protectionism” doesn’t hold water for one second. Huawei has been banned in other places as well, and no other companies in the telecom were simultaneously banned. It’s just not good policy to build critical infrastructure using hardware from a Chinese company.
Yes, but the president is the head of the executive branch, which includes the DoJ. He can simply instruct them not to prosecute.
That does leave companies like Oracle, who TikTok uses to host their content, in a weird position where they could be fined by future administrations for continuing to provide them service now.
However, the law does give the president the ability to give them a one-time 90 day stay of execution. So, theoretically, they could repeal the law in the next 3 months.
The only thing I would have respected Trump for was the TikTok ban and now I don't have any. Trump loves fake news and brain rot, I was naive to think he would keep TikTok banned.
Through this law, Trump will consolidate control over social media.
Facebook and Instagram, via Mark Zuckerberg, and X/Twitter via Elon Musk, are already in Trump's camp and are helping him.
This law gives Trump leverage over TikTok - their access to the US market will likely depend on serving Trump's interests. Like X and Meta (and other SV companies) operating in other countries, they will comply with local oppression. It's incredible that the Democrats keep handing victory after victory to their opponents.
(Trump also is gaining extreme influence over professional news media, including Fox News and the WSJ, of course, but also ABC News, possibly CBS News, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the LA Times, and many more. It may be time to stop the lazy criticism of the NY Times and start taking them seriously; they could be the only island left in the storm, and will be subject to extreme attacks.)
explain how he (a private citizen) can give a 90 day extension on a deadline that is passed with criteria that can not be certified and had to have been already given to congress? Please be precise with terminology and facts in these legal matters.
He's not just any private citizen, he's the president elect who will be inaugurated in a day. I'm sure his word carries way more weight than mine.
I'm not privy to the specific words that were exchanged, so it's hard to be precise. But I imagine it was some form of Trump saying "by tomorrow, I will give you a 90-day extension. I have a gentleman's agreement with the current government that if you do not stop your services in the 24 hours between now and my inauguration, you won't face any issues, so please carry on and we will clean this mess up later".
If you want a private citizen analogy, it's similar to someone saying they won't press charges despite a third-party being in flagrant illegal behavior. In this case, it's the US government saying they won't press charges. Both Biden and Trump have said as much, if my understanding of the case is correct, and one can assume they have discussed this with the appropriate branches of government.
Trump does not have the authority to give a 90 day extension by the language in the law from my understanding. There was a provision for a single use 90 day extension that would require the president to certify 3 things (which currently has not been met and can not be met within days) and have that delivered to congress prior to the ban taking affect. The law gives no mechanism to provide an extension after the ban according to republican legislators.
He must simply _claim_ that the 3 requirements have been met according to his own interpretation of the facts on the ground. It doesn't mean that his interpretation must be correct; He has the discretion to provide the extension per the law.
If someone challenges his interpretation of the 3 requirements in court, then presumably he'd have to explain why he believed that to be the case[1], but he does not have to prove this certainty ex ante in order for the 90-day extension to be valid.
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[1]: IANAL but whether he can successfully prove it or not is also ultimately irrelevant given the SCOTUS recent interpretation of presidential power. If he's found "guilty" of making a bad interpretation of the certainty of the 3 requirements, what is really going to be his punishment? There's really nothing you can do against a sitting president with regards to the exercise of their executive power...
He does not need to simply _claim_, he must certify. And one of those is:
“there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension."
This is a binary thing. No such legal agreement seems to exist. You also ignored the other parts of my comment about him missing the deadline in the law to apply the extension.
"Certify" does not mean the same as prove with evidence. I don't think there's a specific threshold that has to be met there other than the parties agreeing it has been certified. It can even come down to as much as "trust me bro" from the president.
The definition of certify is literally "attest or confirm in a formal statement"
Besides, there's no process through which Congress would question or investigate whether the president really can or cannot certify whatever he claims about this matter.
Large corporations blackmailing countries seems to be becoming more common. There was probably some of it going on throughout history (oil companies?, pharma?) but recently we've seen AT&T, Pornhub, TikTok, Google, Meta and others threaten to or actually stop services in areas that try to regulate them. There has been no legal reaction to this so far, rather companies "voluntarily" leave. Might we see large corporations seized in the future for blackmail?
Private companies are not obligated to offer services, and in the US the government cannot compel private companies to do so (except rare circumstances). "We will stop offering services if X does not happen" is not coercive, it's an ultimatum. Companies should not be expected to operate in a market hostile to them.
What about privatized utilities then? What prevents e.g. electricity or phone companies from shutting down when they don't like some rules? It's a little more nuanced than "all or nothing".
Losing TikTok for a few hours or a day is perhaps going to make TikTok users more angry at the government than TikTok.
Losing electricity or phone service for a day is going to make people more angry at the utility or phone company, regardless of why the shutdown has happened.
And if a utility threatened to shut down service instead of complying with a new government regulation, you can bet the government would immediately jail anyone involved in that decision.
Covered under "except rare circumstances". Regulations for utilities, telecommunications, transportation, and financial services are the exception and not the rule.
Because it's endlessly profitable and very low risk to run a utility, the company's board is... unlikely to ever decide to do a stunt. For what payoff?
I'm torn on this, though, because it's not really the companies blackmailing the countries. It's the companies telling their users, "hey, your country is doing this, and if you don't want them to do this, make some political noise".
Sure, if that message is dishonest or manipulative, that's dangerous, but TikTok telling their US users that they're going to lose access to TikTok if they don't "do something" seems like a pretty reasonable use of free speech.
But at the same time, I don't like that companies have the clout to influence politics to the degree they do. But they have far more (and IMO often better) levers they can pull than what TikTok has done here, and I think those levers (campaign contributions, for one) are much more dangerous to democracy than stuff like this.
(For the record, I am loosely in favor of a TikTok divestiture or ban, though not for the reasons touted by the US government.)
This operation seems a bargain for buying Tiktok, nothing more. The main contradiction is preventing competition and being a monopoly. The government is trying to prevent more competition and create more confort zones for monopolies. They don't care about free speech. Finally, they are part of this business.
This satisfies my curiosity about why TikTok didn't try to push app users to the website, which is not so easy to ban. They were always hoping to cozy up to Trump by offering him the opportunity to "save" TikTok.
It's only for 90 days though, unless Trump decides to completely ignore his duty to enforce the law (a distinct possibility).
My reading of the law does not require ISPs to block customers from accessing TikTok. US-based CDNs would be unable to provide hosting, but that just makes it less efficient, not inaccessible.
The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech.
We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced.
Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
- "Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived."
The outcome is *exactly* as anyone with a modicum of sense expected.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"—often paraphrased (sensibly!) as "deserve neither and *will lose both*." As you say: we've lost both—who could have predicted that? Yeah; well.
Not free speech. Amplification of speech and to an extent freedom of association. Speech is not being criminalized -- you can say the exact same things on a different forum. And the entity being constrained is a foreign actor [edit] with likely state security apparatus ties.
To respond to a comment which has now been deleted:
I don't care about the First Amendment specifically. The US constitution is not magical divinely inspired scripture. I care about the underlying principles of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of association, regardless of how well or poorly those are reflected by a specific written law.
I'm a 50+ average Joe who only watches Australian state media (ABC) and I've seen plenty of content that I find shocking from both Israel and Hamas and I came away with sympathy for the Palestinians caught in the middle.
Lol where do you even get something so easily disproven like this? I care for neither Israel nor Palestine, but I see more or less equal coverage of both sides (not so much my side, funnily enough) on every platform.
Reddit is both anti-Israel and anti-Palestine depending on the sub. News channels will be one or the other depending on the slant and there's plenty on both sides. Most of instagram is people from both sides shouting at each other about how the other gets more representation/are more evil. Same with facebook. I don't use Twitter or any Twitter clones, but I assume Mastodon has a Palestinian slant while Twitter probably has a slight Israeli slant (shitposting aside). Even on HackerNews you'll see both stances often. I guess 4chan would have my stance, since they hate Israel because antisemitism but also hate Arabs.
Do people just make shit up like this for a laugh? I really don't get it, yet see it so often espoused.
> No, you can't. TikTok was the only mainstream platform where pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral.
Reddit shows pro-palestinian/anti-israel propaganda in the front page on a daily basis.
Also, the fact that Israel's invasion of Palestinian territories was an anti-Biden propaganda point that was boosted pretty hard doesn't exactly prove that the likes of China aren't pushing propaganda to destabilize the US. There was clearly a coordinated effort to force-fed the idea that Biden was pro-genocide and a warmonger, and Trump was the only possible candidate to push peace in Ukraine and Palestine.
The US constitution does not apply to citizens - it applies to the government.
Citizens in the US are implicitly allowed to do whatever they like, subject to laws that the government enacts. The constitution describes those areas where the government is allowed to pass laws. All other areas are off limits to the government, and left for the people to do as they like. To emphasize the point, the amendments specify certain areas that the government is extra-especially-not-allowed to create any laws about, like speech.
The extent to which this is observed today is quite dubious. There are lots of laws that the US government passes which have little to do with anything the constitution allows them to do - but they kinda hand-wave around that and gesture toward something, like the "commerce clause" or whatnot as justification.
But in theory - for any law passed - it is unconstitutional unless you can say exactly where in the constitution it is explicitly allowed.
* Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
It's not just US citizens, but per the supreme court "foreign organizations operating abroad possess no rights under the U. S. Constitution". In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society International specifically with regards to the first amendment.
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However TikTok US here is a domestic organization operating domestically merely controlled by a foreign organization operating abroad, which complicates matters. It has rights.
Courts and laws don't need to stop their analysis at "is it a corporation registered in the US." It is a foreign-controlled organization, therefore it is treated as a foreign organization. If you have ever dealt with the defense contracting apparatus, you will know this is how it works.
By its wording, no, because it applies to "Congress". Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
A later amendment is held to have "incorporated" this prohibition against the state governments as well, though that amendment doesn't actually specify anything in particular. ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.")
It is frequently argued that some act of the government violates the free speech rights of foreigners living abroad, which is to say that whatever it was the government did fell into the class of behaviors prohibited by the first amendment. People tend to find that argument weird; I don't know what its batting average is.
Summing up, nothing extends rights to foreigners, but since the first amendment is a prohibition on the government rather than a grant of rights to certain protected people, foreigners arguably enjoy equal protection.
So, usually in a representative democracy (republic or not), the judiciary power is supposed to check and limit the other two (to avoid a tyranny of the majority). You can have that done in two way: with "case law", the only way in some countries (like the UK): basically if a law is enforced against a minority, it will be enforced against the majority. Other countries added a consitution. Its use is to limit the executive and legislative power of the government: the legislative power is supposed to prevent the law/executive order from existing or being executed, and base that decision on the constitution.
TL:DR: no, it doesn't even apply to US citizen, only to US government.
PS: "tyranny of the majority" for some is a definition fascism, i disagree, to me it isn't even proto-fascism, it lack a weird mythos about internal enemies and a few other mythos. It's closer bonapartism, or cesarism at worst. To be clear i think it is a precondition to have fascism (I.E as long as your case law/consitution is enforced for everybody the same way, you aren't a fascist state).
The 1st Amendment applies to US citizens' freedom to read/receive communications from non-US citizens (or i.e. read books by non-American authors). That's not under dispute: the current SCOTUS ruling both acknowledges, and sidesteps, that.
"Code is speech" is absurdly reductionist in most cases.
Yes, the government censoring Tiktok's source code on Github would be a freedom of speech violation, but that's not what this is about, is it? See also: Tornado Cash. Publishing code facilitating money laundering is fine (you'll find the code still on Github!); running said code to facilitate money laundering isn't.
Or to go with an even more extreme example: Writing code for a self-aiming and firing gun is speech [1], running said code on a gun in your driveway isn't.
The fact that we are still debating such basics of the First Amendment here is baffling. This is almost as trivial as the other well-known limitations in my view (shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater etc.)
[1] At least at the moment, and as far as I know; I think we might see this type of speech being restricted in the same way that some facts about the construction of nuclear weapons are "innate state secrets".
American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans. That seems like the real 1st amendment issue to me and I was quite surprised to learn that ByteDance only claimed that their own 1st amendment rights were being infringed on (which personally I find to be flimsier).
EDIT: Tornado cash was taken down from GitHub though, so you don't have a point here
The code isn’t the main issue here, it’s the online platform. The apps were only banned as a means to access the platform, not fir the code they contain. The code would be largely useless without the platform infrastructure and data storage behind it.
Huh? It's up as a public archive on tornadocash/tornado-core as we speak.
> American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans.
Yes, in the same way that American companies and individuals are routinely prohibited by the government from distributing other binaries to Americans, most notably anything that circumvents DRMs as regulated by the DMCA.
I really don't think the people that drafted the First Amendment had apps in mind when they thought of "speech", and would probably consider them something more like machinery (a printing press, a radio (not a radio station!) etc.) Interpreting Tiktok as a type of newspaper (which are widely protected even in democracies without an equivalent to the First Amendment) is much less of a leap of faith compared to considering an iOS executable speech.
Interesting, I didn't follow the tornado cash case super closely, but I do recall it being taken off GitHub for a short time.
So I would also argue that restricting DRM bypassing software is a violation of the 1st amendment and, more importantly, that it's a bad thing to restrict.
We'll never know what they would have thought, but I'll add that actual plans for machinery are definitely speech. We certainly do restrict these plans, with ITAR most notably, and I think it's reasonable to draw that line somewhere.
Note that I never said banning TikTok was as bad idea, just that it restricted speech by way of limiting distribution (which oddly looks unconsidered in the supreme court case), which it absolutely does. I'm uncomfortable with this level of power being granted to the government, but given that TikTok is obviously a spying/malware delivery tool by a foreign borderline hostile government I think it's probably warranted.
I think not being somewhat disturbed by the United States government restricting distribution of an application is a bit weird TBH. That's a huge power to have and can definitely be abused, especially if it's made easier to do so in the future.
You can no more riase taxes to properly fund government than you can fill a bucket with no bottom.
One only need to look at the Harris campaign to see that the political class in the us is fundamentally innumerate as well as incapable of making a cost benefit analysis.
The only presidential administration that produced a non-deficit budget was Bill Clinton's second term (~97-00).
Probably because Ross Perot mostly self-funded a third party campaign centered around the national debt and had received 8% of the vote (and 19% in the previous election).
I personally picked 40% because I couldn't image a change of this sort being consistent with today's political reality.
That said, the fine print of that prediction can be interpreted that the ban is "in effect" even if it not enforced and has no legal liability. I doubt all the predictors were hanging their hat on that fine print when they predicted, though.
I've never understood that quote. Is it ok to give up essential liberty to gain a large, permanent safety? If so, how large and how permanent does it have to be to qualify?
I'm also a little unclear on which liberties are essential, versus those that are merely nice to have. We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
I also find it comical that banning TikTok is the red line for folks when the NSA and other government agencies have been acting with impunity when it comes to harvesting data for decades now.
People don't care about most things because there are a practically infinite number of things one could care about.
But when you ban something 9 figures of people happily use, with some small chunk of that even being people making a living off of it, people will care about that because it directly and visibly affects them.
If I were an US citizen this would be the most worrying aspect to me.
Are the congressmen so incompetent that they didn't see this coming? This backfired horribly for them in multiple ways... unless this was somehow part of a master plan my simple mind can't comprehend?
Did it somehow not backfire and I'm just being led to believe so?
It’s literally pay to play with the new administration which is why it doesn’t feel coherent. He’s being courted by Meta to ban and TikTok to not ban.
The elite have always known the value of media and propaganda. TikTok could easily sway electorate decision making in the same way as Meta, X, and YouTube. The US oligarchs have no control over a sizable social media platform. The data security and privacy concerns are theater. The very same logic we use for TikTok applies to our own apps and social media. The only distinction is the false premise they have our interests in mind.
Are congressmen this incompetent? Yes. Are they bought by adversaries? Yes. Are they just humans who are as equally manipulated as you? Yes.
The assumption (whether right or wrong) is that the NSA and other government agencies are at least doing it to keep Americans safe. And I think there's an assumption (again, whether right or wrong) in the general public that the NSA doesn't harvest the data of Americans themselves – or if they are harvesting the data of Americans, then they're Americans who are up to no good.
The issue isn’t data harvesting, and it’s unclear to me why people getting this wrong.
The issue is a foreign government having access to that data, to installed software on millions of phones, and foreign control of the primary information source for tens of millions of Americans.
The point of the analogy wasn't to say those two things are the same. It was reductio ad absurdum, a totally valid proof technique in math and logic.
If person A says "X implies Y", then person B points out that X would also imply obvious nonsense Z, it doesn't mean that B is saying Y and Z are the same, or even that Y isn't true. They're just pointing out that X is too general to possibly be true.
The context here was Indian raids. Some rich land owner wanted to pay a one time fee. Benjamin Franklin was saying a 1 time fee wasn't enough - and it would only offer temporary safety rather than ongoing safety higher taxes would offer.
This essential liberty was freedom from being killed. Pretty fucking essential.
That's quite interesting. I'd expect a lot of people to say "the freedom to keep my money" is absolutely essential.
We give up that right in exchange for the permanent safety that a government is supposed to grant. Life is presumably more fundamental than money, but if it's the only truly essential liberty, there is a lot of room to give up others.
On the broadest strokes it makes sense. We gave up the liberty of truly owning the land so the government can build houses on them. From there we more or less are rented the land and almost everyone pays a tax for it.
Homeowners have some power. But if the government really needs to (modern example includes building a new railway), They can elect to forcibly pay you and seize it (eminent domain).
>We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
Auto transportation was never a right to begin with. As inconvenient as it is, you are free to walk wherever you want without trespassing. Even across a road. But there's a line when you start to simply endanger others by say, walking on a road at 5 mph.
Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content, and implicitly the fact that if a Chinese company owns it, the US has no control over it. Opinion making in the US is always implicitly enforced, not explicitly.
There's a great bit of an old interview with Noam Chomsky talking to an American reporter in which the reporter asks Chomsky: "You think I'm lying to you, pushing a US agenda?" and he responds: "No I think you're perfectly honest, but if you held any other beliefs than you do you wouldn't be sitting in that chair talking to me"
You didn't even engage with what I said. You dismiss statements of a US senator because of the paper that reports them?
Please address the actual argument, namely that in the US, when you hand platforms to people like Zuckerberg, you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration the way other people change T-Shirts. That is the point of the sale, anybody who is not utterly gullible can see it from a mile away.
On a Chinese owned TikTok Americans get information presented to them, whether intentionally or authentically, that the US powers that be do not like. There is no other security argument, data was already managed by Oracle in the US, the app was technically separated from its Chinese equivalent Douyin.
>Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content
I’m struggling to see why you say I didn’t.
> you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration
I think this is blatantly not true. Instagram, reddit, and others host a TON of anti-current-administration content.
Now, I’d like to discuss your assertion that there is no other security argument with a series of questions. I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
Do you think it is likely that CCP has access to the data obtained by Tik Tok on US phones?
Do you think the US government warnings and security audit results were based on real concerns and findings?
Do you think it is a national security risk for millions of Americans to run CCP controlled code on their phones?
Do you think CCP is able to control the Tik Tok recommendation algorithms to promote their interests, possibly at the expense of American interests?
> I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
The only one I wouldn't uniformly answer "no" to is the last one as there's no real evidence for the first two and that one is at least in principle possible but what's important is that private American citizens running entertainment apps on their personal phones isn't a "national security issue".
Running TikTok on government phones in Langley probably is so banning an app like this from government devices is fair enough, but the interest of any individual American is that they have free access to services, domestic or foreign, even if it's literal propaganda because they're the ones who are supposed to make that judgement. Hell even if it's Red Star OS from North Korea and they want to run it on their personal computer, they should be able to.
American interest isn't a synonym for interest of the state department, because if that's the case you're living in a security state (ironically like China) and not a free country.
Why stop at two? X seems to just be crazy person x says crazy thing y, so no problem adding that to my dns blacklist, fb and insta are as you say, just as obvious as tiktok. SEO results are dominated by AI vomit blogs, nothing to see there so searech engines are useless. LLMs seem to be mostly ok for finding things right now, I'm sure they will figure out how to mess that up soon enough though. YouTube is really useful for figuring out how to fix my <insert thing broken in my house>. But other than that is just the prototype the other stuff was based on. For news I look at news sources that cost money, wsj, economist etc. because then there is at least a chance that I myself am not the product. For finding music I ask local musicians who they like and follow those referrals a few deep. For seeing funny pet antics I look at my pets. To learn more about tech I come here and follow links.
Unlike TikTok, X is an American social media platform. By default, It is protected under free speech rights. TikTok is Chinese and doesn't get to play that card. End of story.
That doesn't keep them off my dns blacklist though. Seems like whatever card tiktok played was good enough to get tomorrow's administration to change course.
If the Democrats field a candidate that is willing to debase themselves with a stupid dance that goes viral, I feel there may be a change of heart. Assuming Trump doesn't manage to run for a third term.
The EU has the advantage that their politicians don't all own gigantic shares in any social media companies (because the EU doesn't have any), so they are afforded the rare luxury of actually voting for the good of the people. That's why the EU has decent data privacy laws.
The TikTok ban would've been far less problematic if they had created legislation for all companies that curtailed data trading and increased user privacy. But that was never the goal.
1. Banning media based on alleged (or real) foreign interference is a very thin line
2. Banning and "unbanning" media based on vague accusations can be exploited for self-serving economical or political interests, which long-term hurts any kind of credibility of media as a whole. And, like it or not: we depend on media. We're not living in self-sufficient communes, at least most of us don't.
3. What made TikTok an issue in the first place: foreign interference (see 1) and problematic content, the policy causes for this probably include insufficient moderation and lack of court accountability. Then there's the question of algorithmic bias: I think this is not a simple question, e.g. is Instagram Reels technically the same or if not, what are the most important differences between their recommendation algorithms?
Except that no one voted to give up this liberty nor purchase this "safety". The oligarchs determined that they wanted to purchase power and "elected" to take our liberty.
He's making tens of millions of Americans (especially including those who may not have otherwise been political) quite fond of him, bringing back a platform that has definitely been a net positive for him overall, undoing one of his predecessors 'achievements', and so on.
He came out against a ban on TikTok long ago (after initially being in support) and made it clear he'd work to reverse it the second the ban bill started gaining momentum.
So he can make a call and cancel a border security bill, but can't make the same call to cancel the TikTok portion of the spending bill before it passed?
Soldiers were already sharing videos of aircraft carriers on Rednote which hasn't gone through the whole shenanigans of paying Larry Ellison to host it on Oracle Cloud and so on. The national security risk is the US military apparently not being able to convince its own soldiers to be thoughtful about cybersecurity.
This is why Blackberry used to sell phones without cameras and microphone switches, and enterprise-centric OS images. Crazy that regular iOS/Android phones leaking data 24/7 to a million 'partners' are freely allowed at military locations. Pictures and video uploaded to social media include EXIF data with geolocation!
How does it matter where those videos were shared? Material is either classified or unclassified, it doesn't matter if the WarThunder forums (for example) are moderated by US nationals or not.
It's not about where the videos are posted, it's about having apps that collect exact GPS position of smartphones that soldiers carry while the position of the ships they are on is classified. The fact that there's videos is just the "proof" that they have installed such apps that exfiltrate things like their location, for example.
If you want to secure sailors' phones you are going to have to do a lot more, and at the same time much less, than ban or transfer the ownership of one single app that happens to be used by over a hundred million civilians.
GasBuddy (and Life360) just sold that same location data to brokers, which Allstate bought and used to adjust premiums. Practically every app that is given access to location info is selling it, and it's widely available to anyone with the money to buy.
Maybe we should have some sort of General Data Protection Regulation law instead of hand-wringing about social media.
That’s the world we live in today. Under many countries’ privacy laws, it’s not legal to sell PII to a third party that you collected for a specific other purpose (e.g., fulfilling the primary purpose of the app). The problem is that they do it anyways.
If I agree to let FantasyCorp sell my location data, and then they follow through with our agreement and actually sell it, then there's no problem here that I can see.
It’s not top secret deployments, it’s any deployments. All deployments need to maintain a level of operational security. Also if you expect a bunch of people in the 18-29 age range to go without internet for 9 months to 2 years, you’re kidding yourself. The tradeoff is between operational security and morale and if you’re in military leadership, you really don’t want unhappy troops on your hands.
I mean, I do completely expect deployed military personnel to adhere to rules and limitations that are much more rigorous than those they'd experience in civilian life.
I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security simply because that's what people in their broad demographic category are accustomed to.
I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories, without regard for the capacities and attitudes of the specific individuals seeking to join. I know for a fact that people are rejected for enlistment for all sorts of reasons.
And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Of this we are in 100% agreement. It’s totally doable, but I am observing that today it is not a solved problem in the US military.
> I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
I’m a little confused about the wording of this but I am reading this as saying that the military should be able to apply its own standards that are stricter than what civilians are accustomed to. I agree, and it does. But I’m suggesting that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that enforcement is never perfect. A blanket ban on personal devices (I’m positive this has been tried before) would both be unpopular and difficult to enforce. It would be a mistake to discount the cost of poor morale. And it would be a mistake to ignore the outsized effect that poor morale has on middle management — the ones who are responsible for enforcing said rules.
I hope it’s clear that my commentary is entirely descriptive and not prescriptive. Full disclosure: I’m former US military enlisted and also currently working in a space adjacent to improving operational security.
> You're constructing a straw man without being curious about the things you yourself are missing.
Could you point out the straw man in question? I feel like everything I posted above is a direct response to arguments I gleaned from your previous comment, and certainly didn't intentionally attribute any argument to you that I didn't think you were actually making.
> I suggest you read parent comment about balance and tradeoffs inherent in forward deployment again.
I've reread it a couple of times, and I'm afraid I'm not seeing any hidden propositions in it that I missed the first time around. Could you be more explicit about what you're getting at?
My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff, and my point about the absurdity of trying to make that tradeoff for society as a whole in a scenario where you imply the military can't make it for its own operations still seems to apply here.
>> I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security
The post you were replying to didn't suggest anything about total freedom. You're exaggerating their words to make your argument easier.
>> I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories
Given initial enlistment age ranges between 17 and 30/40 [0], you get cohorts from specific generations.
Kids who are 17 now were born ~2008, which is just starting to be kids with smartphones and mobile devices their entire lives.
No cross-sectioning required: just upper and lower age limits.
>> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight
I'm going to assume you're honestly ignorant of military networks and field device management at scale.
The military runs segregated networks. Secure networks require approved devices; those devices are extremely locked down. There are often also public internet networks for MWR reasons. Unmanaged devices can be used on those networks. Furthermore, in most non-naval deployments, terrestrial cellular data networks are also accessible.
>> for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Military IT is already overloaded managing the vast number of secure devices and networks, so having them manage consumer devices in any way is a non-starter.
For scale context, the DoD PKI includes ~4 million active CAC cards. [1]
Unmanaged consumer devices + CAC are also often used for less-privileged interaction with the military (e.g. HR functions).
> My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff
And the responses that you're getting are that these are non-trivial problems for real-world reasons.
Furthermore, you seem to have a lack of understanding about how much it sucks to be stuck in a forward base, and how important maintaining morale is to command authority and force effectiveness.
PS: Also, look at user names. I'm not the author of the original comment you replied to.
I'm sure there are many other cheap and easy ways to improve morale on deployments, but that many of those options are eschewed and/or only offered with oversight because they would otherwise risk operational security.
I'm not sure what to make of the argument that the military is unable to find any alternative to consumer smartphones without even RMM implemented as a means of providing for troop morale, therefore the government should regulate social media for the entirety of society as a means to ensure the security of military maneuvers. This just sounds nuts to me.
This entire conversation is about the TikTok ban. My question about why deployed troops are allowed to use social media apps on consumer devices was in response to preceding comments insinuating that banning TikTok is justifiable in light of its potential to damage operational security if military personnel are using it in the field, and was targeted at understanding the implied premise that the problem couldn't be solved by much more proximate, narrowly tailored approaches.
The crew would be relatively constant, but ships also carry attachments that are based on the types of missions they are going to complete. So the actual number of passengers would vary.
The Onion Router was invented by the Navy to make ship location tracking hard with visibility of some of the network, so it's classified at times. More importantly, just because you have satellites doesn't mean that it's easy to pick all of that out all the time or to be entirely certain of which ship/which mission, etc. Making it harder is better even if it can't be made impossible outside of subs.
Plus these apps track you everywhere so the Chinese have your GPS and you're on the aircraft carrier. No need for fancy satellites they can just have that data and track the military and other government employees 24/7. I guarantee you no American company can track Chinese military or Chinese employees 24/7 wherever they're at this is a one-way deal it's not good for the US.
When I was deployed in 2011 we didn't carry cell phones because:
1. Jammers will render your antenna unusable or potentially damage your device.
2. The country that controls the infrastructure now has the inside scoop on who you are, what you're doing, and where you are. Even if they country is an ally, it only takes a few individuals to start mass exfiltration.
TikTok was turning into infrastructure for social dialogue except that it had a new capability compared to the cell phones of 2011: it could be manipulated at scale, and quickly with the combination of algorithms and outrage culture.
It's hopeless to expect every member of the military to be thoughtful about cybersecurity. If they'll openly share nuclear secrets & base protocols publicly, anything is fair game.
There's something in this argument about national security, that if taken to its logical conclusion, would result in a world most people would consider upside-down:
If social media owned by foreign companies is a national security threat, then wouldn't that essentially make FB, X, YouTube a threat to like every other nation? Why not throw wikipedia in too? So now any nation can legitimately see any other source or collector of information as a national security threat and ban it at will? Taken to the logical conclusion, every nation should be enveloped by its own digital borders.
To me, it's the popular sentiment alone, for example people feeling sad and upset TikTok's gone and feeling happy that it's back, that's preventing this dismal future, otherwise governments would block apps on a whim. And this I'd say is a win.
This isn't about free speech. Tiktok's statement actually provides all of the necessary context. China pays influencers. The tiktok ban is not about what you are allowed to say, but who is allowed to pay you to say it. This is a very different question.
Can someone please explain how the law tramples free speech? Isn’t it completely legal to shut down a stadium or arena?
Additionally, why have we all forgotten that China does not allow any of our social media companies within their borders?
If we’re in the business of free trade, there’s no reason to let them operate a social media company in the US until they’ve opened their market to us.
It's an absolute win for the content creators who relied on TikTok for their livelihoods and the small businesses who relied on it for marketing. And for Gen Z, for whom content creation is one of the few viable ways to earn a good income now that tech grad hiring has completely collapsed.
It’s kind-of not. A ban would have given them all the opportunity to go wherever their audience went. The demand for their content wouldn’t simply disappear, it’d just be displaced to some other platform. And said other platform would almost certainly be less capricious and better for creators than TikTok.
> This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
This is the maximally stupid outcome, so I suppose we should have seen it coming. I guess the conclusion is going to involve Trump taking an ownership stake in TikTok, possibly by swapping it for $TRUMP cryptocurrency or Truth Social shares something.
This despite the brilliant defense argument of “that wasn’t fraud because everyone should have known I was lying”…which was also the Fox News defense…and is presumably how the executive branch officially works as of tomorrow.
> The klept will probably escalate until a fellow billionaire gets hit.
The klept will not spare the billionaires. There’s a reason Meta’s entire public posture has changed since Nov 6, there’s a reason the WaPo didn’t publish an endorsement. This isn’t a class thing - Trump is not a billionaire defending his fellow billionaires, he’s a mob boss in charge of the state.
Nothing unless you’re running for public office. The rules are understandably different when you’re beholden to the people. Personally I’m ok with this distinction. Politicians should have to give up some rights that private citizens have and be held to a higher bar to guard against the tendency towards corruption that comes with greater influence and power.
And maybe we should have a law that punishes politicians for paying money to cover up affairs. But we don't have that. Trump's prosecution was, instead, a triple bank shot combining three different vaguely written laws in a combination that makes the Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich look straightforward.[1]
As CNN's head legal analyst Elie Honig explained: "The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever."
Yes he was. The payment in question happened after he launched his campaign -- in late October of 2016.
[EDIT to respond a bit to the now-expanded parent, which was only a single sentence when I replied]: I do totally agree that the hush money prosecution was a bit of a stretch, and wouldn't have happened if Trump wasn't famous. You're just wrong about it applying to a time when he wasn't running for office.
My recollection is that the prosecution was a combination of the mis-labeling of the payments, and the mis-labeling being in service of concealing a (federal) crime. Said different crime being the original hush money payment, which happened during the campaign. I.e. if he hadn't done something illegal while running for public office, there'd be nothing to charge him with.
Now, it'd be better if he simply got prosecuted for the initial crime. Absolutely agree there. But I'm not sure that "I can avoid prosecution for campaign misdeeds by committing them and then waiting to pay people back until after the campaign" would be a great precedent.
The judge summarized the case for the jury as follows:
> The allegations reflect in substance, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, it is alleged that Donald Trump made or caused false business records to hide the true nature of payments made to Michael Cohen, by characterizing them as payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a retainer agreement. The People allege that in fact, the payments were intended to reimburse Michael Cohen for money he paid to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, in the weeks before the presidential election to prevent her from publicly revealing details about a past sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
That summary implies that paying off Stormy Daniels "to prevent her from publicly revealing details" about the affair was the unlawful act. But under what law? And why wasn't he just charged with that law directly?
The judge actually summarized it in vastly more detail than you say there. Take a look at the jury instructions if you want to see exactly what the theory was: https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People%20v.%2... (starting around page 29, or again around page 44)
Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means: violating federal campaign contribution limits, falsifying other business records, and violating state tax laws about how the reimbursement to Cohen was handled. The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
The reasons to not charge him for those separately would seem to be respectively: 1. that's the feds job, 2. statute of limitations expired for the non-felony falsifications during his presidency when he couldn't be charged with anything, and 3. Cohen directly committed the tax crime so all Trump's guilty of is conspiracy to commit a really niche bit of tax misrepresentation that didn't actually cost anything.
The unambiguous bit is that he definitely falsified business records, and so the squabble is over whether he's guilty of a misdemeanor or a felony. It was apparently persuasive to the jury that he did the felony version.
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means".
That just gets you back to the temporal problem we started with. As you say, the only "unambiguous bit" from the jury's implicit fact-finding "is that he definitely falsified business records." But he did that after he won the election. How can you influence an election through unlawful conduct that happened after the election was resolved?
Insofar as the case was framed as election manipulation, you need some conduct prior to the election. Which is why, as you observe, the prosecutor had to add a third layer of uncharged alleged crimes:
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means... The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
Putting aside that each of the predicate crimes is deeply flawed (e.g. federal prosecutors investigated and declined to bring the campaign finance charge), you can't rest your triple-layer cake felony theory on a base of uncharged predicate crimes and tell the jury they don't have to agree as to the predicate crimes: https://www.justsecurity.org/96654/trump-unanimous-verdict. This is exactly the sort of thing judges are supposed to keep from being submitted to the jury.
It's personally embarrassing that lawyers at my former firm helped architect this travesty. If this harebrained legal theory had been used to convict a sex trafficker or murderer, lawyers at that firm would be falling over themselves to represent the defendant on appeal pro bono.
I'm not sure how so many people misunderstand the difference between "free speech" and "app controlled by hostile foreign government".
The people speaking on TikTok have not lost their right to free speech, they still are free to use a multitude of other channels that amplify their speech. No speech was blocked, only the app controlled by a hostile foreign government was blocked, and there are no provisions in a any legal framework that says we can't stop a hostile foreign government from controlling what people in this country see.
Everybody loses? The fact that TikTok remains available to millions of users is a significant benefit, especially for those who rely on it for creative expression, community building, and small-business promotion.
I would say yes, everybody. TikTok is very bad for our society. It has had profound negative effects on people's ability to pay attention to things. I don't know that I'd say the solution is legalistic in nature, but the continued existence of that platform is a cancer on humanity.
He means net loss to the status quo in reference to the entire fiasco. I had TikTok before… I still have TikTok… what rights were trampled in the process of bringing about zero change to me using tiktok?
I might not share your views but it is important to defend this side of the debate to get the full picture.
It’s easy to reduce TikTok to its negatives and forget that ton of people do get value from it. Obviously for content makers but even for watchers, entertainment and sense of community do have values.
I strongly dislike vertical video and find channel-flipping physically uncomfortable, and my life would probably be a little bit better if I didn't hear that around me all the time, but I will staunchly defend what I believe to be a violation of the first amendment.
I'm not sure why people seem to have more narrowly defined their idea of freedom of speech to be "the freedom to shout futilely into the void," when it's a two-way street. The government telling booksellers they can't sell a book to people isn't just a violation of the author's rights, but the right of other people to seek and acquire that book. (Hence the clauses in the amendment about anssociation and abridgment of press.)
The whole situation is very Fahrenheit 451. Which is kind of ironic, since Bradbury would have probably hated TikTok and assumed it would be the television-flavored precipice leading to books being destroyed.
Captain Beatty would be proud of all of the would-be firemen itching to torch everything they don't like, oblivious to the simple corollary that someone else doesn't like what they like.
It's interesting how most commenters seem to forget about TikTok users. Every interest is taken into account, China, USA, intelligence services, TikTok "competition". Users somehow never enter the picture for most people in any other way than as gullible idiots getting exploited by the aforementioned parties.
This seems not to be an opinion that other people hold, but I never saw social media as “free speech” given that some third party can decides which parts of what you say get promoted.
If you sent letters to people via a middleman who decided which of those to forward onwards, you’d see that as censorship. I appreciate that that’s an over-simplified example - it’s meant to be a reductio ad absurdum. But control of the algorithm effectively regulates free speech, IMO.
Also (for clarity) the fact that China happens to be involved is not relevant to my point!
This is not an outcome. The legal process is but still well underway. In the United States, we abide by the rule of law.[1] That's really what separates us from China.
What also bothers me is there's a simple solution to all this. Just pass comprehensive consumer data protection laws and regulations all companies operating in the US are required to follow. But you don't see anyone proposing that for some reason...
No there's going to be some obvious winners.
Trump is going to force a 50% sale to a US based JV.
That JV will be run by / benefit some of his biggest goons.
> balance between national security and free speech.
This is an absurd framing. Free speech cannot implicate national security. If a social media platform controlled by a foreign government can manipulate the people so easily then you have a much larger and ignored problem.
> all of its national security risks
Which are zero. What you actually experience a risk from is the shabby way Google, Microsoft and Apple have put their platforms together. Designed to earn them money while utterly destroying your privacy.
> This outcome is worse
You're already in trouble. This outcome is a symptom of a much larger problem. The conversation around this is completely detached from reality.
“National security” is such a bs term for US govt to avoid transparency. It comes from the post 9/11 era of FISA courts, PATRIOT act to justify wide net domestic surveillance and wiretapping.
To me, the whole banning of TT is political theater aimed to divide the US while existing tech oligarchs consolidate power and money.
Just look at the message TT broadcasted. Blatant pandering of incoming administration.
I agree. This is a forced consolidation that will only strengthen American tech oligarchs and the new administration. It's also coup on the culture of the younger generations similar to what happened to Twitter.
It's worse than that. The platform is now beholden to the president for its survival.
If you're wondering how Russia slipped from a flawed democracy into an aurocracy, it was because Yeltsin fixed the 1996 election, by holding an axe over the head of the press. He made it very clear that anybody who wants to keep their broadcast licenses will need to shill for him.
It's how a drunken autocrat with an 8% approval rating, credited for both hyperinflation and mass unemployment, who launched a coup (that killed a few hundred people and caused a constitutional crisis) ended up getting re-elected.
And then at the eleventh hour, after firing his cabinet, again, he declares Putin his successor and resigns over a $10,000 bribery scandal.
If I want to run what someone else has determined as "malware" on my computer, as far as I'm concerned, I should have the absolute right to do it. Same for spyware. Why? Because I don't want the government to make the determination for what is right or wrong for me on my own property. If the US government wants to block apps on their property, then they can go ahead and do that. But the moment it extends to my own property, it's quite ridiculous to think people are going to bend over backwards and comply with what's good for you. Especially in the context of some vague national security threat, why am I supposed to be subversive to the CIA?
How can you complain about the CCP banning foreign social media and censoring when you have your own government willing to do the same thing -- in the name of Protecting the Democracy?
It's not about privacy or data or whatever the facade is. The crime that we are committing is none other than allowing ourselves to be fed information that could threaten the United States. So, therefore, even according to the SCOTUS, if Congress plasters the magical words "national security" in their laws, then the Constitution takes a backseat and we too can be like China/Russia/Iran. Will we start banning VPNs next--which circumvent our new found love for censorship? I'd not be surprised.
Can you be more specific about what you mean? The search summary for that page says:
> The Tiananmen Square Tank Man is an iconic image that emerged from the protests and subsequent military crackdown that occurred in Beijing, China, in 1989. The protests, primarily led by students demanding political reforms and greater freedoms, took place in Tiananmen Square, a prominent public space in the heart of the city.
I'm not a TikTok user, it was down earlier but clicking now I see the famous tank man video, an article about Chinese censorship of AI, etc. Do you get something different?
Totally fair point, my results could be different. To me, the salient point of Tiananmen Square is the massacre (and wider spread protests). That aspect has been suppressed. I see video clips talking about how the content is available, but no content. I also see many clips denying that anything happened.
"The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met"
"The Act permits the President to grant a one-time extension of no more than 90 days with respect to the prohibitions’ 270-day effective date if the President makes certain certifications to Congress regarding progress toward a qualified divestiture."
Sounds like he needs to work with Congress on at least a basic level for this to be within the law, not just make his own decision and declare all is good. And there is the small detail that he is not President, at least not today.
TikTok has already received multiple "interest to acquire" letters, including the one from Perplexity that would keep all existing investors fully intact.
Having that along with a republican majority in both the congress and the senate this isn't going to be difficult for Trump to fulfill the requirements of the law.
Do you get the impression that the incoming administration cares about the law?
As long as there is a fig leaf/smokescreen, and TikTok makes the right noises and contributions, they’ll be fine.
If anything, Keeping them technically in violation of the law is the leverage the administration will want to keep so they can squeeze TikTok whenever they want.
The law never required that they shut down, so in a tautological sense they are.
However, with regards to the absurd justification. The president (still Biden) hasn't granted any extensions, nor is the president even able to grant an extension without
> certif[ing] to Congress that-
> "(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
> "(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
> "(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
There is no evidence that Trump will be able to lawfully do any of those, and he has to do all, after he becomes president again.
ByteDance has been rather vocal that they aren't interested in divesting like that. He could be, there is no evidence he will be, and it's not something he can cause to happen.
Isn't selective enforcement in general within any law in the United States? There are plenty of laws that get broken all the time and it's up to police & prosecutors/AGs to decide which cases they actually want to enforce.
The US-shilling in this thread is unbelievable. It’s almost as if half of these people have never heard of who Snowden was and don’t believe the US has ever spied on foreign nationals :headslap;
Anyone that didn't see this coming is so naive- Trump only cares about optics. Look at the message when opening tiktok "Thanks to President Trump"... there is no way he didn't say "look, you HAVE TO PUT MY NAME OUT THERE or you are being banned".
But yet morons will be like "trump saved tiktok!!!"
TT playing both the public and politicians for their gain. Well played.
Biden admin wasn’t going to enforce ban but TT soft shutdown yesterday with message pandering to incoming admin (broadcasted to hundred millions of users).
High suspicion of political theater.
I wish ppl would see through this and realize this is yet another distraction to divide us via culture war.
Oh man. So much fuzz over a site that shares video snippets.
Is it just me? I feel like I am witnessing some kind of end of US society.
Fear disseminated by politicians and social media (pick whatever we are supposed to be afraid of this week.) Paired with an addictive desire to be relieved and distracted from this fear, in part from the same politicians/social media.
Between this and the Gaza ceasefire the outgoing administration is laying up political wins for Trump before he even takes office. An embarrassment for an administration that has completely failed to play the political game properly for years. And Biden was such a savvy operator before.
> We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans
These are literally just promises from Trump that these companies are relying on, not an actual change to the law, just a promise that he won't enforce it against them? Sounds like an utterly insane business decision that they'll regret as soon as they fall out with him. Each to their own I suppose.
> The app was still unavailable for download from Apple’s and Google’s app stores.
I guess I wonder if that's going to change specifically. They strike me as the two companies that would be most insane to take Trump at his word here.
It’s not an insane business decision, but the easiest way to garner support for your preferred candidate. Anyone who is 24/7 on TikTok (there are a lot of them) will now say how Trump saved the app. And kinda, technically, they’re not wrong (if you ignore the history).
Sure, but Trump will have the threat to enforce this law hanging over any of these companies for his entire term. That’s a terrible position to put yourself in. I just can’t believe any of these companies are stupid enough to trust him.
The language surrounding this which basically heaps praise on Trump makes it seem like it was a condition he gave, that he must be given clear unambiguous credit, so he can go around saying he saved it, even though he was the one who signed an executive order in 2020 to ban it[0]. Anything to manipulate the American people’s perception of him. It feels like we’re living in Russia or North Korea with the stuff that goes on these days. Truly scary watching an oligarchy take shape realtime.
My read is that the US government originally wanted to try to force TikTok to restructure its relationship with China so it wouldn't be under control of the party, either by leaving the country or more likely selling to a US-friendly owner. This was the argument when Trump toyed with the idea during his first mandate.
Occam's Razor suggests this was due to both a matter of national security from the perspective of the intelligence community and pressure from US companies who have struggled to outcompete TikTok. Basically an "everybody wins" move for the powers that be.[1]
China understandably didn't want to lose its influence, and ByteDance didn't want to give up this incredibly valuable asset, so they said "We'll call your bluff and fight you on the basis of the freedom of speech".
The US government then moved to get a law signed that carves out a very specific way to force ByteDance's hand. I'm sure there were lots of lawyers involved and maybe some back channel with the SCOTUS to make sure this was done in a constitutional manner so that it would survive a suit from TikTok which was all but guaranteed.[2]
That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally. This makes it better for the many, many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
But these buyers don't want the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero, so they must also be pressuring president-elect Trump to reinstate the app so that it can continue to be used by Americans and therefore remain valuable, so that when they actually get their money's worth when it inevitably changes hands.
Trump isn't restoring TikTok so that it can continue to operate as in the "status quo ante bellum negotii". He's restoring it so that {insert buyer} can claim the spoils in a few weeks.
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[1]: We can debate whether "everybody wins" includes the US population, but I think they do, because Chinese influence over US culture is strictly worse than US influence over US culture, seeing as incentives are by definition irreconcilable and therefore always worse if under control of the CCP.
[2]: It stands to reason that all of the US government and the top echelons of business and finance is operating in concert here to drive the outcome they want, which is to remove the influence of the CCP over young American minds and to benefit from forcing the asset to be controlled by a US entity.
I had to scroll past too many "free speech" takes to finally get to this well-thought analysis of the saga.
It has nothing to do with free speech. The US was always going to wind up owning TikTok and influencing speech on the platform. The key issue was price, which is affected by leverage. The strict top-down, centralized control ideals behind CCP/ByteDance/TikTok (they're all the same) were once again outdone by the aforementioned "powers that be".
<< That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally.
I appreciate the analysis even if I disagree with it.
<< many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
It is mildly funny given that China is not selling it. It was defacto made a real geopolitical issue with 170m US users as pawns. They may well be buyers, but China is not in a position of weakness here. If anything, the past 48h showed that users can simply say 'fuck it' out of spite.
In short, from game theory perspective, even if they decided to sell, they can now extract heavy concessions. Yeah, US won so hard on this one.
As I may have mentioned in another post, individual players may have gained some ground, but that is it. US lost a lot in this exchange alone.
US came out way ahead here. They gain full control of TikTok. They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power. They gained even more respect from countries that hate China/russia/iran, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, etc. they now project power over countries that were trying to play both sides of US and China, such as Singapore, Malaysia. And of course, Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper, signaling it is really powerless against US
<< They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power.
Is that a good thing? If so, why?
<< They gained even more respect from countries
Heh, you honestly may want to reconsider this statement. It is not respect, when China openly effectively says 'nah' to sale and shutters the app instead..
<< Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper
Huh? Dude... where did you see a whimper. Allow me to revisit events.
1. Congress passes a law effectively banning TikTok
2. TikTok sues over free speech and loses appeal with SCOTUS
3. Rather than selling, it shuts down the app
4. Users go everywhere, but ( apparently ) US apps
5. Incoming administration gives assurances it won't actually enforce anything for now
I accept there are ways of looking at things, but this is something else.
> Some people signing up for some other services was not what drove Trump to announce this executive action.
To me, there is a strong appearance of quid pro quo between ByteDance and Trump. In that case, there doesn't need to be a sale. Trump likely will require a simulation of restructuring which enables him to declare ByteDance in compliance, and the whole things goes away.
What makes you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok? What’s important is what TikTok can do for him, not anything related to national security or ownership concerns.
> What makes you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok?
I'm not sure I follow as I didn't say Trump will require anything and I don't know what "meaningful" means in this sentence.
> What’s important is what TikTok can do for him, not anything related to national security or ownership concerns.
You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
> I'm not sure I follow as I didn't say Trump will require anything and I don't know what "meaningful" means in this sentence.
I thought you said that Trump would require TikTok to be sold. Did I misread? I was asking why you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok. More specifically, why do you think Trump would require TikTok to sell?
> You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
Is that any more valuable than the things which TikTok can give him?
For those saying there’s no executive order yet or that Trump is not president yet, the point is that they received confirmation that there will be an executive order, meaning they can rely on a 90 day extension of non-enforcement.
So while there is some irony with Trump having previously supported the ban, the practical reality is that he and Susquehanna and the Republicans all are winning big on this one, from a political/financial lens.
The issue is Trump doesn’t have legal authority to issue an executive order delaying the ban, executive orders “execute” the law, delaying would be the opposite of the law, a law that was held up 9–0 as constitutional by the Supreme Court face palm
There is some precedent for doing this. State-level cannabis legalization rests on non-enforcement at the federal level, at which it remains scheduled.
Sure, but there’s no executive order saying we promise not to enforce it (I assume?), that would be counter to the law even if the absence of enforcement is a legal grey area
Either way it feels like there are games being played, and the country is watching because tik tok is so heavily used by so many people
As far as I can tell, what happened is this law was passed in the heat of the moment (Gaza war), but it turned out to be massively unpopular and ineffective at shoring up US support for the outgoing administration's foreign policy, and even after its moment had passed the combination of the arguments raised by the lawyers for ByteDance and the phrasing of the very unique, very specific bill got it through the Supreme Court, so now everyone's been stuck with trying to figure out how to get rid of it.
And notice how Marlboro didn’t start selling cannabis everywhere? Apple and Google(and their legal teams) have to decide if not following the law on the nonbinding word of a 77yr old man’s promise. The law itself allows companies to be held liable up to 5 years after each infraction.
> The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
and
> After the Supreme Court greenlit the law on Friday, the Biden administration issued a statement saying it would not enforce the ban, leaving that responsibility to Trump.
Trump wants 50% US ownership in a joint venture for Tiktok. Shouldn't be a problem since 60% of bytedance ownership is already non-China (probably a lot of it already US investors - General Atlantic/SIG)
The ownership of the company is irrelevant, it's who has control of the algorithm and where the data flows. If Tiktok US licenses the algorithm from China (which seems likely) then none of the national security issues are addressed.
The CCP has a propaganda and spying tool in the hands of 170M Americans. Yet the new Administration is more interested in playing politics than taking necessary steps to secure us against our primary adversary.
It's not just Trump though. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats are taking the China threat seriously enough. The CCP must be destroyed.
Dang. Comments seem to be accumulating on this thread faster than they can be moderated. I'm not trying to call anyone names, but there seem to be A LOT of different political opinions and more than a few conspiracy theories. But who knows... maybe the conspiracy theorists are right... Just wanted to say thanks to the community for not being as flamey as one might expect for a comments section on the internet.
I think the criticism is that China can buy a seat at our table through flattery, and likely other favours , but we can’t? So we’re potentially corrupted / compromised, and they aren’t.
Do you mean the ban, or the removal of the ban? I'm confused. Because I'm pretty sure the ban is at least in part supported by Zuck, and that's why he gave $300M+ to elect a vegetable in 2020, and that's why Meta is spending more than ever on lobbying: https://readsludge.com/2024/04/23/meta-shatters-lobbying-rec...
Dr. T's reversal was at least partly due to the influence of David Yass, who owns a chunk of ByteDance and saved the TruthSocial IPO, making Trump's holding actually worth something. So he owes Yass bigly.
Presumably other wealthy friends stand to win. Steve Mnuchin wanted to buy it.
Word is Musk is offering to buy a controlling stake as well. The whole thing is a racket though: ByteDance is already 60% owned by global institutional investors, including firms such as Blackrock, Susquehanna International Group, Carlyle Group, and General Atlantic. Another 20% are owned by employees, and another 20% by co-founders. Given this, I'm not sure how ByteDance could "sell TikTok" to an US investor - they don't own 50% of it themselves.
I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I tend to believe most can be boiled down to power and/or stupidity. Which is what I see going on here, but if I were to attach a conspiracy theory to it- this was always the plan and now a portion of the voter base has been flipped. Well played by the Thiel, Musk, Zuck circle jerk.
Foreign countries are already banned from owning TV stations in the United States so this is certainly not a speech issue. I dont think its clear that Trump can really save TikTok without passing a law through congress though.
Trump's proposed executive order just gives TikTok more time "so that a deal could be made." Honestly I don't understand how TikTok is able to restore service now before the executive order or even the inaugaration has occured.
There was no legal requirement they block service at all, only that other companies stop doing business with them (i.e. App Stores stop distributing, etc.)
Pretty sure Oracle had to turn off the servers. I feel like Oracle is now not complying with the law. Apple and Google appear to be as of writing this.
I'm not clear how Trump's assurances mean much in the face of a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. I guess we're already in an autocracy controlled by a person not even formally in power yet?
The ACLU tends to take pretty hard line civil liberty positions, including defending hateful folks if their civil liberties are impinged. They’re not strictly a progressive organization.
when the state if the nation is so bad that you have homeless everywhere, healthcare, housing and education are something you have to fight for, prisons are a business, suddenly another perspective seems more alluring, a modern Nordic socialism? putting a brake to unhinged late stage capitalism? or on the darker side, a promise of better conditions in 'some ways'...this is no national security risk, people are getting simply fed up with appalling state of the nation.
This was basically a 12 year old's plan for making Trump seem like a "champion" - and it somehow seems to be working, even in this comment section (assuming half the comments aren't just bots which I wouldn't discount personally).
And then people in this thread apparently unironically don't see why banning foreign propaganda is a bad thing lol
It's quite fascinating to see a nation's televised descent into absurd cronyism and corruption like this. You've got the prez-elect singlehandedly overturning laws that have just been passed a mere 24 hours ago, making shitcoin scams and getting rich off it, aligning all the psychotic techbros into his corner because they fear what kind of insane bullshit he's gonna pull off on them...
This is grotesque. Israel is massively influencing US foreign and domestic policy via AIPAC and other lobby groups. AIPAC pays US politicians significant amounts of money, practically buys them. And they are not even registered as foreign entities, something JFK wanted to enforce before he was assassinated.
So who is really manipulating US policy.
And this is the exact group that put pressure on US universities to suppress free speech and on US policy makers to sent Israel weapons worth billions to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians.
>The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
Recent weeks frankly not a good show by US Judiciary.
The series of Trump indictments all fizzling out, because judges didn't want to indict an on coming president.
And on this particular matter, Supreme Court 'unsigned' opinion felt confused even though it is termed unanimous.
At places it seemed to complain of the paucity of time/scope to consider all parts of the matter more seriously, and at the end even expressed ambivalence about what is going to happen next even.
Frankly bit of shoddy-ness/confused signalling from Judiciary and Supreme Court.
Perhaps it would have been better to just delay the matter by issuing an interim extension and reconsider the issue taking into account the views of the new administration.
This was no urgent matter that a few days delay would have mattered.
We're watching the downfall live on stream. They were wrong, the revolution will not be televised is right, the fascist uprising happened in your social media instead.
People seem to misunderstand this metaphor. It’s not about what type of tech the revolution is broadcasted on, it’s about the fact that you’ll be sitting there watching the revolution from the comfort of wherever you are. You will not be doing anything to actually be apart of the revolution, making the revolution more for your entertainment than your detriment/benefit.
As long as this is the only place the fascist upraising happens… better than being forced out of your job, making all other political parties illegal, being beaten by mobs patrolling the streets while the police looks the other way, canceling elections ad vitam eternam on national security grounds, I mean stuff that proper fascists used to do back in the days.
In the mean time, if I wanted 30 seconds clips of cat videos I’m sure I could use a VPN. Let’s ban it. Teach people censorship is utter BS like every Chinese person knows by now. Sadly my attention span is slightly longer than 30s so I’m not even gonna bother
Bingo, bango, boingo. Just another way to help manipulate people into thinking Trump saved the day, once again. TikTok played the propaganda just right.
- A COINTELPRO-inspired diversion undermines the cause: during demonstrations, individuals wishing to speak must wait in line, while women, minorities, and other groups are prioritized.
- This method becomes widespread in media narratives over the next 15 years, fueling focus on these topics and deepening societal divisions while bankers slip under the radar.
- Initially driven by billionaires, the movement is soon co-opted by financial firms, corporations, and government entities.
- Ultimately, Trump is reinstated, while Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, and, to some extent, Altman align with Thiel and Musk, reversing their previous stances with a dramatic 180° shift.
There is, it's a few days old, and it's a non-enforcement from the Biden administration, according to the man himself and his staffers, he intends to let it be the next administration's problem.
Whatever the next administration does when it takes power is yet to be seen.
The restrict act was written really strangely, and I assume Oracle required some assurance from someone to not just delete Bytedance's accounts and resources.
That wasn't an executive order, as far as I'm aware it was just a statement. It had no legal value, which was why TikTok asked for more assurance.
The fine to each company (Apple, Google, Oracle, TikTok) was in the order of around $5bn each if they kept the lights on, so I would be hesitant to keep it running too without something in writing.
If TikTok was concerned that Biden’s statement wouldn’t be honored, they wouldn’t have turned service back on today while Biden is still president. They’ve had months to work out some sort of deal with Trump, this whole show they’ve put on the past couple days is propaganda.
What does being veto-proof have to do with it? No president has to sign a bill just because Congress can override him if he doesn't. His signature is literally an endorsement.
Yes, but we're not arguing about whether Biden agreed with the bill, but that turning it off was a stunt on TikTok's part.
Someone said there was an executive order, but there was not. He said he wouldn't enforce it, obviously signaling that it's up to the incoming administration.
The fact that TikTok turned off for only 12 hours makes it pretty obvious they wanted to have a good relationship with Trump by giving him some positive PR. Which is ironic considering banning it was primarily pushed by Trump to begin with, but people have obviously forgotten that.
Whether you support trump or not, the level of patronage that corporations seem to think is needed is disturbing. I've never seen companies stoking a presidents ego so publicly.
If there comes a day in the future where the header of every major website starts says "Long Live Donald Trump", we will all be worse off for it.
I've been extremely surprised how eagerly people have accepted this as a new normal. I can't imagine it's in the long term interest of billionaires to be labeled as oligarchs by half the country.
This is Trump playing chess. ByteDance, Greenland, The Gulf of Mexico, Panama Canal- All this, and he's not even President yet. It's all part of a bigger picture and a bigger plan with sizable levers. Some love this, others find it terrifying.
Well Dem and Biden already sealed their fate as the party that ban Bytedance universe (TikTok + Capcut), while Dear Leader Trump restored the services :).
Let's see what the zoomers and millenials will say for next elections
There was never a freedom of speech argument here, unless maybe you are china. There are endless similar platforms available to individuals to express themselves on. Ones that aren't owned and controlled by China... America's biggest technological rival.
If there’s a genuine interest I’m happy to explain. Reels and shorts are severely different, even from a purely technical and feature-focused standpoint. They lack lack the ability to pause (I think YouTube allows it but reels no) or save to device, and (reels) lacks the wide music catalog that TikTok has. Neither product has a comprehensive video editing platform like TikTok does. Both lack the ability to push timely content and maintain freshness. Reels is fundamentally based on the social graph for recommendations, with some additional signals for things like hashtags. TikTok learns from content itself and recommends based on content. TikTok has a good mix of discovery content as well (I think it’s approximately 10% discovery? Meaning, pushing you things it has no signal on to see if you like it or not, rather than only showing you things you like). Sharing and interacting are incredibly smooth and easy. The ability to stitch videos and do face to face replies, or easily do a video reply to a comment, encourage more face to face two-way conversation.
Aside from the technical features and algorithmic superiority, the community on TikTok is completely different. Have you seen the comment sections on the apps you mention? TikTok has created a beautiful community, and it’s a community that cannot be reached on the other two apps, regardless of their feature set.
I think China is not a role model for freedoms, no one should follow their steps. Censorship is not going to solve your problems and you won’t become China in terms of industry by by banning apps. You will become China sans industry.
This is such a fallacious, misdirecting argument. The speech itself was not targeted by the ban. It was the ownership. If the speech stayed the same then regulators would have been happy.
I don't think that's an accurate read. Everyone was playing chicken and the US won. TikTok will be up for sale again, except this time with way less leverage in negotiating a sale.
... I can't even. How did US win? OP effectively nailed all the facets in which it is overall the worst of all worlds. Few individual political players have won, but it certainly was not US or us.
Trump didn't overturn the Supreme Court's decision. He only gave TikTok a 90-day lifeline. They need a solution to be allowed to operate. Either they will have to cut ties with the CCP and operate truly independently—and provide assurances for that—or they will sell to someone and make billions.
I know which of the two I'd pick, but yeah, I guess you can say they might also restructure out of the CCP's control, which I think is unlikely because China then just gets paid $0.
Another alternative would be for lawmakers in this new congress to change the law they just passed but given the Republican majority is very narrow and there is plenty of support for the ban across the isle, I find it hard to believe they will be able to do so. But sure, that's also a possible scenario.
This is a disgusting betrayal of America and a violation of our process, given Congress passed a law and it was then unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court. Unless Trump can show that Bytedance met the three conditions that permit an extension, this will backfire and alienate a portion of his base.
It’s a cult of personality. By definition it’s him they support and who informs their thinking. He can’t alienate his supporters, because they don’t have any framework to fall back on.
Trump has clearly neutered both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Welcome to a unitary government, with one god-emperor and no checks nor balances. It's going to be a wild two (few?) years.
Hence "few". Two if there are real elections in 2026, and the dems retake a majority. "few" if there aren't, or they don't -- in that case maybe 3-4 if term limits hold, or "who knows?" if as you say term limits don't apply, or Trump manages to put someone in place after him.
The level of naiveté in this discussion is absolutely astonishing to me. People are seeming to forget that dysfunctional states (totalitarian, facist, the like) all are sprung from one common thread: control of the mind through propaganda. We already have evidence that the CCP or otherwise is manipulating Tiktok's algorithm to influence American minds [1]. This was one study, by one relatively small and underpowered organization. That's to say, there's probably a lot that we've yet to unearth about how the algorithm is manipulated; or how the CCP is planning to manipulate it to further their agenda at the expense of an American one.
It's simply unbelievable to me that a sophisticated community like HN is against a ban in the context of all of the meddling our biggest rival, China, has done in our country to our direct disadvantage. Russia and China's main M.O. has been to divide us; to sow discontent. And they've been pretty successful. Who knows if Trump would have been elected without the Russian election interference. Trump has been a divisive figure who has reveled in destroying social order and he has done so successfully; the amount of hate and distrust for one's opposing political party is at an all-time high in the US, and it shows. This is to say that China and Russia have already been very successful in their attempts. In China Xi likes to say that "The East is rising, the West is falling". This is completely his M.O. and part of his plan.
And now Trump, aware of all of this, is attempting to bring Tiktok back. Knowing everything he knows about it's use and potential future use of a propaganda machine. And knowing full-well that this is good for the East, and bad for domestic civil peace of mind and social order. And in the most Trumpian way possible, he doesn't care. And he's doing it for the most selfish reason possible--to feed his hero complex. Full. Fucking. Stop. This is such a glaring advertisement that he will do whatever he can to put his interests and reputation first over our country's and it's absolutely sickening.
And the fact that there is actual debate and discussion around this issue on HN is just such a shocker. Again, this community should know better about how dangerous propaganda is, amplified by the fact that it's propaganda from our most rapacious, unethical and conniving enemy. An enemy that is planning wars of conquest, who's starving and torturing parts of its population. You want that enemy deciding what your kid spends an hour a day watching on their phone, while you're not paying attention? Yeah, good luck with that.
This word is incongruent with your use of this word:
>enemy
Especially in light of the fact that you consistently fail to identify which identity is doing this:
>An enemy that is planning wars of conquest, who's starving and torturing parts of its population.
Pop-quiz: which nations have been consistently at war since March, 2003? Which nations have established 1,000 torture dungeons around the globe? Which nations have portions of their populations, by design, living in desperate poverty, feeding a for-profit prison-industrial complex, every single day, with fresh meat?
The ability to identify propaganda is not as important as the ability to identify duplicity. One cannot have the former without the latter.
the issue is not that tiktok harvests user data, not free speech, not that China is refuses to let US counterparts operate in China - the issue is, TikTok is an insidious propaganda machine that influences our your people, and entire generation, to abandon their values and replace them with views favorable to the CCP
daily, hourly, and each minute young people interact with TikTok, they're influenced by a foreign adversary.
it's telling them Ukraine is the actual aggressor, that Putin is "based", that China is a paradise, that the West is falling, that China has a valid claim on all the maritime disputes, among other things that are non-truths
i owe the rise of antisemitism among young people to TikTok. young people who otherwise do not hold a negative opinion towards Israel suddenly became anti-Israel and hold hatred towards Jews
i have experienced the above first-hand. my account doesn't interact with any current affairs, yet I am bombarded with anti-Israel narratives. there are thousands - yes, thousands - of antisemitic comments and replies under each video. and young people read them and think it's normal - that it's normal to think this way and say such things at loud
i reported hundreds of such comments. all my reports, according to TikTok, did not violate their "community standards". instead, my replies to those comments were removed for violating their "community standards"
(to the people who'll say it's not true, i have data to back it up, and i can send a link to a huggingface repo that contains the dataset)
it is clear pro-CCP and CCP-aligned views are promoted while others are supressed.
i live in a country with tensions with China, and my TikTok FYP page is flooded with pro-CCP narratives and narratives that suggest my country is weak and hopeless
TikTok is a national security issue. it's not enough the TikTok divests from China. it must be banned for the sake of the next century.
Yes! Thank you for helping me affirm internally that I'm not crazy.
I agree all of these other arguments that people are fixating on are complete red herrings. The 'fairness' of letting them operate their companies here and not letting us operate there—totally non consequential argument and a red herring. The free speech thing is a blatant red herring and the Supreme Court agreed in a unanimous decision. If America is the sinking ship, then these arguments are the deck chairs.
Totally agree on the antisemitism points—the way that the platform is manipulating it's algorithm to shape opinions is very nefarious in that it's subtle and becomes difficult to prove directly. But researchers look deeper and deeper, they've been able to find evidentiary smoking guns. I would posit that there are many clues hiding in plain sight that have not been looked into yet.
Anyways, I would have expected a lot more discussion around the points that you and I bring up (points of actual consequence) rather than what I'm currently seeing on HN.
But you simply cannot be taken seriously when you claim that openly pro-Israel establishments like the NYT and BBC are biased against Israel - it's just utterly ludicrous, and demonstrably false.
> young people who otherwise do not hold a negative opinion towards Israel suddenly became anti-Israel
You're not seriously blaming TikTok for anti-Israel sentiment?! Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the genocide being carried out by the apartheid state of Israel?
> why are you so obsessed with the State of Israel?
Because my government has suffered from Israeli interference, and because my government is supporting the apartheid state of Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people - providing weapons, financial aid, political aid and manufacturing consent for genocide.
Because Israel is carrying out a modern day holocaust, all while constantly lying and fabricating evidence. Because I've seen/heard/read with my own eyes and ears the insane horrors the IDF is inflicting on the Palestinian people - just such incredible, unfathomable evil. I can never unsee what I've seen.
Because Zionists and their Hasbara lackeys spread hatred, racism and Islamophobia, and have smeared opponents with false claims of antisemitism.
> do you seriously believe there are Hasbara in HN?
Yes, there are all over all forms of social media [0] [1]. It would be stretching credulity to believe they weren't active here.
> most people in HN are anti-Israel
Haha, laughably false! This is the same kind of tired deflection that Hasbara use all the time.
> this community should know better about how dangerous propaganda is
Bear in mind that a large part of this community is employed by the same companies that built the tools used to spread propaganda and disinformation. It wouldn't be in their interest to disclose that they're part of the problem, so it's easier to ignore that the problem even exists.
People seem to discount the way they are influenced by the media they are served. I’m seeing a lot of comments about “free agency” and how “people make up their own minds” rather than 1 to 1 believing what they read. This argument just ignores human nature. We evolved to catch onto ideas, good and bad, and be able to rationalize them in ways that often ignore the true outside state of the world. In this light we should strongly critique those who are the purveyors of information. Although I have many criticisms of even those who are serving information domestically, the idea that we’re going to trust a malicious foreign actor with molding the shape of our minds is just nonsensical.
My comment was originally in another thread that was a statement from Tiktok on Twitter. It looks like this thread was merged with another one so my comment might not make sense now.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
It's worth remembering that Orwell was a socialist, a leftist, and was anti authoritarian not anti communist. (Which isn't opposed to your comment, the Soviet Union was authoritarian.)
It just gets brought up so often that because he was anti Soviet, he must be anti communist, which wasn't the case.
He was always socialist, but ended up as anti-communist after the Spanish civil war, during which while fighting for the Marxist POUM he had to flee a Stalinist purge.
(Americans love to flatten all left parties into "communist", ignoring the rich history of ideological differences and occasionally violent purges)
Anti communist or anti Stalinist? Or even anti Marxist-Leninist?
Homage is a complicated book to place because it's been interpreted so baby different ways across eras. But it's hard to imagine someone going and fighting for POUM and praising them post facto would ultimately be anti communist across all flavors of communism.
See: his memoir "Homage to Catalonia," wherein he worked with the Communist Party of Great Britain to get him into Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where he fought with the POUM, a Spanish anti-Stalinist communist party (though he would admit that this was mostly by chance, and he himself was more aligned with the anarchists).
He would say later, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
If we assume good intent, what OP was getting at is that we had that form of governance, it failed, we then slowly marched towards democracy, and now it looks like a backslide.
It blows my mind how easily people are swayed and how ByteDance is playing everyone like a fiddle. I need to walk into the ocean because this life ain't for me.
After being a non-stop news and politics junkie the last 15+ years, I've gone beyond cold turkey.
I stopped reading all political, U.S., and even world news the day after the election. Zero. Dropped reddit politics. I don't know who are Trump's cabinet picks. I assume Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock will be on the cabinet, but I don't know and don't care.
On Nov 7 when I saw that not only did Trump win, but he won decisively, and I saw this is what the country wants, I decided that since I can't get rid of Trump's bullshit, I actually have full power to keep that bullshit from entering my personal reality. Whatever daily outrage and anger I would have felt since Nov 7, I don't have. My mind is relatively clear, and --surprise, surprise-- my life is unaffected.
I plan to keep this up for 4 years. I assume at some point, I'll go to get a flu shot and be told vaccines are illegal. And if I notice suddenly a bunch of ads for iodine pills, I'll withdraw as much cash I can and get canned food and water and gasoline. I'll deal with it then.
And in 2 years and 4 years I will go to the voting booth. But I'm powerless until then, except for what I allow into my life.
I'm debating trying to do this. I've seen it recommended by other people who I think are smart. Honestly, I tuned out most of the 2010s after being a political news junkie in the 2000s, and it was probably good for me. I couldn't sleep or concentrate on work for a couple days after this election.
> And in 2 years and 4 years I will go to the voting booth. But I'm powerless until then
What's really depressing is that I'm already happy with my representation in congress, and they'll probably win again comfortably in 2026 and 2028, but they're powerless too.
I've wanted to do this since 2016. It was November of 2015 when I first thought, "How long could I go not knowing if Hillary won or lost?" Eight years later, I've put it into effect, and my mind is so much clearer for it.
My whole life I've believed that "it's important to be informed." I now challenge that. I mean: yes, obviously before the next election I will read up on the candidates and propositions. But apart from that, me being informed has zero effect on the world.
Another forum that I frequent is bogleheads.org (about investing and personal finance), and one of the rules is that discussing politics and proposed legislation is off-limits. But obviously when a new law (e.g. on taxes) is actually passed then discussion of how we're personally affected becomes appropriate and necessary.
That might be a good model for generally striking an appropriate balance: be informed about new major legislation (or executive orders, court decisions, etc.) when they happen, but skip all the day-to-day drama about who said what on the House or Senate floor, or in an interview, or on X in between such things. I've seen it suggested many times that the Wikipedia current events portal is all that one should look at, and it would probably accomplish this.
As I had the same feeling as you, I subscribed to a quarterly news magazine called delayed gratification. I feel it's a good balance between keeping up-to-date, while not letting the news interfere with my daily life and emotions.
Even 5 seconds of Trump is enough to cause rage. I'm powerless to change what he says and does, but I'm only empowered to keep it away from me.
My friend's house (and entire town) burned down, so I'm following that news. But even 2 minutes of reading Trump + Republicans saying the fires happened because the LAPD chief is a gay woman, and I had enough for the month.
I think reducing the amount of news one consumes at least slightly improves things. Unfortunately, my wife and many of my loved ones are targets of Trump and his minions, so I can't totally tune things out, but consuming less news media at least makes for less internalization.
I’ll challenge you: what action are you and your wife+family going to be taking based on the news? If that approximates zero, then you are only just stressing yourself.
It depends on who you are. If you're a straight white guy then completely zoning out might be the right answer. If you are an immigrant then knowing that ICE is raiding Chicago on Tuesday is very important information.
I also feel the concern over who is President is largely overrated. It’s as perverse as deeply worrying about who the next CEO of one’s employer will be — even they aren’t that concerned!
Frankly, we should be more concerned about school board and sheriff elections but society is too broken for that to happen or be meaningful.
People act like they know Congressional/Presidental candidates as well as their own relatives yet they cant even name the local office candidates.
All of this is really simple. Reasonable people know the CCP having full control of public opinion by having ultimate control of the algorithm that literally sets public opinion of everyone under 30… is problematic. When you consider that in a year or so they’re going to invade Taiwan and no doubt simultaneously get all of Gen Z and Alpha on their side with propaganda, this is horrible for anyone who doesn’t love dictatorships.
BUT, Trump wants Gen Z to like him and that’s all there is to it. So he’s just going to come in on a white horse and “Save TikTok” — handing President Xi a gift on a silver platter. Because he doesn’t actually give a fuck about anything besides being popular.
Congratulations to Trump to standing up for freedom and against all 9 Supreme Court justices that refused to enforce the First Amendment. People should be free to speak as much as they want on TikTok even though it's mostly useless chatter. In the Koramatsu decision of 1943, legalizing concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, there were 3 dissenting justices. I wish we had some this time.
Masterful PR move by Trump. Two ways to win, no way to lose: he gets control of the narrative there (if not TikTok itself, via one of his cronies), and he shows how totalitarian the "democrats" are.
Yes, they too would like to show how totalitarian the "democrats" are. Jokes aside, the buck stops with the guy who signs the bill into law. Too bad the guy signing the bill didn't even understand what he was signing this time due to his profound dementia.
So once again it took the incoming president-elect Trump and for Biden to lose to intervene and reverse this ban and give an extension to TikTok.
If Biden or Harris won the election, TikTok would have been completely banned with zero intervention at all as you have seen with how it went and Biden whilst still being president would have done nothing and it took Trump to stop it.
Seriously the Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation.
The ban had bi-partisan support. Trump was initially for the ban and then changed his mind. On Aug. 6, 2020, Trump signed Executive Order 13942, which sought to ban TikTok in response to national security concerns. Courts struck it down.
He expressed his changed opinion in 2024. Was it because he met with Jeff Yass who holds 7% of ByteDance (which owns TikTok) and is a major Republican donor? Who knows.
But what is clear is that this is again morphing into a talking point against the Democrats even though all of this started with Trump initially.
Trump singed an EO that was reversed. Only one president showed interest in a law. Only one president whipped votes for that law. Only one president signed the law.
That does not excuse signing a bill into law. If the president opposes a bill, he should veto it even if Congress will override the veto. To do otherwise is to be complicit. So to the extent that you think this bill is bad and shouldn't have been passed, Biden is to blame regardless of how strong the congressional majority was.
The ban had bi-partisan support. So why should Biden stop it if he agrees with it? A major adversary (China) owns a main communication network in the US while the US and other Western countries are not allowed to operate such networks within China. You don’t have to agree with this of course but it’s not unprecedented for the US to restrict the reach of foreign governments. In the past radio waves were restricted in a similar sense.
> So why should Biden stop it if he agrees with it?
That is my point. The Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation and Biden did nothing and supported the bill anyway and just signed it.
In fact he replaced Trump's original EO with a worse one which includes still supporting the TikTok ban and Biden signed that last year which made it so that if the Democrats won the election, then TikTok would have been still completely banned with no reversal whatsoever.
In effect, those who voted for Biden or Harris also were voting for a TikTok ban, which that is beyond hilarious as everyone saw that he didn't halt the ban.
What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it?
Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_Un...
Fiduciary responsibilities make it unlikely that many companies would risk it.
There’s always a chance you don’t come back, and there’s likely to be a loss of marketshare for simply being unavailable for a period and forcing users to trial alternatives.
But, TikTok is not purely commercially focused. A majority of the voting stock of ByteDance is held by the Chinese government, who clearly see non-financial strategic value in controlling it.
Otherwise, they likely could have negotiated a spin out the US operation, whereby they retain most of the equity upside but give majority voting control to a US buyer.
> hereby they retain most of the equity upside but give majority voting control to a US buyer.
Keen to see this opinion when the Chinese government demands the same from Apple.
'cos we're all equal, no?
The Chinese government carefully controls foreign access to its market already (unlike the US), and already bans quite a few foreign companies from operating on the Chinese Internet (again, unlike the US).
I imagine Apple already complies with whatever they need to comply with in order to make the Chinese government happy.
> 'cos we're all equal, no?
No, we absolutely aren't. The Chinese government has ensured for decades now that foreign businesses have only tightly controlled access to the Chinese people while Chinese-owned (i.e., easily controllable by the Chinese government) businesses have advantages not given to outsiders. (And those outsiders need to open up a Chinese subsidiary that is majority-owned by Chinese investors/companies.)
On the other hand, most Western countries have given Chinese companies near-unfettered access to their markets.
If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.
> If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.
I do t use tiktok and have no skin in the game as an EU resident, but setting a precedent for this kind of behaviour to permit clthe government to simply block anything it wants is basically following in CCPs footsteps, that's certainly not a good thing in my eyes.
This is not a new precedent. The US government has placed foreign-ownership restrictions on media companies since before the public internet was a thing. The only difference here is that it's targeted at a specific company, but I'm not really up in arms about that, even though I think they definitely could have written the law without naming ByteDance or TikTok specifically.
Not just media companies, the government block a Japanese company from buying US Steel. Not out of antitrust concerns but due to the foreign ownership aspect.
Yup, and that was done against one of our most loyal allies.
Yep, but people don't pay attention to history anymore and their ignorance keeps us repeating it.
Did they ever?
I think more people in government did because they actually were educated and not just all grifters.
I feel like takes like these are coming from a place of extreme naivete, or worse, nihilism. Either people don't understand why it's problematic that our most influential social media platform among basically everyone age 0-30 is fully controlled by the CCP, or people really think the CCP wouldn't use its ability to control any Chinese company to aggressively mold US public opinion in concert with their inevitable invasion of the democratic country Taiwan,
or... the nihilistic option:
People know China would engage in information warfare using TikTok in a situation like that, but they foolishly think the CCP is on even moral ground with free democracies so none of this matters, and we've gotta keep the funny musical memes flowing.
For all one's misgivings about the US -- and there are many valid ones! -- before deciding these governments are equal, talk to a Chinese political dissident, if you can find one, since they sometimes disappear.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the EU blocked a number of outlets for spreading pro-Russian disinformation (RT, Sputnik for example) so this would be nothing new.
As an EU resident your govt likely exerts far more control over media (both domestic and foreign owned) than the US
> As an EU resident your govt likely exerts far more control over media (both domestic and foreign owned) than the US
Wild statement, so lets look at some data.
https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1337388/classement-pays...
These are a list of the freedom of press in the EU with their corresponding indexes.
Lets compare that to the US : https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states
Index 2024 Score : 66.59
Not looking good for your opinion but lets look at some more that are consumer privacy focused, which was my main point.
https://iapp.org/resources/article/countries-at-a-glance-pri...
IAPP isn't a bad source IMO but hard to evaluate their methods, but lets see.
> Level of understanding about data collection and use
Netherlands : Weak - 14% USA : Weak - 24%
Not great, I could spend time finding more, but the summary is that the EU has regulations that require companies to limit the useage of consumers information and privacy. The EU is consumer privacy focused, wheras the US seems to be Enterprise & Organisation focused, also it's state level enforcements fracture enforcement even further.
Lets look at the US CCPA vs GDPR :
A crucial difference is that GDPR requires individuals to opt-in before businesses can collect data while there is no opt-in condition in CCPA.
That should say it all.
Edit : I forgot to add, outside of Sanctions the EU has no control to simply decide to ban a company when it feels like it.
You start off sounding like you're arguing against the idea that the EU exerts more control over media than the US, but then most of what you said seems to support the fact that they do so.
Am I misreading what your intent?
I am saying the EU does not exert 'control' they protect citizens interests via regulations. Its a different model.
Regulations are for the companies.. But they're not banned. It's a different model to the US.
To clarify. Companies are not banned.. they're fined (often not enough) until they align..
Protecting people is always the justification. “We aren’t restricting your freedom, we are protecting you.” That governments seek to “protect” people from words on a page is wild to me.
> regulations are for the companies. But they’re not banned.
So if they don’t follow the regulations they simply keep paying fines indefinitely? Until they run out of money? Until the company goes out of business? We aren’t banning those companies, instead we’ll attempt to bankrupt them if they stay in our markets; unless they do what we say. In other words, extortion?
I see your point, but those regulations are also given with full justifications, backed up by research etc.
This tiktok issue was brought under 'national security' with what feels like a "Trust me bro".
Ah, but you see, pigs are in fact more equal than other animals
Numerous examples of China-says-jump-everyone-says-how-high.
NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".
1bn customers = a lot of money. A company that will kiss the ring will do the right thing by its shareholders and a nasty thing against humanity. I am 200% sure that Apple has given the keys for all users/phones/servers in China to the gov/CCP and nobody complained.
If North Korea had 1bn potential customers, we would be seeing Kim very differently.
We are cattle. It's all a 1984-ish sham.
Historically China has been so large and 'diverse' (not to be confused with DEI) (like India and Russia). It's not "one chinese person is just like anyone else". There are multiple Republics/States/etc. It takes an emperor to keep together an empire. And that usually requires (plenty of) violence.
Communism is built to make people suffer, remove individuality and requires total obedience and personal reformation to be the 'good citizen'. You and me both are EU citizens. We are all different and we respect/accept each other. In China if you disagree, you disappear. They would very much like to do the same to the rest of the world. And one day they will, just not yet. I hope they implode before they do (like all empires).
(apologies for the grim tone)(I suggest "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8)
> NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".
Houston Rockets GM and James Harden:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harden#Politics
* https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/nbas-apo...
* https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27787634/james-harden-ap...
John Cena was probably the wrestler HenryBemis was referring to. Although he started learning Chinese a long time ago, not for the purpose of apologizing. A couple years ago he called Taiwan a country, then issued an apology.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/john-cena-very...
Actually what’s scary for Apple, and really for all companies with assets or factories still in China is that recently China prevented Apple from shipping its own equipments out of China to India. China is so fearful of even more unemployments that it is now willing to upset one of its largest employer.
Foxconn stops sending Chinese workers to India iPhone factories In addition, equipment shipments are delayed, potentially disrupting next-generation iPhone production in India.
https://restofworld.org/2025/china-foxconn-factoriesfoxconn-...
You really have to be braindead as a COO if you do not have contingency plan to move stuff out of China this year.
> unlike the US
The US is not a master piece of freedom. Want to market or own foreign shares? Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
Yes, China is absolutely worse. But the US is not a good example.
I never claimed the US was perfect, just better. I think using it as an example is fine. No country is perfect by any metric; everything is a matter of comparison over who is better or worse on a particular thing.
> Want to market or own foreign shares?
ADRs work for that, no?
> Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
I agree those things are bad, but they have nothing to do with market access, which is the topic at hand.
I have a London stock exchange trading account with Schwab. I think I opened it online. The only catch is that I can only deposit or withdraw funds via my US Schwab account.
Well if we aren't going to get the actual fruits of capitalism I'm for damn sure going to fight it tooth and nail at home. Shit sucks and I can't think of anyone I trust less than an American capitalist.
> The Chinese government carefully controls foreign access to its market already (unlike the US)
Is there any reason you’re skipping the past 40+ years of turmoil in the Middle East purely from the US trying to control oil fields? Because Iran would like a word with, and there’s a hell lot of other countries behind them waiting their turn
Perhaps I misunderstand your point, but the US obviously doesn't have any issue meddling in other country's economies or political systems. The US also obviously allows foreigners to business in the US without many restrictions. Is this the "free market" I keep hearing about? I don't know.
The OP was contrasting this with China, that does not allow foreigners access to their markets. As a regular American, quite honestly, I would like a bit of protectionism from the US, as I recently bought a house and had to compete with cash offers from Chinese banks. It's insane to me that we allow foreigners to buy property here, while our own citizens are being increasingly priced out of our own country.
Isn’t that how laissez faire capitalism works - the person with the higher bid gets the sale, not based on central planned rules of which country the current administration is beefing with that day?
I'm pretty sure Meta apps, at least Facebook, are banned in China still. Apple complies with the Chinese government and removes banned apps otherwise it can not operate there. I think even Tiktok itself is banned in China, there is a special version just for the Chinese market so their consumers can not see global content.
There is no such ban. Microsoft operates tons of services in China. Internet companies just need to host all Chinese in China using an approved provider. This is the exact same requirement extended to Tiktok, for ages US tiktok data is stored in Oracle cloud with full audit access by appointed American firms.
Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. They are not in the same business. Meta is in the social networking domain, which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security. The "color revolutions" and the "Arab Spring" gave them good reason to believe that online social networks were a driver of societal change too powerful not to control. And they control it very very tightly.
> Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. Meta is in the social networking domain
Microsoft operated its own popular social network in China, called MSN Messenger. Tens of millions Chinese users were on that platform for like a decade until the release of mobile based WeChat.
> which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security
It is a matter of national security, we all saw what happened on twitter shortly before the 6th Jan 2021 attack.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-5-2...
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2...
That is the exact reason why everyone agreed that TikTok must host all US data and its deployed recommendation algorithm code in the US with 3rd party audit access by an appointed US entity.
The only question here is why should Meta and Google be exempted from the exact same rules if they want to operate their services in China.
MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_China
They were defeated by the QQ app and shut down in 2014.
https://technode.com/2014/08/29/microsoft-messenger-shut-dow...
> MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law)
Microsoft retained a 50% ownership of MSN China, just check the link you cited. Microsoft also retained the full ownership of the MSN messenger software while MSN China was just in charge of its day to day operation in China.
Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
> Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
Why are you making it sound like China doesn't restrict Tesla for "national security"?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/business/tesla-barred-china-s... https://fortune.com/2023/07/26/tesla-cars-barred-china-world... https://www.carscoops.com/2024/01/more-venues-across-china-a... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cars-are-banned-in-... https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/china-bans-tesla-drivin...
Tesla was asked to complete a comprehensive review to ensure its data compliance. Tesla did it and has been cleared for such data security issue, that is how Tesla sold 670k units in China in 2024.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-29/as-musk-v...
DJI drones have been operated & tested by numerous US agencies for ages, yet it is still a national security threat. how convenient!
Im pretty sure there is no ban per se. They just say: "either put your servers in our jurisdiction or gtfo of here", to which Meta and co. voluntarily decide to not enter the market. CCP still advertises as open to foreign companies though
So does Europe btw and they comply with that.
Chinese government demands a lot from US companies. Google left for a reason.
Apple is quite a special case since iPhone ecosystem creates many jobs in China. If Apple managed to move jobs to India (or wherever cheap labor is), Chinese government will stop being nice to them.
And even then, right now in China, iCloud service is run by Guizhou cloud, not Apple.
> Chinese government demands a lot from US companies. Google left for a reason.
Yeah, and that reason was incompetence, it's not for lack of trying.
1) China already exerts massive control over all of their social medias via social credit censoring.
2) China absolutely did ban most external social media and forces those that remain to hold data locally.
3) China still has the Great Firewall that everybody forgets about.
4) "He does it too" is the argument a two year old uses and should be accorded the same level of respect.
They already do and it has been that way since "opening" up their markets.
If I recall correctly, Apple isn’t allowed to run iCloud services in China, they are run and controlled by a local company
> Fiduciary responsibilities make it unlikely that many companies would risk it.
When you are owned/controlled by an authoritative government you have the responsibility to not get disappeared. Just ask Jack Ma.
Which specific owner is the Chinese government?
Can you imagine any other country making this demand and it being taken seriously? It is negotiation by means of extortion. Why are American tech companies entitled to the profits of an internationally used app?
You can’t claim this is unfair to China, when China requires foreign companies enter into joint ventures which give the Chinese partner majority voting share.
The US is simply reciprocating.
I don't think it's unfair to China, I think it's unfair to European countries, Canada, Australia, and the rest of the world that uses TikTok who are watching the U.S. demand it is entitled to run and control TikTok.
This would be like the U.S. forcing Spotify's Swedish headquarters to accept U.S. ownership.
Then Europe should grows some balls and ban TikTok. China is literally a foreign invader not just a foreign adversary, aiding in Russia’s conquest of Europe. And trying to destroy Europe’s car industry via state subsidized EVs
India literally banned TikTok overnight when China killed Indian soldiers in 2020
Every state to a different degree subsidizes its automobile industry.
Living in Australia now with access to Chinese EV's is eyeopening. It's great for the consumer. To the extent you accept EV's as a solution for reducing GHG's, the cheaper prices are making it easier to end our reliance on oil. Americans don't realize what they are missing out on.
Better than Tesla-quality vehicles for half the price.
Why exactly are they half the price? What are the externalities of Chinese EV manufacturing. They may be half the price, but I doubt they are half the cost.
> China is literally a foreign invader not just a foreign adversary
TikTok ban is not about vengeance on China, it's about violations of own citizens' freedoms.
> aiding in Russia’s conquest of Europe
Russia right now is weaker and has the least potential to conquer anything than literally ever before.
India still depends on Chinese imports and technology, regardless of how it feels about the country. The TikTok thing was an easy political stunt.
If banning Tik Tok is an easy political stunt then why has this spawned a couple several thousand comment posts in the last 48 hours alone?
Because if there are two subjects HN cannot resist pontificating on at length, it's social media/the modern web and Sinopolitics. Add a dash of red team/blue team sniping and it's the perfect storm.
Easy in India. I’m sure they also debated it at length there. But they went through with it and it largely did nothing.
You're really not going to enjoy history class when it comes to American empire
I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.
And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US, even with someone like Trump in power.
> I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.
I can't speak for most Westerners, but I fully believe the United States to be an empire in decline already. Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves.
> And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US
I don't really think about it in terms of "my interests." My ideal incoming superpower would be any superpower that's ready to deal with existential threats to our species like climate change, along with our global social ills like over-reliance on social media and the year over year alienation of everyone from everyone else. If that country comes with me needing to learn Mandarin then that's what has to happen.
I'm highly disillusioned with both the "West" as an idea (which can include any number of countries depending how racist the speaker is feeling at the moment). I still believe in Democracy, representative or otherwise, but I don't see any of those in your "West" anymore. I see a collection of ailing, aged empires full of greedy old men stealing as much money as they can so they and their families can coast out the collapse they have engineered. I contrast this with China, which certainly has problems too, and the CCP gets up to some nonsense, but their ability to exude top-down control also makes them more able to actually solve problems instead of endlessly bickering about them. And with respect to the notions of individual liberty and freedom that I do want to see in the world, it's clear that the West is too focused on maintaining the rights of the individual to do what they so please, and not enough on maintaining the planet upon which they would do it. How free is anyone if we can't leave our homes due to smog or unlivable temperatures/weathers?
Not saying it's an overall improvement. I am saying that the U.S. is on it's way out, and China is the likely incoming global superpower. We can do precious little to change this if we even want to, and I'm not rushing for a fire extinguisher here.
> Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves
With the exception of the USSR, every superpower’s decline in history has involved a burst of violence. China or India won’t take over if America collapses because America collapsing (versus slow fading over lifetimes) almost guarantees nuclear war resetting the table.
I’d prefer if there wasn’t any dominant powers. But that goes against human nature it seems.
Sure, that would be great. But we live in a world where that kind of thing is probably inevitable.
Why do we assume that would be great? The last time we had no dominant power it lead to ww1…
If anything, WW1 happened because there were too many empires rather than a lack of any dominant powers.
Unless you’re suggesting that what the world needs is a single dominant empire? Which would be an odd position to take because history has proven that monopolies are much much worse for abusing power.
Maybe if/when we colonise other planets we can think of the Earth as a single government with countries acting like states (kind of like the EU but with less sovereignty for each state). However that’s only going to happen if we work together and generally cooperation is viewed as counterproductive to empire building. So we come full circle back to my original point.
It's not very clear, but the US version is more freedom plus killing more people, and the Chinese version is more servitude plus killing fewer people.
I think people who have seen one up close claim to prefer the other (but thets meaningless) while people who have seen both start to lean toward servitude, unless they are highly religious.
Sounds like what a rapist would say about their victims
Since we all live in democratic regimes, maybe, just maybe, the will of the people should matter here at least a little bit? Banning TikTok is a deeply unpopular idea, across all party lines. It's only popular among the anti-democratic elites, from Trump (who first got this ball rolling), to Biden, to European leaders playing their "high-level" games.
This is simply false, at least in the US. A small majority favor banning it. It's not huge, but it's not a "deeply unpopular idea".
Here is a poll showing only 42% of Republicans and 24% of Democrats supporting the ban:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2025/01/15/tiktok-ba...
I was a bit wrong in calling it deeply unpopular across party lines, but it's certainly quite unpopular overall, and deeply unpopular among Democrats.
You're lumping "not sure" in with "oppose the ban". You could just as easily lump "not sure" with "support the ban" and conclude that not banning it is deeply unpopular.
Here's the actual poll: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f...
If you're trying to argue that a majority favors banning it, then, obviously, all opinions other than "favor banning it" have to be lumped together as "don't favor banning it"
It does not say they have to sell to the US. Only divest as to no longer be considered controlled by a `foreign adversary` of the United States.[0] The bill also gives this power to future administrations.
It was literally called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Not, All your app are belong to us.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...
Does the law said it has to be sold to a US entity? I think it just can't be run by "adversary"
More fair would have been a restriction based on some framework like...
+ Public forum or utility
+ Userbase greater than 1% of the adult population
= Majority Ownership of corporate division and management, plus regulatory oversight, must be held within country OR a security partnered country (the easiest criteria for that might be they have an obligation to fight along side 'our' troops in some way).
That way it isn't specific about any given platform or company, and it allows anyone trusted as an ally to comprise the ownership or legal jurisdiction.
That's almost exactly how the law was written. Only the userbase was specified in absolute numbers (1 million MAU).
But if the EU or Canada or Australia bought it, that would fulfill the terms of the law.
EU countries are asleep at the wheel on matters of national security and sovereignty. Spotify is not a matter of national security. TikTok, and social networking in general, has been one for some time now. Misinformation, conspiracy theories, actual conspiracies to overthrow govt, etc have all found renewed vigor thanks to social networks.
US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.
If that’s your position, then you would be fine if EU countries were to pull out all US telco infrastructure because of their previous abuses towards European citizens?
> would be fine if EU countries were to pull out all US telco infrastructure because of their previous abuses towards European citizens?
If I were the EU, I would. We hacked Merkel.
Well yeah, but she was totally asking for it.
I'd be mindful that having a NATO partner be able to spy is maybe better than having Huawei spy if you have to choose, but yes, I think it's a risk that EU countries should be aware of and probably are more aware of than with social networks.
What is your opinion on India's ban of TikTok a few years ago?
You do realize many US companies are not practically allowed to operate in some European jurisdictions? Uber and Amazon come to mind.
That has nothing to with them being US companies. Or are there any jurisdictions where Bolt/(other local company) is allowed to freely operate but Uber is banned?
Aren’t they for a different reason, like workers law protection?
Those are just examples. Whatever the reason for each, sovereign jurisdictions don't allow free access to their resources/markets just out of spite. That includes Europe.
That’s only partially true though. I don’t think Uber itself is not allowed to operate anywhere. Rather it’s business model is illegal in some cities/areas. Usually you can still use Uber to hire actual taxis there.
However exact same rules apply to its European competitors like Bolt. Make it entirely unrelated to this situation.
They’re not. Why are you making that assumption? The US is saying that in order to access the US market they have to divest. They’re free to sell at a fair market price - including to European buyers. They can also choose not to and leave the US market and keep operating elsewhere. They can also just sell the US business and keep everything else the way it is.
To be fair being legally mandated to sell significantly reduces that “free market price”. Technically it’s certainly not “free” anymore..
Well, that's pretty much how China behaves with respect to foreign companies operating in China. They all need to be joint partnerships with owners in China.
The world is more than just China and the United States. That was the point of my original comment. The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world. No other country could get away with demanding this.
> The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world.
This isn’t correct. The US law only applies to the services provided within the US.
ByteDance could spin out the US userbase while retaining the rest of the userbase. Many US companies already have to do exactly this for their Chinese userbase. Spin it off to a JV with a Chinese partner.
I’m not aware of anyone doing this, but you could even have a content syndication model whereby the global TikTok and the US TikTok share a common pool of content and username reservations so that both services appear global to their users, but with separate companies controlling distribution of their own apps and the recommendation model used to serve content.
That's false. The US law requires TikTok to be sold to a non-adversary. A US company could buy it, or some German or Spanish company, and either would fulfill the requirements to avoid a ban in the US.
> No other country could get away with demanding this.
TikTok is already banned in India. Brasil banned Twitter for a while until they caved to Brasil's demands.
India banned TikTok a few years ago. Brazil banned X until it agreed to take down posts in violation of Brazilian law. The European Union fines US-based tech companies frequently.
"Entitlement" in the context of nations is irrelevant. Nations exercise power in accordance with their interests.
The latter two, in theory, apply to local companies too. The TikTok bans specifically apply to “foreign adversaries”.
Domestic adversaries don't own any companies, for obvious reasons.
I would disagree…?
> The United States here feels entitled to own and run
It doesn't have to be the United States. It just has to be anyone other than Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.
Well.. SAP could buy it. Or some other European tech company that could afford it..
> The world is more than just China and the United States.
But this particular situation is not. A Chinese controlled company that operates in the US. If you want access to $CC market you are subject to $CC's rules. Other countries do exactly the same thing (aside from China, GDPR comes to mind) so it's unclear what the basis for your complaint is here.
Surely this is sarcasm?
Yes absolutely. China.
You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.
And why do you think Google and Facebook don’t even offer their services there?
> You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.
I'm not sure how generally you meant to speak, but this is no longer true as a general claim.
"As of November 1, 2024, China has removed all restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, allowing foreign investors, including Americans, to own up to 100% equity in Chinese manufacturing enterprises."
True. I missed that. Operating an online social network has nothing to do with manufacturing though.
And investments into various telecommunications related areas are still restricted or outright banned. So foreign founded/owned TV stations like Fox News could never exist in China (for better or for worse).
What's your source on that? Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon all operate in China and I don't believe they had to give up 50% of their local subsidiary. Google withdrew from China because it didn't want to comply with local laws (e.g. censorship).
They changed it last year. Prior to that you generally could only have a 50% stake manufacturing companies (obviously doesn’t apply to Apple cause they never did any).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_list_of_foreign_inv...
Passenger cars were removed in 2021.
However:
> .. (ii) news agencies, (iii) editing, publishing and production of books, newspapers, periodicals, audio-visual products and electronic publications, (iv) all levels of broadcasting stations, television stations, radio and television channel and frequency, radio and television transmission networks and the engagement in the video on demand business of radio and TV, (v) radio and television program production and operation as well as (vi) film production companies, distribution companies, cinema companies and the introduction of films are still prohibited.
So good-luck to any Australians and Brits who want to operate Fox news style networks in China.
There are other telecommunications related areas which are restricted and not prohibited.
Not sure where would TikTok fall into exactly but it’s probably bot manufacturing.
They aren't demanding a sale. They are just saying they can't operate in the country if they don't sell.
They have a choice to leave the country or follow the rules.
Let us cannibalize your app because it's so successful at doing X that we can't compete with you. It's a bizarre ultimatum for the owners of the app.
Seems like the policies used by the Chinese government for decade are becoming more internationally popular (for better or for worse..).
I can’t really feel bad about when it’s the same deal they offer Western companies. Well.. to be fair Google or FB couldn’t even get anywhere close to where TikTok is.
Where you launch in a place where the government actually controls your company, well, that's a decision you made.
Because it deals with an actual enemy pumping propaganda into your country's citizen's ears. It's a legitimate threat to national security. And no, not just the US does this. (I assume you mean free countries, not dictatorship like China, Russia or North Korea that ban everything they don't like).
Europe banned Russian propaganda outlet RT a couple of years ago, on security grounds. It's just that US prefers the soft-soft approach. Don't ban them, let them "divest". No. It doesn't work. It should be banned end of story. I guarantee a genuine competitor from the US or an allied country would make an alternative quite soon. Would be so addictive and equally brain rotting? Probably not, so people who enjoyed it before would complain. Fine, let them go join Douyin or other Chinese platform and see for themselves how "freedom of speech"looks like in China.
As for anyone who might come and say "they're not doing anything wrong". They are and you're naive for not seeing it. Every company in China is an arm of the state. As an example see how Bytedance released an ebook reader in the US with an AI assistant that tells you things like "nothing happened in 1989 on Tiananmen square", there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it is inappropriate to question and critique the Chinese communist party, China never attacked anyone,ever but it's perfectly fine to criticise every other single country on earth and it is ready to give you a litany of misdeeds any other country on earth ever did. Except China. Do you think a company like that owning what's essentially a monopoly on news for the young people is good? No it is not, and any sane politician would ban it long time ago. The fact Trump did this move worries me for his other decisions in future .
Fox News, Twitter and Meta are far worse influences on American society than TikTok.
And every big US platform is just a big siphon for the NSA when it comes to non U.S. persons.
The stupidity and hypocrisy of this ban and unban is hilarious.
It's the tech policy analog of the Iraq War (on the level of stupidity, loss of standing, inevitable consequences etc).
Not saying this ban is equivalent to a decision that killed 1M+ people, lead to ISIS, and created the migrant crisis and more
> The stupidity and hypocrisy of this ban and unban is hilarious.
Your adversary does not care about morals, but will leverage yours in his favour.
Well, different standards apply for government than for private companies.
The government is not a company regardless of how many doofuses want to run it like one.
lol perfect
> a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement
They were following the law. Anything else is just promises by people who are not exactly known for following through with them
Shutting down because the law says it, and to prevent really big penalties, is not making “a big political statement
The law didn't require them to shut the service off for those who already had the app installed. It just prevented new updates or downloads. Shutting off the app immediately was just theater and reinstating the app with no changes to the law is just the second act.
The law says that US cloud providers are fined if they continued to provide services to Bytedance.
As far as we know, Tiktok is operated on US servers by Oracle. While it might have been possible to find another cloud provider and move all US data there, I can see them not wanting to do that given that there was no point if the app isn't distributed in the US anymore.
There's currently no evidence pointing towards Oracle shutting down cloud service to them though. TikTok appears to have just preemptively shut down the app before they were obligated to, complete with dramatic messages telling users what to blame and who to thank.
Even without following the letter of the law it's entirely rational behaviour for a popular market leader to foment outrage by fully blacking out services. 150 million users (in the US alone) is a very powerful political influence. Politicians frequently fold for a few thousand vocal people complaining on the internet.
It was a gambit used for net neutrality in 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Slowdown_Day
Of course it's rational behavior. Nico was the one claiming that they were just "following the law", that's what this subthread was about. If you agree that TikTok was making a political point by shutting down, then you agree with the person you're replying to.
Not everything on the internet has to be a binary argument.
Such compromises happen between companies as well when a particular app is popular. Facebook and Uber accessing private java apis which meant Google couldn't change the internals as these apps are popular.
Sure that may be smart to forward interest.
Nico argued TikTok made the minimum change required by law.
Oracle was shutting them down shortly after the clock struck midnight Sunday GMT. [1]
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/oracle-prepares-start-shu...
I believe Tiktok shut down the app in India in the same way without being "obligated to" either before the order came into effect, albeit without the dramatic messaging.
(The latter part is probably because Tiktok's banning was not particulaly divisive within the population as it is in the US.)
I don't know exact figures, but when Tiktok was banned, Instagram was really popular - due to being pushed by Facebook, which was really really popular in India by then. None of my friends were on Tiktok, but all where there on Instagram. The reels thing was not popular but Facebook linked the account automatically and you just keep adding Facebook friends there as well.
Tiktok had a better algorithm (to get hooked) but Instagram eventually caught up (with algo)..
The dramatic messaging was entirely the point. India probably did not have an easily exploitable target for such a message, so there was no point in trying that there.
Yes there is.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/oracle-prepares-start-shu...
Oracle did shut them down last night, if Google and Apple have to drop their apps on the apps store, Oracle and other providers have to drop them too. Btw, the app won't function even if parts of the infra is down. Btw, business is risk averse, they don't want to give any excuses for government to fine them. Bytedance should definitely shutdown everything and blocked all US users unless they have explicit, written and legally bidding instructions from the Justice Department. Only an executive order is enough. They asked Biden to give that, but Biden just smirked
Is anyone but politicians to blame?
I’m not sure this is correct. I see where you’re coming from, but there was a clear date that the law was going to be enacted by, and tiktok simply followed that date. Pretty much everybody expected tiktok to be required to shut down. The law is clear that there are penalties for tiktok continuing to operate past that date, so it’s not really surprising.
They were telling users who to blame and who to thank because in this specific case, the blame and the thank are pretty clear. The Biden administration approved the ban, and the Trump administration reversed it. Blaming one and thanking the other is also hardly surprising.
Help me understand then if they’re following the letter of the law what changed with the law between the shutoff and now?
Well, "the law" is a shorthand for "how the police behave" and there is a certain amount of realpolitik here. The basic argument here would be that the US Congress made a scary growling sound and TikTok folded immediately because the Congress is terrifying. But then Trump made more of a friendly sound and so they think they can operate a bit longer with some level of safety.
There is no question that TikTok is a politically sensitive app and the US/China are very nearly in the funnel to a major war so a lot of the usual niceties are questionable. Previously the US has attempted something that looked a lot like a black-bag kidnapping of a Chinese industrialist [0]. I'd imagine that the TikTok people are acutely sensitive towards how the law is actually going to be interpreted and enforced in practice.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou
This is basically the same tactic to the SOPA/PIPA protests [1]. I don't know why people are bending over backwards to pretend it was something other than a political stunt. Also, Trump's rhetoric has remained unchanged since well before this - a 90 day extension. They wanted to flex their muscle to show the US political establishment how many US users there were and how much sway they had to give them more leverage in their negotiations. That's about it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA...
The timeline doesn't add up.
Jan 17: Biden administration says it will leave TikTok ban enforcement for Trump [1]
Early Jan 18: Trump says he will 'most likely' give TikTok a 90-day extension to avoid a ban [2]
Late Jan 18: TikTok makes app unavailable for U.S. users ahead of ban [3]
Midday Jan 19: TikTok begins restoring service for U.S. users after Trump comments [4]
They already knew what was going to happen. They also changed the message shortly after disabling it from "We're working to restore service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned." to "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Stay tuned!" [5]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-administrat...
[2] https://nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-likely-give-...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-makes-app-unav...
[4] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-says-restoring...
[5] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/tiktok-sends-notice-to-users...
There's no evidence that they were obligated to shut off the app immediately at the time the law was enacted.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/oracle-prepares-start-shu...
Which is curious if the sourcing by The Information is legitimate, considering that the FTC hasn't yet begun enforcement.
If your cloud provider tells you they are shutting you down on date X, you want to fight as hard as you can until X and then shutdown gracefully to have a chance to explain to your users why your system is going down. If you wait until you get shutdown, you have no way of pushing a graceful shutdown anymore.
I'm saying that it is curious that Oracle would be acting before the FTC began enforcement, if this sourcing is actually accurate.
Oracle has no interest in running afoul of the US government at all. Their internal culture in many ways views them like that of a quasi-government institute. So in thus case they probably are feeling responsible to actually be the ones enforcing the law.
I imagine shutting down ByteDance is not like flipping a switch. They have a mountain of infrastructure and “shutting down” could mean nuking the data or otherwise getting it out of their cloud entirely. If it has to be done by a certain date you’d need to start nuking things well in advance to be absolutely certain you’re in compliance by the deadline. I’m surprised the shutdown happened as late as it did if this wasn’t a completely staged crisis.
That’s a trivial problem to solve though. Just push an update to the app that shows the „we were banned“ message if a specific API endpoint isn’t reachable anymore (and general internet connectivity is still there of course). Then you can operate as normal until your servers are forcefully shut down.
That's not true, distributors of the app are fined. Meaning, very specifically, app stores.
From (2)(a)(1):
> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
>
> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Possession of and providing non-distribution ( / maintenance / update) services to a "Foreign Adversary Controlled Application" are not in any way a part of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Operative services are specifically and intentionally excluded from the list, to ease the burden of enforcement.
Are you saying serving content to the application would not count as maintenance?
Legally, no, it doesn't
Are you a DOJ lawyer or Federal judge?
If not, what is your basis for your conclusion?
I don’t use TikTok but the “down” page mentioned you can still login to download data. What’s the cost and scope of providing that feature without US cloud providers?
They shut down and reopened without any changes to the law. They are open now, despite the law being in effect.
They reopened with formal understanding that there will be an executive order tomorrow to suspend the enforcement of the ban. That is a big deal and it's something that they can point to to defend themselves in court should that happen. When President Biden signed the bill, it gave him the ability to extend the deadline by an amount which he declined to do (beyond saying "I'll let Trump admin deal with it"); and soon-to-be President Trump is saying he will do it tomorrow.
> formal understanding
I think you mean "campaign promise."
No legally significant action has been taken between now and yesterday.
Are you privy to the private discussions between Trump and the heads of TikTok, Apple, Google, and Oracle? Or are you simply assuming there have been no such private discussions?
Trump isn't president yet, so any such conversations are not legally significant actions the way the person you're responding to meant.
Not actions, but legally binding statements of intent. If Trump offered a binding statement to the heads of all major players that he intends to offer TikTok the 90-day window and work out a "deal" once in office would be more than sufficient justification for these companies to ease enforcement until things become more resolved.
There is no mechanism by which Trump can offer a statement of intent that legally binds him to following that specific course of action after he becomes president.
Any violation and associated fine would proceed though court. I assume such a statement of intent would have meaning there.
That's not how the law works, though. Let's say Trump goes back on his word and doesn't sign this executive order, and then ByteDance (etc.) get into legal trouble. If they can convince a judge/jury that they had a strong reason to believe that they'd be acting within the law as they believe it would have been executed by the incoming Trump administration, that could be a persuasive defense.
That doesn't mean TikTok would be able to continue operating, but it could mean the parties involved wouldn't have to suffer penalties for their operation up to that point (past the ban date). But maybe it wouldn't work, and a judge/jury would throw the book at them. We just don't know until and unless it goes to court.
I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to argue? Obviously you understand that that if you create a contract stating that you agree to do [x] in the future, then you are indeed legally bound to that agreement.
If you're arguing that qualified immunity would enable Trump to break the contract if he so chose without consequence, then that is probably true, but I see no reason that would imperil the companies having a rock solid defense against enforcement penalties in the interim period.
Such a contract - where someone promises to use their (future) presidential powers in exchange for some consideration from the other party - would be illegal and unenforceable, because someone paying the president to exercise executive powers to their benefit is literally just bribery.
In what universe does this apply to the president? If the president promises a company to do X, it’s not a contract. I’m not even sure the president is allowed to make a contract with a private entity to give them a political favor.
There is no law or precedent to prohibit someone from engaging in contracts because of holding public office. In fact there is even an ongoing movement to try to get more politicians to do exactly this so that campaign promises would be more likely to be executed. Again qualified immunity would probably make these contracts impossible to enforce against a politician, but in this case the agreement would work as a defense if for some reason Oracle et al faced legal threats or fines for continuing to work with TikTok.
You can create contract, but contracts require consideration, and I don’t see how you do consideration in a case like this without it being a bribery.
Trump => Agrees to avoid interim enforcement against companies facilitating the operation of TikTok + legally clarify matters when he gets into office.
Companies => Agree to temporarily facilitate the operation of TikTok until matters are further clarified.
I don't see anything particularly controversial here.
I'm pretty certain an executive order cannot overrule a law. So they're just hoping to either get an actual reversal of the law while Trump is in term or just hoping nobody after him will care.
It's like betting on jury nullification but without the benefit of double jeopardy protection. It's unclear if any of the US companies the law is aimed at will risk it.
An executive order can't overrule a law, but it can direct the DoJ not to enforce a particular law.
Which would be an EO counter the constitution and obviously not durable itself. In 4 years the next DOJ can just enforce the law on the books with 4 years of evidence of companies openly breaking it. It'd be a slam dunk case
The law allows the president to grant a one time 90 day extension. (In this specific case)
Trump isn't president and the ban went into effect before he was. There's no legal extension possible anymore under this specific case.
It’s federal law, and the president can offer a pardon allowing anyone to ignore federal law for as long as they remain in office.
The courts on the other hand can permanently block laws.
> the president can offer a pardon allowing anyone to ignore federal law for as long as they remain in office.
no, the president can pardon individuals convicted of a criminal law, which is not at all what you describe here
Most famously Richard Nixon received a pardon by Ford immediately after his resignation but before any prosecution. Also, it’s any federal law, the exception is impeachment and nothing else.
So, pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution. They may not pardon someone for something that hasn’t happened, but as long as there in office when the crime is committed that’s more a technical issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States
After President Gerald Ford left the White House in 1977, close friends said that the President privately justified his pardon of Richard Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of the Burdick decision, which stated that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt.[6] Ford made reference to the Burdick decision in his post-pardon written statement furnished to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives on October 17, 1974.[7] However, the reference related only to the portion of Burdick that supported the proposition that the Constitution does not limit the pardon power to cases of convicted offenders or even indicted offenders.[7][8]
> pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution
Is this really the case? Has this specific situation ever been ruled on by the Supreme Court? Burdick v. U.S. doesn't address "pre-pardons" or blanket pardons. Nixon was never prosecuted or tried.
The specific situation applied in Burdick.
The court ruled they could reject a pardon given before prosecution thus avoiding the need to testify about someone else. It would be a moot point if the pardon was invalid.
To be clear "they" (who can reject a person) is the recipient of the pardon, not the court.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States
But that's not the relevant part of Burdock for this thread.
The relevant part is that an (accepted!) pardon does apply before indictment.
Presidents can pardon classes of people. Carter pardoned all people guilty of evading the draft during the Vietnam War. So Trump could pardon everyone involved in certain companies or involved in a specific act.
This feels like a stretch, I don’t think it’s a pardon they are after. Pardons don’t really work like that.
TikTok I think was going for more of a shock factor. Maybe even without talking to Trump they have credited him as restoring it, might seem weird for him to “go back on it”.
Or maybe it’s to put him in good light.
Trump issued a statement saying that he would issue an executive order after he became president that retroactively would dismiss any fines which satisfied both TikTok and the app hosting providers (Apple, Google).
Also, the technical bit serms entirely on app distributors.
This is the internet.
The President can offer pardons for criminal matters. However, he is required to uphold laws passed by Congress, particularly bipartisan ones affirmed by the Supreme Court.
For example, why would the President have a veto power if he can simply post-facto ignore laws they pass?
He's only accountable to Congress (SCOTUS also affirmed that) and good fucking luck ever getting the required votes to remove him from office. He can do whatever he wants with impunity.
> He's only accountable to Congress (SCOTUS also affirmed that)
No, SCOTUS ruled that the President is not subject to criminal prosecution.
---
On many, many occasions, the courts have ruled executive actions invalid.
On no occasion, have courts assigned criminal liability to a President.
SCOTUS explicitly affirmed that as the rule.
I'm sure the SCOTUS that said "your crimes are legal" will stand up to him now
IDK.
My comment was just re "SCOTUS also affirmed that"
SCOTUS pointed out that they weren't crimes committed by Trump. We then saw the political prosecutions of Trump backfire spectacularly in a way that strongly suggests that the balance of the US population agreed with the SCOTUS call that the prosecutors didn't have a case that Trump had to answer for.
There’s a bit of a “live by the sword, die by the sword” situation going on here.
Presidents can’t just ignore a law categorically (although they regularly do, e.g. DACA, DOMA, etc.) On the other hand, presidents can certainly decide not to prosecute a particular entity under a particular law. That’s the heart of the executive power versus the legislative power.
Here, Congress wrote an extremely specific law that applies basically to one company. Which isn’t impermissible. But it’s also not clear to me that Congress can insist on immediate enforcement of that law without crossing effectively usurping the executive power and directing the President to prosecute a specific company at a specific time.
Technically, the President + Executive can do whatever they want, including prosecute parts the Executive!), until the President is either impeached or replaced by election or incapacitation.
Technically yes. But what I mean is that, even in terms of the spirit of the law, the situation is a bit murky, because Congress effectively wrote a law that requires the executive to prosecute a specific company on a specific deadline.
That's actually one of the reasons the president has a veto. If the president doesn't want the law to pass, then there isn't much point in passing it unless Congress makes a show of force with the 2/3rds majority, which is also the majority needed to remove him from office.
Similarly, one of the reasons the president has a pardon power is because he doesn't have to enforce those federal offenses. E.g. imagine that a president without pardon power instead offers "plea deals"/settlements for a $1 fine or concocts vacuously lenient house arrest enforcement.
The original constitution basically accepts that there is very little you can make a president do, and it instead formalizes what would otherwise be a gray area (it does have plenty about what he can't do). Some of this has changed over time especially as the judicial branch has granted itself more power.
The entire system is built on checks and balances. For instance even a simple district attorney can choose to effectively nullify laws within his jurisdiction by not prosecuting violations - something that has regularly happened in contemporary times. Even the final check - the lone juror - can also nullify laws by similarly choosing to acquit alleged violations regardless of the evidence.
You could obviously create a far more functional system but it would probably be far less stable. The reason you have all these checks and balances, from top to bottom, is that the Founding Fathers were obsessed about the risks imposed by both a tyranny of the majority and a tyranny of the minority. And non-enforcement of something effectively comes down just a continuation of the status quo, making it difficult for any group to [openly at least] impose their will on others.
You're not wrong but the only real recourse for an executive that fails to uphold the laws created by Congress is an impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate.
Theoretically that's true but in practice there is ample precedent for Presidents refusing to enforce specific laws. In one instance (DACA) the Supreme Court ordered a President to continue a previous President's official policy of not enforcing certain laws against certain people!
Don’t confuse the oath of office for a binding agreement. The president is supposed to uphold the law, but they are only held accountable by impeachment.
They even have broad immunity while conducting official acts up to and including breaking the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)
“Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), is a landmark decision[1][2] of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate[1][2] such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch.”
It obviously irrelevant whether the law was bipartisan or not, and the Supreme Court never "affirmed" the law--it denied a preliminary injunction.
As to upholding laws passed by Congress--just two days ago, Biden did his last round of student debt forgiveness, bringing the total up to $188 billion.
I’m not trying to “both sides” this. I’m just saying that the standard you’ve articulated for how promptly the president needs to act on a law like this isn't the standard we apply in practice. The government tries to reach deals like this in lieu of enforcement actions all the time.
Did they shut down at the last moment necessary or did they shut down during what is likely a peak browsing time in the U.S.? Did they need to include messaging about political figures to notify the user of the reason of the ban?
I understand that there was this law. It's a political statement because of the political message being sent out to the user base. The act of shutting down on its own is not a political statement.
The law did not require them to suspend the service.
The law requires Oracle who hosts their data companies that provide cdn services to stop working with them. The law did require them to suspend service, but not quite as soon as they did and nothing had changed legally
The law required them to choose from among several options, one of which was suspending the service. The law did not permit maintaining the status quo as an option.
No, it does not at all require ByteDance to suspend service.
It requires Apple and Google to stop distributing the app on their app stores, and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
ByteDance could shut down any US-hosted services and serve from outside the US, and be entirely compliant with the law. The TikTok mobile app might become out of date and stop working (for people who already had it installed on their phones), but www.tiktok.com would continue to work just fine.
>and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
And they were forced to use those hosting providers (oracle) by the US. It's not like investing loads to bring all the data over to singapore or so would serve them well either. They'd still lose the US business relatively quickly and with lower chances of turning things around like they might've. Why bother?
What do you mean, "no"? You agreed with me.
The option you describe is another among the several options available.
Unless you're saying that the service shutdown would not have brought Bytedance into legal compliance, which would be a novel assertion.
But now they are breaking the law by turning it back on.
Nothing in the law changed since yesterday. This is only theatre.
But bringing the service back again today is not following the law, is it? Trump hasn't taken office yet. Curious if you've now changed your mind.
Someone else pointed out that "the law" is shorthand for "how the police behave" and that has certainly changed because of VP Trump's statements.
A) Behavior and statements are different things. B) Biden also said he wouldn't enforce the ban (and also, it was the last day of his administration, so enforcement by Biden wasn't even possible)
This was a political gift to Trump, as the messaging in TikTok's app makes perfectly clear.
Police behave how government leaders want them to. Government leaders changing their statements changes the actual behaviour of police.
It seems like striking fear into the hearts of users to make them realize a ban is really on the table is in their best interest. They want to not be banned, and giving everyone a 48 hour show of users on the platform counting down to the end, then being really upset when they think it's gone is a great demonstration that people want their Tiktok.
* Trump gets a free layup to look like the hero for unbanning it
* Trump will think hard and heavy in the future about banning it again, knowing there's a lot of passionate young people that will reconsider voting for him next election if he does
Seems like a smart move to me.
I like how it is just a given that he is just going to ignore term limits.
I'm Canadian, I forget about term limits
Plus has there ever been a US president that came back after a term away? Usually when a "new" president comes in you figure they'll be running again next time.
Grover Cleveland also had two non-consecutive terms, and the twenty second amendment is pretty clear in it's language that you can only be elected to the office of President twice.
They shut down before the law required them to (by a few hours), and now they’re back despite no changes in law or action by the president. Biden had already issued an executive order, nothing changed
That would be my question also. You can't explain the shutdown as following the law if the law didn't change between the time of the shutdown and coming back on. It seems to me like the more accurate assessment here is an anticipation of policy changes, which however fruitful do not reflect any change in law, but perhaps some change in the degree of reassurance that the law won't be enforced.
If it's not that, it may well be as the original commenter in this thread suggested a stunt to make a point.
In 2012 a coordinated action by 100,000 sites (including major platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia and Google) all went dark for 24 hours to protest SOPA, which was successful in killing the bill. Some only changed the color scheme and added a message but others shut down.
> which was successful in killing the bill
the protests had no bearing on the outcome of the bill. most of us didn’t even know they were taking place.
Sorry what?! I was in Australia and even from here it was obvious it was happening. Maybe go back refresh your mind on old HN posts. Sorry not meaning to be rude but the digital protests of the day were very significant. Lots of media coverage and site blackouts and banners and average punters waking up to the interruption. Stacks was going on. You can even watch Internets Own Boy doco where it’s covered.
having lived through that period and relying on the internet to do my day job i didn’t notice.
also if you look at the history of the bill, there is no mention of public opinion at all. They shelved the bill due to lack of agreement.
Well, speak for yourself, not "most of us". On 01/18/2012 the HN front page was basically nothing but SOPA/PIPA content:
https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2012-01-18
As for your claim they had no effect, that's not what the sources from the time say—on the day of the protests 13 senators announced their opposition, including 5 former co-sponsors:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/pipa-support-col...
When you lose five co-sponsors in one day and that day happens to coincide with the internet shutting down, I don't find it very credible to try to claim that there was internal dissent all along.
I very much noticed. It was all over pretty much every major site. I'm surprised to hear of anyone online that day that didn't notice.
Uber has used this tactic many times in their early days. It mostly worked because citizens got used to cheap rides and got mad at their government for taking it away.
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
OnlyFans did something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyFans#Restrictions_on_porno...
That wasn’t a political statement. Per your link, it was a belief that that could not continue the credit card payments while staying in compliance with the law.
> flip-flop so quickly
The timing and phrasing make it clear that this was planned and negotiated in advance, and the shutdown was just for show in order to be able to post a memo about how "President Trump" saved it. If actual negotiation had to occur, it would not have happened in the twelve hours between midnight and noon on Sunday morning.
The point of the stunt was to persuade large numbers of younger folks that the Ds are the bad guys and Trump in particular is the hero. And it'll work as designed.
> If actual negotiation had to occur, it would not have happened in the twelve hours
A spur of the moment decision would be more like Trump than a lengthy negotiation.
What’s the evidence of this? It seems highly plausible but do we have any proof besides speculation?
My partner uses TikTok and was greeted with a message today saying that DJT saved the app. That isn't possible because he isn't president yet. It's all very embarrassing.
I don't think I will be able to handle 5 more years of this without moving in a very remote place and limited information streams.
I’m going to go found a place I’ll call Galt’s Gulch for maximum irony.
I'd pay good money for a newspaper that would go out of its way to avoid mentioning Trump, Musk, and all these other highly exasperating people, unless it's completely unavoidable (e.g. "Trump declares war on California").
Also the CEO of TikTok is going to sit directly behind Trump at the inauguration. It's not even subtle and half the point is that it isn't subtle - bend the knee to Trump and you'll be taken care of, is the message. We operate just like Russia at this point.
Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
I got an internal ad on Facebook telling me to connect my TikTok account the other day.
https://imgur.com/a/yCOpifC
We’ve also started seeing TT ads on Reels, and a brand new blue-checked Facebook account appeared on TT yesterday and rapidly gained 100Ks of followers.
I'm old enough to remember when selling out the American people to the CCP would have been a career ending scandal.
Selling them out to the Iranians? Pardoned and the person involved got a job on Fox News (Oliver North).
Selling them out to the Russians? Well, it worked fine last time, a bunch of minor figures went to jail, but the boss remained untouched.
So why not sell out to the Chinese? Remember, it's only illegal when a Democrat does it.
> Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
Well, that makes this interesting. The bill also allowed a 90-day extension if they found a buyer and were in the process of finalizing it.
This may put this cringe ByteDance stunt and Meta/Zuck's pandering to Trump into more perspective. The Hero coming to save the day with a magical 90-day extension. As long as everyone plays their scripted part. On the other hand, it's probably just a funny timed coincidence that will pass in 3 months
[added] The president would have to approve any sale of apps caught in this law
> Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
Wait, if this is truly what this outcome was about, this seems.. huge? Can you share more information about that?
It's possible for people who aren't currently the president to do things.
“Be President while the other guy still is” is not one of them.
There isn’t enough time for the current President to enforce this. A convincing pledge from the incoming guy that he’ll allow them to continue operating is all it would take. How you get a convincing pledge out of this guy, I have no idea, but apparently they believe it.
He's also telling them to buy a shitcoin. It's all very well believing he magically saved TikTok, but I think there's a lot that will be real hard to swallow. The cycles between FA and FO are getting really, really quick…
it turns out that sometimes what you find out is that nothing happens after you’ve fucked around.
And sometimes it’s the rest of us who get to find out.
The current president already said he didn’t intend to enforce the ban anyways.
That doesn’t mean much when he’s about to go.
TikTok operated in a way that did not need to happen. Biden's administration was explicit in that the enforcement of the ban were to be performed by the Trump administration. Trump signaled that he would sign an EO allowing a 90 day extension to the ban terms on Monday. TikTok are now operating based on this information.
Who is currently in charge of the oval office is an irrelevant quality.
Note that the ban was not really on TikTok, but the ownership. TikTok could be owned by many other parties in the world. It just can't be ByteDance or parent/subsidiary which has ties to China.
> Trump signaled that he would sign an EO allowing a 90 day extension to the ban terms on Monday
How does that work? If congress passed a law banning TikTok how can the president just override it for 3 months? What's to stop him from overriding it for the next 4 years?
It's outlined in the bill and is explicitly stated.
I've lost interest in this topic unfortunately, but its pretty clear even past all the legalese with the terms defined from what I remember.
I read the bill and didn't see it stated anywhere. I'd genuinely appreciate a link or even a copy/paste with the relevant section that I could look up on google.
But that is essentially what is happening. There is long-standing convention for the president elect to not step on the sitting president's toes prior to inauguration, but Trump has been bucking that convention this time around. This is just an impossible to ignore example.
It’s actually illegal for people who aren’t currently the president to negotiate as if they were.
Declaring your intent to create an executive order the next day is not a negotiation
He's bragged several times that he saved TikTok. Trump also said the Israeli peace deal wouldn't have happened with him, which is an admission of breaking the law that states you cannot act as president without being president.
But Trump already knows he is above the law, so none of this matters.
Israel already broke the peace deal btw, but as with a lot of Israel news, you'll be unlikely to see that reported on.
That does not take away the fact that Trump was directly negotiating with Netanyahu before even won reelection.
As far back as July, then again in October.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0q_8zGJGxc
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-10-13/trump-...
Okay, fine, let's play this game.
What did Trump do to get TikTok back online?
He agreed to extend to TikTok an executive order that grants it a 90 day extension, as the law explicitly allows the President to do.
Doesn't the law explicitly require TikTok to have a convincing deal in place, and to be able to show proof of that to Congress, before such an extension can be granted?
At 17:05 in this video (and I believe discussed once elsewhere but I can't find it/don't want to rewatch it): https://youtu.be/pZkoV5UnPvw
> as the law explicitly allows the President to do.
I think this is debated, which is why Apple and Google may not bring back TikTok to the stores... at least that's what I read.
I don't know but TikTok itself said it was because of him.
No idea and we might never know, but, do you think ByteDance would just lie about it?
Trump agreed to use a provision in the bill to offer a one-time 90 day extension on enforcement: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
Yeah... there's no such provision. The only mentions of the president in that bill are:
1. In the definition of a "covered company". The bill itself already saus that TikTok is covered; this is only a provision to add other companies to the list.
2. In determining what qualifies as "divestiture" to have the ban lifted. That's described as happening when -
> the President determines, through an interagency process...
"TikTok wrote me a big check and said nice things about me" isn't an interagency process.
Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.* He has literally zero power until tomorrow afternoon. He can't grant pardons, he can't lift law enforcement decisions, and he can't write executive orders. The promise of an executive order, even if such an order would be lawful tomorrow (which I can't understand how it would be), is not a legal document that can make something legal today.
> He has literally zero power until tomorrow afternoon
For very weak definitions of power. Zuck didn't wait to bend a knee until the inauguration. Because power.
Since you ignored the passage I linked, let me qute it for you and the surrounding context if it helps you learn to read:
(a) Right of action.—A petition for review challenging this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act may be filed only in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
(b) Exclusive jurisdiction.—The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any challenge to this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act.
(c) Statute of limitations.—A challenge may only be brought—
(1) in the case of a challenge to this Act, not later than 165 days after the date of the enactment of this Act; and
(2) in the case of a challenge to any action, finding, or determination under this Act, not later than 90 days after the date of such action, finding, or determination.
^ That is where the 90 day stipulation came from.
===
> Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.
Right okay, what does one do with that information? It's common practice for Presidents to collaborate with their successors during the handoff period. Both the Biden and the incoming Trump administrations collaborated on the Gaza ceasefire, as way to help gradually transition power.
Bro is upset about Trump using a clause in a law, but has no problem with Biden and Kahmahlah declaring that something is part of the constitution based on absolutely nothing. Bro … after what Biden and Kahmahlah did, there is no valid criticism that any Democrat can have of Trump. Anything short of abolishing the constitution, as Biden and Kahmahlah tried, is less bad than what Biden and Kahmahlah did.
Why did you misspell the VP's name 3 times like that? It kinda makes your entire message seem very unserious.
Now, how exactly did the outgoing administration "try to abolish the constitution"?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrespect>
I missed that one: how did Biden snd Harris try to abolish the constitution?
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/17/nx-s1-5264378/biden-era-natio...
> Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear
> In response to an NPR question about whether the archivist would take any new actions, the National Archives communications staff pointed to a December statement saying that the ERA "cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions."
That has literally nothing to do with attempting to abolish the US Constitution.
If a president can decree amendments, the Constitution means nothing. If you can break the constitution to change it, as Biden attempted, then how do you have a constitution?
paste your article into chatgpt and tell it your thoughts. I've very curious if you can convince it you have a valid point. More so, you may come out more educated and everyone wins
https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2025/nr25-004
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
Pointing out that Biden, in contradiction the the US constitution, tried to alter the US constitutions. I don't make the facts, they are what they are.
I’m not sure what to say other than that you have a bizarre interpretation of the article. I mean in no way, shape or form is Biden trying to abolish the US Constitution.
The US Constitution does not allow the president to decree new constitutional amendments.
The ERA was introduced in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972.
If the ERA was dully ratified, then it would not need Biden to decree it law. If Biden can decree an amendment to the constitution as law, then the constitution has no meaning.
It has been ratified though.
Biden is just pointing that out, no?
No.
https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2025/nr25-004
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
Don't post fake news.
It is very clear that it is Trump doing the negotiations around TikTok. The current administration is at this point powerless.
If you mean because they used the term "President Trump", that honorific is for life. See, for instance, the recent passing of President Carter for a million examples. If you mean because he couldn't have executed legal actions yet - he could have offered private and legally binding statements to all the major players - Oracle, Apple, and Google.
> he could have offered private and legally binding statements
No, he couldn't? It's not even clear he'll be able to do anything with an executive order when he is sworn in, but President elects certainly can't.
I don't know why you think he couldn't. A legally binding statement of intent to offer TikTok the 90-day window and work out a "deal" once in office would be more than sufficient justification for the heads of the various companies involved to ease enforcement until things become more resolved.
> A legally binding statement of intent to offer TikTok the 90-day window and work out a "deal" once in office
Would not be legally binding. The President cannot unilaterally bind the U.S., and he is free to make and break statements of intent.
Presidents are allowed to offer legally binding political favors in private?
Calling it a political favor is quite silly. He stated he was likely overturn it for months now, but the public indirect phrasing was probably not sufficient for the involved actors to feel was sufficient to act on, a private statement of definitive intent would be.
Oh maybe the very clear messaging in the app and by the inbound administration, who is heavily supported by tech elites. The same people who have been very open about their feelings towards opposition and who and what they support. No one will come out and claim this was the case, but its not like they are trying to hide it either.
Do you need to eat shit to know it is shit?
Isn't it enough to see, smell, you have to touch and eat it repeatedly so you can conclude: yes, this is shit. You are now expert in shit eating and the professional opinion is that this is really shit, no mistake is made here!?
If that’s the case this was totally bungled, the app was down for less than 12 hours, overnight during a weekend. If they wanted maximum effect Trump wouldn’t have tweeted until 5pm eastern to give people a chance to come to terms with the shutdown actually happening.
They want to be able to livestream the inauguration tomorrow on Tiktok.
Sure, but TikTok coming back online around this time would have also allowed for that & been more effective propaganda for Trump as savior of the app.
It gave people all of Sunday to react to the shutdown on TikTok ahead of Monday where the focus will be the inauguration.
They shut down long enough to get attention but not long enough for people to find another platform
It had to have been a PR move.
The Tik Tok in-app notes for "shutting down" and "we're back" both referenced Trump by name. I doubt they would do that without his explicit consent.
Trump beamed his name and heroics directly into the eyeballs of 50m people before he even took office. That wouldn't have happened without the brief blip going dark.
Odds are good he said he'd pardon them (which is a whole different story) but ensured they'd go dark for a few hours, either by withholding his guarantee or by directly coordinating it with them.
This is Trump. It's always about him. If we haven't learned that we haven't learned anything.
Ha ha are you serious? Trump is a fragile-egoed narcissist.
He's not even in power and already everyone's sucking up to him.
like your conspiracy theory, lots of entertainments in it.
The goal was always to get TikTok divested of Chinese ownership, not to ban it.
The ban was the stick and selling it for a lot of money was the carrot. ByteDance surprised almost everyone in choosing the stick.
> The goal was always to get TikTok divested of Chinese ownership, not to ban it.
Seems like the goal pivoted recently - the goal is to keep TikTok Chinese and have them supporting the corrupt regime taking over the US, similar to other foreign adversaries have in the past
> ByteDance surprised almost everyone in choosing the stick.
shortly after Trump tried to force bytedance to sell its shares during his first term, the Chinese government passed laws to include the recommendation systems used in social media into the export control list. bytedance thus won't be able to sell tiktok without approval from the chinese government.
Does anyone have a citation for this? Probably higher quality if it's in Chinese even if I have to machine translate it. Because that would be a clear pointer of suspicion.
2020 report by nyt, paywalled of coursed
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/technology/china-tiktok-e...
the official export control list in Chinese
https://www.most.gov.cn/tztg/202312/W020231221620858841394.p...
it is on the 29th page, with export control number 086501X, item 18.
OK, that's pretty convincing. And it's interesting how much other stuff is in there like OCR for Hanzi!
It's like real life is playing like a shitty TV series. Constant cliff hangers, plot twists that never resolve....
Agree, and the velocity is amazing, it's really hard to keep up with the shenanigans. In my opinion, it will have a negative impact on the economy, education, birth rates etc.
Government should stay out of the way, and I don't want to hear about it every ten seconds, on the other hand, I don't want to have to read the news every five minutes to audit what they're doing.
I think it's obvious that US lawmakers were somehow convinced ByteDance would absolutely divest from TikTok if threatened with an ultimatum. They were never prepared for an actual ban and the resulting fallout. Now that it's obvious they won't divest (which should have been obvious the entire time), they flipped
> US lawmakers were somehow convinced ByteDance would absolutely divest from TikTok if threatened with an ultimatum
I worked on the bill. Everyone assumed it would hit the ban, get an extension, and then either remain banned or get sold to Elon, Ellison or a Brexiteer.
Can you point to a lawmaker who has flipped?
Here's what Chuck Schumer said:
"It's clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers" [1]
The deal was divest or ban, not look for "more time to find a buyer". My point is they were never prepared for an actual ban.
[1] https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/1880007290830688609
> they were never prepared for an actual ban
This is have your cake and eat it too politics. I can pointedly say that Schumer’s office isn’t surprised Bytedance ran out its 180 days.
Won't somebody think of the influencers.
I think the bigger point is there are a lot of young people making really decent money on TikTok. (I know a few of them.) The result is a lot of push back from a lot of people who are effectively loosing their jobs. This is probably more clear to politicians now than it was a year ago, since the actual “threat” of the situation set in for more people.
As popular as the platform is with the younger demographic and the voting preferences of said younger demographic it's political malpractice for democrats to not try to at least salvage some face in this whole ordeal, whether you think the blame is misplaced or not.
Here we have a group of people that have given up on their duties re: checks and balances because following orders is easier. What a surprise that they're spineless in other ways too.
Not exactly the same but ChatGPT's firing and rehiring of Sam Altman seems to be in the same vein
> What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it?
There's too much effort and uncertainty involved in actually creating a problem and then actually fixing it.
It's much easier and more reliable to create the perception of a problem by promulgating lots of FUD, then engage in performative theatrics to nullify the FUD and proclaim the problem fixed.
What's the difference between the perception of a problem being present and the existence of a problem?
If you create an issue, and solve an issue, indifferent of the issue being real, you'll be credited with solving the issue. It's ridiculous at this scale
> What's the difference between the perception of a problem being present and the existence of a problem?
Well, it would be the same as the distinction between real and imaginary in any other context.
Perception is reality
No, it very much isn't. Reality is reality, and people's perceptions of it are often quite incorrect.
The phrase is not a defense of some hyper relative worldview. It’s commentary that the perception of the many facts, which of those are highlighted, which are ignored, which biases shine through and which narrative wins, etc., at the end of the day, is the reality you must deal with. Reality is downstream of facts.
You can be passed out in the back seat but a car crash is still going to kill you
That’s not what the saying means, obviously -_-
But the meaning you're presumably referencing isn't applicable to this conversation.
Union strikes may fit that bill.
> it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly.
Trump was against Tiktok before he was for it.
He was also against crypto currencies before he released his own.
> Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly
Trump has never had any issue he has not been on both sides of. He has no ideology, he does what benefits him in the moment at any given moment.
According to the people I work with, all they care about is kids in cages. They value “tough talk” on immigration above anything else. Being influenced by Russia or China don’t even register.
> all they care about is kids in cages
To clear, they want kids in cages. Did I read that right?
Heh; I thought you were talking about trump the first few times I read this.
He appointed a bunch of corrupt Supreme Court judges, and they upheld an obviously unconstitutional law (bill of attainment). Now, on his first day in office, he gets to be a hero by unilaterally deciding not to enforce the law.
So, moving forward, (1) we should expect increasingly unjust and draconian laws, and (2) as long as you do what Trump asks, you can break whatever federal laws you want.
(Zukerberg, Bezos and Trump have already gotten in line for this.)
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
A number of internet services (e.g. Wikipedia) shut down temporarily on Jan 18, 2012 as a political statement against SOPA.
> it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly
I wish people would understand that Trump has no ideology. Over a span of decades, Trump has been critical of liberals and conservatives, often at the same time. He's praised conservatives and liberals, often at the same time. His political positions are aligned with whatever benefits him the most.
He doesn't care about making life better for the middle class. He doesn't care if immigration restrictions are relaxed or tightened. He doesn't care about whether or not transgender people have access to health care or can or can't serve in the military. He only cares what positions on those issues will benefit him and his friends at any given time. And if tomorrow holding the opposite position will benefit him more, he'll switch, just like that, and somehow convince his base that's what they believe too.
Trump is the one who was championing the idea of a TikTok divestiture or ban, back when he was president the first time. He's only changed his mind on that because opposing the ban is better for him now.
100% it's what happened. And the craziest part is that it worked because Biden went along with it. It's easy enough to argue Trump played hardball to negotiate for any divestiture that may occur; because that was his goal all along. The narrative/pundits can spin this easily in his favour.
Either because they gave in to the ploy, or because they were unable to close a TikTok deal, the Democrats look incompetent here. And Trump gains favour in the younger demo (that he's already pretty strong in) AND with SMB because he gave TikTok more time.
oh - and his true audience all along: an American oligarch is about to get at least half of TikTok for a steal.
Anyone doing graft, corruption or just questionable wealth accumulation in the millions or single billions is going to look like small ball for at least the next four years.
Yeah it's just decent strategy on their part (I hate to say). Even if they don't profit directly off of the TikTok deal they look like absolute bosses for being able to "give" Americans what they wanted all along.
He who can destroy a thing controls that thing. Expect the new administration to have great influence on tiktok policy and content.
Already do and users are noticing. Ads have been introduce in a really obnixious facebook/instagram style and contebt moderation is more facebook/instagrem esq as well. It would surprise no one on the platform if meta has already aquired it, and it just needs to be announced.
I dont think we know the actual range of motives for shutdown. Oracle may have forced it, for instance.
Epic Games sorta did this to Fortnite, but the reversal wasn't quick
The SOPA and PIPA protests were basically that
> What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it?
In Trump's world, I think you should cause a problem, blame somebody else, and then fix it.
moonshine stopped working also. I guess it was under the same parent org. They all back to working now.
Is it a big political statement to shut down a couple hours before the deadline of shutting down?
The app stores removed the app in accordance with that timeline too.
No. It's a big political statement to include political messaging and plead to political figures when you shut down. Then to praise those political figures afterwards is additional political messaging.
No, many users are sharing the theory that the downtime was to allow meta or google to take over the backend. Content delivery is different on the app now. For example, ads being served during videos not between videos.
There was no deadline, the app stores didn’t need to remove it.
The Biden administration said it would be left to the Trump administration to review, they had no reason to shut it down. It’s purely to force Trumps hand a bit.
> As of January 19, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will make it unlaw- ful for companies in the United States to provide services to distribute, maintain, or update the social media platform TikTok
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/TikTok_v...
Please do some research next time before spreading lies.
That is simply a topical remark within the judgement denying the injunction. It isn't relevant to what is enforceable or being enforced. The Act in question doesn't contain wording that implies that TikTok would have been required to be taken immediately offline, as the act requires enforcement by the FTC, which hasn't yet moved on the matter.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520...
It clearly states it will be unlawful for companies (e.g oracle for cloud, google for app distro) to provide services to Tiktok
From the White House Press Secretary:
“It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”
Please do some research next time before accusing people of spreading lies.
Thanks. So that was between friday night and today, that means it would also be true that Bytedance could not rely on the autonomous aspects of the US government to not create liability, unless given an explicit assurance.
I wouldn't say following the law would be purely to force a hand, I would say multiple things can be true at once. They still had liability.
Other government agencies, like the SEC, has been filing court cases all the way till the last minute even though they’ll likely get dropped tomorrow. It is understandable to take a risk averse approach for a company.
The Biden administration said it wasn't going to initiate enforcement proceedings in the last 24 hours of their administration.
It did not, nor did it have the authority to, waive the apps stores requirement under the law to do that. To remove the potential for future enforcement actions (up to 5 years in the future) punishing them for failing to comply with the law. Neither will Trump even once he is president unless and until amongst other things ByteDance signs legally binding documents that they will divest from TikTok within 90 days.
> Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly.
"Rep. Mike Waltz calls out the Biden campaign's TikTok account: 'They should be ashamed'":
* https://www.foxnews.com/video/6346831867112
Waltz chosen as Trump's national security advisor:
* https://www.npr.org/2024/11/11/nx-s1-5187098/trump-national-...
And currently "Trump security adviser doesn't rule out continued Chinese ownership of TikTok":
* https://www.reuters.com/technology/trump-security-adviser-do...
So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Trump going soft on China was predictable.
Trump's biggest backers, Elon Musk, Jeff Yass...etc. all have ties with China.
People need to understand that politicians (dare I say everywhere?..) are just business man with dressing. They simply put up a show for people to win the votes and once they get elected, do whatever they can to make an extra buck. Trump, a convicted felon is certainly no different..
Was it? Apart from Elon’s dependence on China market for Tesla sales, I didn’t think so. Trump has been talking a lot about going hard against adversaries. The TikTok ban is something he supported. And it’s more popular on the right than left.
What am I missing.
Trump as a private citizen, can't issue a statement and automatically over-turn a law.
If someone wants to enforce the law, they still can. It's still on the books, and Supreme Court upheld it.
The US presidency fully devolved into a mafia this time around, no more mincing words or operating behind the scenes. Just like a mafia don demands, all fealty should be in public and fully subservient, no half measures.
Till now, commenting or criticizing someone was fair game, not anymore. Musk and trump have shown they can petty and vindictive. So no more commenting in public too. Not sure what this does to the press. Over time people will be trained to think free press is bad too.
The US president is not all-powerful. If he was, Trump would not have been forced to hand over power to Biden in 2020.
Certainly he is petty and vindictive. But there have always been petty and vindictive people in power, and people that were too scared of them to speak their mind. But there have always been those who still dare to criticize people in power.
Trump resisted handing over power after the 2020 election, and to date, he has faced no significant legal consequences for those actions.
Given that lack of accountability, is it unreasonable to suggest the stakes will be even higher in 2028? If there were no consequences last time, why wouldn’t there be an even greater effort to challenge the outcome, should the need arise?
This isn’t a binary issue of whether the president is all-powerful or powerless. It’s a spectrum, and since 2020, we’ve objectively moved further toward the "all-powerful" end. The absence of meaningful checks and consequences has set a precedent, making it harder to draw the line in the future.
> Trump would not have been forced to hand over power
Can you re-read your sentence and ask yourself if this is a normal thing to say in a working democracy? That this is even on the table means Trump IS a dictator. He was just too dumb to know how to make it work in 2020. From a non American lens, it actually looks like you handed power to a dictator because he won "fair and square" this time. I have trouble believing the US will have another genuine vote in my lifetime.
even if someone wishes they were a dictator of the USA doesn’t mean that they are
It does mean he will behave dictatorially, and make dictatorial decisions as president as far as the system will allow. Previous experience (his last presidency) shows he will take every opportunity, and has a lot of leeway in your "democratic" system.
Surprisingly it doesn’t take a lot more when the political opponents don’t do shit (Biden x Garland, anyone?) or when the people either actively supports dictature or decides not to vote for… reasons.
> or decides not to vote for… reasons.
The main reason being a refusal to stop assisting a genocide [0]. Seems like a legit reason to me.
You might want to ask yourself - why was supporting Israel more important to Harris than winning the Presidency and defeating Trump?
0 - https://www.commondreams.org/news/harris-gaza
This is just a publicity stunt to capitalize on his popularity among Gen Z: https://www.newsweek.com/young-people-most-optimisitc-about-.... Trump is simply picking up the ball Biden fumbled.
>Till now, commenting or criticizing someone was fair game, not anymore. Musk and trump have shown they can petty and vindictive.
Tons of people criticize both of them. In fact, both Musk and Trump have publicly criticized each other, and have now made up.
Republicans have learned to weaponize attention far better than Democrats. Negative attention is still attention, and where Democrats shrink from "gaffes" or criticism, Republicans just recognize that public criticism is still a form of attention. Even among each other. Whoever gets the most eyeballs, top stories, and headlines for longest wins this game.
Vicious, vindictive, petty, nonsensical, random, and trolling tactics are all strategically useful in this media landscape.
Republicans have the benefit of not having guilt around saying things that are patently not true while the Democrats are still trying to act within norms.
It is asymmetrical warfare on the truth.
It astounds me that anyone is capable of sincerely believing this.
Why? I think it's a very reasonable take. Democrats dont go around talking about people eating dogs.
Republicans don't go around saying a President in obvious mental decline is "sharp as a tack." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHE3jnOAR80
Democrats literally just lost an election because of their tremendous ability to lie to themselves: Biden isn't incapacitated; selecting candidates based on race/gender doesn't compromise on quality; immigration has no drawbacks; etc.
I take the sharp as a tack comeback, that is fair.
Regarding selecting based on gender compromising or not compromising candidate quality is a vastly more compex question. It is sad that a lot of people have a simple answer to themselves. That immigration has no drawbacks I have not heard anywhere, seems like a position you assign to democrats, not one they hold.
> Regarding selecting based on gender compromising or not compromising candidate quality is a vastly more compex question
Except Kamala Harris put the correct answer to that question into stark relief. Everyone knew from 2019 that she was a terrible campaigner and manager. But Biden picked her as VP and then Democrats picked her as the nominee because they were able to lie to themselves that she was an accomplished individual rather than someone who had moved up within California uniparty politics because of her race and gender. Selecting people considering race and gender in an effort to “make history” or correct past wrongs is a deeply misguided practice. But I didn’t expect it to blow up in people’s faces quite so quickly and spectacularly.
Sorry, but this is a fantasy of yours.
You only are able to say so because Trump won - with hindsight.
I will add that the media infrastructure around the Republicans have also managed to convince most of their viewers that "up is down" in a way that I would not have believed possible (but should have from reading many books about the Third Reich etc.)
And yet you fail to make any logical refutation of it.
You cannot reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into.
Politicians lie, constantly. All of them. Yes, even the ones you like. Saying Republicans lie and Democrats don't is practically self-propagandizing, convincing oneself of something they'd prefer to be true.
ALL politicians are equal-opportunity liars: if there's an opportunity, they will lie. Sometimes for power, sometimes for money, sometimes because they owe a favor. It's a big club, and we aren't in it.
> Politicians lie, constantly. All of them. Yes, even the ones you like. Saying Republicans lie and Democrats don't is practically self-propagandizing, convincing oneself of something they'd prefer to be true.
> ALL politicians are equal-opportunity liars: if there's an opportunity, they will lie. Sometimes for power, sometimes for money, sometimes because they owe a favor. It's a big club, and we aren't in it.
If you genuinely believe this, how do you determine which way to vote?
It's not like you can call a particular set of politicians (country or party) pathological liars and then take seriously election promises from any member of that set.
I vote for those who lie to me the most convincingly about having my family's best interest at heart, and who claim to have goals for the country that align with my values.
That's about the best any of us can do.
Well, it's coherent I guess. But you are just selecting for being convincing. Why not try to decide what you think each candidate will actually do, rather than caring about what they say, when you describe their lack of honesty in terms I would reserve for just the worst of them?
(Considering where I grew up, "the worst of them" would mainly be Boris Johnson: even if I don't like many of the other better-known UK politicians, they at least seem to say things that reflect their actual value systems, whereas Johnson… https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-qa-what-di...).
It's a response to the fact that democrats can create widespread misperceptions through their control of traditional media. For example, in 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies to get Donald Trump elected President." https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/20383-russias-imp.... Hillary Clinton never went out and said quite that. But the barrage of coverage from all angles in the media created the same impression as if she had said that.
In another example: how many people know that, after the 2000 election, the Supreme Court found 7-2 that Al Gore's proposed recount strategy was unconstitutional? Nobody knows that Al Gore had employed a strategy of hand-counting ballots only in counties he had won to find more countable votes that would swing disproportionately in his favor.[1] The media completely blacked that out, and everyone now only remembers the 5-4 part of the decision addressing how to fix that constitutional violation. There's more people under the misimpression that Kathleen Harris or Jeb fixed the election in Bush's favor than understand the sneaky maneuvering by Gore that precipitated the whole mess.
[1] E.g. if Gore won a county 2:1, then statistically, every vote rejected by the machine that could be hand counted would be twice as likely to be a Gore vote than a Bush vote. Gore found a loophole in Florida election law that allowed him to use that principle to find more votes in his favor by seeking hand recounts only in two large counties he had won.
Another example of whataboutism, this time about a guy who ran for presidency many many years ago. He's the one who gave attention to this now obvious unconvenient truth. Back then they criticized the energy use of his house, which still compares very pale against the consequences of this, still swept under the carpet today, inconvenient truth.
MAGA didn't happen in a vacuum. Two republican presidents have been elected in the 21st century, and after both of their first elections, the media fostered widespread misperception of the legitimacy of their wins through selective reporting of the truth. For people coming into the leadership of the GOP now, folks in their 40s and 50s like Vance and Johnson, remember the 2000 election very well, but not the Walter Cronkite era when the media was more even-handed. That inevitably shapes their own approach to communication.
Undermining the legitimacy of the new President to try to diminish his power seems common lately, e.g.:
- Clinton only won because Ross Perot siphoned votes away.
- Bush didn't win, the Supreme Court handed him the Presidency.
- Obama isn't American.
- Trump was only elected thanks to Russian interference.
- Biden didn't win, the election was stolen.
It's a tactic that gets used because it seems to work, at least in terms of rallying one's own troops.
And Kennedy is a Catholic, so you're just voting in the Pope. And van Buren is a Dutchman. This isn't new.
Correct, but now there will be not even a semblance of bipartisanship. It's not even enough to be a member of the same party, you must pledge full unwavering loyalty and never criticize the administration or face the consequences of being ostracized, attacked, power revoked, and prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ. The media, both social and legacy, are fully on board now too, the gloves are off.
Also, you can now commit crimes and then pledge loyalty in exchange for a pardon. See Eric Adams.
>you must [...] never criticize the administration or face the consequences of being ostracized, attacked, power revoked, and prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ.
It's not "never". JD Vance published a book criticizing Trump, and still got picked as VP.
By contrast, Tulsi Gabbard--who was the vice-chair of the DNC at the time--was run out of the party and tarred as a foreign asset for opposing Hillary Clinton and her desire to start a war in Syria.
> > Musk and trump have shown they can petty and vindictive
This is great. Sociologist tells us that any given person can only have 150 friends maximum, same goes with enemies , it will be very long 4 years for whoever sits in the 150 enemies at any given time, but all things considered they aren't people too dissimilar compared to Musk and Trump.
While petty revenge goes on, policy as always gets ignored and problems emerge (inflation, other pandemic etc) and the whole thing will collapse because at the end of the day even a perfect and experienced captain won't be able to steer perfectly a 400M people strong super tanker such as the US, let alone a vindicative one busy lashing out on his enemies aboard.
It will end up like the Evergreen in the Suez canal.
Trump said yesterday in his speech that they want a model where the US owns 50% of Tik Tok and has some oversight.
This is pretty much the exact same setup that US companies get in China. This seems like a pretty decent compromise actually. Free speech advocates win because people still get to use the service, but national security folks also get a win because they can monitor its use by a foreign government and shut things down if it’s being used maliciously.
I don't want to live in blue China, especially when the oversight is the Trump administration.
I wouldn't call required government control a free speech win.
I mean it’s a compromise, usually both sides are unhappy when a compromise is made haha.
There are real concerns that the CCP could use it as a tool to manipulate and spy on the American people. There’s a good reason why Tik Tok is being banned in many countries around the world. Also a good reason why China bans and tightly controls American social media companies in their country.
But if we agree to compromise, we can ideally find a balance where the average American is best served.
If the we earnestly believe that why would we need ownership and exclude most other corporations? Why aren't we pushing for FEC like oversight?
Seems to me that this strategy is as best not earnest and at worst only serves those in power.
Well I think people at the top consider China to be special, same thing happened with the sale of Grindr to a Chinese company. That was stopped by the US government because it could easily be used by the CCP to do bad things like blackmail Americans.
I do believe that both sides of the political spectrum agree that there is a special threat posed by Chinese involvement in American social media. This TikTok ban was pushed forward by both sides of the aisle and has had support from people in both administrations.
Social media in general is ofc toxic and terrible for all kinds of other reasons, but WRT national security TikTok is so huge now that it’s getting special treatment.
> This is pretty much the exact same setup that US companies get in China.
I mean, no? Meta, Google, X, Snap and American social networks in general are banned in China.
It is the setup for all companies which are not banned in China lol
Companies are not fungible in the eyes of a nation.
You're very late to the party.
https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-ti...
How is this at all related to what the person was saying? They made no mention of financial corruption. They're explicitly talking about speech and press.
Money, speech, press... The mafia has many avenues of control...
I think it's pretty clear Hunter Biden has been sleazily profiting from the position of his father.
What's missing is Joe Biden's involvement.
If your politics are against Joe Biden, I guess you can just kind of imagine that he must have participated.
IMO, we should find corruption in politicians flat unacceptable, even if -- especially if -- they are on our own "side".
You may want to become concerned when the president can unilaterally contravene laws passed by congress and validated by the Supreme Court.
> You may want to become concerned when the president can unilaterally contravene laws passed by congress and validated by the Supreme Court.
It seems prudent to say given this seems to the prevailing narrative: this did not happen. The law is still in effect and Tiktok is still banned[0]. The service shutdown that many experienced yesterday was one Tiktok performed voluntarily, presumably in protest of the ban. Tiktok's decision to restore the service was one they could have made at any point after the shutdown, regardless of any statements made by the then-President-Elect.
0: If you don't believe me, uninstall it from your phone and re-download it. ;)
additionally, wasn't the "whistleblower" who made many claims about Hunter Biden's laptop found to be blatantly fraudulent? dude was later convicted for making false statements.
IIRC the Romanian and Kazakstan ones were also heavily thrown into doubt.
whole thing reads like whataboutism
That's exactly what it is. The people breathlessly compiling a list of "what abouts" for this type of corruption need to look past their nose. 2 things can be fucked up at the same time, and one of those things being fucked up isn't an excuse for the other thing to continue being fucked up.
Also, when one of those "what abouts" is verifiably false, as in the case of the guy who made claims about Hunter's laptop, it's completely meaningless. Those people are comparing to something that doesn't even exist.
It's a stupid, losing game that way too many people want to play.
Comparing Hunter Bidens sale of his name to the Trump organization as if it's the same is so laughable.
How many pump and dump crypto scams is Joe up to? "Media" company stock sell offs? Hotels he puts government employees in so he can charge their stay?
At the risk of "what about"-ing, this list is laughably small compared to the Trump's bribe docket.
Neither of these are acceptable, a president and their associates should not be able to personally enrich themselves from the office. I know this disclaimer won't matter to someone who just really wants to argue, but this does absolutely nothing to move the needle for me. Pointing to someone else's corruption to excuse Trump's corruption is just a losing battle, you will never convince me to care about one when the other is just allowed to fly.
President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho to the rescue!!
For those who haven’t seen it yet, go watch Idiocracy from Mike Judge. It’s a preview of the years to come.
That's a unfair comparison towards President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. Didn't he give up his position in the end towards the more qualified main character of the movie?
After attempting to murder him first. But yes.
Arguably DJT consented to the murder of his VP, before cedeing power once the coup failed. So not too far off.
yeah but president camacho went willingly; DJT only went because his coup failed
Or way older and much more eloquent (albeit less digestible) "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. Or even older "The Medium Is the Massage" by Marshall McLuhan.
Money quote from President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho to cement how he and Trump align on values:
> Come on, scro! Don't be a pussy! Besides, you do a kick-ass job and you get a full pardon.
Remind me again who pardoned his own son.
After the precedent around pardons set by his predecessor I'll give him that one.
At least Biden let the process play out before issuing the pardon so the public got to know all the details.
> At least Biden let the process play out before issuing the pardon so the public got to know all the details.
That sentence didn't age well.
Biden preemptively pardons Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley and Jan. 6 committee members https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-preemptively-pardons-a...
President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-fami...
At least Hunter Biden won't be our Ambassador to France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kushner
More like a documentary of the last eight.
The last two felt more like Weekend at Bernie's.
iT's a doCuMentArY!
It's a film that was intended as a joke, and uses Eugenics as its premise. Yes, the Internet has made idiots louder, but it has also helped intelligent people become smarter. The next 4 years will be like the last 8, minus the pandemic.
>The next 4 years will be like the last 8, minus the pandemic.
Yes, calls to takeover ally countries and releasing a presidential cryptocurrency really remind me of the last 8 years.
Speaking of inscrutable nonsense that antagonizes ally countries: I’m still pissed off about the Canadian lumber tariffs.
My brain struggles to understand how people can see how Trump is operating and think it is "normal".
What has happened to Americans??
Don’t worry, Trump will get us another pandemic.
We still haven’t restored the part of the US federal government that stopped SARSv1 (they operated out of China and other countries with the cooperation of local authorities). Trump disbanded them before SARSv2 (aka COVID-19), so they weren’t around to respond to it.
Also, we’re still funding the biological weapons research programs that almost certainly created COVID (according to documents from multiple departments in the Biden administration).
On top of all that, RFK’s trying to switch everyone to raw milk in the middle of a bird/cow flu pandemic. That creates a new disease transmission vector that’ll probably help it cross to humans.
There is no eugenics in that movie?
I like the movie a lot, but the beginning is a little problematic from a modern viewing iirc. It discusses how the poor and uneducated produce more kids than the higher classes, thus a dumb population after many generations.
Factually true about the correlation between higher standard of living and having fewer kids. However, that exact discussion has been used as a dog whistle against other "undesirable" groups in the past. The movie's beginning implies it would be better if we decide who gets to have kids.
Overall a great movie, but I think that part has aged poorly.
I don't think you have to draw that specific implication.
Given that the phenomenon is essentially real, what do you think that means?
Is reality problematic?
> Is reality problematic?
Look around! I'd say so! :)
>uses Eugenics as its premise
Uh, false?
there's an implied (if tongue-in-cheek) pro-eugenics message, since the premise is rooted in dysgenics being a real problem
How you go from "smart people should reproduce more" to "cull the population of the unfavorable" is on you, but thats certainly not the conclusion I would draw.
eugenics != "cull the population of the unfavorable"
eugenics includes positions like "unfavorable should reproduce less than the favorable"
This seems to imply that the president elect can make unilateral guarantees contravening US law. That’s a surprising outcome.
Prepare yourself from many more surprises from this lawless regime. The US supreme court has already said he is immune from prosecution.
The future has been clearly telegraphed, and who is going to stop him?
In his own words years ago, he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and his supporters would find excuses for him.
He’s also the guy that triggered all of this by signing a presidential order to change TikTok ownership during his first run.
Does he have a coherent position on this that these actions support?
Does he have a coherent position on anything?
His main policy seems to be to show the world that he's a big man with big genitalia. And in fairness, he is quite successful at that because much of the world thinks him a gigantic dick.
I'm not really joking, because that really does seem to be the underlying philosophy in what he does: it's whatever he thinks makes him the "big man tough guy". Trying to analyse things beyond that just doesn't make much sense.
Not particularly "show the world" because he's been very demonstrably weak internationally. He's a showman who makes very bold sounds, but his actions show that he will give in to China on Taiwan, like he gave into them on Hong Kong, like he gave in to Russia on Ukraine, like he gave into North Korea on nukes...
Now on Taiwan, he's already stated previously that he will _tax_ China if they invade Taiwan. This contradicts long standing US policy of not stating exactly what action the US will take in the event of invasion, and has had the result of pushing up projections of exactly WHEN China will invade Taiwan to be within the next two years, during Trump's presidency.
The only thing that will possibly make this change is as a condition of financial supporter Elon Musk, who needs those NVIDIA cards that come out of Taiwan so he can pursue his religious mission of winning the AI race. And that's only if TSMC manufacturing capabilities can't be dragged out of Taiwan and set up elsewhere in a sufficient timeframe to reduce the impact if China were to invade Taiwan.
> he's been very demonstrably weak internationally
What you or I view as "big man tough guy" doesn't necessarily align with what Trump views as "big man tough guy". In Trump's view, "solving" the problem of Taiwan one way or the other, when so many other presidents have "failed" to do so, makes him the big man. Whether he completely screws over American interests in the process – never mind the people of Taiwan – doesn't really enter in the calculation.
More power and more flattery, that's it.
To accumulate power for him and the people he likes
No, he does not.
The law gives him some power to grant a 90-day reprieve, iff he makes some 'certifications' to congress w.r.t. progress toward compliance.
That's only before the ban, not after. The ban is already in effect. This is a violation of the law, plain and simple, and the law does not allow for an unbanning after the fact. The 90 extension could have been done before the 19th, but not after.
Simply put, this is law breaking. The President-elect is making promises to break the law day one. This is not surprising.
Look I don’t want to carry any water for him whatsoever, but I think it’s going to be essential to couch criticism in the rule-of-law setting we think should prevail. To that end, the text of the relevant section is:
> With respect to a foreign adversary controlled application, the President may grant a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days with respect to the date on which this subsection would otherwise apply to such application pursuant to paragraph (2), if the President certifies to Congress that, […]
where “would otherwise apply” is pretty clearly not predicated on the preceding section having come into effect or not.
Thank you for this post.
At least post the rest of the relevant text:
>the President may grant a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days with respect to the date on which this subsection would otherwise apply to such application pursuant to paragraph (2), if the President certifies to Congress that-- (A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
>(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
>(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
It seems highly unlikely any of those criteria are being. Trump is not even suggesting it, never mind providing receipts.
Totally, he has to claim to congress those things are true. Claims are … not his weak point.
Both liberal and conservative presidents have made choices about whether or not they will enforce particular laws passed by Congress. This is nothing new. It's just getting a lot more media attention than most instances of this have gotten.
(A very common example: many people in the US can walk into a store and buy marijuana without fear of prosecution because the last several presidents -- from both parties -- have chosen not to enforce that particular federal law.)
Certainly the courts can (and sometimes do) get involved, but the only thing that can force the executive branch to act is for the House to impeach the president, and for the Senate to convict. And the House is not going to impeach Trump over this, or pretty much anything.
I doubt judges would take your side on this interpretation of the law. Wanna put some money on this bet?
He chose the judges.
He'll probably be choosing at least two more as well.
I don’t think it matters.
Scenario one: We get an FDR style leader to fix this stuff after a massive economic collapse and public backlash. (As Biden posited in his farewell address.) This will either lead to court packing or (like last time) the lapdogs on the court will accept their new leashes.
Scenario two: The federal government suffers a partial or complete collapse, and the US ends up being city-states or like the former USSR. (I think this is more likely, and also what Putin wants, assuming he can’t keep Trump under control.)
It’s also possible we’ll continue to have fair elections and the courts will stop abusing their power. This seems the least likely to me.
Under all other scenarios, we’re completely screwed and the current courts will already go along with it.
> This seems the least likely to me
So you think there's a >50% chance that one of your scenarios will happen? Would you like to put some money on that bet?
It's like 2016, all over again.
Its a stretch to consider this law breaking. The president either does or does not have authority here, but the only one breaking the law would be ByteDance.
Biden wasn't considered to have broken the law when courts threw out his plan to forgive school debt. The president tried something, the courts found the order to be invalid as the rule didn't fit the current laws, and everyone moved on about their business without claiming the president broke the law or implying he should have been charged.
If you are surprised this happens given Jan 6 events you have been living under a rock.
There is a good chance there will be no more fair elections in US.
This was a pretty big talking point during the election, towards the end I didn't go a day without hearing about how Trump will end democracy or how democracy was on the ballot.
What the hell happened? For anyone that honestly believes that, why pack up and go home when Trump wins the election?
What do you mean "What the hell happened?"
The question is about how we handle the coming elections four years from now, not the previous one. If he's going to be a dictator it will only be possible when he's in power.
I was specifically talking about claims that Trump is going to end democracy though. There wouldn't be elections in four years, that's a moot point.
By what the hell happened I mean what happened to those claims? Did people not believe then, or are they resigned to the election results meaning we just accept the end of democracy?
>Did people not believe then, or are they resigned to the election results meaning we just accept the end of democracy?
If I revolt against the government that is 100% breaking democracy.
If I wait and see what the next admin does, that is maybe 50% (fake numbers) likely to break democracy.
You can think DJT is bad for democracy and also think it is more bad to try to toss out an election he won.
> If I revolt against the government that is 100% breaking democracy.
If you're revolting because democracy is already lost, or the loss is imminent, you weren't breaking it.
> You can think DJT is bad for democracy and also think it is more bad to try to toss out an election he won.
Not if you truly believe democracy is doomed with his election. I don't believe that, but if someone does I don't see how waiting for it to happen helps.
America spoke and said they wanted it, what more is there to be said? If there was marching in the streets, it would be torn to shreds by the online grift sphere.
To be fair, America said "it really doesn't matter who is president". Which is arguably worse.
If I honestly believed democracy would be ended by the next leader I would be marching in the streets, or better yet finding a group forming a rebellion.
Ending democracy is a very serious thing. It shouldn't have been used hollowly by either party, and if it wasn't hollow then people should be standing up to stop it.
We did stand up, that was the entire 2024 campaign. We really truly believe the guy who incited the insurrection in 2021 that ended the history of peaceful democratic transitions of power in the USA is going to do more of the same damage to democratic institutions in 2025. Given what happened on 1/6 I don’t know why you see that worry as hollow.
I see it as hollow mainly because the democratic party and many of its supporters seemed to go silent after the election. I can only speak for myself, but if I truly believed he would end democracy in a few short years I'd be doing whatever I could to stop it. I say it seems hollow because I just can't imagine it being a serious, real threat and also rolling over.
> I can only speak for myself, but if I truly believed he would end democracy in a few short years I'd be doing whatever I could to stop it
We did do whatever we could to stop it. We tried every avenue available.
We tried impeachment twice, but he was protected by his party. The first time they protected him for extorting a bribe from a foreign government. The second time they protected him for inciting an insurrection. We tried the DOJ but he was protected by a federal judge he appointed, and supreme court justices two of which he appointed granted him sweeping immunity from prosecution. We tried to constitutionally disqualify him from running on the basis he incited an insurrection, but again he was protected by judges he appointed. Our last recourse was to run on a pro-democracy candidate during the election but the people rejected her.
So we tried everything. But the election was fair. He won. That's that. We tried everything else, and anyway at this point it's too late without resorting to a violent coup, which supporters of democracy won't do. There are no other pro-democratic avenues left to protect democracy from Trump. Sucks it turned out this way, but at least you can't say you weren't warned.
The missing piece of the puzzle is that the DNC does not represent the people, it represents corporations who are just fine with Trump. Your average person is very concerned and is likely to think that Trump does represent a very real danger to democracy. The corporate apparatus that is the DNC made some noise about it to see if they could rile people up into voting for them and that failed.
People expect liberals to align with the left because that's where they've been in recent times. But liberals align with globalists, police, and corporations. Leftists always predicted that when the time came, liberals would run to the fascists. And what do you know there they were: Biden, Obama, Bill, Hillary, Kamala sitting right next to Trump at the inauguration in unity. Message received.
> or better yet finding a group forming a rebellion.
You mean like the two assassination attempts vs Trump? Which only made Trump's power greater and consolidated more support?
Aggressive actions literally make Trump stronger. That's literally failing to work and we're living in the fallout of that. I'm not sure how to stop Trump but inciting violence seems like the wrong answer to me.
Besides, its the US Military. We all know that its impossible to actually rebel vs the Army. What do you want a rebellion to do? Grab a couple of AR15s while the Army literally brings in tanks?
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Aggression is a failing move. But so was a political campaign that tried to convince people of Trump's dangers. So that's that. Or are you seriously trying to bait people into arguing that more violence was the answer here? Did you literally forget the election already?
Aggression is often a failing move, yes. And I'm not saying we should go there. What I am saying is that I don't understand what happened to everyone claiming democracy would be over, and that if the threat is real I don't see marches solving it.
Because Aggression is a failing move.
What more "marching" do you want? The only escalating point now is violence because all the marching from 2024, 2020 and all other years accomplished nothing. Indeed: even just "marching" in 2020 was apparently "too violent" as Black Lives Matter (a march to protect African American lives) somehow got twisted by Donald Trump and his politics into a "violent" march.
I think it makes sense that people are cautious about the next steps. But what the hell are you wanting people to march for? To deny the election and cause a liberal Jan 6th event? What are you even talking about? Even if people did that, it'd only play to Donald Trump's persecution complex and he'd get more power anyway. And its not like anyone would be marching to force Biden or Kamala back into office, neither candidate is popular enough.
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The actual move is to retreat from Federal level politics and hold firm at the State-level side. If the Federal Government is lost, the focus should be on more local bastions and defenses.
The fact remains: the resistance wants to be peaceful and non-violent. You've taken away the voice of the peaceful ones by labeling them as violent at every turn. So we know marching doesn't work anymore. Its not like the movement is dead, its just resting for now as people figure out what the new plans are. But its clear that a direct assault vs this ideology isn't working.
I think we may be talking past each other here.
My point at the start of this thread was that, in my opinion, the level of certainty with which people claimed Trump's election was directly voting for an end to democracy does not align with actions since the election results were in. Either people didn't believe those claims even while saying it, they have since been convinced otherwise, or they rolled over knowing full well that democracy is over within a matter of years.
> they rolled over knowing full well that democracy is over within a matter of years.
My point is why is the latter so hard to understand?
There isn't a way to resist directly anymore (especially as both Biden and Kamala are insufficient to serve as the focus of a hypothetical coup). There are other plans in place to have resistance at the State levels, where it will be more obviously beneficial.
Any most of the escalations we can do are once again, counteracted by the simple history that is the assassination attempts. It's clear that the path to violence to stop this madness is closed.
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It's not the time for direct confrontation at the federal level on this subject. It's the time to pull back and defend at the State level.
Have you seriously thought about how to stop this in any way in the past few months? Your questions are so shallow it's making me think you only have talking points to share. After an election loss like that (not a landslide, but still an obvious loss), there is no coup potential or other kind of way for the Democrats to even try to hold onto power.
> Have you seriously thought about how to stop this in any way in the past few months? Your questions are so shallow it's making me think you only have talking points to share. After an election loss like that (not a landslide, but still an obvious loss), there is no coup potential or other kind of way for the Democrats to even try to hold onto power.
Not quite sure what talking points you think I have to share here, I thought I was laying out a logical flow that doesn't make sense to me.
Circling the wagons at the state level is a good short term approach, though if successful I don't see how it doesn't first run into the unfortunate need for violence.
As a country we have spent the better part of a century moving a large portion of powers to the federal level. States can't just ignore that and do what they want without repercussions. Maybe more importantly, I don't see how a stage could continue to run democratically as part of the union if democracy is destroyed at the federal level, there would just be too much conflict there.
> they rolled over knowing full well that democracy is over within a matter of years.
This point. The point I've been quoting specifically.
I've stated why this is an incredibly shallow perspective on repeated occasions. I'm not going to repeat myself.
> As a country we have spent the better part of a century moving a large portion of powers to the federal level.
Tough shit. Democrats lost the Executive, both branches of the Legislative, and the Supreme Court. Democrats have literally nothing in the Federal level anymore. Or have you forgotten how this election has gone?
Its all Republicans here on out at the Federal level. The ONLY plan is to fight at the state level to protect those close to us.
The Federal level has been completely and totally lost. The ONLY plan that makes sense is to build bulwarks at the state level, and if that isn't enough then maybe even at the municipal / city level.
Because it was mostly being astroturfed. Democracy obviously isn't going to end in any way, shape, or fashion under Trump.
And so the organizations pushing these lies need to move onto the next lies to keep the rage and fear going. Maybe this time around it'll be Trump is secretly controlled by China - must be why he reversed the TikTok ban.
His campaign is large enough that there's probably some guy in it, no more than a degree or two separation away, banging a Chinese spy a la Eric Swalwell. Tie it to Trump, start a new committee of absurdity and away we go.
It'd actually provide some logic to banning TikTok which was just politically absurd when Trump would predictably reverse that, to much fanfare.
Trump incited an insurrection based on lies in 2020. He's on tape demanding a state election official 'find' the exact number of votes he needed to win. His appointed judges have preemptively given him immunity from criminal prosecution. He routinely calls for physical violence against those who loudly disagree during his rallies. He has said he's willing to use the military against political opposition. He offers to deregulate (selling the health of the people) in exchange for campaign funds (which he spends like his own personal bank account). There has never been a president so openly corrupt and vitriolic in the US.
Trump is the most willing and equipped to strike a fatal blow to Democracy.
People have already marched against him. Now they rightly fear for their safety.
> His appointed judges have preemptively given him immunity from criminal prosecution.
I get your point here, though if I'm not mistaken they defined the boundary of what any president can be legally held accountable for while in office. It wasn't a blank check or a one-off rule only for Trump.
> People have already marched against him. Now they rightly fear for their safety.
Marching really isn't the answer if democracy truly is at stake, unfortunately. I very much dislike Trump and don't expect him to do well by our country, though I don't personally see enough to think he is actually going to tear down our democracy. Hopefully that's right and we don't get to the point of actually having to defend it.
I’m really curious what kind of activity someone could exhibit that would cause you to believe they could end democracy.
Genuinely. Because for me, it’s enough for someone to incite an insurrection, and to argue in front of the Supreme Court it should be legal for him to use the military to murder his political opponents. Why does that not read “wannabe dictator” to you?
Because I gotta say, if you’re wrong and he wants to tear down our democracy, the time to defend it was the election. Now we just have to deal with the fallout.
A president can't end democracy just because they want to. There have probably been many presidents in the past that would have liked, in their secret heart of hearts, to be dictators. But they didn't end democracy because they couldn't, because our Federal government has a system of checks and balances that limit the power of the president.
He was president once, and was not able to pull off a successful insurrection, or murder any political opponents. And he probably won't do so this time.
The whole point of starting an insurrection, sending the vote back to the states, and using alternate slate of electors was this was something that is so far outside the reach of normal courts that it would have stalled the process enough to possibly grant him emergency powers, declaring himself as president.
Trump doesn't need go full militant to end democracy. He could literally just cause enough bullshit in the process to where the two choices are either let things continue as he wants them two, or mass civil unrest and economic shutdown, and most people don't have a sense of nationalism to pick the latter. So US dies a death by 1000 cuts.
The only hope is that there are more people like Pence on the Republican side that when duty calls, they do the right thing.
> But they didn't end democracy because they couldn't, because our Federal government has a system of checks and balances that limit the power of the president.
Checks like Congress, a majority of which is terrified to stand up to him even after an attempted coup and comically bad cabinet appointments?
Or the courts, many of whose judges he appointed and shamelessly render verdicts (often on his behalf) without recusing themselves over conflicts of interest?
Or the executive branch, of which he is the head, and can cycle department heads like an episode of The Apprentice?
> He was president once, and was not able to pull off a successful insurrection, or murder any political opponents
The US passed an entire amendment to its constitution to prevent insurrectionists from repeated attempts to take over. The fact that he attempted to do so is already treason. One doesn't have to succeed to be disqualified. Otherwise what's the point of the amendment? Just keep trying until you succeed.
Yes exactly those checks. Even if your characterization of the independence of the three branches of government is valid, the circumstances are far from unique in history.
In the past, there was always a threat that if a president got out of line, he could be impeached. But the impeachment clause has been rendered inoperable by Republicans.
The first time Democrats tried to impeach Trump, Trump argued in front of the Senate that he's allowed to commit crimes, including extorting bribes, as long as he does it for the good of the country. On that basis, the Senate acquitted him. So now the the standard set by Republicans is that even in the case of extortion and bribery, the president should not be removed from office as long as he had a patriotic heart.
Worse than that, the Supreme Court affirmed that the president has sweeping executive immunity, making any prosecution of an impeachment case impossible; the Executive controls all of the information Congress would need to prosecute the impeachment, and as we saw during Impeachment I, Trump is fine to just flout congressional subpoenas. Furthermore with the new doctrine of Presidential Immunity there is no judicial recourse for them to compel production of the documents they would need to prove an impeachment case.
Finally, we further know impeachment is impossible because when they tried it, Trump argued the correct recourse was the courts. But when we tried the courts, Trump argued the correct recourse was impeachment. That cannot be the case in a functioning system.
Any president could end democracy, as could a many other groups. I really don't have a checklist of behaviors a la the DSM-5 that would allow me to know someone is likely to end democracy.
I do think trump is capable of it, as where others in the past. I just haven't seen enough to think its an legitimate enough threat to have made me warn others that it will happen. I could always be wrong.
But you would agree that making the argument that it's fine for you to assassinate your political opponents would be a flashing red flag that person does not believe in the the ideals of democracy. I mean, generally someone who agrees with democracy would not argue, even for hypothetical purposes, that the highest power in the land reserves the right to murder with impunity people they don't like for personal political gain.
And so if someone does make that argument in front of the highest court in the land with the intent to avoid accountability for inciting an insurrection, as Trump did, maybe that person would be a bad person to give immunity from criminal liability because of their outlook on the scope of their own power.
Can you link a source on the "using the military to murder political opponents" thing?
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump said. He added: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-suggests-hell-us...
Do you understand what others (who may not agree with you) think of your arguments when you use extremely hyperbolic language to describe things that do not appear to justify such?
The Boy Who Cried Wolf is an excellent tale I regularly read to my children. The moral is one of the utmost importance.
What argument is being made by the parent? It’s a direct quote.
Trump argued in front of the Supreme Court that his notion of presidential immunity covers the right for the president to use Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rivals:
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4398223-trump-t...
I also see it as astroturfing or a hollow threat of not voting for the "right" person. That said, if anyone honestly believed it I don't see how they could not sit by and watch it happen.
> That said, if anyone honestly believed it I don't see how they could not sit by and watch it happen.
And what, exactly, is someone supposed to do about it? Legally. Besides voting, obviously. That ship already sailed.
There are plenty of examples of the people stopping their government when it went to far. Its not easy and should always be a last resort, but the people should never just roll over and give up if the threat is real - especially when a seemingly large portion of the population viewed it as a real threat.
While i dont think Democracy will end under Trump, it is manifestly not obvious that it won't.
The president-elect literally floated the idea that his voters wont ever have to vote again if he won.
This was clarified on Snopes; he was referring to groups such as fundamentalist Christians who rarely vote, urging them to come out this one time and vote. Not very eloquently worded, perhaps, but certainly his intent, as explained by spokespeople and by himself in subsequent interviews, was not to shut down voting.
Anyone trying to make sense of Trump's words has as much credibility to me as people who interpret tea leaves, or the Bible. Judge his actions; trying to divine anything from his words is about as effective as chasing wild geese.
I judge every politician by their actions, not their words. In Trump's case, his words are more "salad-like" than most, but his actions generally speak pretty clearly.
Right, he did incite that attempt to violently overthrow the peaceful transfer of power on Jan 6.
Where is it going to come from though? The news networks that propagated this nonsense seem to have realized this election cycle that its over for them. Comcast just spun off MSNBC and CNBC. That means they are going to milk it for whatever scraps are left and then toss it in the trash. The neoliberal left does not really have an effective online platform like the right and the progressive left have because they spent years dismissing online.
> For anyone that honestly believes that, why pack up and go home when Trump wins the election?
You're wondering why people who are pro-democracy are respecting the outcome of the election?
Well yes, are people willing to accept a loophole that democracy is so important that you must respect one final election ending it?
If results of elections aren't respected then the democracy is already over.
Pro-democracy people will want to find ways to strengthen or preserve democracy (or at least limit the damage) in the face of threats to it, not blow it up themselves.
Elon Musk literally held an illegal sweepstakes paying people to vote in Pennsylvania. And given Elon Musk's position in the new government, its clear that his sweepstakes has led to direct benefits from Trump. It was direct quid-pro-quo and no one is doing anything about it.
The courts were too slow to stop the sweepstakes and now that Trump is in power, we all know Musk would be pardoned of this crime. So no one is bothering to prosecute.
The election fraud already happened. Now tell me who the hell is going to punish the troublemakers?
It seems USA is completely blinded by some immaterial force. How can people not see all the blatant lie from Trump and his bootlickers? Why is USA refusing to fight (or at least help allies substantially) against Russia, which commits crimes on the level of Nazi Germany in WWII?
The US activity supported similar atrocities in Palestine, and there was bipartisan support for that.
I don’t have an answer to your question.
>. How can people not see all the blatant lie from Trump and his bootlickers?
Because the reality is, a good majority people in the USA have a very good life, even the lower class, contrary to what the media may have you believe. So when the majority doesn't show up to vote, its because they think it doesn't matter who is in charge.
These are the people everyone should hold primarily responsible for whatever bad things happen. The MAGA type crowds are always going to exist in one shape or form, and its everyone's responsibility to vote so that the bad side doesn't take power.
> How can people not see all the blatant lie from Trump and his bootlickers?
Not sure if you are serious, but the problem on both sides of the disagreement is caused by the illusory nature of consciousness, and is exacerbated the fact that our culture does not study that phenomenon despite how incredibly important it is.
This is what people should be arguing over rather than yet another consequence of it.
Not a popular topic in certain contexts, apologies.
It’s of course always possible that you are the blind one. Maybe one day you’ll grow out of it.
You're still thinking of him as a president and not as the new monarch of the US. I wouldn't be surprised if he is around for more than one term and incrementally greater and greater authoritarian powers.
Hes no spring chicken so that remains to be seen. I do however worry about who is waiting in the wings to ride on his coat tails.
The surprising part is that people are still surprised. Trump can do whatever he wants and there will be no pushback. We are talking about the guy who launched a meme coin a few days before taking office and made $50B+ overnight.
I think those chickens just haven’t come home to roost yet. His wife launched her coin today. There is no way this isn’t being looked at closely. Impressively quick start to the new shit show.
> There is no way this isn’t being looked at closely.
Who's going to look at it? Whichever sycophant ends up being AG?
He is now immune from prosecution, financial crimes will be pretty low on the list of things that would breach the Supreme Court’s ruling on this matter.
I could see a world where the lawyers have cooked a progressively more egregious set of legal violations to test the bounds of the new authority granted by the Supreme Court. Up next is probably a mandate that foreign diplomats/us government employees stay at trump properties at exorbitant prices for “security purposes”.
Up next? They already did that the last term, when Pence was forced to stay at a Trump property in Ireland. They actually had to go out of their way to stay there, so it cost all of us more in taxes, and Trump ended up with the profit. Totally fine, some consternation in the press, but ultimately Trump profited and no one did anything. So yeah we will see more of that in the next term.
Closely by whom? Tomorrow, Trump and his sycophants will control the DoJ.
If you're talking about a future administration, we've already seen what happens when Trump leaves office and people try to hold him accountable: absolutely nothing.
> I think those chickens just haven’t come home to roost yet.
People have been saying that about Trump's antics literally his entire life.
Exactly. He’s a convicted felon, and so what? It doesn’t matter. What’s an investigation into a meme coin going to do, other than cost taxpayer money and give Trump the chance to say more sound bites?
A wide open door to get foreign political donations (see: bribery) in plain sight.
Is the US dollar going to survive this presidency? Honest question. I can easily see a path to replacing it with enough political/VC will.
> Is the US dollar going to survive this presidency? Honest question.
1000% yes. Not only is it going to survive, but it will probably beat out all other major fiat currencies over the next 4 years.
Beat them out in what way, or by what metrics?
If you're comparing against other major fiat currencies that's a pretty easy bet. The only way the dollar loses meaningfully, or fails completely, is if it is no longer the reserve currencies given priority over those other fiat currencies. This has to happen eventually but it seems pretty safe to say it won't happen within four years.
Here’s the law: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
No, Trump can’t legally postpone or give reprieve to TikTok. The time has passed for that.
Once Congress has enacted a statute and the President has signed it into law, the executive branch must enforce it. An executive order cannot override or suspend a duly passed law unless Congress included an explicit waiver or suspension provision in that law. Nothing in the text of this act appears to grant the President such discretion, so there is no straightforward way for the President to “undo” or pause the ban by executive order. The only way to alter or lift the ban would be through new legislation or a valid constitutional challenge in court.
That seems unlikely considering the Supreme Court already rules on the matter.
That's not the law that passed. The law that passed is https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815 (lengthy law -- see DIVISION H—PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS ACT), page 62 in the PDF.
Also, both the House and the Senate have pending legislation to extend the deadline.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/391 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/103
Thank you for correcting me
The executive branch is responsible for enforcement of laws. He could just choose not to enforce it, no?
I think replies to this will be one of two:
* Legally the executive is not granted this power.
* But in practice they are because who's going to make them?
The entity responsible for enforcement always has this power. It's why DA races where the platform is essentially law nullification by way of non-enforcement have been happening for some light criminal justice reform that can't get through the legislature.
The executive branch has a clear history of selectively not enforcing laws, so there is clear precedent. The most notable recent example is that the last three presidents have all chosen to not enforce federal law on marijuana in states that have chosen to legalize it.
That is a somewhat different scenario as the battle over marijuana laws would boil down to a state's rights issue. Many states have claimed authority over deciding whether marijuana is legal, effectively claiming that the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction on the issue.
That doesn't change the fact that the president has instructed the DoJ to not enforce a federal law passed legally by Congress.
Sure, I'm not arguing that. The context is just different enough to be important in my opinion.
Historically it would have been congress or the Supreme Court. The issue is that no one seriously expects them to do anything against trump.
Why would Apple or Google want to take the risk? They are not TikTok, they don't stand to lose hundreds of billions of dollars of value.
Because they want to appease the new President.
A little bit difficult to get the president elect who is to be inaugurated today (the 20th) when that same president elect in his own words reasonably believes that the 2020 election was stolen.
I think we're all very certain that a thorough investigation into the 2020 election will clear up any concerns about it.
Surely this is not the first case of a president not enforcing a law.
So then presumably this goes back into court, and then what?
But that's the point isn't it. He's testing the waters.
There will be no consequences and therefore few limits to his power.
Welcome to the new dictatorship.
I'll post this here for posterity:
He'll find a way to get a 3rd term in power. Maybe he'll claim the constitution means no 2 consecutive terms, maybe he'll just ignore it, start a war, whatever.
But I'd be willing to bet on it. In fact, I just might...
Trump can choose to not enforce the law. That is of course illegal, and a high crime, but who is left to stop him?
It's not illegal, nor a high crime. It is in fact established precedent that this is in the purview of presidential power. This is why FBI agents are not raiding every marijuana shop in DC or the states that legalized it: since Obama, every president has chosen to instruct the justice department not to enforce federal law in this matter in those states.
Marijuana shops were deemed legal on the state level, you are comparing a real conflict in federalism to ignoring a congressional and supreme court ruling with massive national security implications on day 1.
You're splitting hairs. The constitutional framework is clear - federal law has priority over state law.
The only relevant aspect is whether the president has an obligation to enforce federal law or not. And the precedent is very clear: they do not.
> The constitutional framework is clear - federal law has priority over state law.
It is anything but clear and the subject of ongoing legal battles. https://www.cato.org/commentary/yes-states-can-nullify-some-...
Again, you picked an example of a real conflict between state and federal law and compared it to an unambiguous law passed by congress confirmed by the supreme court that the incoming POTUS will simply ignore.
No, that is not normal. Feeling like i'm going to be gaslit everyday for the next 4 years so i'll save that statement somewhere in a word doc.
As opposed to the Democrats that refuse to enforce immigration law, or refuse to prosecute all sorts of crime they don't feel like (Except when they have to "Get Trump by all means")?
We can play this game all day, so let's just agree Democracy is broken.
Immigration isn't a democrat issue. From where I sit both parties are actually pretty well aligned on that one.
Obama was surprisingly tough on immigration. ICE was doing raids at the time, I remember hearing about raids at the industrial chicken farms not far from where I live. Obama was also working heavily with Mexico to stop immigration at Mexico's southern border.
Illegal immigration is going to be an unsolvable problems regardless of party, as long as we have the incentive of welfare programs that make it financially lucrative just to physically be in the country. I'm not arguing to get rid of those programs, but the incentives are there to come illegally and there's just no feasible way to secure such a large border with land, air, and sea travel.
Which specific immigration laws did Democrats "refuse to enforce"?
Curious to this as well.
Any example at all will do.
In my city, a great deal of laws are not enforced. Enforcement is a policy at most levels, it seems. The interesting thing, to me, is that there’s no fear of future administrations enforcing, or even Trump pulling a 180 and using the law being broken as leverage.
See my comment above. This is a misunderstanding of how the executive branch works. Once Congress has enacted a statute and the _President_ has signed it into law, the executive branch MUST enforce it. An executive order cannot override or suspend a duly passed law unless Congress included an explicit waiver or suspension provision in that law. Nothing in the text of this act appears to grant the President such discretion, so there is no straightforward way for the President to “undo” or pause the ban by executive order. The only way to alter or lift the ban would be through new legislation or a valid constitutional challenge in court.
In essence, the executive branch already had a chance to veto the law, but didn’t do so. The signature of the President (whomever that is at the time) seals the fate of the law.
You're ignoring established precedent. Look at Obama choosing not to enforce federal bans on marijuana use in states that have legalized it - that is a policy of not enforcing well established federal law that has been reinforced by every subsequent president for the past 12? 16? years now.
Now that we have seen Trump's executive orders, it's clear he is taking the route of non-enforcement. However, TikTok remains unavailable on the Apple App Store and given that the support article [1] remains unchanged since Monday, I'd say it's likely to stay that way until a court rules on the matter.
"Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025."
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/121596 - "About availability of TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps in the United States"
It will be interesting to see how this plays out from the perspective of the major App Store providers who are the ones with serious money on the line. If they reinstate the app, then they risk being prosecuted at some future date, which could even be after Donald Trump leaves office. But if they keep it banned, then they risk attracting the ire of the administration and its heavy powers of regulation.
Donald Trump is very unpredictable, but one thing seems to be clear from his behavior. Anything that serves to benefit himself or his family tends to receive his favor. And there are billionaires swirling around him ready to do him favors two of whom are potential buyers for TikTok.
> the executive branch MUST enforce it
Or what?
(I'm not being flippant. Are there consequences I'm not aware of if he decides not to enforce?)
Or nothing. Literally! No GOP representative will dare go against the Trump, or else they will be primaryied. The law only applies if there are consequences, and in this case there aren't consequences. If you don't realize this is how US operates, you are living in some la-la land like the democrats that insist on decorum, norms and such other BS.
Your understanding of the law is incorrect when you say "the executive branch MUST enforce it". Administrations of all political stripes have decided not to enforce parts of particular laws. And this is precisely because "enforcement" means you need to use limited resources to prosecute someone for breaking the law, and the executive branch has always had wide latitude deciding who they prosecute. If Congress decides the president is not faithfully enforcing the laws, their option is impeachment. Well, we all saw how that went the last few times...
The thing that is shocking to me about the current TikTok situation is that while Trump may be free to say "I won't enforce this law", he can't write any sort of executive order overturning the law, and I think it's pretty disgusting the media isn't pushing back against this more (except for Kara Swisher, who made this exact point) and saying this isn't possible.
The law is explicit that any company (like Apple, Google or Oracle) that provides services for TikTok would be in violation of the law and subject to large penalties. Nothing Trump says as president can change that without Congress acting. So it is simply baffling to me that these major companies would be willing to put themselves in serious legal jeopardy with just what amounts to a pinky promise and a wink from Trump.
>That’s a surprising outcome.
It's President Trump, what are you going to do about it? The man has been regularly breaking the law since 2016 and there is never any political will to stop him.
Trump v. U.S. established it's not illegal when Trump does it.
I feel like Americans didn't realize that the country slipped into a mixed authoritarian regime now.
As any other mixed authoritarian regime, the laws matter somewhat but are also balanced with the intent of the guy on the top.
And I did say authoritarian, not dictatorship, those aren't the same level. There's a lot of shades of black between Norway and China.
Many many of us did, but were powerless to stop it.
More like you cheered it on while your club was the one benefiting.
I don't know who you think I am or what you think you're saying, but none of that applies to me.
Writing in laws that allow you to selectively take out whoever is convenient at any time is lawmaking 101.
Of course lawfare is the tool of the democrats, and not republicans, like you seem to believe.
> regularly breaking the law since 2016
You sweet summer child.
Before 2016, some of the lawsuits succeeded. After 2016, he's pretty much safe from legal ramifications until his death.
Trying and doing takes a minute for him, fixing it is a long process with consequence on all others mostly.
All those opportunist-narcissist shit-stirrers out there rely on the prudent and consequently slow self fixing mechanisms of societies (beyond the dumb and lazy childish masses vegetate below these figures and so looking up to them) like viruses on the delayed adaptation of the immune system. The host that feed them may easily die this way? Not their problem!! They have their shine and rule moment and they do not have much of miserable and futile life left anyway, f*ck others!
The president can pardon whomever he wants. It's in the U.S. Constitution.
Do pardons extend to companies? That could be a really unintended consequence of the whole "companies are people" precedent.
It might be surprising, but SCOTUS confirms it
They're just 9 clowns in robes these days
If this stands, it certainly is. It’s a mockery of the whole of the system. Congress better act on overturning it post haste or enforcing it post haste.
They only have one option for the next two years: Impeach and remove. GOOD LUCK LMAO
Yes, the republican dominated congress and senate are certain to do that. It's very clear this puppy has no bottom.
To be fair, he's already been impeached twice; this wouldn’t be anything new to anybody.
"and remove"
Third time is the charm!
I think apps like TikTok or YouTube Shorts literally brainwash people. It’s one of the dumbest things ever invented on the Internet, yet incredibly addictive at the same time.
Never had TikTok, but that's exactly what I thought when Youtube introduced Shorts and I found myself spending long sessions in them.
However, now I think it's the same infinite scroll we already had in twitter and reddit -- but instead of text and images, now it's just videos.
At the beginning the content was really dumb and bad, but after some time it became way better. Now my feed is basically cooking recipes, chemistry experiments, interesting physics facts, bits from my favorite comedians, etc. Maybe Youtube learned my tastes, or maybe the content creators learned how to exploit better the platform. Either way I'd say I'm happy with the result now.
I still think some people are getting brainwashed by certain content, but in the same way as they were getting brainwashed in twitter and reddit.
For me, in reddit (and hacker news), I tend to actually read the actual video, read the comments, sometimes even leave a comment. Much more time spent on an actual item.
For short videos, it is a continuous stream of video's where a new video is automatically started after the last one. This is what makes shorts so horrible. You are forced to watch a new video every 15s to 1 min. Versus actively deciding yourself how long you look on a particular item. It becomes bad as your brain gets trained to loose interest after 1min.
I highly recommend turning off the autoplay next video option in YouTube. It will enhance your life.
I'm so tired of the Internet turning into the Internet of Faces. I feel like I see faces plastered all over the Internet now, eager to take only ten minutes to explain one minute of information to me.
Probably not a coincidence that the Internet became a lot less nerdy and cool around the time HD streaming was viable. Modern social media shows that people want the next evolution of TV not books.
Don't download titkok. It's like Shorts but works a lot better.
Both are like using slot machines but on tiktok you win (dopamine hit) more often - or at whatever rate the house wants you to.
Even if it is recipes and chemistry it's the format that's the issue, it still fries your dopamine and lowers your attention span.
Some of it is that for sure. But you could also make the counter argument about long form content. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to explain how to make a cake.
Definitely two sides of the same coin, struggle not to have a YT video playing if I’m alone and doing something else that should be enough for my focus.
It doesn't take 30 seconds either.
TikTok has been pushing longer form content for a while. 60-90 seconds is plenty for a recipe
I don't think it's any worse than any other form of media (like reading comments on hacker news instead of reading the article)
It is much worse lol
Videos cram so much stimulation over such a short period of time
Text you still have to read
Or, to spin it around -- given a standard, naive population, why are video platforms so much more successful than text ones?
Hypothesis: video is more addiction, regardless of content
Except I can read much faster than a video can convey information to me, almost always - I suspect the popularity of video to deliver information at least in some part stems from declining literacy. Whenever I have to watch a poor reader read something, I am honestly amazed they can function at all.
We might not use HN the same way then...
I frequently give up on reading a thread midway down the page because it's requiring *too much focus*, and, get this, I might even interrupt my break and just go back to work early instead!
I don't think that would ever happen on a neverending infinite scroll of hyperengaging video.
Have you used it?
This type of comment comes up here a lot, but maybe you should show us what exactly you mean?
Because at least for physics and chemistry, those are topics where, in my experience, you need deep, sustained engagement to make any personal progress on them.
Sure, you can probably learn a few fun facts through TikTok but really what's the point?
There are only 24 hours in a day. The hours you spend doomscrolling through - in the best case - fun facts about physics and chemistry are hours you spend not doing anything of value, like learning about actual physics or chemistry.
I get that you don't need to be doing something super productive all the time, what I'm saying is that I think you're fooling yourself if you believe that TikTok and co. are anything more than the shallowest form of entertainment available.
I remember lots of things! Like Nile burning some random thing. Or that British physicist talking to the British shit poster lady.
I think you might have a point..
I chuckled at your reply, because there is truth to it. But in all honesty I did learn proper running form from TikTok.
I also did from some American Olympic athlete. I still don’t go running though.
An interesting difference between physics and metaphysics is that in physics people tend to think fact checking their claims is important.
Until recently, both meta and physics thought that fact-checking claims was important.
I think physics folks are still mostly top notch when it comes to physics, but for metaphysics they fail like everyone else of course.
Aha sorry, it was a play on words. "Meta" the company just fired their fact-checking team, hence the tongue-in-cheek comment
Can you provide a ranking of entertainment from most “deep” to most shallow please since you seem to be an expert on what entertainment is OK to consume?
I'm not, but I do know you'll be on the safe side if you go read a book that challenges you! :)
Do you agree that differences exist and some things can be better for mental and personal growth than others?
That is exactly what TikTok does, they are more popular because their tastes algorithm is even better than Shorts for figuring out what you actually want to watch
its like how 30 years ago when people would numblessly flip through hundreds of cable channels for hours, but with endless tailored content and extra dopamine shots on top from social feedback
its very telling how, while youtube (classic) also has these same ingredients, the ux of looking through a menu is far less addicting than the slot machine mechanism from swiping up
yeah but cable was limited by channels and by producers. now anyone can make a video and it's possible to tailor that to tiny niches that would have never been served by cable.
It's a slot machine, a scroll is an arm pull. Sometimes you get a brain tickle and you keep on scrolling to get more. I'd bet money that the brain activity is exactly the same.
100% agree on this and go further; it rots their brain. We have to have the societal courage and guts to admit that it is conceptually the same as things like drugs/alcohol/smoking.
Then again, we lost that battle with misogynistic, language-rotting, and violent rap music because we were too worried about being called racists, so there might not be hope we'll do better this time around.
Yes, rap music (and video games, and rock music, and comic books, and pinball machines) definitely ruined the world by rotting the childrens’ brains.
It wasn’t the gutting of the educational system, that’s far too simple an explanation.
Your facetious comment is essentially correct. It all comes down to culture and parenting. The 'gutted' education system where I live spends 25k per student, which doesn't matter if kids never read a book.
Do you think rap music has had more of an impact on society or democracy than TikTok or YouTube shorts or just Facebook?
I'd be pulling something out of thin air, but my opinion is that yes so far it has. Facebook and TikTok, and other social media, has served as an amplification mechanism for various things, including rap music.
But at this point, we also have a separate category of things that pretty much on their own are having a negative effect on society. That would be things like TikTok (including Instagram Reels, and Youtube Shorts).
The fact that they're not trying to come up with a new UI paradigm, or discovery mechanism is very telling. They keep focusing on semi-random swipe-directed discovery, and that tells me they're not interested in making the best content available to you as the interested-consumer. They want you wasting time and generating N-counts of redundant ad views/impressions/things before finding that one thing you wanted or might find interesting.
Youtube is probably the best at at-least trying to not force you to swipe (when watching normal videos). But even there, we can see how much people complain about "The Feed" or "The Algorithm". With all of Google's money and effort, they couldn't (or chose not to) find a better way at matching viewers with good content.
Do you think forums like the one you are on right now do not?
We're the product of all the information we consume, but forums like HN aren't custom-tailoring what I'm shown to maximize engagement from me.
Do you think there might be some variation in the degree of negative effects a forum like Hacker News has compared to TikTok/YT shorts?
I do, but this is not contrary to my point.
No, because reading is more healthy than mindlessly watching short videos. There is only so much content on the front page, it's not a slot machine you can pull for hours like tiktok.
Give it a few months until somebody rigs an open-source video generation model to generate a "Short" from any frontpage article, and then several "reaction videos" based on the top comments... and maybe a frontend UI that turns the frontpage into an infinite scroll of those Shorts... and bam, HackerReels will be born
Do you truly believe zero brainwashing takes place here?
Out of curiosity, how deeply have you considered the question? And, might that depth not be a function of the norms in the forum?
I can't believe how ignorant some people could be.
It is so easy to find reports and evidence of how Tiktok could be of great value to people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/dining/tiktok-ban-cooking...
https://www.today.com/popculture/books/what-is-booktok-meani...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-67555175
Having some amount of utility doesn't contradict it possibly being used for nefarious purposes by it's owners though. If I intentionally wanted to design an information warfare weapon, I'd make sure to sugarcoat it with interesting/funny/useful content to make it palatable. Just like putting the soldiers inside a giant wooden horse.
Not that I really care enough to ban TikTok, but the value demonstrated here is pretty spurious. You could swap "TikTok" with "socializing", and I'm sure these people would've had similar outcomes.
Socializing is indeed of great value to people; not at all spurious. You're helping prove OP's point.
And OP didn't even mention all the small businesses that took off due to TikTok giving them an avenue. This notion that people have to dismiss TikTok as merely mindless dopamine is really just wilful ignorance.
My point is that none of this is truly dependent on the existence of TikTok, which OP does not be seeming to be arguing, even slightly. The internet is a revolving door of gathering spaces that enable people to do nice things for each other. People can do nice things for each other anywhere, even when surrounded by the digital equivalent of two-way mirrors.
Citizens have a right to assemble and speak to each other. Foreign corporations don't have a right to own the feeds of huge swaths of the population. Hence the rules around newspaper and TV ownership.
AR-15s can be used for hunting but it doesn’t mean it is always used for good
> I can't believe how ignorant some people could be.
Wow, it goes deeeeeeep.
Is anyone aware of any opinion poll among US population about banning tiktok? This to me feels like one of the issues with potentially largest disconnect between voters and politicians
Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
28% oppose the ban, and 32% support it. So a majority are either in favor or ambivalent. Two years ago a majority supported it: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f...
Support has declined and opposition has increased. I don't think there's much of a disconnect here though, since it doesn't seem there are many people with strong opinions counter to what Congress chose to do.
"Not Sure" != "ambivalent". It's a mistake to lump "Not Sure" and "Opposed" together and declare a majority, as the group as a while does not represent a specific stance. Any attempt at nuance for either side gets bucketed into the largest category.
That group seems like the most interesting question... what sub groups do they fall into.
Anytime there are such large numbers of "undecideds" it's likely they are low-information, and an opportunity for Trump (or any unscrupulous politician, but really, Trump) to lie to them and turn them to whatever side they wish.
Since 170M Americans look at TT, I wonder of how much of it was TT propaganda itself.
The amount of propaganda on TT is rather huge, though I won't say any different than US media, just more of it these days oriented to how 'good' China is.
To be fair, self-promotion is a good kind of propaganda to broadcast. It inspires healthy competition.
If tomorrow China becomes a global beacon of high-quality and affordable healthcare, maybe US will actually feel some pressure to fix its issues.
The impetus for this is largely from Congress in both parties. Public support often doesn't align with congressional action and it doesn't stop them.
Vote for your congress members.
Guess you were not part of the popular vote
>drumpf bad
He is! But I don't call him names; that's lazy.
Yep.
But that's why it isn't a direct democracy. Sometimes government needs to do things that are not popular.
But of course this is always going to be an opportunity for a populist to take advantage of the disconnect. Sometimes, as in this case, that is damaging. But of course it's well within the rights of politicians to play that game.
I wonder if those numbers would change if people read the same intel reports and knew how far the Chinese spies are up our asses.
I assume most americans today are already under the impression their government spies on them and facebook/google will gladly give anything that is asked for, how does the chinese spying on them make any difference for the average citizen? If I was a regular american and had to choose I'd take the foreign spy 10/10 times. What will the chinese do to the regular american citizen compared to what his own contry could do with this information?
If you're diaspora and other smaller interest groups for sure, but the general citizen probably wouldn't care at an individual level. I'd argue that the NSA revelations and how everything just got worse and worse since then killed any chance of the public caring about this kind of stuff.
> how does the chinese spying on them make any difference for the average citizen? If I was a regular american and had to choose I'd take the foreign spy 10/10 times
I hope our adversaries believe the same one day!
I'd be surprised if they don't already.
"under the impression" ???
We have proof. There is no guessing here.
You’re overestimating the number of people that care about it. A good chunk of people really don’t care about privacy, data security and potential exposure to propaganda, no matter how much we (engineers who actually care about it) tell them to.
Lots of people do care about the propaganda thing. Like, most normie voters I know definitely don't give a crap about the data privacy stuff, but they haven't forgotten about the cold war and are not bought into this "maybe it's fine if the Chinese government can control what all the kids are seeing" narrative.
But it's a big problem that the framing has often been about the data privacy thing.
A lot of normie voters care but they are at least one if not two generations removed from the median TikTok user. Generational divides can be pretty stark and it's clear that future generations increasingly don't care as much about internet privacy. In fact, being a public figure on the internet is a good thing these days since you can make a career out of it.
Again, I don't think it is ever again going to be mainstream to care about the privacy thing.
But I think older people do care now about the potential for hostile foreign propaganda affecting our politics, and I think the younger folks who (reasonably!) care more now about losing their favorite entertainment app will grow up and understand the propaganda problem when they're older. That is, I don't think it's a generational thing, I think it's an age thing. And politics is driven by people over the age of 30.
People who were born after Cold War are 35. I don't think TikTok's main demographic remembers that.
Yes, but you don't have to be alive to understand the problem. I agree with you that the cold war is very old news to the TikTok demographic, but it isn't to people who were born in the 80s and before, and that is who drives politics. By the time the current young people grow up more, they will have their own direct experiences with geopolitical struggle. It remains to be seen where that will lead.
Engineer who uses TikTok here, I'll let you know once I become a communist.
> people read the same intel reports and knew how far the Chinese spies
People do, and after Snowden revelation, they wonder why they should care.
The population was forced to accept the fact that they are constantly spied on 10 years ago.
Decisions have consequences.
Well, those who made the decision decided to keep the intel secret, so we'll never know.
You bring up valid point. Did the legislators lie en masse to us about national security to remove a competitive app from the American ecosystem or not. If the national security issues exist, where is the outrage from our elected officials? If not, our government is for sale.
Not for sale as much as adjusting to the new reality of feudalism.
> If the national security issues exist, where is the outrage from our elected officials?
The vast majority of security threats does not cause any public outrage. It is dealt with behind the scenes.
A lot of people hold the view that privacy isn't important unless you have something to hide. They likely wouldn't care about some government on the other side of the world knowing what stupid tiktok videos they watch.
They probably would. But so long as the decisions are made using secret information, how can we know? We can only assume they are lying to us, until they show the proof.
Until they're shared to the public, the wise move is to choose not to believe them.
The problem with a poll is that the general public is likely not privy to all the information that the people in charge have. I think the best thing to do here is just come out with all of it, lay it on the table, and see what the public thinks then. If you have a good reason then show us.
That is exactly what the government has not done all these years. Why be tight-lipped if there is solid evidence and data, its not some issue of nuclear weapons/military-strategy.
I've suspected that they have evidence that China is using the platform for social manipulation, but we're using the same techniques on other countries and possibly domestically and the government doesn't want to make the general public aware of it. Or it could be that they don't have evidence of actual wrongdoing, but feel that the risk is too large to allow it to exist.
Whatever it is, this has gone off the rails and the public is going to need a real explanation if they decide to move forward with the ban.
People are fickle and will forget about this in a few months.
Days
More people supported the ban than opposed it in multiple polls. You’re leaving out the people who weren’t sure when polled
>Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
The relevant poll would be one right after the ban was enacted on bipartisan support. It's far too politicized now meaning that a huge percentage of people will simply support/reject it purely based off of "their candidate" being for/against it.
This holds for both sides of the debate.
The timing and rhetoric from lawmakers make this ban really seem about Israel. Lawmakers and citizens are pretty disconnected on that in general.
You know polls are a rotten way to make policy. Easily manipulated. In fact, Hitches said in "Letters..." that any time you see a poll just realize it's someone trying to change your mind with the bandwagon fallacy - isolating your own opinion as wrong and outside the norm or trying to reinforce the "right" opinion by confirming that you're part of the cool-kid club.
Yes, polls are an imperfect tool. But I think they remain the only tool we have to gauge what decisions coming out of Washington are product of broad popular support vs ones product of intense lobbying from shadowy powers.
Most policies aren't the sort of thing that is going to attract broad popular support (or opposition.) Did you look at the opposition numbers? Who are the "shadowy powers?" Lawmakers say that China is the shadowy partner here doing bad things with Tiktok. I don't necessarily trust the US government on this issue, but I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed.
I think there are probably some people who are pushing this for self-interested reasons (American social media apps) but also I think the stated reason for the ban is probably the truthful motivation, and I'm ambivalent about trusting the US government and US corporations not to spy on me, but I tend to trust the US government when they say they are trying to stop China from spying on me. And if zero people spying on me is not an option, well, fewer people would probably be an improvement.
> I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed.
Right. If the Chinese government is not using TikTok to spy on citizens of their adversaries -- or, more likely, influence citizens of their adversaries -- then the Chinese government is full of incompetent fools. And I think it's safe to say that the Chinese government is not full of incompetent fools.
It's not that polls are imperfect, it's that they're often entirely misleading and incorrect. And if the only tool you have to do a job isn't fit for purpose, then that just means that you aren't equipped to do the job properly.
If the only tool we have for measuring Washington's behavior against public opinion is one that doesn't accurately reflect public opinion, then that means that we just don't have a reliable way to measure Washington's behavior against public opinion.
> It's not that polls are imperfect, it's that they're often entirely misleading and incorrect.
Can you point to the source of your argument? Furthermore -- can you point out how this particular poll is one of the misleading and incorrect ones?
The previous commented made an on-target point about how polls can often be manipulated to produce contrived results. I've seen plenty of cases that corroborate this: differently constructed polls showing wildly different breakdowns of opinion on the same issues among the same population, surveys full of obviously leading and loaded questions, etc.
So given all of that, I think the burden of proof is properly the other way around. Why do you think this particular poll is reliable?
I often wonder what value a survey has if those surveyed have not enough information and facts at hand.
we have lawmakers making reproductive laws who don't know how babies are made. Those making the laws don't have enough information on hand.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/super-awkward-clip-republica...
it's irrelevant in politics because they are still going to act on their own level of information regardless.
Did they poll AIPAC?
So you are saying Trump went against 87% of lawmakers?
If you exclude "not sure," it's 52% support banning. Also, the survey was not limited to voters.
Note that a majority/plutority becomes more skewed when aggregating constituencies.
Granted 52% -> 87% is still a big increase, but there you have it.
For the record -- the law for TikTok divestment was not passed on its own, but was instead included in the foreign aid (including Ukraine) package https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-...
It is not clear if it would have passed if not that procedural trick... So one has to take this into account when considering 'bipartisan support' of the thing.
This is a misleading view of history. It is true that it was included in the foreign aid package, but the TikTok ban was also passed in an isolated bill in an overwhelming bipartisan manner beforehand.
90% of Republicans in the House voted for the TikTok ban alone. 73% of Democrats.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202486
It is very clear that it would have passed without that procedural trick, because it already did.
Correct. I advocated for both these bills. The TikTok ban carried Ukraine.
Now post the lobbying money received by lawmakers, as well as their history of trades of Meta stock.
Top recipients of campaign donations from Meta:
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/meta/recipients?id=D0000335...
Congress members invested in Meta:
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/meta/members-invested?id=D0...
And? The history of media companies operating in the US to have US citizens owners is likely much longer than you've been alive, just ask Murdoch about is US citizenship.
You're highlighting a completely different problem that's longstanding and happening regardless if we're talking about enemy states. Be nice if we could solve the Musk/Zuck issues, but I don't suspect we will as we worship the altar of money.
> media companies operating in the US to have US citizens owners is likely much longer than you've been alive
You do realise that, should US allies apply this principle themselves, US companies will suffer? Most UK media is foreign owned at this point. As is our water supply, transport and energy
And Elon’s rampant disrespect and general behaviour are inviting that day.
The difference is China is an adversary, not an ally like the UK,and China already bans our social media there.
They don’t actually, the only British ‘social network’ is OnlyFans and it’s allowed in China.
As for the rest, what is the relevance?
US money influences our politics through shadowy think tanks and pushes it to the right. US-owned water utilities take on loans, use them to pay dividends and drive themselves into bankruptcy.
Being a US ally doesn’t buy us better treatment from US billionaires, they are still predatory vultures.
> not an ally like the UK
Let's see how long that lasts.
>so one has to take this into account when considering ‘bipartisan support’ of the thing.
I do not. I can hold a person accountable to their vote on this legislation. Their vote on this legislation caused the Supreme Court to release an opinion that affects every citizens 1st amendment rights. Now if they released a statement at the time condemning this while also talking about the importance of the aid they might have some leeway.
How does the ruling affect the 1st amendment rights of US citizens? It entirely affects foreign business owners.
Accountable for sure, but it's less clear who was in favour and who was against the bill compared to if it wasn't bundled together.
Standalone vote in the house was pretty supportive and bipartisan too https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202486.
Congress has a limited amount of time and attention unfortunately, so omnibus bills are very common. That doesn’t invalidate the contained legislature.
I don’t agree with the widespread usage of such “tricks”, but I do understand the harsh reality and limitations of representative democracy.
Thanks for this. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.
The standalone vote for it was overwhelmingly in favor of a ban. See other comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42762082
Yes it was included in a foreign aid package to make it more palatable to Congress. Advocates of the bill on this site are not bringing that up because they support the bill.
> but was instead included in the foreign aid (including Ukraine) package
I don't know why these kinds of shenanigans are still possible. It makes a complete joke of politics and legislation (and by extension: law).
I know I'm shouting at clouds here, and I know the reason is: the sheeple don't care enough to change this thing for the better. But I still feel the need to point it out.
I don't think the sheeple can, sadly. Govt has been so thoroughly captured by corporate interests that I think the fall of America will happen before the govt starts governing for the people
While it’s back in the US, it seems to be a separate version from the rest of the world. My account is European and I can no longer log in within the US without a VPN out of the country. My GFs account is American and she can login but has lost access to some accounts and the ability to watch livestreams which my version of the app still has. I wonder if the 13 hour “outage” was for a larger scale data migration for a separate US version
> I wonder if the 13 hour “outage” was for a larger scale data migration for a separate US version
First I've seen this theory and it makes a ton of sense in light of the new discrepancies between what US and non-US accounts can see and search for.
I also can not see livestreams. It says "Unstable Network Connection". And I have 2 separate "air gapped" phones and TT accounts - no shared details and both behave the same.
There are lots of conspiracy theories online. However, I think it is just that the process of bringing the stack back up may be difficult. They also have a huge shopping network, that has also been down, and there are emails/communications to shops saying they are working on fixing it. Also, when I take a link from TikTok and post it in a downloader app, it no longer works since the URL is broken.
Maybe some microservices did not come back up (outage), or maybe they were knowingly compromised as part of the extension deal. While I can see that Lives can not be censored, I do not know the reason for shopping to be disabled, so I suspect it is an outage.
[ Actually shopping is also "live", so maybe that's why ]
We will probably find out over the coming days.
Today morning, lives are back, link sharing (downloads) are working. Have not seen shops yet in 2 minutes of scrolling
Glad lives are back, I was actually inspecting the traffic using my PiHole from when my GF's US tiktok was browsing and when my European account was attempting to connect. Both of them his a CDN within the US but after that it looks like we had traffic going to different versions. Her's was routing to a tiktokv.us while mine was sending traffic to tiktokv. I'm not sure if this has been in place before or if I'm just realizing now but I believe a split-brain scenario is pretty likely.
Maybe it’s intentional, maybe it’s just the technical reality, it’s a bit early to call. We on a tech site ought to know what a shitshow split brain scenarios can be.
If so, all the more reason to distrust and ban this product. They’ve clearly not been honest with the public.
Completely unrelated but here’s the Wikipedia for an interesting book called The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo...
(1962) is shockingy relevant. I have to read more dystopian sci fi from that era just to keep up with current event
"Trouble Every Day", a song by Frank Zappa released in 1966, that's just as relevant nearly 60 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU
(but not in a way relevant to the TikTok topic)
Similarly, you might be interested in the Adam Curtis documentary HyperNormalisation: https://vimeo.com/191817381
+1 to Adam Curtis. Binged everything he's ever made last year.
Have you read it, and if so, do you recommend it?
The people pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue are ignoring that no one was requiring TikTok to change their content at all. The law was written to allow for 0 impact on users if the CCP-connected parent company simply divested.
Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. But ByteDance’s allegiance isn’t to their shareholders.
Many American civil liberties organizations think that the the ban is a free speech issue:
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok...
https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-scotus-tiktok-ban-violates...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supre...
It seems to me that they aren't "pretending" they honestly believe the issue is about free speech. Laws that does not explicitly curtail free speech but effectively still does just that can certainly be created.
I don't know if it's a free speech issue but legally speaking it's definitely not a first amendment issue because the law targets foreign corporations and the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities
But there are American users making and viewing content on that platform.
The physical equivalent would be if China was hosting a TED-talk-like conference where anyone can come and hold a presentation, and after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in, neither to hold presentations nor to listen to them.
Technically that doesn't violate the constitution, but it's not difficult to argue that it does violate the spirit of the constitution
> But there are American users making and viewing content on that platform.
Those Americans can host the exact same content on youtube or any of the many other video hosting sites.
This is not a free speech issue, it is a megaphone issue.
Making things harder is not separable from making things impossible.
That's true and that's actually something the courts consider. The standard is unreasonable burden. So it's not necessarily anything that makes speech harder, but if it does make speech unreasonably burdensome then it would run afoul of the first amendment.
So if the alternative places where such speech could be hosted were extremely limited, expensive or very difficult to use then the law banning a platform could create an unreasonable burden.
Suggesting that a shuttering of TikTok represents any impediment to your First Amendment rights — even if no comparable alternative existed — is to misunderstand what was promised by the Constitution.
Of course, plenty of comparable alternatives do exist.
Correct, but requiring American content creators and consumers to move to a different platform (when those platforms are already large, have huge reach, and have low switching costs) would likely not meet the bar for an unreasonable burden. I don't think the courts would strike down this law on first amendment grounds.
This make no sense, at all, in any context. Law enforcement, security, philosophy, competition, politics. None of it.
It would be harder for me to learn piano if my teacher was convicted of murder.
For the sake of the one downvote, please allow me to complete the implied dialogue tree:
>>>> It would be harder for me to learn piano if my teacher was convicted of murder.
>>> Nonsense. You can easily find another piano teacher.
>> Right, just like people who use TikTok can easily find another short form video platform.
> That's a terrible analogy.
Nonsense. If TikTok was convicted and shut down because of rampant financial fraud, your First Amendment rights would be similarly unaffected.
TikTok was told to close because they refused to bring their corporate ownership in line with requirements set out in US Code passed by Congress. The content of any video was never at issue.
Just as a thought experiment, take your reasoning and try to ban as much speech with as much specificity as you can. You can't ban the content of the speech but you can ban venues where speech takes place and and means of transmitting speech so long as at least one venue and means remains.
> after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in,
I think if that were the situation then yes the first amendment would be in issue. But I don't think anyone is saying that this is happening here. As I understand it this has nothing to do with what anyone is saying on TikTok and there are no social or protest movements gaining ground on TikTok that the government is trying to suppress. The only issue here is the foreign ownership and how that ownership is used. I don't think anyone is saying the government is doing this to silence any TikTok users
An issue arises when popularity is manipulated through artificial boosting by an adversarial government.
At some point, it becomes State Propaganda masquerading as grassroots activists.
Control over content can influence and distort public discourse and understanding. This is also against the spirit of free expression envisioned in the constitution and instead injecting an intentionally divisive voice.
The physical equivalent would be if the Chinese intelligence apparatus opened an auditorium where they said "come sit here and let us read your mind and we will feed you what advances our national interest".
> the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities
Sort of true. Sometimes the constitution just says "persons", which has generally been interpreted to anyone.
But it's not material, because the 1st amendment is a restriction on congress. That's why it starts with "Congress shall make no law...". The argument isn't about if TikTok has rights, it's about if congress is authorized to take this action. They're inter-mixed a bit because if TikTok does have the rights they claim, then congress automatically isn't authorized, but they are separate.
you're right, my statement is an extreme oversimplification and there are situations where the constitution does apply to noncitizens (like due process during deportation) or places where things are unclear (if speech of foreign nationals were being regulated). But this case where we are talking about a foreign media platform's right to operate in the US without any reference to the content they are broadcasting... this seems to be one of those rare clear cut cases. I mean no one saw any issue with America effectively banning RT.
There were some people on here saying that national security is just a pretense and the government is actually doing this because they dislike some of the content being posted on TikTok. I don't know if that's the case but if it were then I would concede there is a first amendment issue. But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.
> But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.
I still think it does, but it's Apple and Google's right to propagate the app, not TikTok's right to be on the app store. And since neither Apple nor Google are party to the lawsuit, nobody really has standing to take that particular line of argument.
Yes, of course Congress has the authority to restrict foreign companies purely from the Commerce Clause alone. Their power over restricting foreign entities in the U.S. is nearly total. The U.S. is under no obligation to host speech or operations from any foreign business, entity, or application for any reason whatsoever.
And we have a long history of restricting foreign media ownership
So if a particular book were published by a French company, the government could ban it from being sold in the US? I’m sure that’s not true.
No, they couldn't ban just one book printed by a French company. They'd have to ban the company entirely. And that's what happened here too. It's not just TikTok that got banned, but all of ByteDance's other apps too, e.g., Marvel Snap and CapCut.
And it's also important that divesting was an option instead. In your analogy, they couldn't ban the books outright, but could demand they be published somewhere else.
No. But they could ban American companies from providing services directly to that French publisher (e.g., a US company couldn't print books for or sell paper to that French publisher). However, a US law could not stop me from legally reading a copy I owned, or from selling or giving that copy to someone else within the US...
The First Amendment case would be much clearer if this was actually about banning access to TikTok (it's not: TikTok self-blocked US users, Amazon/Oracle shut off servers, and app stores stopped distributing to US users). TikTok could choose to operate their service (like many other Chinese companies) using only non-US infra and without relying on American companies to distribute their app; indeed, the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, hosted entirely from Chinese servers, continued to work just fine.
This case is also a reminder of why the iOS App Store is so bad for rights: at least on Android, you could sideload a 'banned' app; Google can comply with the law and US users can still download TikTok. On iOS, you don't have that option.
Using such restraints on foreign trade to censor publications is a very transparent end run around 1A.
It is a big sign that we live in a police state that the courts are willing to be politicized to the point that they are willing to ignore this obvious trampling upon the human rights of both the app publisher and the app’s users.
Also, iOS users can go buy a tablet or phone that can sideload. Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.
This isn't an "end run around 1A" - the law doesn't target any speech or content at all. TikTok can keep operating with all the same content, they just need to separate from Chinese ownership first. If this was about censorship, why include that option?
This isn't about censoring content, it's about preventing ByteDance from collecting personal data from 170M Americans that Chinese law requires them to hand over to their government.
If this law is a trampling of human rights, then so would basically any anti-trust enforcement on media corporations
It's not end run around 1A. 1A is a law protecting the people (and their various forms of organization) of the United States. Congress has every right to regulate or ban foreign entities of any kind for any reason from operating in the United States.
The rights enumerated by the constitution are human rights (“endowed by their creator”) and are not specific to americans.
Furthermore, the 1A is a restriction on the government and isn’t related to whether or not someone is a citizen.
There are lots of things congress is prohibited from doing under the constitution, including against foreign entities. Congress can’t ban a foreign religion operating in the US, for example.
> rights enumerated by the constitution are human rights (“endowed by their creator”)
You’re quoting the Declaration of Independence.
Correct.
So not "rights enumerated by the constitution." Which is why the degree to which the First Amendment provides protection does turn on legal status with America [1].
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...
Oh please. TikTok isn't a publication. The individual creators on TikTok have not been censored; they've merely been told that TikTok is not permitted to operate in the US, and that they will have to post their creations -- unedited, unaltered -- on other services. And those other services exist, and have wide reach, so it's not like saying "sure, you can continue to create, but your audience is now 5% the size it was before".
> Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.
Sounds like you're arguing against yourself. TikTok hasn't actually been banned.
yes, tiktok is publication of an application program.
The constitution applies to American users and to non-Americans on American soil. It's not like the cops can execute you for being here on a tourist visa.
I do not think that the constitution necessarily applies to corporations. Corporations, for example, do not have a vote.
Forced corporate divestiture is a thing, for example Merck.
The constitution applies to the government. It establishes the government and defines -- and therefor limits -- what the government is allowed to do.
Corporations are considered "legal persons" for the purpose of applying the law to them in a convenient and organized way, but in real life, corporations are just organizational models employed by human beings for the purpose of coordinating their activities.
The restrictions applicable to what the government is allowed to do to "people" as defined in the constitution apply regardless of what organizational models those people are using to coordinate their activities. Ultimately, everything in society reduces to people, and the government is not entitled to use reified abstractions to escape the constraints on its authority.
Corporations have First Amendment rights as ruled by Citizens United v. FEC. Even though corporations don’t have a vote (which is its own can of worms because of their economic power, money = vote), they still enjoy some of the same constitutional protections as individuals do.
Thats only because those corporations are owned by Americans. Foreign corporations do not have first amendment rights.
No, there's no such reasoning in that decision, which confirmed that speech itself is protected by the first amendment, regardless of who originates it.
And this ruling had little to do with any of that -- the first amendment challenge was that the ban imposed content-based burdens on the speech of the users of TikTok, and the court ruled that it did not. So the ban therefore survived the challenge under intermediate scrutiny.
The domestic vs. foreign ownership element of the ruling only pertained to the evaluation of whether there was a compelling government interest in enacting the ban, not whether the government was exempt from first amendment scrutiny at all.
i mean that's old law. theres a new law in town and it was a 9-0 ruling too.
Something being a free speech violation does not imply it being illegal, free speech exist as a independent concept from the US constitution
The constitution applies to the people of the United States. It's in the first line: "We the people of the United States..."
That Constitution also includes numerous clauses granting Congress the authority to regulate international commerce (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3). TikTok is a foreign commercial enterprise. We have restricted foreign products and services since the Boston Tea Party.
But wouldn't you be infringing the rights of the US users if you ban the platform they want to message other US users over? Isn't that indirectly infringing their free speech? Or does the first amendment not protect stuff like this?
That indirectness is exactly why it's not. The first amendment ensures you can express what you want, but you're not owed a platform.
But can the government actively interfere with my communication by banning the platform? If the government notices that a lot of critics are organizing over Discord, can they ban Discord, because they're not banning speech specifically, only a platform used to spread the speech?
I think what you raise is something the courts should consider if the government were trying to shut down a platform because of what it's users were doing on it. But it's not a live issue in this case. There is no allegation that the US seeks to suppress TikTok because of what Americans are posting on it. TikTok isn't saying the government is doing that and I don't believe the government is seeking to control the speech of TikTok users. The consern seems to be more about who controls the algorithm and data collection (a foreign state with adversarial interests) and it seems to me that it has nothing to do with anything Americans are posting on TikTok. I mean the content on TikTok isn't all that political or revolutionary
> There is no allegation that the US seeks to suppress TikTok because of what Americans are posting on it.
Of course there is. It’s obvious that a huge chunk of the momentum behind the TikTok ban stems from a desire to suppress anti-Israel content.
If that were the case, then why was ByteDance given the option to divest?
Because the drafters knew they wouldn't/couldn't/aren't allowed to/would only be able to do so to someone more under the thumb of the US government?
The actual purpose of a law or system is the actual outcome of it and not what it's dressed up to say its purpose is. A law that says "we don't allow mosques unless they're owned by people not descended from countries on a terrorism watch list" is still an infringement of the freedom of religion. We don't have to pretend there's good faith here.
> Because the drafters knew they wouldn't/couldn't/aren't allowed to/would only be able to do so to someone more under the thumb of the US government?
This is at best vacuously true. Since China is the most powerful adversary of the US, you'd say that literally anyone else is more under the thumb of the US government than they are.
Because if they were owned by an American company it’s much less likely they’d allow that content to go viral.
The law didn't require the new owner to be in America. Anywhere other than Iran, North Korea, China, or Russia would have been allowed.
How is that incompatible? Who would control it
Given how laws and American rights have been established to work. Yes, absolutely. They just need a legally acceptable reason to do so separate from the speech. Banning a platform because of speech they don't want isn't allowed, but banning a platform for other reasons is, even if that platform also happens to facilitate speech.
Like with tik tok, the ban itself isn't a speech issue because there's nothing bytedance can change about it's communication to not be banned, it's an ownership problem.
They could filter Palestine content, then although some people still want to ban it, it won't be easy
> can the government actively interfere with my communication by banning the platform?
Yes. Foreign-ownership rules have been a thing in America for almost a century [1].
[1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli...
By your very broad definition of infringement if a newspaper refuses to pay it's taxes, and then the government shuts down the newspaper down for that, this would be infringement.
Clearly it's not.
Yes, the government can make laws that effect speech platforms just like we can make them pay taxes.
Welcome to the religious fallacy of strict textualism, currently worshipped by the Supreme Court majority
You may wish to read FIRE and other organizations amicus brief where they lay out exactly why they think the ban is a free speech issue, legally speaking: https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2024/12/Amici-Ti...
The ACLU hasn't been a credible defender of free speech in some time. (FIRE and EFF still credible.)
I started having issues when they supported Citizens United
But the ACLU was arguing in defense of free speech there.
Had citizens united gone the other way, imagine what Trump could’ve done with Facebook and Google to ensure reelection in 2020.
He wouldn't have had to resort to complex modes of influence, that's for sure. It's very scary that we've gotten to the point where people are claiming to "protect democracy" by proposing to allow institutions controlled by incumbent politicians to regulate who is allowed to say what in the lead-up to elections.
This issue is not about freedom of speech to any of the players. Its geopolitics. The ACLU and the EFF care about the precedent it sets.
Shocking news: different players have different motivations.
> Laws that does not explicitly curtail free speech but effectively still does
You can say the same thing about an antitrust law that forces Alphabet to sell Youtube.
If antitrust laws did not exist then making them would need a constitutional amendment
Well they’re clearly wrong.
Go read the SC unanimous judgment. It’s very clear and lays out exactly why they’re wrong.
In fact they do a lot more than that because they state off the bat that there isn’t even a first amendment question (a Chinese corporation doesn’t have first amendment rights in the U.S.), but they go beyond, assume the first amendment does apply, and still explain why that isn’t valid.
SCOTUS, as they've done in many recent cases, is artfully skirting the substance of the issue.
How is this ban actually enforced? By fining American companies for serving specific content. That is the First Amendment issue. SCOTUS simply asserting that it's not in order to make their ruling convenient does not actually make it so.
There's all kinds of content that you can get fined for hosting. Pirated movies for instance.
Is that also free speech? Again, it's just the law and how it is enforced.
Copyright (in the US) was literally created by the same people who wrote the 1st Amendment. Copyright is in the Constitution itself. It was very obviously an exception from the start.
"Foreign governments saying things" also existed at the same time the 1st Amendment was written, and there were no carveouts from 1st Amendment in light of that.
In any case: If SCOTUS during its early cases on copyright law (or copyright on the Internet) simply asserted "this has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment," they'd also be wrong. That would be a clear avoidance tactic not to wrangle with the substantive issue. In reality, the big cases on copyright are riddled with 1st Amendment questions, considerations, and constraints.
> How is this ban actually enforced? By fining American companies for serving specific content.
No, it fines American companies for providing services to a certain foreign-owned company.
If this isn't permissible, then sanctions can't be a thing and OFAC can't do its job. (Whether or not that would be a good thing is a separate issue.)
Funny that you mention that: sanction laws are also riddled with First Amendment questions, considerations, and constraints.
A SCOTUS that simply asserted these questions do not exist would also be laughable.
One very recent entry on this discourse:
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/knight-institute-and-foun...
They ban American companies from distributing or maintaining the application, not specific content. More of a "criminal conspiracy" type of behavior rather than something that would relate to wikileaks or whoever. Can as well argue what is being banned is the data-collection side of the operation since it's the part that depends on using the app. Those companies still have the freedom to publicly state whatever the CCP has to say.
The law indeed needed to be carefully written to "skirt" any first amendment violations, and SCOTUS unanimously agreed it had done so successfully.
The application itself is content from the POV of the Constitution.
Universal City Studios v Corley
"Content" is narrower than "speech". In that case the restriction was described as "content-neutral". Hence it didn't require strict scrutiny, only intermediate scrutiny. Which seems like the blueprint for how they wrote the TikTok law.
I don't think that is clear at all. Refer to their amicus brief where they explain their reasoning in detail: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/brief-amici-curiae-wr... The gist of it, which you missed, is that they think the ban violates Americans first amendment rights.
Yeah, I can't believe all these people are talking "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" so literally.
Haven't these people heard of Wickard v. Filburn?
Tiktok definitely isn't press and algorithm-powered social media feeds can hardly be considered free speech. It's not even speech - it's broadcast! We've regulated broadcast since its' inception.
While Tiktok doesn't have literal printing presses, neither do TV networks.
How can the first amendment be interpreted so broadly that large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians is considered free speech, yet so narrowly that social media isn't part of the media?
Oh I agree. Citizen United was wrongly decided, and the only people who agree with it are those who benefit from the corruption it has enabled. It's far from settled law, though obviously it's not changing in the next 4 years.
As for social media - it's an advertising platform. The algorithm is deciding what you see based on what sells ads. Who is exercising free speech there? Tiktok and Meta are exercising corporate speech in the name of profit making. They have no right to host such a platform, and the government certainly has the right to regulate it if they do have one.
The government can't compel Meta, Tiktok or individual users to say X, Y, or Z, they can declare the ads-based algorithmic-content business model illegal or subject it to strict regulation - especially when its in the furtherance of free speech, like preventing Facebook from deplatforming people for having the wrong opinions that advertisers don't like.
> large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians
You do realize that Rupert Murdoch was forced to become a US citizen because of the same laws that are in question about US media ownership.
Social media is 100% the media. Social media has freedom of speech. Businesses don't have freedom of ownership, including media business. Kinda fucky, but this is very long standing law.
We only regulated broadcast using the public airwaves. That's why cable TV is generally exempt.
ACLU is a biased organization and only supports the bill of rights when it suits their political alignment.
And what is their political alignment in this case (and in general)? Considering that banning tiktok got voted with bipartisan support.
As I understand things, they tend to leave gun rights stuff to the enormous and well-funded NRA.
In cases from "Roe vs Wade" to "Masterpiece Cakeshop" and "Hobby Lobby" the ACLU came out against things supported by the religious right. And although the ACLU regularly supports the free speech rights of swastika-tattoed nazis - Republicans don't see that as supporting their side, because no reasonable person wants to think people with swastika tattoos are on their side.
Unfortunately so. It didn't use to be that way - the ACLU used to be so principled that they would defend literal Nazis' rights. But they've fallen a long way since then.
They would defend the Nazi right to free speech.
You seem to be confused between principally defending everyone having the same rights vs defending everything anyone can do.
The ACLU defends Nazi’s rights because they believe Nazis should have the same rights as everyone else irrespective of who they are.
That doesn’t mean they defend every possible action that can be considered a civil liberty.
Especially when individual liberty is in contention with collective liberty. This is the "hard problem" for organizing a free society.
Eliminating traffic laws would make individuals more free in a literal sense, but those rules also make it so people can get from place to place quickly and safely. The liberty interpretation is that what people actually want is to travel, not to drive however they like. So you trade a freedom most people don't miss to enable another.
Vaccine mandates are a great example of this contention where under normal circumstances nobody cares about having to get vaccinated but they do care about not getting polio. Covid was strange in that the number of people opposed was significantly larger than I think anyone expected.
Agree, but (and yes, whataboutism ahoy!) one can make observations about a similar lack or principle on the right.
It always seemed to me that the US was fuzzy when the very clear text of the Constitution rubbed up against the realities of a complex State. For example,
- the 1st Amendment doesnt say the speech can be overridden by a compelling national security interest, which is the argument here. But the US has security services, and legitimately there are cases where to allow speech does harm. But if you are going to be honest, shouldnt there be an amendment giving the State an override of 1A?
- 2A is infamous, of course, and for the love of $deity lets not discuss it here, but why does "not abridged" get overriden by bans in, say, machine guns, which have been on the books since the Chicago gangster era? Either you abridge or not. Or at least be honest about it .
- Some speakers in the covid era made a very strong appeal to personal bodily autonomy when it came to vaccine mandates. Ok, let's follow that. Does it not then also follow that a woman cannot be forced to carry a baby to term? That would seem logical, but the connection is not made. Conversely there is no "commonweal" override written into the Constitution and we are left with random SCOTUS decisions over the last 240 years.
Both of these I suspect are handled sorta explicitly by giving the state the power to do whatever it wants if it is important and essential enough.
The courts have various categories for how important something needs to be to allow certain levels of unconstitutionality, eg suppose I have "legally" built the nuclear device featured in a recent kurgesatz video with enough kiloton to start by itself a nuclear winter kill every person on the planet... I seriously suspect SCOTUS will be ok with the state taking the ignition keys away from me
> the 1st Amendment doesnt say the speech can be overridden by a compelling national security interest, which is the argument here.
No it isn't. The argument here is that it isn't a restriction on speech at all.
The government can fine American companies for carrying certain content but it's not a 1st Amendment issue? Why are people buying this lame argument?
Because the people 250 years ago could not have imagined the problems that we'd have invented for ourselves in these days. It was always meant to be a living document with a process of adding and changing amendments. And in between that time the the way people interact has grown more complex. If you took those same intelligent men and dropped them into today, the Amendments would look different.
If only they made a process to change it…
Good luck amending the constitution these days. We can't even pass an amendment that says that women have the same rights as men.
An amendment process that in practice is impossible to exercise is just as good as having no amendment process at all.
That’s not an excuse for circumventing it, obviously.
> The government can fine American companies for carrying certain content
No, and no one is saying they can. The law says American companies can't do business with a certain foreign-owned company.
It is beyond settled in law that this is something that the US government can do.
It’s not a certain company, it’s a whole class of them (partially defined by POTUS’ whims)
Sure, the government can do that, and when doing so infringes on Americans’ speech or access to information, it introduces First Amendment questions that must be addressed.
“The government says CNN can’t post stories from BBC” isn’t immediately resolved by “it’s a foreign company.”
> when doing so infringes on Americans’ speech or access to information
But this doesn't do that. Everything that Americans could post or watch on TikTok, they're still allowed to post or watch anywhere else.
Just like everything that a reader might find in NYTimes, they could also find on Fox News!
It sounds like you're saying that there's some content on TikTok that Instagram Reels/YouTube Shorts/etc. won't allow on their platforms. Is that correct? If so, can you give an example?
Since when is that the test?
Is the government allowed to shut down Harvard because the same classes can be taken at ASU?
Because it's not the content but rather the company behind it. The exact same .apk would be allowed if ByteDance divested.
"for the love of $deity lets not discuss it here" - good idea, and why not take your own advice.
Uh. They still defend the civil rights of neo-Nazis (aren't any actual nazis left), white supremacists, etc.
> neo-Nazis (aren't any actual nazis left)
Neo-Nazis are a subset of Nazis though, no?
In the sense of an adherent to Nazism, yes, neo-Nazis are Nazis.
In the context of "literal Nazis" the ACLU had argued for the rights of - like the German American Bund, which contained actual members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, not exactly.
For those unaware of ACLU's change over the last 10 or so years, here is an example:
In September 2021, the ACLU wrote a New York Times op-ed defending vaccine requirements, arguing they actually advance civil liberties by protecting the most vulnerable and allowing more people to safely participate in public life. David Cole and Daniel Mach, the authors, wrote that individual liberty isn't absolute when it puts others at risk.
Surely, one can be pro vaccine mandates. But I would not expect a civil liberties organization to hold this position.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/opinion/covid-vaccine-man...
Pretty much every measure taken against COVID had been taken many times before during the numerous epidemics of cholera, typhus, yellow fever, bubonic plague, smallpox, and influenza that plagued (no pun intended!) the US since its founding.
Requiring inoculation/vaccination, shut downs, masks, and quarantines was generally considered a legitimate use of state power to prevent the spread of deadly diseases and not an infringement of civil liberties.
Actually this goes back to even before the US was founded. George Washington imposed mandatory smallpox inoculation on his army during the revolution. This probably contributed significantly to his victory because both the British army and native tribes that had sided with the British were heavily weakened by smallpox but Washington's was not due to that inoculation requirement.
Please share any pre-Covid example of the government shutting down all public gatherings including weddings and funerals and closing the vast majority of businesses for a substantial period of time.
There may have been isolated examples in the past, but the degree was not the same.
You wouldn't expect a civil liberties organization to have an opinion on containing a dangerous pandemic? In addition to working at the ACLU the people doing their work are also humans.
When "containing a dangerous pandemic" means a restriction on civil liberties, I would expect the ACLU to comment on that matter.
I am personally happy with vaccine requirements, but IMO the ACLU should have been defending the people who weren't.
Should the ACLU defend the rights of someone to blow up nuclear bombs in their backyard?
That’s a clear curtailment of their civil liberties. And assuming they’re in a rural area may not harm anyone else either.
This is an obviously extreme example but the point still stands. Any civil liberties organization cannot focus absolutely narrowly on that question in every situation but has to apply a broader approach.
Surely you see the difference between someone having Strategic weapons in their garage, and the government forcing someone to take a medicine that they don't want to take, right?
>but the point still stands
On what, exactly?
You, actually, do not have the right to spread viruses around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
All individual rights are balanced with the rights of other individuals/society. You can be given the choice to vaccinate or be forcefully quarantined. This has occurred many times in the US and the right of the state to do this has been upheld.
While corona was weak we will eventually seem some dangerous bullshit spread and the anti-vax dipshits are going figure out exactly what their rights entail as they are being drug from their house at gunpoint with the express will of the majority of the population.
Quarantine powers are subject to the “strict scrutiny” standard. Freedom of domestic travel is as fundamental as freedom of speech in Constitutional law. This has been thoroughly adjudicated many times and in many contexts by the US Supreme Court, including many attempts by the government to exploit regulatory and taxation loopholes to indirectly effect that outcome.
It is unambiguously unconstitutional to prevent everyone from traveling, even for quarantine purposes. It must be evaluated on an individual basis subject to judicial review to establish that the individual presents a clear and present danger, and only for a very limited duration. No different than restrictions on speech.
This is the reason no State anywhere, regardless of who was in power, instituted hard lockdowns during COVID. This is known to be settled law to such an extent that attempting to prevent the population from traveling without clearing the strict scrutiny standard would be met with an instant Federal court injunction, likely coupled with a withering public statement questioning the competence of the State’s Attorney General. There was no upside in taking that risk.
The idea that you can forcibly quarantine someone solely because you don’t like their choices is wishcasting, not based on credible Constitutional foundations.
There's a big difference between quarantining people who you know have a dangerous disease for a few weeks until they're better, and quarantining the entire country for years because you're not sure who has a dangerous disease.
To be clear, they probably did have the legal power to quarantine the whole country, but after a week or so there might have been an armed revolt.
Edit: Maybe they didn't.
Unlikely, freedom of domestic travel is subject to the strict scrutiny Constitutional standard (international travel is a more open question). Banning freedom of travel for the entire country would be equivalent to banning freedom of speech for the entire country, from a Constitutional perspective.
Interestingly, the myriad freedom of travel cases happened so long ago and were so decisively settled as a strong right that everyone has kind of forgotten about them because there is little interesting left to decide. Not as controversial as questions around the meaning of speech. But I think the last significant questions were addressed around the Second World War.
Yes, the government has quarantine powers, which have been broadly established. They did not necessarily have the right to go about it how they did in 2020, which was through OSHA rules and other "soft power" rather than through their power to quarantine people. Almost nobody was actually quarantined in relation to COVID.
A broad, sweeping quarantine in relation to COVID would have been so unpopular that you can see why they went about it in a "softer" way, but sometimes the government can't have its cake and eat it too.
Those vaccine mandates were broadly ruled illegal, even in light of the quarantine power. These sorts of civil liberties are complicated, and the ACLU found themselves on the wrong side of this one.
> Should the ACLU defend the rights of someone to blow up nuclear bombs in their backyard?
If someone actually went to court over this, I would hope/expect that the NRA would send some lawyers. The ACLU isn't that into the second amendment and has never been. However, nobody has gone to court over this. They did go to court over vaccine mandates.
By the way, the only grounds the government would have to stand on here are radiation-related. It is broadly legal to use explosives on your own property unless you're too close to someone else's property. It is also broadly legal to build your own weapons.
Advocacy organizations shouldn't aspire to extremes. The ACLU should offer reasonable and practical help and commentary on civil liberties. Otherwise, you get the modern NRA that fights every law about firearms.
Well, whose rights are we talking about.
There is "freedom to" and "Freedom from" lots of people not getting vaccinated affects people's freedom from getting infected.
The 1st Amendment doesn't apply to Chinese companies operating in the US.
I keep seeing this type of comment here, like a sell is the obvious thing to do. Why? Selling / divesting TikTok US under these circumstances would surely not fetch the best price. In addition they would immediately create a global competitor that have the same product. Why would ByteDance the company or its investors want that?
Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole? The incoming head of state doesn't exactly have a great track record of seeing through on promises to pay and is threatening tariffs against all and sundry.
Anybody with that kind of financing readily available is throwing it at AI and not another social network, no matter how useful it might be for domestic propaganda.
> Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole?
Don’t need trust when you have the second most powerful state entity backing you. Corporate America has a complete jammed full history of its interests getting screwed over by foreign entities only for the US government to step in either with military force or some coercive measure resulting in a corrective action. Im sure China is well aware of this playbook and are probably apt to copy it too.
You might overestimate the tendency of states that are not the US to invade others
> Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars
Why would the US government be involved in paying tens of billions ?
The idea is that ByteDance would sell it to Meta, X, etc and would be a private transaction.
Which makes no sense. Meta wouldn’t sell “meta Uk”, data product, algo and all to a competitor for 20 billion or whatever the number floating around is.
It doesn't have to be a competitor. They simply have to divest the US operation.
Just like happens in China and in many other countries.
Whoever they sell to becomes an immediate competitor though no? They’d get the software, US users and algo.
Divesting the US operation would be pointless, the goal of the law is to control the algorithm, and that isn't something that the US office has access to. If they did they could simply be poached like Uber did to Waymo.
It's a distinction without a difference. Musk is effectively an agent of the state, with billions in subsidies he wants to protect, and a Chinese auto market he is desperate to be allowed into.
The CCP would not miss out on taking advantage of the situation and demanding trade concessions for agreeing to sell. US government would absolutely be involved in raising the necessary finance, as banks won't be bending over backwards to lend Musk money for another speculative venture.
I don't see why any of this must be so. Couldn't they just move or sell to any other country on the planet not on the adversary list?
Congress doesn't appear to care if TikTok survives or not. TikTok bans are not news.
They could, but why would they want to? Consider:
* If ByteDance divests their US TikTok operations, they create a new competitor that could potentially out-compete them in other (non-US, non-Chinese) markets.
* Whatever amount of money they get for this divestiture would be much lower than what the business is worth to ByteDance (when your options are sell or shut down, potential buyers will not feel the need to bid high).
* ByteDance's US TikTok operations are certainly of non-financial value to the Chinese government. That value is likely orders of magnitude higher than their financial value to ByteDance. Selling that user base is probably not preferable to shutting down. Influence campaigns are certainly easier to run on a platform you own, but certainly those campaigns are already running on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Why add another platform that they can't control where they have to run influence campaigns?
How separate is Twitter and the government really from today?
Today? Quite. Tomorrow?
Ask the same question when the person that owns it finally buys the government.
Sanctions regimes still exist.
Well yeah, of course Tiktok isn't going to get the best price now that it has tried and failed to play chicken against the US government.
They should have seen a law like this being passed coming years ago. That is more than enough time to divest.
Too late now for them, I guess. They can take the financial hit for being so bad faith.
Why is Tiktok US no longer worth $10 billion or so?
Why wouldn't American investors still want to buy it?
My guess is that American investors would want to buy it, but want the algorithm, but ByteDance is not willing to sell the algorithm out of fear that sharing it would degrade its competitive position outside the US.
If a 100-200 billion dollar valuation company gets sold for 10 billion dollars then they would be agreeing with my point, not disagreeing with it.
In practice, US social networks usually promote content that is aligned with US cultural values and geopolitical interests. Whether this is because the government is actively leaning on them or just because being run by Americans colors them with those values, I don’t know. But the fact is, it’s not a coincidence that TikTok is the main place pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral, and it’s likely that changing owners would change the content on TikTok even if the law doesn’t actually require it to do so.
> Whether this is because the government is actively leaning on them or just because being run by Americans colors them with those values, I don’t know
Look up Mitt Romney’s comments where he plainly says they need to ban TikTok because they can’t control the narrative on Israel-Palestine. Narrative being his word.
Here's a source that confirms: https://newrepublic.com/post/181327/mitt-romney-congress-ban...
I'm not defending them here, but the laws in China prevent a sale, so technically they have a duty to uphold China's laws first before upholding their fiduciary responsibility. Same with any American company and following American laws.
> the laws in China prevent a sale
First I've heard of this.
The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.
They’re confusing the US TikTok subsidiary with ByteDance parent organization. They were only required to sell the subsidiary.
Ironically this would be enforcing the very same law that exists in China, where all companies have to be majority Chinese owned.
I believe the law mentioned here isn't focused on which organization it is. The law itself basically said you can't export recommendation algorithm. Yes, in the very similar wording as in "you can't export certain GPU chips".
Which is fine. The whole point of the divestment was to NOT use the CCP-controlled recommendation algorithm.
Does this mean they would be obligated to censor tank man content in the US at the CCP's request?
When I worked for an American subsidiary of a Chinese company (Video Games) we were only required to honor censorship requests for Chinese users.
That's a policy decision by the Chinese government. They still have the authority, but the Streisand effect makes blunt censorship counterproductive in an open society. For example, TikTok took down the viral "Uighur makeup tutorial" but quickly reinstated it after the backlash. That backlash couldn't occur in China, but it can in the USA for as long as uncensored outlets exist.
Subtler manipulation still works great, and the opacity of algorithmic content recommendation makes that an ideal instrument. Nobody outside ByteDance knows to what extent the CCP is putting its thumb on that scale already, but they certainly have the power to.
If we're talking about the same video, the reason they initially took it down is because she had pictures of Bin Laden and was praising him.
I'm talking about this one:
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/an-update-on-recent-conten...
A different account operated by the same user was banned for something relating to an image of bin Laden in a different video. I've been unable to locate that video. I haven't found any reference stating that she praised him. She described her use of that image as satirical, and TikTok itself seems to recognize that (but stands by that ban):
> *While we recognize that this video may have been intended as satire, our policies on this front are currently strict.
In any case, the video in question is the Uighur one. TikTok quickly stated that one was a "human moderation error" and reversed it. My point is irrespective of whether their rules were morally correct or correctly applied, though--whatever those merits, they clearly drew more attention to the topic by censoring here, not less. So it's not surprising they don't apply blunt Chinese-style censorship outside China, since it's counterproductive without Chinese-style control of all major media.
They’re majority owned by non Chinese investors. I don’t see how china law would have any say.
Google "Golden Share CCP ByteDance". CCP has direct influence over how ByteDance is run.
Shares aren’t the sole mechanism for influence though. In Russia there are open sixth floor windows one could fall out of. In China you could disappear to a camp for a few months. Shares are kind of soft in comparison.
lol no.
Chinese laws are whatever Xi says they are, so that's where Trump negotiating a deal for himself / his rich buddies comes into play..
This is correct. His power is effectively absolute. Any time his eye focuses on an issue, the issue is resolved to his specification or heads roll and another puppet is appointed to resolve it so.
I spoke a few years back with a tech analyst who specialized in Chinese equities. She herself is a Chinese ex-pat living in the states. She, quite exasperatedly described investing in Chinese equities as "you basically need to guess what Xi is thinking".
One day test prep schools are illegal and immediately shut down. Tech CEOs suddenly became pariahs and started getting carted off to re-education camps. Etc.
You never know what could happen to an executive, company, or sector.
I think that's a major part of the concern. Their first duty is to the Chinese Communist Party. Historically all sources of information in communism have to serve the goals of the party above all else, and this is tightly controlled.
The CCP doesn’t run a communist nation.
China is technically a multi party democracy, however the CPC does control the PLA (imagine if Republicans controlled the military, and that would be like China).
This is well outside my area of expertise, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding was that the legal parties are all subservient to the CCP and acknowledge their primacy.
So functionally maybe a little like Albertson's is the only legal party, but if you prefer your region can have a subsidiary of Albertson's like Safeway or Shaw's.
Officially no, effectively yes. It is not like they have meaningful elections, so a lot of power brokering is done behind doors. They do, however, provide minority parties with a quota of seats, although they effectively don't have decision making power (like the governor of a province vs. the CPC chairman of the province).
China is authoritarian no doubt, but clearly there are different forms of authoritarianism. Monarchy isn’t communism either. In principle, communism can’t exist under an authoritarian state, since that would create two classes; you’d be looking at some kind of socialism. Either way, I’d just point out that China has a brutal capitalist market. I feel like that kinda precludes communism.
Communism is whatever someone says it to be, so it isn't a very meaningful label. The term socialism is used a lot more than communism these days, although the party hasn't changed their name.
If you read Marx, communism isn't possible to achieve until after capitalism has run its course, so the way things are in China ATM are perfectly at harmony with that.
Communism has a definition. In the same vein, when someone says “democracy,” you can know roughly what they mean without knowing, eg, is it a representative democracy, is it a republic, does everyone vote together on all issues in a town square. Communism has basic characteristics involving the abolition of private property (not the same as property) and class. China has moved away from socialism to a kind of state capitalism over decades, and I don’t remotely understand why we’d call it communist.
Again, if you read Marx he claims that successful communism comes after capitalistic development. The communist party can take communism as an eventual goal instead of as a necessary truth right now, since the latter has always ended in disaster and the former puts off communism until later. The communist party is most definitely focused on communism as a goal, its goal is turn China to communism when its ready, China is not communist ATM.
Yes, that’s why I said at the outset that the CCP doesn’t run a communist country. That’s also a pretty funny idea; the CCP is cultivating a brutal capitalism to encourage a worker revolution into socialism against, uhh, themselves? By this logic the US is communist.
Yes I'm aware this trope is applied to every communist country that's ever existed. I've never been in a conversation where it added anything.
It's like saying the Pope isn't Christian. It's really a hidden statement about gatekeeping.
But then how can you use it the other way around, to say that it is bad?
I think the same way we can talk about monkeys or squirrels. It's a family tree of related ideas. But there's no official checklist of features it has to have.
To give an example for comparison, a lot of people want to say socialism is about workers controlling the means of production. But that doesn't come close to covering all of the things that were called socialism that existed before someone proposed that definition.
With communism it's similar but at least I'm not aware of any one jingle that people are pushing as the one true definition.
But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc. it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
For what it's worth I'd argue that capitalism is even less well defined and I've heard it used to describe every economic system that's ever existed including all communist countries.
>it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
That’s not what I did, and I’m not a communist. I’m specifically talking about China because people use the label, deeply incorrectly, to portray them as a threatening other, as though they work in a super different way to us and threaten our way of life.
> But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc.
Im no scholar, but I’m pretty damn certain you can’t have a strong free market, alongside the consequent wealthy capitalists, under communism. Words have meanings, and that’s not what anyone or their mother would think of as communism.
It’s not a hidden statement about anything. China is not communist; communist means something. North Korea isn’t a democratic republic; that also means something. We can go into definitions if you want, but I think this is trivial to observe for China.
Edit: I think the distinction is important because the US has a tendency to label things communist before it goes to war with them, whether cold or hot.
Guess the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is also democratic then.
See, names are meaningless.
Yeah, worse, the CCP runs a neoauthoritarian state built in the exact same vein of Project 2025, only with "chinese characteristics".
Yeah they’re communist like FedEx is federal.
I do not understand this line of argument. On the one hand there is a political decision to ban-or-annex a foreign company, on the other hand the reaction should not be political and in general political implications should not be discussed?
And if anything, if tiktok US is sold it will be way below its actual value, so there are many reasons to resist this apart from the political ones. And I assume they expect they will come to a concession in the first place.
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
This is not strictly true - when a company leaves a huge market, it is imprudent to leave behind a well-resourced competitor in place. If I were a ByteDance shareholder, I'd hate if it spun off TikTok America LLC, and then having TikTok America compete against ByteDance in Europe and the Rest of the world on an equal technological footing, but perhaps even deeper pockets from American markets.
>Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
Would you argue for Tesla or Apple to sell to China? Do you think Musk would divest his China business? The parallels are almost identical
1. Tesla cars collect a huge amount of data.
2. Tesla is already banned from being driven by government officials.
3. Tesla has the best self driving algorithm
4. Chinese cars are already banned in the US
5. China is Tesla's second largest market
6. Tesla is the 3rd largest EV company in China
Would you be surprised if Elon decided to exist China instead of "receiving tens of billions of dollars" from China?
Bytedance is privately held. With a 20% stake by founders and employees. Divesting according to the bill terms would have them giving away portion of their most precious IP that is the fyp recommendation system. Any reasonable company would refuse to totally divest and create a competitor just because a government said so. Also TikTok makes money for advertizing to the entire world not just the US.
It's not "give away" when they get to charge the market price for it. They presumably also wouldn't inherently even have to split up the company, rather than e.g. do an IPO for the entire global enterprise.
The valuation and acquisition process of the US branch of TikTok would take more than 8 months as outlined by the language of the bill. So it's already forcing them to receive chump change for it. Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.
> That goes against the free enterprise.
"Free enterprise" is a fantasy. We don't have that, pretty much never had. And I think that's a good thing. Free enterprise/free markets tend to monopolize and prey on workers and consumers.
> 8 months
This has been a possibility for a lot longer than 8 months. Trump was talking about it during his first term more than four years ago. You can take the time to line up buyers even if you don't end up having to sell, but if you have the time and then don't use it, whose fault is that?
> Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.
Of course it's not free enterprise. It's a government regulation.
If the US passes a law that says US companies aren't allowed to do business with Russia, that's not free enterprise either. Should those laws be unconstitutional? Maybe, but not any less than this one.
A forced sale will not get near the price as a deal you can walk away from. Two very different markets we are talking about.
Except now they get to remain the owners and they don’t have to sell at fire sale prices, so it turned out to be the best possible outcome for their shareholders.
I’m not arguing it’s a restriction on TikTok’s speech or bytedance’s speech.
It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law doesn’t fine TikTok. The law fines the people who let me download an application I’ve chosen to use. At $5,000 per instance.
It’s not about TikTok’s rights being violated. It’s about mine, and yours.
No court in the land will agree with your interpretation. The first amendment protects speech, but it doesn't grant you the right to publish that speech wherever you want. If it did then Facebook couldn't ban people from its platform, for example.
The first amendment enjoins the government from actions. Private companies are welcome to ban or regulate their own venues as they see fit.
The Supreme Court with its unanimous decision made it very very clear it’s not about freedom of speech, but about foreign adversary having access to data profile of 180 million US citizens. And believe in lawmakers argument of foreign adversary propaganda to those citizens.
Why do people on hacker news keep drudging up freedom of speech ad nauseum??
I wouldn't be surprised if the freedom of speech nonsense is an influence campaign by the PLA.
It is just such a ridiculous argument but if you repeat nonsense enough times, people start repeating it back as if it is real.
We never had to deal with this before because the WW2 generation was obviously not stupid enough to let the KGB publish children's books and Saturday morning cartoons inside the US and have a KGB influence campaign that says to ban the books/cartoons would be a free speech issue.
Obviously a non-starter. What you see with Tiktok is how completely infiltrated and corrupted things are in the US in 2025.
The unrestricted war from China started a long time ago and the IMO the US has already lost.
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." ― Sun Tzu
> I wouldn't be surprised if the freedom of speech nonsense is an influence campaign by the PLA.
As is "everybody is installing Red Note." The people who think this is true are the people who use tiktok.
It's really about how the US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is not 100 percent beholden to the US gov and stock market regulation, by a company that doesn't have to instantly respond to pressure from the Executive branch, could possibly refuse to instantly comply from pressure from US intelligence agencies, could refuse to comply with search requests from US law enforcement, and extensive lobbying from Facebook to cripple a competitor that Facebook ignored until it was too late.
It's not a free speech issue.
Given that the infra for serving US tiktok customers is in the United States(inside of Oracle Cloud), I am curious if Tiktok/bytedance responds to US law enforcement requests.
> the US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is not 100 percent beholden to the US gov
You have it backwards. The US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is 100 percent beholden to the Chinese gov.
Did you read the opinion? It did its analysis as requiring some level of scrutiny because of the free speech implications under intermediate (and in Sofomayor’s concurrence strict) scrutiny. It held the national security concern outweighed the free speech concern but it absolutely did not say it was relevant in the analysis.
Of course I read it, opinion said
“ At the same time, a law targeting a foreign adversary’s control over a communications platform is in many ways different in kind from the regulations of non-expressive activity that we have subjected to First Amendment scrutiny”
And the opinion talks about foreign adversary, those exact words, at least 30 times. It mentioned freedom of speech twice
So it was a free speech issue, wild.
Because they read random crap on X they thought sounded smart and are now simply regurgitating it with no further thought or consideration.
And “free speech absolutism (for me, not for you or anyone else)” is the current right-wing cause celebre.
Show me where it is an infringement of your 1st amendment right to a private platform? You’re free to criticize the government however you see fit, but you’re not guaranteed the right to a microphone and stage that isn’t yours. There are plenty of other communication channels you can use to express yourself. Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok, just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.
> You’re free to criticize the government however you see fit, but you’re not guaranteed the right to a microphone and stage that isn’t yours.
So if I wanted to hold a speech how corrupt the government is and then the government passed a law that a PA supplier isn't allowed to sell me a Microphone or speakers, that wouldn't infringe my first amendment right because I don't have a right to a microphone or a stage? (Im not American so I don't have any first amendment rights anyways but for arguments sake.)
Yes, a court could reach that conclusion.
It's the PA supplier would be in a better position to argue that their rights are being violated. Especially if a single customer was targeted because of their political views / protected characteristics etc.
The problem with the TikTok scenario is that no specific group is being targeted for restraint. And the government does have the right to regulate trade. E.g. there are embargoed countries, export controls, etc. The fact that you can't sell raw milk across state lines is different from a hypothetical restriction on selling raw milk to, say, people named Todd.
No, it wouldn’t. Congress could pass a law that we’re not going to import microphones and speakers from China. The Constitution explicitly gives them the power to do that. You could then purchase them from any one of a number of other companies and your speech is unaffected.
Look, my point is that the first amendment is in play here and it’s not ridiculous to suggest a free speech analysis is required to hold the law as constitutional or not, which is what the court did and what reasonable people can agree or disagree around to what extent that speech should or shouldn’t be protected. (I personally think, as I stated that the free speech harm is a stronger case from the users who have now been restrained in their ability to use the platform and software distributors who are now restrained from distributing specific software than it is as applied to TikTok where the legislation is content neutral and so the free speech analysis is less relevant.) I’m not even claiming that this law should be found unconstitutional, just that there are free speech issues to adjudicate and the less obvious ones are probably more relevant than the one people are citing where the restraint is content neutral.
Your comment however draws a weird parallel later on though but first let’s take a moment here:
> Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok
That is what the court found but it opens some interesting questions that really do have impacts.
I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.
As would a law which banned foreign ownership of venues while also introducing a regulatory scheme for domestic ownership stakes of sensitive industries and defined news and commentary as a nationally security sensitive industry. (Which this law essentially does for certain types of apps.)
So at some point a law can be “content neutral” and about access to venue not content but I bet almost any reasonable person would agree it’s an unreasonable restraint.
Now for a situation you draw the above as a parallel with but is very different:
> just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.
Bluesky can do whatever they want but if the government were to get involved in defining regulations around which users could use BlueSky… yes absolutely I would expect it to be thrown out on first amendment grounds and expect it’s a significantly stronger case than any of the examples above.
It’s a much weaker and almost irrelevant case when directed at a non-governmental organization in which some folks are using “free speech” as an argument over what entities which are not enjoined from almost any actions may do with their own venues. But yeah, if it was the government telling BlueSky who to ban? You bet that’s got first amendment implications and I’d expect a court to review it under strict scrutiny. (And I wouldn’t expect it to survive.)
> I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.
That's a poor analogy, because allowlists and blocklists are not the same thing and do not have the same effects. The government only allowing a list of certain approved media outlets would be an obvious 1A infringement. The government blocking certain media outlets is not.
It’s not meant to say they’re the same thing, it’s meant to demonstrate clearly that venue restrictions even when content neutral can impose restrictions on speech and those restrictions must be balanced and scrutinized appropriately under our system.
There isn't this much fuss about the foreign ownership of physical and broadcast media laws.
Is the difference really about whether you can post on the platform or not?
I think that’s a huge difference, yes. And about what apps my phone is able to download, and what servers it is able to access.
Another huge difference is broadcasting is about usage of a shared resource and has always had regulations on who is allowed to do what. They don’t ban RT from setting up their own venue or printing a newspaper. RT and other outlets are able to operate in the US and people are able to chose to watch them.
Why is it a huge difference? If you want absolute free speech places like 4chan will offer far more freedom than even TikTok ever would.
> Telling me where I can publish a video?
This is like arguing graffiti laws are censorship.
Graffiti laws are also evaluated under heightened scrutiny due to free speech implications. A law having an impact on free speech does not mean it never holds, but it must be analyzed in that context. Here’s an example: https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
> Graffiti laws are also evaluated under heightened scrutiny due to free speech implications
Graffiti bans are unquestionably constitutional. Graffiti laws that regulate the content are not.
Telling people where they can speak is precedented, legal and necessary. Telling people what they can say is against the principles of free speech; the government doing so is illegal.
I get that you believe that's what's happening, but I can't imagine any US court agreeing with you.
The law (and the US constitution) does not guarantee any particular platform for your speech. It just guarantees that you can speak, and courts have interpreted that to mean that you need to have some reasonable platform, and that laws can't put an unreasonable burden on your ability to speak on some platform.
As an aside:
> Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law does not target internet providers at all. They are not required to block traffic to *.tiktok.com or any of their IP addresses.
> It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
You are being ridiculous now. None of those are forms of speech.
And restrictions on your ability to perform certain actions is literally what being in a society is about. If you don't like it then find another society. Just like you can find another ISP, place to publish your video or platform to use apps you want to use.
Whether you think it’s ridiculous or not, restrictions on distribution of software being a violation of US free speech rights has been an established part of US case law for around three decades now: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
I'm skeptical that Bernstein vs DOJ would apply, to a [foreign-controlled] company that is not publishing their algorithm, on the idea that allowing their [trade-secret] code to control how hundreds of millions of people interact with each other is somehow free speech on ByteDance's part.
The foreign-controlled part in particular implicates Congress's obvious and explicit power to regulate international trade, and it seems obvious to me that there would be something less than strict scrutiny applied to alleged violations of the 1A when that Congressional power is in play.
Yes, most of the court felt intermediate scrutiny was the appropriate standard in part because of the reasons you outlined.
(I also agree that this is a different case, I only point to Bernstein because it is a clear part of case law which states that software distribution is and can be a free speech issue and restraints on it would be expected to be evaluated with some level of scrutiny.)
I also feel you are being a bit absurdist fwiw. I am know the be a principled devils advocate sometimes, so I'm reading you as that, otherwise your position as an American makes very little sense to me
The justices on the Supreme Court analyzed the constitutionality of this law under a free speech basis. The Per Curiam opinion of the court suggested the correct standard was intermediate scrutiny as an abridgment of free speech. Justice Sotomayor suggested in her concurrence that strict scrutiny (the highest standard) was appropriate.
They concluded that these regulations were okay at those levels of scrutiny, but it is not absurd or ridiculous to analyze these as forms of speech, and indeed, our courts do so.
That said, just because there is a conflict with freedom of speech doesn’t prevent all government regulation, it just means the laws involved must pass an elevated level of scrutiny. That applies here, for multiple reasons, and with multiple parties.
Source code you can argue is a form of speech versus a packaged product.
Not that the case is relevant because restrictions on the availability of products is well established under the law. I can’t just buy nuclear weapons for example.
>"If you don't like it then find another society. "
Isn't use of any non-violent means to advocate one's belief to change the society is the whole point of the democracy? Your point is rather very totalitarian.
They are arguing that any infringement on any action they don't like is unacceptable.
This is incompatible with living in a society.
I’m not, for what it’s worth. I’m arguing that I think the free speech case is stronger for the users and software distributors who are enjoined from the platform or distributing certain software applications than it is for the platform whose ownership but not content or speech is being directly regulated. (The law doesn’t fine TikTok it fines the people providing services to TikTok. Their speech rights may be more relevant in this case.)
I also see why people are interpreting my comment to mean that because it’s a restriction on my speech it’s not constitutional because that’s how people usually act on the Internet. But I don’t and didn’t. What I said was it was a restriction on my speech and I believe that’s more of interesting case than the restriction on TikTok’s speech. The ramification of that is that the courts would adjudicate the free speech restriction at an appropriate scrutiny level and determine whether that restriction is allowable. As we all know, some restrictions are allowable and constitutional. Others aren’t.
It’s not unreasonable, wild, or strange to point out that there’s a restriction on speech here, and to point out that conflict needed to be resolved to determine constitutionality.
Most are handled at the district level, if the court felt there was no legal issue at play, they would have denied cert. Their opinion did end up being per curiam which suggests the court feels clearly about the case, but does not suggest they never felt there was an issue worth arguing.
> What I said was it was a restriction on my speech
I don't agree that it is, though. The restriction is on where you cannot put your speech[0], not on the speech itself. If there was nowhere that you could put your speech (or if the available avenues became much much much smaller in reach), then I would say that your speech is being restricted.
But that's not the case here. You can publish that same speech on YouTube, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Twitter, and a host of others where you can reach more or less the same audience you can reach on TikTok.
You also mention elsewhere about not being permitted to download a particular app onto your phone (and/or that a service provider isn't allowed to provide it to you). That just isn't a free-speech issue at all. And besides, if you have an Android phone, you absolutely still can install the TikTok app on the phone, because Android allows sideloading. If you have an iPhone and can't sideload, then your beef is with Apple, not with the US government. Beyond that, www.tiktok.com still works just fine, and will still work fine even if/when it ends up hosted on infra owned by non-US companies.
[0] Note that I did not say it is a restriction on where you can put your speech; it is a specific restriction on where you cannot, which I think is an important distinction.
It’s a restriction either way. Whether it’s a reasonable one or one that meets elevated scrutiny is a separate second question. Your points are arguing that question and are reasonable context for that debate.
The government isn’t banning TikTok, the law only requires a change in ownership. The current owners are choosing to performatively shut down in an attempt to bully their way through that requirement
The US need not restrict any of your speech. You’re not directly communicating with any of TikTok’s users when you post to it, TikTok is. In the Internet age, even apparent one-way communication is handshakes upon handshakes. Consider this: You’re free to send whatever messages you want to ByteDance. They’re just not allowed to reply (or have anyone reply on their behalf). The app is a useless binary blob if it can’t set up a TLS connection.
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
It is not. A company would be (financially) punished if it didn't follow regulations. DiDi was an example. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/23/investing/didi-us-delisti...
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company
This is only true if you assume the US is the only market that matters. But TikTok is very much an international phenomenon, and selling would likely harm the company far more than a couple billion. Firstly it would give another company everything they need to run a global competitor to TikTok, including software, infrastructure and userbase. Secondly it might encourage other countries to also force TikTok to sell.
Giving in here would be the beginning of the end of TikTok and could well be argued to be a violation of the company's fiduciary duty to shareholders. It would be the ultimate version of chasing short-term gains by selling the long-term future.
> Secondly it might encourage other countries to also force TikTok to sell.
Wouldn't that be a no-op if they already did so?
Interesting position. I wonder if another country could just force Musk to divest himself of Twitter in the same way. Could solve a lot of headaches that way. Maybe the EU could force the issue.
Depends on the political power of the entity and it's existing laws.
In your example, Musk could stop the app in the EU, much like TT is/was doing.
With this said, is the EU law written like the long standing US laws that give the TT law the power it has? If they have to enact new laws that would conflict with its member states wishes/dealings with other nations, expect it go to nowhere.
Possibly they could force him to divest from whatever legal entity Twitter operates under in that country, or force Twitter to stop operating in that country, but they would have no authority over the US corporation.
The post I'm replying to is arguing that fiduciary duty would force the sale, not a law. The banning just... sets a chain of events in motion.
It won't. It would be fantastic if the EU banned Meta or X. Instead they're suddenly scared of continuing to fine them for their endless illegal data harvesting and gatekeeping to cozy up to Trump.
Rep Mike Gallagher, the sponsor of the bill, published this op-ed making it sound like a speech issue: https://www.thefp.com/p/tik-tok-young-americans-hamas-mike-g...
Personally, I am more concerned about people pretend it is not.
Fifuciary duty to shareholders is one of the most pernicious forces against progress there is.
The short term "number go up" mentality is breeds is a cancer.
That's somewhat of a myth that lets these companies off easy, there's no ruling that says you have to maximize profit at all costs, or at all to an extent. The sole motivator is greed.
The former does not imply the latter. Look at Bezos, he spent years re-investing in Amazon to provide long-term financial benefits to his shareholders. Pressure for short-term gains comes from shareholders on Wall St, it’s not a fundamental property of shareholders.
It's a complete myth used by the greedy to justify corporate greed. The only way someone would ever be succesfully prosecuted for this is if they'd clearly intentionally crash the company. Go do a search, you won't find a single other prosecution.
I really hope this changes your mindset. The number go up mentality is purely a result of avarice from those enacting it, it has 0 to do with any laws, it's all personal greed.
"Shut down in the US" not shut down everywhere, if I'm not mistaken. It also doesn't seem like an obvious violation of their fiduciary duty. The eventual growth in all other jurisdictions could easily be claimed to be worth more than the sale price, and it could also be argued that selling to US holders would harm the platform internationally.
This does not make sense, it is like saying that requiring bezos to sell his newspapers is not a free speech issue (I might or might not support such action as I am not a free speech absolutist)
>"Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders"
I am shedding tears for those poor shareholders.
You should talk to the ACLU. Get them straighten out.
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i...
"You may speak if..."
Is a freedom of speech issue.
This is a shakedown and violation of property rights.
What would happen if Brazil says they would ban X if Elon Musk didn't divest from it?
X would be blocked in Brazil.
Now, expect Musk and his billions to push lobbying weight around to ensure Brazil paid dearly for it.
International politics is a treacherous game.
What does this have to do with X, Brazil, or Musk?
Because seems insane to think that only because U.S says that Bytedance need to be divest or be banned, that any company will prefer to divest... And if the company doesn't do it, it's because of "hidden reasons"
We are talking about a single country.
everything… the world does not revolve solely around USA. the EU should ban all US social media companies too unless they are sold to one of EU countries, that makes sense, right?
You joke, but with the power these companies have over peoples minds (enough people to sway elections) it is a reality we may be going towards; each power constellation a different social media universe.
TikTok has the power to sway any election how they want. The data available to them about what reels sways what people in what direction is immense. The only question is if they are doing it.
In 20 years I expect either democracy to vanish, or algorithmic social media to be widely banned, or control over algorithmic social media to be viewed more like control over nuclear weapons...
Another free speech interpretation: the right to assemble. I cannot assemble with the group of people I once was with TikTok gone
There's no government restrictions preventing you from assembling elsewhere.
Your interpretation would make shutting down any place where people assembled unconstitutional which was clearly never the intent.
Of course you can. Nothing stops the same group of people from congregating on Discord, Rumble, or even in real life.
This is like saying that closing all churches of a religion is not a big deal as the people can perfectly pray by themselves. (Also since they can pray in their head why not making that religion's prayers illegal to speak aloud)
No, it's like saying it's not a big deal to close one particular church building with eminent domain to build a railway station there.
If you used to assemble at a public park, and the city closes the park entirely to turn it into something else, does that violate your right to assemble too?
If the specific intent was to make it difficult to assemble, then yes.
The law hasn't made it difficult to use alternatives to tiktok, which are free and numerous.
depends. Was it the de facto town square?
Even if it was the town square, if the property went from public to private ownership property ownership laws trump your free speech laws. You cannot come on to my properly and say whatever you want, more so you can't say it's not trespassing because of freedom of speech.
If the city sold the public property with the specific intent of having a private entity stop protected speech they were powerless to stop then yes, it would be a free speech issue
I'm not buying this drivel - the company stands to make way more than one rushed and limited buyout would garner.
Your argument is a false dichotomy, and it's made in bad faith. You argue that they should have taken a 10B pay day, meanwhile they are alive today and arguable worth over 100B.
That would be if they were American, even if they were not Chinese, not every country puts shareholders capitalism above everything else a company is suppose to decide upon.
But those running corporations are fiduciaries - the have a legal and ethical obligation to their shareholders. If those shareholders want to not maximize profits and have other objectives, then that's totally fine and then the managements obligations are to those aims of the shareholders.
As per US law....
> pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue
A lot of folks here are saying that the TT ban had nothing to do with free speech. A couple of indirect rhetorical questions that might be relevant to help illuminate opinions about TT:
1. If there were a single newspaper (in the pre-internet era) that developed and printed a lot of reporting with a particular political outlook and was the home of many columnists known for being the premier thinkers with that outlook, and a law were passed that had nothing to do with the content but had the effect of shutting down that paper, and only that paper, would this be a speech issue?
2. If a political rally were assembling to petition for redress of their grievances, and a law were passed that told them they could say what they wanted but the rally was only allowed to occur in a specific field 30 miles outside the city and 3 miles from the nearest paved road, would this be a speech issue?
3. Given that deadtree-books-in-physical-libraries are not the primary point of reference for most people anymore, if you wanted to block access to certain kinds of information and/or make a statement about doing so, what action would you take in the 21st century to do the equivalent of a book burning? And would this be a speech issue?
There are obvious and easy things you can point out about how the TT law is different from each of those three scenarios, don't @ me about that. But it seems to me that most people who are serious (or, publicly serious, which is a little different) about supporting the TT ban give reasons for it that would be inconsistent with their answers to one or more of those three questions.
(1) Doesn't match the situation at all, because the law didn't require the paper to shutdown - it required a foreign company to divest so that it is US-owned, and the paper could continue operations as normal.
That's a pretty substantial difference.
(2) Also doesn't match the situation, there is no requirement that TikTok restrict the reach or audience of their content in any way AFAIK.
(3) The situation is more akin to "foreign government owns the local library, and can decide based on the identity of the person walking in which books the person is allowed to see and check out" - seems obviously problematic at least /if they do that/
All your examples miss the part about the company being a foreign government's psy-ops vehicle.
As many have pointed out it is not only titok's free that is in question, but rather the free speech of its users.
As an analogy you could imagine that all the people in the cases above are neonazi pedos and you might conclude that they do not deserve free speech, but the point of the parent is that in all of those cases the free speech of the people was being infringed upon (the question is whether that is justified or not)
Which of these examples includes the parts about foreign control? This is the primary issue as far I was aware. The chinese state does not have first amendment protections because they are not american citizens.
Recent and related:
TikTok goes dark in the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396 - Jan 2025 (2187 comments)
I guess we know now why TikTok voluntarily went dark.
Wonder which companies will be assured by TikTok's assurances there will be no consequences for helping them break the law.
I just hope this causes congress to dig their heels in again. Almost can't believe what I'm seeing.
In a sane world Congress would be furious at the executive overreach.
I don't remember the last time either party called out their colleagues for questionable use of executive orders, but to do so would require principles, and we haven't seen those in decades either.
It would only take 38% of Republicans in the Senate to vote with Democrats to remove Trump from office to get him out of politics for good.
Defying the literal law on a matter of national security certainly qualifies as treason, or at least a vague "high crime and misdemeanor."
Now that he's done his job for the Republicans (delivered a red wave), is there any benefit to keeping a kleptocratic monster in power?
Should Congress just remove him from office and let JD Vance be president?
Edit: Not sure why being downvoted. China bots?
No, there’s a LOT of MAGAts on HN.
It's the pathology of fetishizing contrarianism.
"I am contrarian because daddy Thiel said it's smart" without a hint of irony
Dehumanizing people by calling them "maggots" or other such vermin isn't a good look considering history of the 20th century.
slow clap. Nice twist.
But… this is a MAGAt:
https://bsky.app/profile/patriottakes.bsky.social/post/3lg75...
I downvoted your comment because you're wrong. The constitution defines treason pretty clearly, you're not going to get a treason conviction without the US being in a legally and officially declared war with China. There has never been a treason conviction for any act committed after WW2, the last time the US was officially in a declared war. The Rosenberg's selling nuke secrets, the Walkers who decrypted Navy communications for the Soviets, those guys who went over to the Taliban or ISIS... all highly illegal but NONE of it was treason.
Furthermore your comment is poorly thought out. Impeaching Trump would be very bad for the popularity of Republican senators, anybody should be aware of that regardless of how you personally feel about the people involved.
Colloquially "treason" fits many of trump's actions, and the comment did hedge and mention "high crimes and misdemeanors" which trump has certainly been guilty of before (but I'm not convinced he is here)
"Colloquially treason" isn't a crime anybody can be charged with, its just hyperbolic political rhetoric.
Despite my own feelings on the ban, this kind of royal court politics is the worst potential outcome. Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path. Not to mention the prosecutorial discretion may be creating massive liability that the new administration could use to extract favors from some of our largest tech companies.
>Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path
I don't understand why this is not the primary takeaway. Regardless of the specifics of this issue, it is objectively a huge power grab for a president to vow to not enforce a law that had bipartisan approval of both the legislative and judiciary branches.
> Regardless of the specifics of this issue, it is objectively a huge power grab for a president to vow to not enforce a law that had bipartisan approval of both the legislative and judiciary branches.
Isn't that the road we've been walking down for a while now with the proliferation of executive orders?
I'm not a fan of this outcome either, but it doesn't strike me as a revolutionary departure from current norms.
Executive orders have historically been a way to get things done when the law is ambiguous. It has not, as far as I know, been used to try to directly contradict existing law that has been upheld by the judiciary branch. I don't even know how that would be legal - if it were then it upends literally the entire basis of our government.
We're essentially saying the president is a dictator - which I know is what the current president wants, but I sure hope the rest of the country doesn't.
> Executive orders have historically been a way to get things done when the law is ambiguous. It has not, as far as I know, been used to try to directly contradict existing law that
Isn't this the case with the federal government not enforcing its own marijuana sale, possession, and use laws for at least a decade now (in states that have legalized or decriminalized it), across several presidents from both parties? I don't think it's ambiguous what's supposed to happen legally when it comes to Schedule I controlled substances.
The federal government deciding to bring charges or not are a completely different matter from an executive order. If you can point to an executive order that "legalizes" marijuana when there are laws explicitly making it illegal, cite away. It would be news to me.
I think this is different. I generally feel like executive orders are 1) used to take some kind of affirmative step that the dysfunction in congress is blocking 2) have some level of defensible legal theory. This feels like the opposite. My understanding of the 90 day extension is that it's supposed to be there to allow a deal to close, but there is no evidence I've seen of a deal being worked on so the legal theory seems to be really flimsy. Disregarding a law, while not unprecedented, is not a great sign given some of the incoming administration statements on a ton of other topics.
>My understanding of the 90 day extension is that it's supposed to be there to allow a deal to close
It is also important to recognize that Trump isn't just talking about invoking the 90 day extension. He is promising companies they won't be held responsible for the fines they should be accruing for violating the law before he even takes office.
Biden is still the president and he’s not enforcing the law. It’s not clear to me that the president can’t grant an extension later once all the statutory requirements are met. What’s the difference between one day and say 10 days?
Putting that aside, the legal theory here—where an exception is there for this purpose and we’re quibbling about its application—is nowhere close to “flimsy” when it comes to constraints on executive prosecutorial discretion.
Biden's ability to enforce the law seems to be pretty constrained given the amount of time left in his term. Like asking Garland to start a prosecution isn't exactly practical. I think it's also worth noting that TikTok was complying with the ban until they were given a signal by the incoming administration that they weren't planning on enforcing it.
The text of the law isn't totally unambiguous, but I still think it's quite clear that the conditions where a 90 day extension could be granted aren't being met, so we'll have to agree to disagree on how flimsy it is.
The number of executive orders has decreased every president since Bill Clinton.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125024/us-presidents-ex...
If you look at the "per year" it increased again under Trump.
Why would you look at it “per year” when speaking in terms of “per president” other than to say “except trump”
Because not all presidents have served for two full terms. Examining things while ignoring the time period over which they happened does not a meaningful analysis make.
In that case, neither metric is appropriate, and we should be looking for the trend per presidential term.
O(year) ≈ O(term) / 4
(Assuming that all terms are the full 4 years long, which happens to be the case for all of the presidents being discussed in this thread)
Why would you not?
It depends on what happens after the litigation over it. It will be a revolutionary departure if the law continues to not be enforced, after the courts demand it be, if they do.
Couldn't agree more. Each incoming administration since Bush has only expanded executive power, despite decrying its usage in the admin they replaced. This is a very predictable outcome even when looking ahead from 20 years ago, and its easy to see where things will stand in another 20 years.
The current norm that comes to mind is Biden trying to cancel student debt, to which the SC said no.
It's nothing new in that it's something that should have been decided by Congress, not the executive. But I think it's new for the executive to ignore the SC like that. Any counter examples?
This should be a lesson: most prosecution and enforcement is discretionary.
This isn't a power grab. That already happened when the Supreme Court invented out of thin air the idea of presidential immunity. There was no basis for that.
Supreme Court justices are political operatives and the conservative supermajority has gone on a spree of overturning precedent and inventing law on a scale not seen since Marbury v Madison.
“Historical tradition” as a legal doctrine is completely invented. “Major Questions Doctrine” is a massive power grab over the other two branches. Presidential immunity is simply the “unitary executive” doctrine, also completely invented.
We already have a dictator.
Let me introduce you to Andrew Jackson
The executive branch has the power to decide whether or not to enforce a law. For example, see weed laws not being enforced.
The law has a provision permitting the President to grant 90 day exceptions. Trump has indicated he'll sign one tomorrow. This isn't going around the law, it's just the law as written. We can debate whether the law was good or bad, but this is an outcome the law directly supports.
> law has a provision permitting the President to grant 90 day exceptions
“A 1-time extension of not more than 90 days,” § 2(A)(3) [1].
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-17758/pdf/COMPS-17...
Except it doesn't sound like he's satisfied any of the criteria, unless he's promising to buy it himself:
(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application; (B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and (C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agree- ments to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension
Those are criteria the President has to certify are the case, not criteria that have to be the case.
Zero clue how that would play out in the courts, but it wouldn't resolve in anything resembling a timely manner.
His administration will lie, because TikTok has made it clear they will not divest in order to stay in the USA.
But so what? His administration, and he himself, lied about a bunch of stuff during his previous term, and what happened? Nothing. Never tried, never convicted (he was impeached, but so what?)
We do not have a mechanism for dealing with a president or administration that is willing to just lie. Even if the SCOTUS were to determine that the administration did in fact lie about certifying those things, so what? Nothing will happen.
> We do not have a mechanism for dealing with a president or administration that is willing to just lie
Of course we do. We’ll just fine Apple, Google and Oracle tens of billions of dollars if they don’t cut ties with Bytedance. The law can be patient.
I advocated for this bill. My personal guess is the tech companies bend at the knee and then pay for a new train system in New York or whatever.
(A) is intentionally vague and deferential. The possibility of a Trump Presidency was in everyone’s mind in drafting; he’s not a guy you tell what to do, he’s a guy you give discretion to with an opportunity to blame unsatisfactorily deferential third parties.
Yep! Thanks for finding the source. I was on my phone, couldn't get the actual text.
It says the conditions of the extension must be certified to Congress. That means the deal is identified, has been significantly executed, and legally binding. I doubt Trump has any of that, which is probably why he’s resorting to an executive order.
More worryingly he stated in his Truth social post that he’s seeking 50% ownership. That doesn’t meet the definition of divestiture in this bill, since China would still effectively steer operations, including content recommendations.
He's not resorting to an executive order to ignore the law. He's using the loophole in the law that allows him to grant a 1-time 90 day lift of the ban, given that he certifies that certain conditions have been met.
The conditions have not been met, but he will lie and state that to his satisfaction, they have. Nothing will happen to challenge that except some noise from a couple of Democratic senators.
What happens 90 days later is anyone's guess.
> using the loophole in the law that allows him to grant a 1-time 90 day lift of the ban
It's not a loophole, it's a clear power granted--with strict limits--within the scope of a short bill.
Sure, the loophole is a part of the law, as I (and others) stated. Congress passed the law, which included a simple and easy way for a president to suspend it once of 90 day, with weak and unenforceable requirements to invoke it. Given that this is an unusual clause to have in a law, I feel comfortable calling it a loophole.
> the loophole is a part of the law
That's not a loophole. It was intentionally designed the way it's been written to be used the way Trump is using it--to give the President leverage and the ability to save face for Beijing.
You're saying it is not possible to build a loophole into a law.
I'm saying that it is.
Then why does it need an executive order? And doesn’t “certify” mean more than just “claim”?
> why does it need an executive order?
It doesn't. That's Trump being Trump.
> doesn’t “certify” mean more than just “claim”?
Not to my knowledge.
That requires a legal agreement to divest to be in place, which I suspect isn’t the case yet.
That being said, the law is enforceable today and Biden said he won’t enforce it.
> That requires a legal agreement to divest to be in place, which I suspect isn’t the case yet.
Nope, it merely requires that the president certifies that it is in place, and that's something entirely different given who the president will be.
The president can grant one 90-day exception, if certain conditions are met. Those conditions have not been met.
It's a potentially successful power grab because the law isn't widely supported by the populace. Trivial to say "those eggheads can pass what they like, I will protect you from them"
My read says the law itself is a presidential power, doesn't have to be pushed unless the President wants it
There is no way the President can commit that these services will not accrue massive fines throughout his non-enforcement period.
And actually your read is wrong: the President does have an obligation to enforce laws, it's just in practice there are all sorts of ways one can effectively bury this obligation under claims of different prioritization. They are not really allowed to come out and just say: "I am choosing not to enforce this law because I disagree with it."
> the President does have an obligation to enforce laws
This is only true as far as other people are ready to keep the president in check. I only have the surface knowledge of US politics, but from the outside, it seems like the American institutions that were supposed to balance the executive power are all being quite successfully sabotaged.
That's a different argument than the one GP made.
One of the things that makes it more difficult to enforce those obligations is people's mistaken belief that those obligations do not exist.
So when people say those obligations don't exist, they should be told they are wrong.
Fair enough.
Not yet, but maybe in the near future. We'll see! The ultimate check is too many people getting too pissed.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
The Executive Branch (President, White House) has a responsibility to execute the law as legislated by the Legislative Branch (Congress) and judged by the Judicial Branch (Supreme Court) if applicable.
Trump is citing House Resolution 8038[1], Division D, Section 2, subsection A, paragraph 3[2] which states (emphasis mine):
>(3) EXTENSION.—With respect to a foreign adversary controlled application, the President may grant a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days with respect to the date on which this subsection would otherwise apply to such application pursuant to paragraph (2), if the President certifies to Congress that—
>(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
>(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
>(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
In plain English, this means Trump once he is President will have authority to order a one-time up-to 90-day extension to enforcing the ban if TikTok can present evidence that they are in the process of selling to an American entity.
If TikTok cannot present the evidence or they still do not complete a sale within the 90-day extension, the ban will apply and must be enforced by the President.
As the law in question was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President (Biden), the President (Biden and Trump) cannot overrule or otherwise refuse the law with an Executive Order. The President must enforce and act within the powers vested in him by the law.
It is questionable if Trump's claim of not penalizing violators of the law prior to an approved 90-day extension is legal; the law allows no such powers to the President.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8038...
[2]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8038...
> It is questionable if Trump's claim of not penalizing violators of the law prior to an approved 90-day extension is legal; the law allows no such powers to the President.
The president has the power to pardon, which could be interpreted in that way.
I'm no legal scholar, but I think offering the pardon up front with the intention of circumventing the law would itself have been a crime up until the recent July supreme court ruling that now appears to make it perfectly legal: absolute immunity for all official acts including pardons.
Yes, the legal question was decided last year by the Supreme Court (and it will work in all Presidents' favors going forward, Trump included). The question of duty however lies with Congress. The Executive Branch is tasked with executing the laws passed by Congress, and Congress always has the option of impeaching a President who refuses his duty to execute and enforce the law.
They impeached Trump. Twice. Didn't do anything.
He was acquitted on both counts, so no he wasn't impeached.
In fact, there has never[1] been an impeached President in American history.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_impeachment_trial_in_t...
https://time.com/5552679/impeached-presidents/
>To be impeached, a President or other federal official must have committed one of the violations described by the Constitution as “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” But history shows that if a President is to be impeached, the biggest factor may be political will — whether members of a President’s own party are willing to turn against him, and whether enough members of Congress believe that trying to remove the President is worth the risk of losing popular support.
>To impeach an official, the House of Representatives must pass articles of impeachment, which formally accuse the President of misbehavior. Once the House votes to impeach, the Senate must hold a trial to decide if the President should be removed from office.
So no, Trump (nor Clinton nor Johnson for that matter) was/were not impeached. They were all acquitted of the charges presented and even foregoing that the Senate ultimately lacked the political will to impeach them.
They were all tried for impeachment but they were not "impeached". To be impeached means they were found guilty of the charges (article(s) of impeachment) levied. It's like calling someone acquitted of murder a murderer, that's not how this works at all.
https://time.com/5552679/impeached-presidents/
"On January 13, Donald Trump became the third President in American history to be impeached and the first President to be impeached twice."
And yet the paragraphs I cited from the very article you keep linking dispute that statement.
Again, I cite:
>To be impeached, a President or other federal official must have committed one of the violations described by the Constitution as “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” But history shows that if a President is to be impeached, the biggest factor may be political will — whether members of a President’s own party are willing to turn against him, and whether enough members of Congress believe that trying to remove the President is worth the risk of losing popular support.
>To impeach an official, the House of Representatives must pass articles of impeachment, which formally accuse the President of misbehavior. Once the House votes to impeach, the Senate must hold a trial to decide if the President should be removed from office.
Further, citing Clause 6 of Article 1 from the Constitution[1] (emphasis mine):
>The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.
A President (or former President) is only "impeached" if he is found guilty by the Senate of the charge(s) levied against him by the House. To date that has never occured, all impeachment trials against a President to date have concluded in acquittals.
Factually, there has never been an impeached President in American history.
The use of the term "impeached" to mean a President tried for impeachment is confusing and misleading, perhaps deliberately so given the individuals concerned in all the impeachment trials.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_Stat...
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-americans-have-been-i...
"The most recent was the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump."
"What does impeachment mean?
Impeachment means charging a public official with misconduct. Like in the justice system, charges alone do not lead to consequences. Instead, there is a trial, during which the official is convicted or acquitted."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impeachment_investigat...
While there have been demands for the impeachment of most presidents, only three — Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1999 and Donald Trump in 2019— have actually been impeached. A second impeachment of Donald Trump was adopted, making him the first US President to be impeached twice.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
I reiterate that "impeached" means to be convicted of charges levied in (an) article(s) of impeachment.
Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1[1] of the Constitution (also cited in your links) states (emphasis mine):
>[The President] shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
For there to even be a question of a presidential pardon applying to impeachments that necessitated such a clause, being impeached implies being convicted. The Justice Department considers pardons without convictions as "highly unusual"[2].
I thus reiterate: There has never been an impeached President to date, and the use of the term "impeached" to mean a President merely tried for impeachment is very misleading. Again, you don't call someone merely tried for (let alone acquitted of) murder a murderer.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...
[2]: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/frequently-asked-questions
You can repeat yourself all you want and link irrelevant information about pardons, but you aren't going to change reality.
What are you even trying to argue or prove? The library of congress states that he was impeached.
https://guides.loc.gov/federal-impeachment/donald-trump
President Donald Trump is the only United States federal official to have been impeached twice.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-impeachment-vote-capitol-si...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/majority-of-house-memb...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55656385
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-poised-impea...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Tr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_T...
>What are you even trying to argue or prove?
That the term as-used by most people is misleading.
>In plain English, this means Trump once he is President will have authority to order a one-time up-to 90-day extension to enforcing the ban if TikTok can present evidence that they are in the process of selling to an American entity.
There is zero chance he can satisfy A, B, and C tomorrow. Zero.
I agree, the realistic chance of TikTok providing evidence of an active and ongoing sale process when they hadn't entertained even the mere thought of a sale is astronomically low.
Then again, reality can be weird sometimes. Never say never until the fat lady sings.
Why are they not able to not enforce the law? The right for law enforcing entities and persons to not enforce the law due to personal discretion has been upheld many times in the past. Cops don't have to do it, prosecutors don't have to do it, not even judges have to do it although they almost always do because otherwise it creates friction between prosecution and the judge and the judge is likely to get booted for it eventually because successful prosecutions is how law enforcement and courts earn most of their money and unsuccessful arrests and prosecutions is how they lose money. I don't see how or why the executive branch is under any obligations to enforce any laws, feds don't often enforce marijuana laws in legal states despite being federally illegal still is an easy example.
The only real check against the president/executive branch is the legislative branch having the power to impeach the president and get them replaced, or by legislatively dismantling or changing the internal rules of a department. They lose their jobs, but aren't liable for anything or breaking any laws I know of. Just the same as states can boot out judges or prosecutors if they don't like how they operate, and police departments can fire officers if they don't like how they operate. At no point did cops or prosecutors or judges break the law by not enforcing the law, they merely piss off the state that is funding them and now losing additional money due to lack of enforcement and prosecution, and I don't know how the president or executive branch is any different.
Go look it up instead of having me explain it to you. You're just verbosely asserting your opinion, and at least in the US, your opinion does not map to how the law actually works.
US Constitution Section 2 Article 3: "[The President]... shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed..."
So when past presidents have said they wont prosecute marijuana laws, what was that?
Your argument reminds me of the clip where the guy who had his license revoked for DUI is surprised when the car starts anyway. Just because a law says a thing, a person still has to action something. If the boss says don't do it, you don't do it. Don't rightly matter if the law says you should.
> So when past presidents have said they wont prosecute marijuana laws, what was that?
Can you cite an example? If you're talking about the Biden admin, here is what the AG said:
"I do not think it the best use of the Department’s limited resources to pursue prosecutions of those who are complying with the laws in states that have legalized and are effectively regulating marijuana..."
I.e. exactly what I said is defensible in certain scenarios – and indeed must be defended, potentially in court. It is not POTUS simply saying "I won't do it."
I'm not sure how you can hold that position; the AG is the arm of the president. If the AG says "I won't do it", then that is, by extension, the president saying the same.
And I don't think Garland's longer, winding way of saying what he said doesn't reduce to "I won't do it".
I have explained the difference already and cited specific examples. It’s a you problem if you’re trying to interpret the words another way.
you missed few US government and US history classes growing up, eh? :)
You're the one who has this wrong, and now you're being rude about it.
The enforcement of the law is not at the president's discretion. That would make Congress powerless. Congress is not powerless.
So under this logic, the president can decide not to enforce the laws that require they and their family, friends, associates, and allies to pay taxes?
Don't think so!
Still not quite right, not in a modern state. Law has always been sovereign power, and in the modern period the entire state is the sovereign (think Leviathan.) It is strange that Americans seem to think these are personal powers.
Well, the law as agreed upon by Congress designates it as a personal power.
> the law as agreed upon by Congress designates it as a personal power
No, it does not.
The extension is discretionary, the liability is not. (And the liability specifically accrues to the operators of the app stores and hosting companies.)
This is kind of the point, the text of the law is totally ephemeral because the power to violate it is entrusted in the state itself.
That's not what the law says. What gave you that impression?
The law gives the President discretion to decide what apps to ban essentially. It didn't specifically target TikTok.
So Biden decided to ban it and Trump decided to unban it. It's all perfectly within the law.
> law gives the President discretion to decide what apps to ban essentially. It didn't specifically target TikTok
Wrong.
§ 2(G)(3)(A)(i) and (ii) name Bytedance and TikTok [1].
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-17758/pdf/COMPS-17...
In context, you're both wrong. You're correct that § 2(G)(3)(A)(i) and (ii) explicitly name Bytedance and TikTok [1], so it is not up to presidential discretion to add more apps, but § 2(G)(3)(B)(ii) indicates that it is within the president's discretion to not enforce.
There are some paperwork qualifiers that for certain have not been met (the not-yet president almost certainly could not have briefed Congress as president 30 days prior) -- but they seem trivial to satisfy, and it would be pointless to initiate enforcement actions for an event nobody intends to follow through on
> but § 2(G)(3)(B)(ii) indicates that it is within the president's discretion to not enforce
Wrong.
That § lets the President designate other entities. That’s why we wrote “any of” at the top—Bytedance, TikTok or any of the things the President may designate.
§ 2(G)(3) A/B seem more like OR conditions to me, not AND. I don't think Bytedance can get out of it by the president saying they're not a threat.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521... Ctrl+F "(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION"
Maybe I'm in over my head, but that's how I interpreted it too. It's annoying how every news source and even Wikipedia doesn't make it clear what this law does.
I'd just recommend reading the full bill. It's not that hard to understand and it's fairly short. I used a GPT to parse sections which seemed a bit complicated
Yep, that being said I'm not mad at ignoring this part.
Of all the shittyness of this bill, least of which giving the president pretty much unchecked power to ban foreign social media, the fact that it named a specific entity is to me just bad form. Law shouldn't ever include "fuck you in particular" even if the effect of the law when applied will be that.
I am actually surprised that it was not deemed unconstitutional on this basis alone
What is the constitutional provision that covers this?
>I don't understand why this is not the primary takeaway.
Because this takeaway is wrong.
Yeah, Trump himself signed the executive order to ban TikTok.
Trump is not in power now.
Power is when people do what you say.
He did it in 2020?
> Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path
The very dangerous path started a long time ago, or at least that's how it feels from abroad. "He can't" followed by "He wouldn't" then "He did".
IMHO this is the reason things should be laws not weird tradition and conventions if they really matter, (same reason that the fault of things like SCOTUS upturning Roe v Wade is in Congress for never making it a law instead of just a precedent
> feels like the start of a very dangerous path.
I'm baffled people keep saying this. You're miles down the dangerous path - you've almost reached the end of it. This is nothing new.
>feels like the start of a very dangerous path
Start?
I'm old enough to remember how things used to be and it sure wasn't perfect, but JFC is it bad now.
really? cos I feel old, but as far back as I remember usa's vaunted democratic institutions have been a sideshow while the wealthy favour global militarist domination over the needs of ordinary american people.
when did you decide that things went bad?
Let's see:
SC decision that presidents are above the law.
Violent assault on the Capitol.
Journalism imploding.
OK.
I'm looking for a year.
I think the SC decision was last year, whereas the capitol riot was 4 yrs ago.
sorry, I don't know a date for 'journalism imploding', but I'm guessing you mean 2016?
so you think the WMD lies were before things turned bad?
I’ve personally harped on the failure of globalization since the 1990s, before it was cool.
Nothing has been this bad.
But perhaps I’m wrong. Could you point out how today is the same as before?
broad brushstrokes: democracy as a sideshow while the rulers prioritise warriorism over the material needs of the population was clear last century.
what's worse? I mean, I'll readily admit that the sideshow has got more ridiculous, but the main game is the same.
How much worse would you say has the side show gotten?
Would you say the sideshow itself is being undermined at this point?
I dunno about worse, but wildly more ridiculous. Not sure how to measure, but the scattergun disinfo is certainly another level beyond targeted lies.
maybe we need to undermine it? if the institutions of 'democracy' that tower over us are not working we might need to build some from the ground up that do.
Oh yeah, the good old segregation times.
That’s how all dictatorships work.
Everything is illegal.
You live by the KING.
The actual bad precedent set here is that the US executive branch has the authority to censor the media.
That is incorrect in this case. The "censoring" was done by the legislative branch, congress.
The "uncensoring" is done by the executive branch.
It's both. It gives the President the authority to designate an app as controlled by a foreign adversary, forcing it to be banned or sold. It also names TikTok in particular. I didn't know about the second part until I read the original text* just now, since every summary missed that, but I'm not happy about that part either.
* https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
To clarify, the law bans TikTok and also lets the president ban other apps in the future.
> The "uncensoring" is done by the executive branch.
Interestingly, the executive branch is still under Joe Biden at the moment.
TikTok content has changed in tone and tenor since President-Elect trump's policy reversal. Looks like he'll have ByteDance working for him like he did Russian fake news during his last regime.
That’s actually the exact opposite of what has happened.
Yes, and what's even worse to me is Trump's explicit motivation for supporting TikTok now. Like there are some interesting philosophical, moral, and maybe legal arguments against the TikTok ban but what he's seized on is simply that TikTok was a useful tool (as far as he's been told) for gaining votes. Keeping it around just benefits him politically and personally, so that's it.
You know what, that’s is actually correct.
Practically necessarily trumps concerns of fictitious and imaginary constructs
Mechanistically, the law applies to the app, not the service. It's not clear to me that serving videos to users that already have the app is a violation of the law.
It also applies to their cloud providers
Yeah, a.1.B, (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Is distributing content an "update"?
We are watching the norm be created that ‘what apps we are allowed to use’ is something that is in the personal gift of Donald Trump.
That is a very weird precedent for us to be setting.
The law specifically gives the president a 90 day extension.
The executive order will just be baldly illegal, and what happens in the litigation on it is the next battle.
TikTok is, as we speak, breaking US law.
No there's an actual provision in the law that allows the President to delay enforcement one-time for 90 days: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521... . This was an explicit provision of the bill.
The provision requires the president to tell congress that a deal is in the works. Either the executive order makes no such claim and is unlawful, or there really is a deal in the works, or the president is unlawfully making an untrue claim.
There is likely to be no punishment for either of those unlawful outcomes, but they are still unlawful.
I won't argue against the idea that Trump is on a dangerous political path based around patronage and personal favors, but the law does grant him the authority to give TikTok a 90 day extension. If TikTok has not sold by then and he fails to enforce the law, that's a bigger problem.
> Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority
I wonder if there was actually a bipartisan majority in favor of getting rid of TikTok?
Yes, the bill passed by a bipartisan majority, but TikTok was not the only thing in that bill. Previous attempts to advance a standalone TikTok bill had failed to get majority support.
This time it got attached to a bill that provided $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, $26 billion in aid for Israel, and $1 billion of additional humanitarian assistance for food, medical supplies, and clean water for Gaza. There was also $8 billion for security in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.
A lot of Congress considered that aid (or parts of it) to be critical, and it had taken a lot of time to get there. I bet as a result of that a lot of Congress members would vote "yes" even if they disagreed with the TikTok part.
When Biden signed it he spoke about the importance of all the aid provisions and didn't mention TikTok at all.
Only four more years of this stuff to go. In other news Trump coin has plummeted by a few billion as Melania launched her own meme coin with a ~4bn market cap.
> Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority
It was a rider tacked onto a must-pass bill. There’s nothing about the manner it was passed that makes it special or particularly blessed. This was classic congressional sausage-making.
And yet the law is the law. There's no premise that says the manner in which a law is passed determines its enforceability.
Also nothing saying that it will be enforced at all as long as the bribes are deposited on time.
Sorry but this argument does not make sense, AFAIK this extension is lawful and explicitly permitted by the same law, so the law was followed any way.
Or are you saying that the public perception of the law should itself be the law?
I'm not saying the extension is unlawful. The person I replied to seemed to imply an addendum to a law should be less enforceable than the primary focus of the law. I was simply addressing that statement.
I didn’t say it was unenforceable, just pointing it there’s nothing special about which parties voted for it out by how much.
But also at the end of the day the executive branch has sole power to enforce it or not, and if the president doesn’t want to enforce it there’s really nothing Congress or the courts can do about it other than impeaching him, which realistically won’t happen. The two parties have captured the system of three-way checks and balances, and a cult of personality has captured the party with trifecta power. That’s the game, folks. We live in an autocracy now.
How do you figure? The explicit domain of enforcement is the executive branch, so if the new guy coming in says something akin to "They've made their decision, let them enforce it" that's somewhat by design even if you may not agree with it.
The system was designed with these checks and balances in mind explicitly.
> if the new guy coming in says something akin to "They've made their decision, let them enforce it" that's somewhat by design even if you may not agree with it
It’s absolutely not. Which is why non-enforcement doesn’t release liability; if you break a law that the President declines to enforce, people can sue the government to force enforcement today and the next President can enforce tomorrow.
And in this case they'll just accrue (massive) fines.
The ultimate consequence of that interpretation would mean that the executive does whatever it wants since all enforcement of court rulings or laws fall to the executive.
Yes, this is how government works if the judicial + legislative branches have no enforcement power. That is not at all how this government works however. I suggest taking an American civics course if you want to learn more.
> how this government works however.
I mean, with some of the decisions by SCOTUS in the last few years we should really be at the point of "This government works?"
Prosecutorial discretion is not a "check and balance" it is a cost cutting approach that allows worse laws to last longer
Yeah, I think that's bad. Some level of prosecutorial discretion is obviously needed but furthering a state of affairs where laws are meaningless depending on if you have the favor of the executive is dangerous. The checks and balances in the passing of the law make sense but there should be a strong norm towards actually enforcing things and pushing the legislative branch to change the law if there is something wrong with it or the judiciary to rule on if it is actually legal.
There's anecdotal evidence that something funky is going on in the background. More so than usual.
A handful of very prominent creators critical of the US (or other) governments have had their accounts just disappear. The algorithm is also showing decidedly different type of content.
What accounts?
This is just the beginning. Not sure America will survive another 4+ years of this clown.
“America won’t survive this presidency! If you don’t vote in this election you won’t get the chance to vote again!”
Been hearing that shit since I started paying close attention to presidential races with the first run of Bush in 2000.
I quite dislike the hysterical rhetoric too. That being said, I get why people ascribe it to Donald Trump. I will never forget turning on the TV on Janurary 6th to see the President of the United States inciting a riot on government property that had already killed multiple people.
This is going to be a pretty miserable administration and I expect a complete reprieve of the "stop the steal" bitching and moaning that we sat through the first time around.
Congress looking towards an enforcement while the President trying to make a deal. It is going to be interesting how this plays out.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...
I wonder how Mr. Johnson is proposing to do his enforcement, seeing as how the executive is the branch of government charged with enforcing the laws.
Congress could impeach. In a sane world, if the executive continually ignores Congress, then that's what would happen.
In a sane world. This particular person has been impeached and acquitted twice over, though, so I'm not sure we're there anymore.
Completely lose the zoomer voting base in the near to mid future?
Exactly. We could have had a discussion about whether a executive order can override house of representatives had such order be issued by Trump post inauguration yet overriding it prior to that should be the bigger deal here.
It's unfortunately not news that a Trump presidency doesn't respect the mores of the office.
The president can pardon people for breaking federal law and can stop the enforcement of federal law[1] so as president elect it makes sense that he can effectively neuter any federal law short of congress deciding he has gone to far and impeaching and removing him.
[1]i.e. federal agencies no longer prosecute personal marijuana use by executive order
Man, the current democratic party just does not know how to solve problems in a way that people appreciate.
Absurd that the Republicans are somehow going to swoop in and "Save the day" on an issue they themselves championed.
Looking this up, is this [1] the bill? Cuz it turns out this bill was sponsored by a Republican and passed during a Republican controlled House in 2023, by a supermajority 352 - 65.
People always blame Democrats for things that Republicans do.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
It also passed a Democrat controlled Senate and was signed by a Democrat president, who then elected to not even attempt to enforce the law today, his one day to do so. Either of those could have blocked it. It's at the very least bipartisan and the talk at the time of passage was that the Dems could deliver on Rep promises. Neither side seems to want to be the ones holding the unpopular bag.
And upheld by the the supreme Court in a unanimous decision
You are correct. Our entire government looks like a clown show over this. National security issues that we couldn’t see banned it and now it’s still here. I better see some members of the legislature fight this misappropriation of power that was upheld by the Supreme Court. If a president can come in and hand wave away a law just passed and implemented(by a huge majority mind you), then the rule of law is gone. I hope that Cook and Pichai stand firm and not let these apps back into the store until the government fixes this shit show through the proper channels. Those who flip flop their votes should have their reasons spread across traditional and online media. If our entire government will flip flop on an issue so quickly after the Supreme Court suppressed the 1A a little further, I feel the corpo state has taken us another step towards the cyberpunk dystopia that I prefer to cosplay in my games not reality.
Republicans probably love to see Trump ignoring Congress even if it's a law they passed. Now you've essentially got a large chunk of the population (youth especially) cheering that Trump saved the day by acting like a dictator. Gives him opportunity to do more of the same.
> who then elected to not even attempt to enforce the law today, his one day to do so
I don't think the US president is exempt from the tendency to avoid hard work on their last day on the job.
AIPAC made sure it had bipartisan support.
There is always someone in the thread who wants to blame the Jews. Two in this one.
And there is always a Hasbara drone who lies, deflects, and conflates Israel with Jewry so they can insinuate that any criticism of Israel == antisemitism.
AIPAC is an organization made up of American Jews, not Israelis.
That's only part of the truth though.
AIPAC is funded by Israel, and by it's own description AIPAC is an organisation made up of pro-Israel zionists. Oh, and the "I" in AIPAC stands for "Israel".
Lies once again. AIPAC is funded by American Jews.
Nice try hiding your hatred.
"American Israel Public Affairs Committee""
There are many Jews who disagree with what AIPAC does in the country and what Israel does.
Would we permit a lobby for China to do the same thing?
Because AIPAC is an American organization made up of American citizens funded by American citizens.
this is the sane comment here. the parent comment this comment replies to is the insane one. and yet this one is downvoted and the other is not
a reply on this comment even accuse the commenter of being Hasbara
HN is the world-upside down. a lot of people here really should just stick to tech
Let me guess, "it's too complicated."
No. It’s actually pretty simple. You are making the inference.
When the "real problems" are TikTok access and who can enter in which public bathroom you know everyone loses, panem et circenses
I’m not certain, but I think there might also be some other issues people talk about.
Oh yeah "immigration". Can't wait for the immigration discourse in 10 years time, when people all over the world, rich and poor, christian, muslim and jew, white and black, are being displaced because they're homes are literally uninhabitable because the frequency of out of control weather events has gone up.
Will you allow "climate refugees" into your neighbourhood? Will you be a climate refugee yourself?
Buddy, where the fuck did that come from lmao
But TikTik is an important forum for the people of the world to solve our thorny issues! In the days before social media, our world was a mess. Today we are awash in sage, well-reasoned discourse: a new Age of Enlightenment! What fools we'd be to tinker with this valuable information ecosystem. /s
The incentive structures inherent in modern politics encourages all politicians to alternately champion or repudiate unworkable solutions to problems that themselves are likely exaggerated or fabricated from whole cloth.
The parties are just brands competing against each other to appeal to different segments of the same market, offering essentially the same product in different packaging. Getting your competitor to adopt a market position that you've already prepared a response to is a neat trick.
This is par for the course, and I don't understand why anyone would expect anything different.
This just seems trivially obviously not true to me.
I mean, it seems obviously true to me, which is why I posited it here. Do you have a counter-argument you'd like to offer in response?
> Man, the current democratic party just does not know how to solve problems in a way that people appreciate.
What would have been a solution to the problem that people would have appreciated?
A privacy law, for starters.
Where are you finding 60 Senators for that?
As if that would even have any effect in that situation. No amount of audits and rules would prevent TikTok from collecting data and manipulating the public opinion.
Why not monitor it? Create thousands of read-only accounts that "prefer" content with all kinds of ideological viewpoints and statistically analyze whether the algorithm is being biased to promote certain viewpoints. I'm not smart enough to implement something like that but it sounds like a solvable problem to me.
I thought about this too. In no way do I suggest it's an actual solution, but I wonder if some kind of reporting could be used as leverage to help appease US leaders towards a solution that doesn't require banning the app or handing it over to them.
How does that prevent China from using TikTok to inject malware?
[ citation needed ]
I don't think I need a citation to say that it's feasible for China to inject malware via the TikTok app on people's phones. Would it be difficult? I imagine so. But, I think the risk is such that the onus is to prove that it's not possible, not the other way around. China is a hostile power and an authoritarian regime. It's a different risk calculus than Facebook, which is not controlled by a dangerous foreign adversary.
How exactly does that prevent an adversary from spreading propaganda? And what makes you think privacy laws would prevent foreign spies from spying?
The alleged national security implications of Tiktok are not based on spreading propaganda, but on gaining access to information about Americans. A privacy law would address that issue, as well as protected Americans' privacy from other companies, regardless of where they are based.
> The alleged national security implications of Tiktok are not based on spreading propaganda, but on gaining access to information about Americans
What? Doesn't the opinion itself literally say that the threat of "covert manipulation of the content" was one of the government's justification? Never mind the millions of times that Chinese control over the content people view has been brought up as a rationale both inside of Congress and outside? Haven't these been beaten to death already?
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/17/speaking-with-and-in-fa...
Publish the algorithm. Allow users to choose which algorithm they want to use.
What does this even mean?
There is no "algorithm": the policies of a service like Tiktok are spread throughout its entirety. The only meaningful way to "release the algorithm" would be to release the whole source code.
Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means; and there is no way to verify that the released source code corresponds to what is actually being run.
It would be great if there was some way to verify that a service you're using matches some published code, but we don't have that.
> Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means
Releasing the code does help. Joe can't open up his car and fix the engine control code, but the local repair shop can and they can also understand it and raise to a journalist "huh this manufacturer pushed a new version that'll make it stop driving if you service it at the workshop of a competitor" or whatever the car equivalent of this tiktok algorithm concern would be
The second problem you mention, I fully agree with: verifying whatever they publish. Client source code, you barely even need because it'll just be a front end for what the servers decide to show you. Verifying that what they say the server code is, is really what the server runs, that's the hard bit. But claiming to be open could be a start; something we can find discrepancies in and push for further openness
Whether this will solve the national security concerns and help with the youth mental health crisis that's often linked to social media, that's all way beyond my expertise and I have no opinion on the matter. Just that, in general, not everyone needs to understand everything in the world for it to be useful to publish
The code has been available for years. Bytedance published their recommendation engine as an arxiv paper in 2021 and the code is available on Github, https://github.com/bytedance/monolith. The power is in the weights of the live-trained model.
Facebook?
Yeah you can choose to use Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, or Threads freely. /s
DEM looks bad now bc they just lost power. DEM did not solve it earlier bc an unpopular party can't do hard/unpopular things. GOP may have a shot, if they will be as popular as they looked in November. End of day it's about popularity and power.
The outgoing Biden administration actually stated that they wouldn’t enforce the ban for just one day, choosing to leave implementation of the law to the incoming Trump administration.
Efforts to save TikTok have been bipartisan (“Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.”) and efforts to enforce the ban have also been bipartisan (“Democrats had tried on Wednesday to pass legislation that would have extended the deadline, but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked it. Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that TikTok has had ample time to find a buyer.”)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-wont-enforce-tik...
Trump was banging the drum regarding banning TikTok, then changes his tune in the 11th hour, and will now use this to come out as the hero and savior. Not to mention how many republicans supported this.
I gotta hand it to him it’s kind of genius
But also scary how much people are willing to swallow
Edit: wanted to elaborate but wasn't sure how to put it best. Then two comments down there is exactly what I'm looking for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759761 So many people (in absolute numbers at least, maybe not in relative numbers) seem to just eat it up like kids eat candy
Anecdotal, but I see a ton of people who were anti-trump and protesting just a couple years ago celebrating and thanking Trump for saving tiktok and making them happy again. It's wild.
If someone banned youtube or HN, I'd be upset, but I wouldn't be depressed and suicidal over it like some of these people were publicly
The bill was cosponsored by 54, 32 of them were Republicans. I think the primary author was a Republican.
My 12 year old daughter was cranky this morning about Tik Tok being banned, then walked in ecstatic it was working again. I’m like “I wonder if Trump fixed Tik Tok,” and sure enough. She gave me a high five. My 6 year old son is already MAGA because the boys in his class love Trump.
Like inflation, this was a problem Trump created and now he’s getting credit for fixing it.
It's probably not a good idea to let a 12 year old use tiktok.
She watches videos about ancient Egypt, her friends lip syncing to songs, and knitting. The content on Tik Tok is way better than the trash on network TV or Hollywood movies.
I consider the Chinese oversight a plus. It’s much more sensitive to Asian values for the most part.
There are no “Asian values” on TikTok. TikTok is banned in China.
If it had values your 12yo wouldn’t be on it as Douyin has an age restriction of 18+, and prenatal consent if 13-17. Under 13 is prohibited. It also has time restriction of 40 minutes per day for 13-14yo and only accessible between 6am till 10pm. Not only that content is highly censored and restricted.
But keep living in a bubble that TikTok is totally fine.
prenatal consent
I don't think that means what you think it does.
Auto corrected. Can’t edit it now.
Better tell every parent in America
do you not remember being 12?
12 year olds having mood swings because their digital crack was banned for half a day. God help us all.
I don't have a 12 year old (yet) but my 8 year old has mood swings when they're too cold, too hot, have a headache, the tv remote doesn't work, their tablet runs out of time, their tablet runs out of battery, when they're hungry, thirsty, and/or tired (the preceding is non-inclusive, sometimes they have a mood swing for no perceptible reason).
Kids are people. People have feelings.
Yeah, but the times I've seen parents actually address/redirect bad behavior or of their kids in constructive ways are few and far apart, many sort of gave up or go to the other extreme. Small kids lack a great deal of emotional empathy and can wear a decent adult down very fast if right buttons are pushed at right time, so thats tricky to say at least. But then again its the greatest achievement in most people's lives (to raise their kids well just to be clear) so some proper effort long term should be spent here.
Good parenting consistently is hard, very hard and sometimes basically impossible, but the difference between parents who at least try hard to raise kids well and those who sort of gave up on their kids is striking (tiktok and other digital stuff is a good yardstick of overall state of this, when I see kids of other folks using it and clearly addicted I am losing all respect for those folks as parents, and its always a big bag of various failures and neglect coming along). Its heartbreaking to experience, especially the powerlessness.
Yea if I see a 4 year old with an ipad in a restaurant I lose respect for the parents. Parenting is hard, and everyone fails at some point but there are certain things I have never comprised on and social media/digital crack at a young age is one of them.
Well this attitude is why millennials are both failing to have enough kids and miserable as parents.
We had kids in our 20s and my daughter has been glued to her iPad since she was 2. Her grades are better than mine were at her age, she has artistic hobbies (makes jewelry, paints). She’s maybe a tidge slower than I was on reading, but that might be pandemic.
Note that Tik Tok is different than “social media” in that it doesn’t really allow for the gossip and backbiting within enclosed groups that typifies say Facebook. The most emotionally upsetting thing for her seems to be normal girl-girl social conflict, especially through her iMessage group chat.
Whats far more important than academic skills are social skills, how she fares on that aspect? Thats where real threat of this lies, not general population having IQ 80.
Life without good or at least normal social skills is pretty miserable in many aspects, almost can't be fixed once adult, and has much larger impact on what I call 'life success' than career can ever have.
Embrace monasticism.
4 year olds have always gotten some amount of TV time, right? Is it that horrible for a parent to give them the TV time at the restaurant so they aren't running around / screaming / bothering other patrons instead? (Which of course you can also judge a parent for, but then the only answer may be for one parent to have to leave with the kid).
It doesn't mean the kid is also using the iPad at home for hours on end. Or consuming anything other than Bluey / Paw Patrol / Sing 2...
> so they aren't running around / screaming / bothering other patrons
Going to a restaurant when I was a young kid was considered a treat and special occasion, and if I misbehaved, I was out of there immediately. I quickly learned to sit in my chair, eat my food, and not be disruptive.
I think people in general these days act with a higher sense of entitlement, and that translates to parents believing that it's fine for them to go to restaurants because they want to, ignoring whether or not it's appropriate for their children, somehow also believing that they "deserve a break" and their kids' disruptive behaviors in public aren't their problem. But no, screw that: if your children won't behave at restaurants, don't bring them along. If you can't find a sitter, then you don't get to go either. (If you can't afford a sitter, then you probably can't afford going out to a restaurant either.)
> ...to give them the TV time at the restaurant...
I would have less of a problem with this if the kid was using headphones (I know, risky for their ears at a young age if they also have control of the volume), or if the tablet could be kept quiet enough so I can't hear it at my nearby table. But that's rarely the case.
But hey, sure, if you can give your kid TV time at a restaurant without me having to listen to it, I guess that's fine. I think that's a poor substitute for actually teaching kids how to behave in public, but I'm not that kid's parent, and that's just my opinion.
Pretty sure I had a meltdown when my parents took away a copy of Lord of The Rings I was reading for the 4th time that week instead of doing my homework. Kids freak out about all kinds of stuff. Maybe it's more that 12 year olds are kids and not whatever bugbear you're worried about this week.
That's the relatively harmless bit! You left off "[banned for half a day], then being indoctrinated into supporting an anti-democratic despot for the rest of their lives".
Yeah, as a 12 yr old, I would've reacted completely calmly to Counterstrike being banned, or ICQ being banned, or MySpace being banned, or, worst of all, my access to lingerie models from clothing catalogues being destroyed...
Take this as an opportunity to teach them about why they shouldn't trust politicians. Make sure you tell them about Trump being the original supporter of the ban https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
She already doesn’t trust politicians, and knew that. We think he changed his mind because he was flattered by the girls lip syncing to his funny quips.
But it remains the first time in her life that a politician listened to a concern she had, and acted on it promptly to fix the problem.
The problem that that politician caused?
I'm sorry, your SIX year old is MAGA? I mean maybe this is an America thing, but my 6 year old knows literally nothing about any politician. How are 6 year olds even aware of Trump?
Knowing nothing about politics is on par for being MAGA.
Do you never drive through a neighborhood with signs all over the yards?
Listen to radio or news programs while kids are around?
If your kids asked about these things would you not try to explain?
Trump is famous to pre-teens in the same way Andrew Tate is, from what I can tell.
The presidential election is a public spectacle in America, with children’s TV networks getting into it: https://www.nickelodeonparents.com/nickelodeon-kids-pick-the....
The funny clown man who looks weird, dances weird, and speaks weird? Of course six year olds know about him!
Cult of personality
Trump isn't just a politician, he's a showman. He had a TV series for years. He has effectively hijacked US media to ensure that there is constant news about him.
Looks like you’re getting downvoted, but this exactly matches my kids’ HS friends who said “now I finally get MAGA - let’s make America like it was before the Tik Tok ban!”
There isn’t too much teens really feel on a day-to-day basis with politics and this is one of them. I’m not a Trump fan at all but his ability to spin things like this and the stimulus checks will need to be studied.
I doubt a study would be helpful for anyone else, except that he had a good read on when his chances of winning were best back before 2016.
Aside from that his popularity -- and ability to lie shamelessly and have enough people ignore it and vote for him -- is wrapped up in the entity "Trump". His play book is age old.
Trump gets away with lying because he also tells truths on important issues where others tell lies to force a false consensus. People are very sensitive to this stuff.
What are some examples?
It seems like an oversight to me that all the discussion about political impact leading up to this has focused on consumers. Statements like "Gen Z likes TikTok, so banning it risks alienating them", "Gen Z will forgot about TikTok and move on to the next thing in due time", etc.
I think this overlooks one key detail. The focal points of the new online world -- "influencers" -- rely on TikTok for the lion's share of their income. Taking away a fun toy might not radicalize someone but taking away their livelihood might.
And even if these users are a tiny fraction of a percent, they wield outsized influence (obviously). They are the new media. Risking losing these people, many of whom have been largely apolitical, seems like a huge tactical error in retrospect, and one that Trump would predictably take advantage of if given the chance.
> Absurd that the Republicans are somehow going to swoop in and "Save the day" on an issue they themselves championed.
Absurd that when Trump initially proposed this it was considered a stupid and racist idea. Now they’re for it.
I’m just happy TikTok is back. It’s a big loss for Reddit
Am I missing something? How? The users would've went to Meta or Google I assume
People only have so many hours in the day to consume content.
India is the obvious case to look at here and people went to Meta.
The less people get sucked into the toxic Reddit bubble, the better.
Reddit is a lost cause. They totally got the election wrong and the day afterwards they broke their mind trying to justify the loss with whatever conspiracy theory they could come up with. Combine that with overzealous mods and you'll eventually end up in a situation where the majority of people left are just bots. Bots talking to other bots.
You can’t talk like this about a platform based on the concept of independent Subforums. How did the Woodworking subreddit get the election wrong?
I'm a reader of r/allsvenskan, also don't quite remember them getting the election wrong.
This comment after 4 years of "stop the steal" and "Joe Biden is a robot" as large points in mainstream Republican thought is comical
What I learned the hard way this cycle was that I and all the people supporting Kamala were duped into repeating 2016 all over again. The lack of a primary, all the games being played culminating in an 'anointing'. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
Anyone putting any trust into Reddit is fooling themselves. Its not only political subs, other subs are also astroturfed, they are just more subtle about it. There are plenty of examples from places everything like /r/buyitforlife(where you discover the lies after you get burned), to bigger subs like /r/technology(which push certain agendas devoid of facts). You'd have to go sub by sub and piece out the blatant lies, or you could walk away from the platform understanding that the design is fundamentally flawed and was designed for an era of the internet that no longer exists.
What do they, or any elite gain/lose by gaining/losing the appreciation of ordinary people.
Do you care what a cattle or a sheep thinks? Some may, but the majority don't give it a shit.
They do still need our votes. But they forgot that, so they lost. I voted for democrats but they got what they deserved.
What exactly do you think Democrats should have done that they didn't do?
I vote democrat, but then I'm a rich, educated, knowledge worker coastal urban elite so I'm supposed to right?
I think the hard answer is - the Dems need to actually do things that dissatisfy people like me if they want to actually win the masses - working class, blue collar, etc voter back.
Currently they are focussed on everything other than class. Identity politics. Race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, etc. None of this is particularly threatening to people like me and is a moral good, but it should be secondary to actually helping the poor regardless of how they identify.
Left wing parties elsewhere push for more redistributive policies than the Dems ever dream of here. Instead they do hand-outs to constituencies that aren't in dire need, and already vote Dem anyway. Student loan forgiveness, EV tax credits, etc.
Meanwhile in UK & EU, even the vaguely upper end of middle class pay marginal tax rates that would make $1M/year US earners cry. This is where the revenue comes for the depth & breadth of their social programs.
Should the US go that far? Absolutely not. It would stifle innovation, growth, and what makes the US far more successful than our rich peers. But Dems need to break free of the thinking that if we just tax a few billionaires, all our problems will be solved.
> Identity politics. Race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, etc
This is an interesting list that 100% reflects what Republicans in my state ran on and Democrats only mentioned them when on defense (except immigration, which they clearly took point on before trump torpedoed the bipartisan effort to work on it)
> EV tax credits
These were absolutely needed to kickstart the EV market, just like oil subsidies were needed to keep the American economy moving so people and goods could get from place to place.
Left wing parties elsewhere are losing too, mostly because of immigration. Meanwhile the welfare states are collapsing in the UK, Canada, France and Germany because the birthrates and lack of economic growth can't sustain it.
I think globally a lot of rich world left wing parties made similar rhetorical mistakes. Essentially leaning into identity stuff without acknowledging working class people’s challenges.
Also to be fair they’ve been in power globally for some time and so are seen as the status quo party, and largely ran as such. People are feeling economically squeezed and therefore voting incumbents out.
So it sounds as if the left are attempting to cater to issues further up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs than the majority of the voting populace think are important.
That's interesting, because it feels like "the right" (in my experience and whatever left and right mean these days) wouldn't recognise or consider catering to anything above the two basic levels (and to be honest, the 'brutal truth' part of my own personality tells me that anything above those two basic levels is 'cream').
Yes this is a good summation of the problem.
People who worry about the price of groceries or basic car repairs to keep their older car on the road don’t want to hear how privileged they are due to their race (they might not be a minority but they aren’t rich) / how they are destroying the planet (they aren’t flying 10x year) / that kids who took out loans for expensive private college deserve free money (they didn’t even go to college or went to state school) / how democracy is at stake / etc.
Which mean that it is a messaging problem, considering that Democrats are more progressive economically...
It's more than messaging when the rank & file democrats and elite voters walk, talk and breathe this line of thinking. And there are policy choices made downstream of it as well.
not banned tiktok
I would like to ask Chinese president Xi Jinping when will Google and Facebook be available in China and all the rest of the Western social apps. Can I get any clarity and assurance? Thanks.
Well fifteen years ago Google was available in China. And at that time, while the masses simply used Baidu, among the educated it was well known that Google delivered better results. And that was because Google capitulated to the censors. The government had a direct hotline into the Chinese offices of Google and could demand the search engine immediately ban certain keywords or results. At that time Baidu's censorship was quite a bit more heavy-handed than Google's. It was Google that grew tired of this arrangement and decided to quit. They first moved the operations to Hong Kong, and then later the Chinese government decided to block the Hong Kong version of Google.
As a former Google employee, during my employment I found plenty of internal blog posts from the China team at that time about this arrangement. It was amazing to me that a lot of these internal blogs simply weren't deleted because people forgot about it and storage was so cheap.
A quick google suggests that in 2008, Google's search market share in China was ~45%. That's pretty significant.
Zuckerberg already tried in 2015, went on a tour, gave obsequious speeches, spoke in Mandarin and asked Xi to give his unborn child an honorary Chinese name. Refused on both occasions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S20BoxH8W9g
Guy really doesn’t have a spine
Reminds me of the ultimatum I gave my dog last week: I told him that if he didn't stop pooping on the floor, I would punish him by pooping on the floor myself.
I think that’s a bad metaphor, though I don’t particularly know what you’re trying to say.
I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps). If America is opposed to the way China handles social media then we shouldn't seek to emulate them
> I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps).
This presumes an assumption. I don't consider the banning as a lever for ensuring US controls Tiktok as bad behavior. America has a vested interest in snooping on and having direct control over popular mediums of communication. Giving Chinese ownership access to the methods used (like the physical devices, et al), is a security issue. It's a cold war game that seems a little sophisticated for this day and age (somehow). The lack of understanding explains a lot of these wandering conversation about tangents.
> America has a vested interest in snooping on and having direct control over popular mediums of communication.
So this is the sort of statement that needs to be whacked a couple of times with a rolled-up newspaper.
The US government does not have a vested interest in doing things expressly prohibited to it by its own constitution.
My dog is a dog. He doesn't see anything wrong with pooping on the floor, so he won't be fazed if I do it too: threatening to poop on my own floor is not going to get him to stop doing it. If I follow through with my threat, not only will I be doubling up on the problem of poop on the floor, I'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for a me than it is for my dog, because we do not hold human beings to the same standards of behavior and hygiene that we expect from dogs.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Their government does not see anything wrong with violating the rights of their citizens, so they won't be fazed if we do it too: threatening to restrict access to social media in the US is not going to get them to stop doing it in China. If we follow through with our threat, not only will we be doubling up on the problem of illegitimate political restriction on public discourse, we'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for the US than it is for China, because we do not hold constitutional republics to the same standards of rule of law and respect for individual rights that we expect from authoritarian regimes.
I think you're perpetuating a false equivalence, though.
The Chinese government kicks out foreign social media because they want to censor a laundry list of topics and have near-direct control over discourse.
If we assume poor intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to prop up the market share of US/Western-owned social media companies.
But if we assume better intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to deny the Chinese government the ability to run unfettered political/social influence campaigns on US citizens. (Instead they'll have to play cat-and-mouse games on Western-owned platforms.)
Even if both intentions are there, I think this is much better justification than what the Chinese government does.
While the action may be similar, intent matters.
You're talking about intent, but I'm not sure I understand the relevance of intentions here. We're evaluating behavior, which remains the same irrespective of what intentions motivated it. I think it goes without saying that the Chinese government and the US government will invoke quite different rationalizations to explain their behavior, but I'm not sure that any rationalizations are sufficient to justify behavior that is bad in itself.
Or, more simply: no, intent does not matter -- you are responsible for the damage that proceeds from your purposeful actions regardless of what ideas were in your head at the time. Ends are not sufficient to justify means.
And yet you conveniently leave out the part where clearly the Chinese government desires that TikTok continue to operate in the US (under their control). Denying someone something they want is nearly the definition of punishment.
The analogy only works if the US response to banning US social media was to do something similar like banning Russian social media that had no impact on China.
As for whether the ban is legitimate or not, The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it is. We’ve banned foreign governments from owning television stations for decades.
So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's not quite correct to say that the Supreme Court ruled that the ban is legitimate. It narrowly ruled that the immediate first amendment challenge wasn't sufficient to invalidate the law under intermediate scrutiny. The only thing they were evaluating was whether the impact of the ban was biased toward any particular content, which it isn't.
They didn't rule on the overall constitutionality of the act, whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment, or anything else. Those questions might well be evaluated later.
>whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment
The petitioners made those challenges as well. 3 lower courts denied them, and SCOTUS chose not to overturns the law based on those challenges, thus upholding the constitutionality of the law.
Based on your the argument, because SCOTUS didn't rule on the constitutionality of the ban with respect to the 2nd amendment, they didn't actually declare that it was legitimate.
So yes technically you are correct, but SCOTUS certainly choose not to declare the law illegitimate, which is the most legitimating thing they are ever going to do.
>So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's just a bad analogy. Come up with a better one.
> So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
No, I think the way of thinking is that it's irrelevant whether or not China (the dog) does it. If you want to deny the Chinese government the ability to use a Chinese-owned social media platform in a certain way, then you ban it. This isn't a tit-for-tat situation at all; the US is doing something it believes is beneficial for itself; it's not simply pooping on the floor which would serve no benefit.
The overall point is that your analogy doesn't fit the current circumstances, so stop using it to argue against the TikTok ban.
The role of the US government isn't do things it believes are beneficial for itself. It's to administer the law consistently with the constitution. When it behaves in arbitrary way and implicates the rights of its own people in order to pursue geopolitical ambitions on the global stage, it is metaphorically pooping on the floor.
The constitution explicitly gives the government the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Nothing about this is arbitrary, it is merely the government catching up with new technology and bringing regulation of that technology closer in line with regulation of existing technology. Foreign governments or companies controlled by foreign governments have been prohibited from holding radio licenses since 1934.
Did you know that foreign companies are banned from owning more than 25% ownership of a tv and radio broadcast licenses in the US? I'm sure you've spent much effort looking into and trying to repeal those laws too.
China isn't your dog. What if you invited your neighbour over, and they pooped on your floor, repeatedly. And then they said you're not allowed into their house.
If all of that happened, I still don't think I'd be motivated to poop on my own floor.
That's fine, because that's not what the US is doing to China.
No, "pooping on the floor" is the US government is doing to the US, regardless of whether its ultimate aim is to punish China.
I am not willing to give the US government discretionary authority over what software I have access to in order to advance its geopolitical ambitions in relation to China.
Just as soon as they allow the Chinese government censors to control what is and is not available on the platform.
How you see his position as different from ours is an astounding result driven by American imperialist propaganda.
None of these entities are on your side. Highlighting a false dichotomy does nothing.
The propaganda works well indeed. People taking sides is perhaps the saddest part of this story since the politics can be well understood with just a little review of history. You put it well in saying that none of the two are on your side. Wake up, sheeple; stand for principles, not one or the other government.
When Google and Facebook agree to also base their servers in China and follow Chinese censorship law.
You're welcome.
Could you potentially see an issue with both countries disconnecting their economies and communication networks? As we do this, I worry a war gets easier to start.
The straight up "shout out" in the pop-up, I almost couldn't believe my eyes.
I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional." Ironically, it probably got them huge bonus points so they know what they're doing.
They're Chinese. They know how to handle a shakedown by Party officials: it needs both bribes and flattery.
Damn, this is the simplest, most accurate breakdown on what’s actually happening that I’ve come across. The incoming administration is pretty transparent in the bend toward corruption, and these folks know exactly how to manage that as a business challenge.
You could say that, but if it turns out to be working in the US...
> I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional."
Have you been paying attention the last few weeks?
NVIDIA: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/ "As the first Trump Administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach."
Companies aren't stupid. They know that in order to be successful in today's world, you have to personally fellate Trump. Thanks to the American voters for bringing us this reality.
"Sucking up" implies there’s a meaningful choice—that firms or individuals can realistically be expected to show courage now. But voters chose this, knowingly. Blaming firms for bowing to public will misdiagnoses the issue and wastes emotional energy fighting a false battle.
Whats the realistic alternative? Standing up to Trump? The president who has explicitly said he will retaliate against firms and individuals who oppose him.
The same president who was re-elected even though everyone knew this was coming?
If this bothers you, and you want to address it, focus on identifying the real root cause and work toward changing that.
And if you genuinely believe firms would act differently, make the case. But let’s be honest—how many rational people would stand up to someone who:
- Faces no accountability, - Has the Supreme Court and legislature backing him, - Is in power for a second term, - Commands an incredibly effective political machine (Fox-GOP), - has die-hard voters behind him?
This all reminds German companies about a 100 years ago, so much.
Ah, the propaganda GUI element. I distinctly remember covering it in my HCI class. Right between 'How to Design Intuitive Interfaces' and 'How to Influence Favorability Ratings with Popups.'
not only has tiktok done this before, uber & lyft & doordash did it in california in the lead up to elections
I have no issue with American companies trying to change American policies.
You have no issues with corporate influence on US politics?
I think the commenter was choosing between american vs non american influence in US politics.
Not between corporate influence and no corporate influence.
They literally said
> I have no issue with American companies trying to change American policies.
For me that's a naive stance that ignores the problem of corporate influence on politics.
Apart from that, how is US corporate influence necessarily better than foreign corporate influence? Neither care about the US general public. Some US companies knowingly harm their own citizens (Philip Morris, Exxon, Purdue, etc.)
One can argue the problem with TikTook is that it's controlled by the government of an adversary nation (from the viewpoint of the US), but it's not just the fact that the company resides in a foreign country.
Don’t misunderstand me - my interest is in effective, cooperative discussion.
I clarified someone else’s statement, like a busybody, because their position deserves to be supported or supplanted based on its own merits.
The choice they set up was an ingroup vs outgroup choice. You are discussing fair systems.
There’s a common ground between both these positions, and I would have liked to see that conversation occur.
For what it’s worth, I can sympathize with a desire to support in groups, however fair systems are the practical way to achieve that.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
> The choice they set up was an ingroup vs outgroup choice.
What I wanted to point out is that it really is a false choice because it assumes that US companies have the interest of the general public in mind.
I believe the patent was highlighting an additional issue and providing a pretty clear follow up question.
Not equating the two questions.
Corporations and their wealthy owners have an outsized influence on policies to the near total exclusion of everyday people. Not sure what future you're envisioning here but you might want to consider where you fall in the pecking order before bending the knee to blatant oligarchy.
holy crap… wow!!!
This is the prologue to a potentially dark time in American history
world* history
I agree they know what they are doing by manipulating or perhaps secretly enriching Trump. He posted on Truth social that he is seeking 50% US ownership. That’s very odd. Why not 51% so that there is US based voting control? Or full divesture from China as the law requires?
And then there’s the fact that the conditions for an extension aren’t met as written in the law. There’s no way he can certify to Congress that the conditions are met, which is why he’s trying to use an executive order. But that’s illegal.
They didn’t need to turn off in the first place. The Biden administration had already said they wouldn’t impose any fines.
This was literally nothing but a political play intended to give Trump a boost.
The Biden administration signed the thing into law. Of course they need to comply. And people are acting as if somehow TikTok decided to self-ban and have now un-banned. No, it's only those with the app already installed that are able to continue to use it. It's still blocked on the app stores, and will presumably stay that way until tomorrow.
Then why did they sign the law?
When have you ever seen anything like it in the past ?
The relevant part of the pop-up:
> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.
Additionally, an extract from TikTok's later statement [1]:
> In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.
What the fuck? That's some incredible bootlicking by TikTok. They've done a great job making Biden seem like the bad guy for banning TikTok, while Trump saves the day by rescuing them. This is especially ironic considering Trump was the one who wanted to introduce the ban in the first place until he gained 15M followers on the platform.
[1] https://xcancel.com/TikTokPolicy/status/1881030712188346459
Biden could have easily deferred the penalty phase by 30-90 days. He did not, even after the blowback this past week.
How? The law as written only gives the president the authority to give one 90-day extension, only if certain conditions have been met. And those conditions have not been met.
I mean, the promise to boosting Trump in the popup is probably literally what got them the promise of an executive order, possibly with the suggestion that if they wanted to stay on Trump's good side they'd best ensure their algorithm was Trump-friendly in future.
Of course, everything he does is quid pro quo. Now he has a sword of damocles he can hang over their head to ensure he can get anything he wants in the future.
Besides, China doesn't mind propping Trump as they correctly see him as a simpleton who is going to delay USA development by a decade.
How remarkable that our major geopolitical enemies (with the exception of Iran) support our incoming president. He must truly be a great uniter that will usher in a new age of global peace.
he will usher new age of global peace as much as my fat neighbour will not eat the cake for his birthday
It’s like America is rapidly turning into 90’s Russia and people are cheering for it.
I'm wondering if it's just the facade has been removed.
Biden was right about the oligarchs characterization.
After the ban, Pornhub displayed a message asking people to contact their state representatives. I reckon it's a self-interest thing.
> Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses
“panem et circenses“, Juvenal 100AD
This whole theater from the start was designed to flex just how much influence China has on the U.S.
No matter what happens now, china was the real winner here.
It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue. To me it's more like if newspapers were printed with toxic ink or something. The negatives of TikTok have nothing to do with the speech expressed by the "creators" on the platform, but rather with the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose.
It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as well, but banning them isn't a matter of suppressing the speech and letting TikTok continue isn't a victory for free speech. It's just a victory for a gross sort of psychological pollution.
> The negatives of ~Tiktok~short form videos have nothing to do with …
It feels silly with this coloring of TikTok as the evil when meta, Google and a dozen other American companies are doing the same, just less successfully because they let advertisers and corporate interests buy priority in the algorithm which literally just boils down to “you likely like the same stuff as people who like the same stuff as you”.
You really can't tell the difference between Americans doing it and a foreign nation doing it?
Of course we can. But the hypocrisy shows how the government doesn't actually care about the health of citizens or society. If they did, they would start with regulations on algorithmic feeds as a first principal, then ban companies that don't comply.
And that could include writing the regulations in such a way that ByteDance couldn't possibly comply, because of their ties to China. At least we would clean up our own home too in the process.
To rephrase my question: can you really not tell the difference to democratic health between Americans doing it and foreign adversaries doing it?
For the most part I don't think there is a difference. It seems like once all the common factors of divisiveness and brainrot are removed, the main difference between TikTok and the others is that it would be harder for certain powers in the US government to corral TikTok into toeing the line on State Department foreign policy goals than western companies. Considering the largely homogenous, biased western media coverage of e.g. the lead up to the 2nd Iraq War, Patriot Act, US-Israel policy that has shaped American viewpoints, I don't think it is obvious why having a major non-aligned media source is a net negative.
There's no difference between the people who have to live under the regime they're changing and the people who seek its destruction?
I can't take that argument seriously, sorry.
To rephrase my response: do you think this action will meaningfully improve democratic health?
Just for the record. Is Russia a foreign adversary of the USA as-of today?
to me, america is a foreign nation. so no, I do not see any great difference, and yet I'm caught up in this censorship of the internet.
America IS a foreign nation doing it.
It's not like the American companies have their users best interest at heart either! They're literally bound by law to prioritize their shareholders interests.
Well you should be far more wary of what your government will do with such data than a foreign one continents away but i don't think that's the difference you were looing for.
Hard disagree: your own government at least has the incentive to make the country better (or at least appear so) to seek reelection. A foreign adversarial government has the incentive to limit the growth and power of the other country, in so far as it affects their own country.
Should you care about what your own government does with your data? Absolutely, 100%, no doubt, big ticket issue, fly the banners as visibly as possible. But more than an adversary? Not even close.
> your own government at least has the incentive to make the country better (or at least appear so) to seek reelection. A foreign adversarial government has the incentive to limit the growth and power of the other country, in so far as it affects their own country.
"Adversary" is assuming your conclusion. My own government has plenty of incentives to attack my business (I've got plenty of competitors who would support them in doing so), far more so than the government of China.
one can make laws that affect my life. The other ... can maybe inspire me to dance? Or pray to the CPP I guess?
I agree. I'm not saying TikTok is much different than others. I'm saying when we see TikTok banned we shouldn't feel like "Oh no, not that!", we should feel like "Well, it's a start, but let's do more in that direction."
"gross sort of psychological pollution"
How do you define this? That's the problem. We should define it somehow, but instead we have a law written specifically for TikTok, making demands because we said so. A proper law is a law for everyone. A law for one company is foolish, wrong, and un-American. Its replacement was already gaining traction before the ban even hit. Without a proper law this is just a hydra waiting to sprout more heads.
> It feels silly with this coloring of TikTok as the evil when meta, Google and a dozen other American companies are doing the same
Ban them all...
You're arguing crack should be legal because cigarettes are
The odds [edit: ^W^W^W^Wchances] are just lower that Google and Meta would rig the algorithm to subtly color peoples opinion in favor of China and Russia.
If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it?
Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction.
TikTok has all the data it needs to work with the minds of people and also all the ability. And China has the motiviation..
Of course Google and Meta might promote other goals in their algorithms, but the chances of a leak of that happening is definitely higher in current American companies
> the odds are just lower
well, this is awkward..
“Intentionally trying to destabilize the country and trying to sell you things are literally identical issues.”
As if America needs foreign influence to destabilize...
I'd sooner blame viciously profiteering corporations and blatant disregard for democratic values among a significant fraction of American politicians.
>It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue.
The catalyst for the ban was Israel/Palestine. You must consider this - TikTok did not adequately censor pro-Palestine content. This was confirmed as a major problem for Israel by the CEO of the ADL.
When an app gets banned because it is not inline with the US military industrial complex you must consider the spirit of free speech laws.
>the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose
What material effects are those?
There is by now "free speech" being published for every single combination of personal interests, demographic, and personal opinion and personality traits.
If you wanted to push, say, white supremacy, to a trans mountain bike riding sci fi fan -- I am sure the content that will do that job is out there. Not with 100% certainty but enough to control a population. The question about controlling the population is only about picking the right reels to show to whom in what order.
If you control the algorithmic firehose and control who sees what, you basically control the minds of the population.
Not by explicit propaganda. Only by nudging and bumping content.
People can make conscious decisions to not want their worldview defined by traditional sources, whether it is Fox News or The Daily Show or whatever. But with TikTok everyone gets something different and who knows how it is geared or rigged.
As a left-ish person, TikTok is genuinely the only place I feel safe from braindead hate. EVERY OTHER platform I've interacted with has a fuckton of hate.
I'm sure it exists in TikTok too, but at least the algorithm keeps those freaks far away from me.
Can you establish somehow how a TikTok ban would help this situation?
A diminished attention span. Assuming that's still considered a harmful effect.
> It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as well
Or... regulated? I'd be all for privacy regulations and data handling regulations that would affect the algorithms of everyone but as long as the law is targeting TikTok only and not also FB, Insta, Twitter, etc, the idea that this ban is about "the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose" is a total red herring.
I'm not saying the ban is about that, but it does accomplish something in that direction, and we need more bans that are explicitly about that.
Ultimately though I don't think regulations about privacy and data handling are sufficient. To go just one level deeper, a large proportion of the data in question should not even be collected, regardless of how it's handled or who it's shared with. But many of the problems are even deeper, and have to do with things like how big companies are allowed to get and how much venture capital is allowed to destroy things that work by funding things that don't.
It's not about the algorithmic feed, it's about allowing your #1 adversarial state to have control over that algorithms parameters. They don't let Twitter, Google, or Meta operate in China.
Where's the smoking gun for these privacy issues? Why hasn't the FBI or anyone else investigated and discovered these issues, if they exist?
The US has very little privacy law.
This isn't about privacy; it's about who gets to promote what ideas to Americans. Do you think that a post about Tienanmen Square, about Uyghur persecution, or about Taiwanese independence, will get nearly as far on a Chinese controlled media platform?
They don't. https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...
Because the Chinese Communist Part is not stupid enough to just exploit their leverage over sovereign nations for shits and giggles. You don't need a smoking gun to understand how corporations in China operate. They operate with the blessing of the CCP, and regardless of whether they've ever done anything, the scale of what they could do if they wanted to would be some spectacular lessons in modern propaganda.
This is simply more of the same fearmongering we’ve heard before. Not an answer to their question.
The fear is justified though. We fix security holes because they are security holes, not because they have been exploited before.
Seconding this: you don't try and fix things after the damage has been done, you try and anticipate _where_ and _when_ the damage could be done. In this case, giving a foreign _adversarial_ (<- emphasis) government significant leverage over citizen sentiment is a massive security hole.
To me it's more like a newsstand selling only aliens magazines, bigfoot books and sexy (but not yet porn) magazines.
Every magazin with a title "bigfoot found!" reveals another "mermaids discovered" magazine, and below that a "tony blair is a reptilian, proof inside", and if people want to stay there and consume all the magazines, why not? In the end, there's more quality content there, than on discovery channels (ancient aliens, mermaids, etc.)
not even joking:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11274284/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1643266/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1816585/
...
One way the free speech angle might make sense is that TikTok (and other foreign-run social media) normally aren’t as susceptible to domestic pressure to throttle, shadowban, etc certain types of content (like airing of some politician’s dirty laundry).
I could absolutely see that being the case. Trump and the Republican Party now have a solid thumb on US-based social media via Musk/Zuck, which makes lack of control of foreign social media more of a pressuring issue than it had been before. It looks bad if the popular discourse taking place on uncontrolled media differs wildly from that on its controlled counterparts.
> TikTok (and other foreign-run social media) normally aren’t as susceptible to domestic pressure
TikTok has been uniquely subject to political pressure over the last half decade. They didn’t buddy up with Larry Ellison because Oracle has the best servers.
At least for the time being, traditional media outlets don't seem to have a problem airing US politicians' dirty laundry.
You talk about censorship but if things are happening it will be a lot more subtle than that; more about what you show than what you hide. Peoples opinions are already shifted a lot by what reels they watch. By controlling what people see you control what people think; at least many enough.
Censorship is outdated. With the amount of data and reach TikTok has they have something more akin to mind control.
Principle being the same as traditional politisized media, but the effectiveness of TikTok is just on another level. You see "people like you" sharing what they honestly believe for good reasons. Only thing TikTok did was decide to show that clip, and not the other clip of a person like you saying the opposite thing, also hearthfeltly and for good reasons...
The whole way Tiktok went black and the number of times it has mentioned President Trump in a positive note - to me - reinforces the idea that Tiktok is just a propaganda tool (in this case, for Trump). I would not be surprised if the whole act of going dark last night was because Trump told them that's how it needed to go so he could be a hero by Monday.
The way most of our biggest companies and wealthiest are just lining up to do Trump's bidding is what I would expect from unstable 3rd world countries but never from the US (I know cause I came from one).
By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda? I sometimes cannot believe it's those who so loudly cry about threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process. Rather than tackle the narratives substantively, they'd argue about who gets to manipulate the mob. It's just wild to me. If that's your view of the electorate, then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power. Honestly, maybe there's some truth to that, but it sure flies in the face of the sanctity of voting and "democracy."
> voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda
Who is even saying this is not true? The United States government is more aware than maybe anyone else that influencing human opinion and action is a statistical problem once you have enough scale.
Just look at the history of the USIA [1] and its successor the USICA.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Information_Agen...
And today's Bureau of Global Public Affairs[1]. Which "engages media to shape the global narrative on American foreign policy and values [and] communicates U.S. foreign policy objectives to the American public." Of course, it's difficult to pierce the veil and determine exactly how they go about doing this. Narratives are propaganda.
https://www.state.gov/about-us-bureau-of-global-public-affai...
I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
Otherwise, if democracy is good and votes should matter and at the same time voters are a mob subject to manipulation... democracy is what? A system of government by whoever can do better propaganda? Why would that be good for anyone except those who do propaganda?
So yeah, I think many people are claiming that is not true.
One question I would ask if people are just a mob, who is actually pushing the buttons? Owners of media, political leaders, are also humans, no? They have the same weaknesses, at least in principle.
If you accept some people are different (those who command and control propaganda) then we must conclude that not all people are vulnerable to it, so maybe it's a spectrum. But still democracy sounds like a bad idea, as a majority are probably on the low end of the spectrum, and the majority rules.
> I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
Both are true. We are individual agents and a mob.
Democracy, as we all know, is the worst political system except for all the others. At scale people on average behave about average and make decisions perfectly aligned with their systemic incentives and available information.
You (and me) are not immune to propaganda.
Strong recommend watching/readingupon Manufacturing Consent and Chomsky’s life work in general.
> Democracy, as we all know, is the worst political system except for all the others.
Honestly it would be about time we stop repeating this Churchill's quote as if it's one of the ten commandments. The man wasn't certainly a god and humans are often mistaken.
The actual meaning of democracy is the "power of the people". Nowhere that implies a western-like electoral system.
I'd argue in your average western democracy the people have very little power, with lots of symbolic processes to reinforce the illusion.
> The actual meaning of democracy is the "power of the people". Nowhere that implies a western-like electoral system.
Correct. “we” used to do it simply by killing the leaders that were disliked. Elections are a bit friendlier than that :)
You might enjoy this Zizek video on the border between the west and the balkans: https://youtu.be/bwDrHqNZ9lo . I think he captures the sentiment well.
> I'd argue in your average western democracy the people have very little power, with lots of symbolic processes to reinforce the illusion.
This was Chomsky’s whole point in Manufacturing Consent.
I think then we can agree that if the people hold very little power, what we have today in the west is definitely not democracy.
A study[0] came to the conclusion that the US is in fact closer to an oligarchy, and I'd extend that to most other so-called democratic countries. The interests of a few always trump the interests of the many.
In this context, that Churchill's quote seems out of place and mostly serves the purpose of shutting down the discussion.
And thanks, I very much enjoy that Zizek video.
- [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
> what we have today in the west is definitely not democracy
On the metric of "people power", do you think people in the east have it any better?
It depends.
In Russia? Worse in terms of popular participation in the decisional process, but it still works because the majority of people believe (rightly or not) that their interests are protected by Putin. So for all they care, as long as Putin does his job right, it is for all purposes a democracy in its true meaning. Much unlike us, where most of the electorate feels that governments work against their interests and the quality of life stagnates or worsens, life conditions in Russia have improved greatly since the fall of the USSR.
In China? I'd say they have it better than us. Anyone can join the CPC/government and work their way up the decisional apparatus based on an actually meritocratic process, anyone can participate in administrative decisions through consultations. It's what they call "whole-process people's democracy". Do some research on this if you haven't, you'll find out that Chinese people are much more involved in the decisional process at all its stages than we are.
I'll tell you the truth, I sincerely believe that the only true marker of democracy is for the conditions of the people to keep improving constantly, even for the poorest. That is the realization of the power of the people, the only way in which their interests are actively pursued.
Everything else is just fluff that we added on top to make the term better fit us and exclude our adversaries. Democracy can be direct, representative, authoritarian, it doesn't matter so much to me as long as it makes our lives better.
> an actually meritocratic process
I find this hard to believe. Isn't Western society/democracy ostensibly setup to allow meritocratic advancement as well? Yet I think it's fairly well-established at this point it very much does not work that way in reality. So what is it about Chinese government/society that makes them impervious to the same factors that make meritocratic systems so difficult in the West? Greed, nepotism, and hunger for power to name but a few.
Well for one corruption is punished heavily in China, even with death penalty. Just recently an official has been executed for a $412 million corruption case. So of course there's going to be corruption and greed like anywhere else, the difference is how the system reacts to it. In comparison I believe the hardest bribery sentence in the USA is 13 years of imprisonment.
Another interesting thing is that for their poverty alleviation project, when an official is assigned to a province they have specific targets to achieve. As long as they don't achieve the targets, the official can't be promoted or transferred[0]. Meaning if they ever want to get a better job or earn more they have to actually reduce poverty.
- [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuaJGPZCBYU
I have a hard time taking Chomsky seriously after he felt his need to make his uninformed opinions on Russia's aggression and AI public.
Was Chomsky ever an expert? Maybe, I wouldn't know because I haven't read what he built his legacy upon. But that he wrote so poorly on two topics he has little experience with does him no favors.
>Was Chomsky ever an expert?
Chomsky is a Linguistics Professor, he has no formal training in media or political theory. So yes, he is not an expert, and funnily enough he's the kind of leftist who straight up admits he is biased and selectively picks facts to support this arguments.
> Was Chomsky ever an expert? Maybe, I wouldn't know because I haven't read what he built his legacy upon.
My entire life anything I hear from him has been misinformed and anything I hear about him is "Chomsky disproven". I have to imagine whatever he was known for happened before I was born - which I've never been exposed to. Granted I've never sought it out either.
To me he feels like an academic Kardashian: Famous for being famous, and it's not really clear how it started.
I think he just went a little loopy with old age
> I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
I think that is a pretty hardline interpretation, but there's another way of thinking about it:
democracy has worked pretty well up to now and there hasn't been a better replacement.
That doesn't mean it will continue being a good solution as technology and society change.
Democracy is not a new concept, just current implementation is different. Democracy, in some form, dates back over 2500 years to ancient Athens (circa 5th century BCE). Around 1500 years ago (~500 CE), formal democracy as it existed in Athens had largely faded, particularly with the decline of the Roman Republic (509 BCE – 27 BCE), which had elements of representative governance. It struggled with corruption, inequality and power struggles, so all the problems that are getting stronger with time in our democratic systems. The idea of democracy reemerged during the Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries) and became formalized in modern political systems - United States (1776) and revolutionary France. We live in cycles, democracy probably will fade again, and again it will be considered anarchic and unstable until the cycle repeats itself.
> That doesn't mean it will continue being a good solution as technology and society change.
Yea neo-feudalism seems to be all the rage these days.
Democracy is not a given, people with power want more power and less checks - historically that’s what things converged to typically.
Not sure about what's really "typical", nor which name would best describe what direction the USA (let alone anyone else) is even heading in.
The ancient Greeks had ideas about the κύκλος (cycles) of government: Plato's cycle went [aristocracy > timocracy oligarchy > democracy > tyranny]; Polybius' cycle was [ochlocracy -> monarchy -> tyranny -> aristocracy -> oligarchy -> democracy -> ochlocracy] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory
> I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.
Disagree. Democracy can basically be mob rule and still be “good” if mob rule is better than alternatives like “divine right of kings,” “rule by military despot” and so on.
I think Democracy is critically important. However, the main reason I believe this is because Democracy allows for the transfer of power without violence. That's THE value prop.
You are so close to breaking through..
> Otherwise, if democracy is good and votes should matter and at the same time voters are a mob subject to manipulation... democracy is what? A system of government by whoever can do better propaganda? Why would that be good for anyone except those who do propaganda?
Yes. And you are already waking up to that in your next question.
> One question I would ask if people are just a mob, who is actually pushing the buttons? Owners of media, political leaders, are also humans, no? They have the same weaknesses, at least in principle.
> If you accept some people are different (those who command and control propaganda) then we must conclude that not all people are vulnerable to it
Why would those who do propaganda not be susceptible to disinformation, or the Dunning-Kruger or Gell-mann Amnesia effects? Every person is susceptible to disinformation. The difference is that those in power can disseminate disinformation at scale.
> so maybe it's a spectrum. But still democracy sounds like a bad idea, as a majority are probably on the low end of the spectrum, and the majority rules.
Hence "tyranny of democracy". Many places in the First world are now experiencing this, where 'green' programs and and social progress are being dismantled en masse because of a slight majority. Worst of it is, long term these decisions will carry a massive financial burden. The LA fires with $250 billion+ in damages are a herald of that.
There are hundreds of HN users commenting here as if their opinions have meaning and value.
Which would be in question if they could all be under various states of “influence”…
At the very least the median credibility would be roughly zero.
Just because you share an opinion does not mean that opinion has not been shaped, directed or influenced.
"The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Also HN absolutely has an Overton window. It has an entire system to enforce it (the voting and points system).
Did you reply to the correct comment?
You don’t need to convince me that is a possibility.
You pose this as a mathematical question but stop far short of it's full extent
Chase Hughes:
"Manipulation Playbook: The 20 Indicators of Reality Control"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3AN2wY4qAM
Yes. This is well known since Antiquity when the Athenian Democracy voted to condemn Plato to death.
Read more about the period and you will see that the Democratic cities of yore, Athens first and foremost, often swinged towards taking bad decisions, and that a whole corporation of "sophists" manipulated public opinion without shame (read e.g. Gorgias).
The great progress that enabled the restoration, extention and stabilisation of Democracy in the modern era has been indirect, representative democracy and base, written bill of rights/constitutions that aren't asily modified, requiring majorities of 2/3rds or more and constraint what can be voted on.
> ...when the Athenian Democracy voted to condemn Plato to death.
That was Socrates, not Plato.
Socrates was allowed to choose his own punishment too, so he wasn't exactly condemned to death right away. He also had the opportunity to escape prison. He chose not to.
Sorry for the Socrates/Plato mix-up.
TikTok has the opportunity to divest. They chose not to.
Qhat you doesn't make much sense, starting with your claim Plato was sentenced to death by Athenian democracy, which there is no evidence of that I know of.
Because I mixed them up, as Plato is the one who wrote down Socrates' teachings and his story...
There are worse mixups ... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/aug/19/plutos-repub...
The one condemned to death was Socrates. Kind of weird for that to be the detail you get wrong…
Yeah, yeah, sorry.
I agree with everything you're saying, but I also can't fully square up that the equivalent American apps aren't allowed in China. This is about freedom of speech on app built by a country that has no freedom of speech. I realize this point is orthogonal, but is still an important element of the decision.
> also can't fully square up that the equivalent American apps aren't allowed in China
It's a chance to showcase how we're "more free" or literally just as restrictive
At its core free speech is about the freedom from government influence and the complaint is about government influence.
It’s one thing to allow the CCP to say whatever it wants, it’s something else to allow them the ability to manipulate of what other people can say. Allowing such a highly restricted platform seems like it hurts free speech more than it helps.
> https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/24/shadowbanning-...
Maybe you disagree with the viewpoint or message, but it seems awfully paternal for such wide spread censorship.
This is why we can't trust only the US to provide us our social media and even if we don't like who is offering it.
TikTok also has an enormous shadowbanning problem so your complaint here is moot.
>Allowing such a highly restricted platform
Tiktok was and still is banned in China by the way.
Yea it’s banned in India, Afghanistan, China and a few others. It’s kind of an odd list, including democracies and autocratic governments.
It's not a highly restricted platform at all, there were literally videos of translated Hitler speeches trending with hundreds of thousands of likes, even though the CCP absolutely hates western nationalism.
This is the platform that led to the proliferation of newspeak terms like "unalive" to circumvent content restrictions. Such speech restrictions were never a thing on FB, IG, X, or YT, yet this form of self-censorship has spread to those platforms anyway, because TikTok users have become so used to it.
While there aren't direct speech restrictions in platforms like YouTube, you're leaving out the crucial detail that mentioning words like "suicide" gets your video demonetized, which directly causes similar self-censorship.
YouTube pays creators based on advertising deals making some topics far more valuable, while other topics have become very sensitive to advertisers. That’s related, but different from censorship.
Creators are still free to use YouTube as a platform to discuss sensitive topics with a very large audience without paying per viewer, unlike say advertising or standing at a street corner talking to passersby. As such YouTube is still supporting the discussion and distribution of said content.
Sure! Yet creators choose to censor themselves in similar ways to keep ad revenue coming in.
Restrictions become more effective when they are less obvious.
When as has been demonstrated their algorithm ignores the number of upvotes in favor of massively promoting viewpoints it cares about, that’s also vast suppression of opposing viewpoints but in a way o get creators to quietly comply rather than try and push the boundaries.
China probably doesn't care about Hitler. How about Tiananmen Square? Do you see a lot of trending coverage on Hong Kong protests?
Here is a list on what restrictions Chinese citizens live with
- Workers in state sectors can be banned from traveling out of China https://www.scmp.com/news/article/3265503/chinas-expanding-t.... Also, non 1st tier city citizens can have a hard time getting passports, essentially a ban of travelling
- banned from using trains or airline if they are on the social credit score ban
- banned from moving money out of China for more than $50k a year
- banned from accessing foreign websites. VPN is technically illegal, and using it can get you into trouble
- banned from accessing porn
- banned from using a long list of restricted words on social media, from Winnie the Pooh, to "support Xinjiang people"
- banned from using TikTok
- banned from protesting against lost wages from state enterprises
- banned from group protesting
the list goes on and on and on
Ok, that’s their country what does it have to do with us? Also why do we do this:
> https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/24/shadowbanning-...
This is why it’s good to have a social media company free of US control.
Yes it's great to have chinese companies on american soil that prevent people from saying "taiwan number one" in games like marvel rivals.
So much freedom!!!!
Do you hear yourself? Are you insane?
> Ok, that’s their country what does it have to do with us?
I mean, nothing really. You could say the same about Israel and Palestine, or Saudi Arabia and Iran, or China and Hong Kong. Human rights abuses are perfectly acceptable in today's society, as long as they're out of sight and out of mind. He who controls visibility into human suffering controls the way people perceive his control. Hasbara, in Israeli vernacular.
> Also why do we do this:
Because Zionist lobbying exerts disproportionate control over both the US tech industry and the legislative apparatus regulating it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
You're not going to drive a wedge between people by repeating the Israel stance, though. If you tried to expose China's same abuses for working slave labor to death or suicide, you'd be suppressed in exactly the same way America suppresses your anti-Israel content. From a national security perspective, TikTok's existence is about whether another country can impose their own double-standard on top of America's own populist opinion. Today it's the war in Gaza, but tomorrow it will be about suppressing democracy in Taiwan for the "betterment of global peace" et. al. You can't deny China's plans to use TikTok for war with a straight face - by many accounts it's already started.
The US does not need to showcase anything, they are magnitudes more free in speech than mainland China. To suggest otherwise is strange.
With or without Tiktok, the USA is nowhere near as restrictive as the CCP. The users who tried RedNote discovered that very quickly.
People trying to act like this Chinese controlled vehicle supports free speech is so weird to me. They're not "censoring" anything - they're using it as a straight unimpeded funnel to subvert the west.
> they're using it as a straight unimpeded funnel to subvert the west.
And Fox News is also a foreign-owned straight unimpeded funnel used to subvert democracy, which sows division and conflict in our society.
It's done orders of magnitude more harm to it than TikTok ever has.
When are we banning it?
Rupert Murdoch got US citizenship because of foreign ownership rules. From his wiki page:
> On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.
I am pretty sure a Chinese-American owner would be considered Chinese for the conversation about foreign control over TikTok.
China doesn’t allow for or recognize dual citizenship, so it doesn’t matter unless they also gave up their Chinese citizenship (rumor has it the CPC relaxed this rule for a certain snowboarder). But ya, that Murdoch is also Australian is probably benign.
Nothing about Murdoch's politics is benign. They've done more damage to democracy worldwide, but particularly in the US, than China ever will.
Speaking of hostile foreigners, a prominent South African was just giving the crowd a few Nazi salutes at the inauguration. Is that also benign? At what exact point do we start observing that the enemies to democracy are inside the house?
Ok, Murdoch’s Australian citizenship would be seen as benign, unless you are going to tell me that Australians are as dangerous as Murdoch in general?
They are about as dangerous as Chinese Americans, which is to say, not at all.
Particular people are problematic. But you can only judge that by actions, not by their country of birth.
Which is what makes this foreign manipulation rhetoric and ban rubbish. It refuses to identify what the bad actions it's trying to protect us from are, it's just a lazy, prejudiced rubric that gives the most egregious ones a free pass, because they have the right color stripes on their pin.
I already mentioned that dual citizenship isn’t possible for Chinese. There is no person over 18 that holds Chinese and American citizenship, but you keep somehow ignoring that. Any Chinese can get American citizenship, get rid of Chinese citizenship, and buy a tv station in the states, the process is straightforward, and they won’t deny you because your ethnicity is Han or Hui or whatever.
I doubt China's unwillingness to recognize dual citizenship would be the problem.
What defence remains against an autocratic government who will use that very freedom as an attack vector for their nefarious goals.
The United States used to claim we had a laissez-faire market. We don't claim that anymore.
In founding of the United States lies tariff stories. The United States does not reject government and nations as entities at all. It just asserts rights for its citizens which doesn't include everyone on the planet.
Or it’s a chance to be “fair”
If stooping down to their level is the move we make, then we should immediately stop acting as if we are more “free” or democratic than China. You can’t have it both ways.
You realize it was a representative-democratic process chose to enact TikTok ban, so your statement is literally false on that dimension alone.
you're implying that these elections are on equal grounds with truthful candidates. I think that's a small part why America has become decreaingly distrustgul of politicians but still vote. Many people on both sides of the aisle have admitted 2024 felt like choosing the least bad candidate.
The root cause of this sort of comment is people often equate the outcome of democracy == good or desirable to them or even the majority, which is not necessarily the case. People can whine about the outcome of a democratic process all they want, which even if done perfectly could be a compromise that is distasteful to all parties but still democratic.
You'd normally be right. But the US did just have the richest man in the world setup a lottery to buy votes, and walked it back to "oh it was rigged anyway" when called out on it. Any lawsuits is pennies compared to the results.
It was subtle before with stuff like Gerrymandering that the layman would never notice. But it's so blatant now that the democratic process is compromised.
When he got away with calling the Thai diver "pedo guy" using the "lol jk" defense then he knew he could get away with anything.
> you're implying that these elections are on equal grounds with truthful candidates
Where exactly is the commenter implying this?
No political process on Earth, democratic or otherwise, has ever met this standard.
But is it the Will of the People?
Yes. I also realize that a democratic system allows for making decisions that do not align with such a system, and can in fact destroy such a system from within.
Is this not what we have all been saying about Trump? Or are you saying that is OK because his moves have been made within the framework of a democratic system?
How is "everybody has freedoms except the governments of adversarial foreign countries" not more free than "nobody has freedoms"?
You could reasonably argue that, but only for now. The precedent set here opens a can of worms that we should aim to close sooner rather than later.
But the mechanism we are using is one and the same - this is essentially the launch of a “Great Firewall of America”, just enforced a bit differently.
Is allowing them to impose the same kind of restrictions in their US app as they do for their own citizens good for free speech?
> then we should immediately stop acting as if we are more “free” or democratic than China.
This is a histrionic response. America can still be more free and democratic than China while also enforcing a ban on their businesses.
Blanket censorship of this kind is not the hallmark of a healthy democracy.
This ban is the definition of a slippery slope - this ban may be in your interests, but eventually one will not. What then?
This isn't blanket censorship, period. Every single user that currently voices their stance, values or opinions can continue to do the exact same thing on any other platform they choose. Just not TikTok, because they are a business owned by an adversarial government that deliberately uses their soapbox to manipulate democratic audiences: https://kyivinsider.com/russia-and-china-just-rigged-romania...
Also don't forget - TikTok has remediation options where they continue to operate in America as an American business instead. They are the ones that refused that and chose censorship. America just forced the choice between eating the cake and having it.
Edit: Correct, it is not. The part that is censorship on China's behalf is the enforcement of the Great Firewall and enaction of laws prohibiting citizens from owning or consuming foreign news or entertainment. China's ban on foreign apps could just as well be explained by a desire for better domestic software markets - the same cannot be said for the Firewall.
Edit 2: Yes, secession would settle this. China has proven that they cannot be trusted to disseminate information through a state-owned apparatus. If the owner continues to be a government entity, then continuing to let them do "business" is like letting the Trojans wheel in their horse so the citizens can marvel at it.
By the same token, the Chinese ban on US apps is not censorship, correct?
So if you accept to cede control we will leave you alone. Blackmail, in other words, exactly like China does it.
Feel free to record a 30s video on the topic of Tiananmen Square and post it on X, Facebook and Chinese TikTok. Report back with results in 24h. In the conclusions section, point out the difference between censorship and moderation.
How about you record a 30s clip of atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza and watch how quickly it will be “moderated” into oblivion.
Here's a graphic one (it has a sensitive content warning):
https://www.instagram.com/ajplus/reel/C0SHLYlSynD/
Some others that aren't graphic:
https://www.instagram.com/middleeasteye/reel/C6RA3X0v1-y/
https://www.instagram.com/middleeastmonitor/reel/C4qXD7nvCLV...
https://www.instagram.com/katiecouric/p/CyW65klxgjA/
I'm not very familiar with Instagram, you'll have to tell me if those posts have been moderated to oblivion.
I will try to reiterate my initial point since people keep losing track: banning TikTok is a slippery slope that moves us in the direction of China’s GFW, and we can longer claim a moral highground once we do.
As far as this ban goes, there is in fact a less emphasized angle that explains the strong bipartisan support for this ban (related to Gaza): https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...
You seem to be unable to reconcile that China can use a platform with some positive aspects for ill. I abhor Israel's actions and the role of their extremist sects in rejecting international oversight. But I also abhor China for using prisoners, slaves and North Korean indentures to harvest Xinxiang cotton. These topics won't be given a fair shake on TikTok because China's focus is on which destabilizes America fastest, not which is the most popular among bleeding-heart liberals. Of course they selectively provide moderation support for offensive topics that makes America look bad - do the same thing for China or Bytedance and the double standard rears it's ugly head. It was never about free speech, just creating a cycle of dependency on China for news and opinions.
On this basis alone, American consumer protections should have banned TikTok from the start. There is no tangible outcome where state-owned social media is given a holistic directive, especially not when China is the owner. I pity you for not keeping up with modern geopolitical tensions, but this is just the beginning of the "censorship" if you're reliant on China to voice your opinion. They had their chance to demonstrate detente, but they chose to fight instead.
I understand the nuances just fine. Nowhere have I said that China is innocent here. Does this ban alone make the US as authoritarian as China? Of course not.
But I also understand that an outright ban of a social media platform is an authoritarian practice, and a bad sign for the future of this country. It is an easy way out, but at the cost of introducing a mechanism by which more censorship can take place.
To me, this ban indicates that the US is willing to ban any platform that does not cave into its demands for content “moderation” (if you will) - just like China has been doing for a while now.
We are not “better” than them anymore, and the sooner we realize this, the better of a chance we have of reversing this process.
We are in fact better than them just as we're better than any UAE royalty.
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Not at all. I know that Chinese censorship exists. You - or others, lost track since multiple people are involved here - are the one who’s trying to argue that US censorship does not exist, even in light of this TikTok ban.
Also, you probably don’t realize this, but censorship and moderation are many times two sides of the same coin - depending on the incentives and factors at play.
Censorship is very strictly defined as government’s doing. If this isn’t your definition, we aren’t even talking about the same things. I gave you a very concrete example with potentially serious consequences if you’re a Chinese national posting in China vs somebody getting deprioritized on one platform in yours.
This is an incredible point. Instead of using this crisis to pressure Beijing to crack open the China market to US companies or even just get some concessions, Trump just folded to look like a champ.
Ad-funded social media platforms make money by measurably altering people's opinions and behavior. It's literally their only job—everything else is in service to that goal.
Given that this is what they do day in and day out and that the successful ones are by all metrics very good at it, it seems totally reasonable to assume that one could trivially be turned from manipulating people into buying stuff to manipulating people to voting a certain way or holding certain opinions.
One person one vote is the guiding principle of democracy and, yes, it assumes that no person is able to actively hijack someone else's vote for their own gain. We have systems in place to prevent voter fraud, and I think that we should have systems in place to prevent systematic individual targeting of individuals for algorithmic manipulation as well.
What we don't need is a law that specifically targets foreign companies doing it. Our homegrown manipulators are just as dangerous in their own ways.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
I disagree with this interpretation. It's creating a sort of false dichotomy -- voters can still be individual agents AND ALSO they can be manipulated by propaganda. And the key is that propaganda doesn't have to be wildly successful in order to impact a democratic process. It just has to convince enough people to sway an election. That is, and always has been, one of the trade-offs of democracy. That's why we say "democracy needs an informed electorate to survive" -- because an informed individual is less likely to be easily manipulated.
If I were the CCP this is perhaps the cleverest talking point I could have possibly come up with, propping up TikTok while simultaneously condemning democracy.
But to substantively respond: NO. This is exceptionally naive. Democracy assumes shared fates and aligned incentives among (both voting and communicating) participants. A foreign adversary mainlining their interests into half the population of the US absolutely violates this assumption.
The advantage of democracy is that the propaganda game gets played every few years and current elites can lose. Under a system of freedom of speech, there is very little stopping a decently (but not massively) funded rag-tag group of competent individuals from running a more efficient propaganda campaign than the powers-that-be (think of Dominic Cummings' Leave campaign in the UK for the perfect example).
This is the best system we have found to establish the impermanence of the elite class. Because this is the real beauty of what we in the west call democracy: not the absence of an elite class, for there is no such system, but it's impermanence.
And while that is all well and good within a country, the argument is that it would be unwise to allow a foreign hostile power a seat at our propaganda game. Especially one which does not reciprocate this permission.
This is a thoughtful reply. But, if it's just propaganda games played by the elites, I suppose another way to ensure informed outcomes might be literacy tests. Or property ownership.
I guess more than anything I'm just surprised that it's the "threat to democracy" crowd that would be taking such a cynical view of democracy. They're admitting that Trump's propaganda was just better than theirs. Which is, in some ways, hilarious.
> a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
This idea goes back to the founding of the nation. It's the very reason we have an electoral college.
And the reason we didn't have universal suffrage.
Bingo. I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. If we truly trust in that, the source of the influence - foreign or domestic - shouldn’t matter. People who advocate for censoring foreign sources of influence are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically.
> Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. If we truly trust in that, the source of the influence - foreign or domestic - shouldn’t matter.
Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal? You have the draw the line somewhere.
> are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically.
A democracy that is NOT a direct democracy is already admitting this. This is exactly the reason we have proxies in a representative democracy.
You got it, it's about playing by the rules. A robust culture of propriety is one line of defense against the bad times, and we're losing it.
> Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal?
Because those things are not just speech - they're implicit or explicit physical threats.
America runs most of the world's social media platforms and expects other countries to be happy with that, but then panics the moment another country dares to offer them the same thing? I don't know which scenario is worse, the one where this is just an excuse for an America First trade war or the one where the US genuinely believes that controlling a social platform means you control the countries that use it.
> A democracy that is NOT a direct democracy is already admitting this. This is exactly the reason we have proxies in a representative democracy.
I think it’s less about admitting this and more about the impracticality of having citizens vote on issues daily.
> implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically
I think that is the case though. I will come off as arrogant and my lack of vocabulary might make it sound less elaborate, but a huge chunk of the population is not able or willing to so. This is why every time a country is facing a crysis, the populist politicians gain in popularity. People are already stressed out by their jobs, paying the bills, rising cost of living, so who wants to spend time and effort to research the causes of this, evaluate which proposed solution seems most realistic, what the tradeoffs are, compared to the dude who tells them that the problem is very simple and that he has the solution that is equally simple. It's the immigrants stealing the jobs, or the heat pumps forced upon them, or solar cells.
And it doesn't even need foreign social media to come to that.
> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions.
You should invest a minute thinking about the problem. Pay attention to your own opinion: people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. Focus on that. Now, consider that propaganda feeds false and deceiving information to the public. In some cases, the decision-maker is only exposed to propaganda. Even if that decision-maker is the most rational of actors, what kind of decisions can he do if they are only exposed to false and deceiving information?
There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?
>There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?
Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
> Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
The "common carrier" status of services which hold editorial control over the content that's pushed and promoted is highly dubious.
maybe common carrier is not quite right but social media has no proof of identity. hence I cannot sue motorest for libel if you send a nasty personal-attack reply to this :)
This is an interesting thought experiment, but how is it relevant in practice? In free-speech countries, people are not exposed to just a single source of information. That simply doesn't align with reality. It's akin to criticizing capitalism by imagining a scenario where a single company monopolizes everything.
Truth is subjective.
Truth is absolutely _not_ subjective.. a person is either alive or dead, the earth is either flat or not flat, e = mc2 is either true or false, .. I could go on.
Reminds me of a quote from 1984: "In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_%2B_2_%3D_5
> Truth is subjective.
Any belief supported by lies and falsehoods cannot be described as truth. It's something else.
opinion is subjective, truth means (can’t believe I have to write this) that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. and it is not objective unless you live in a fantasy world half+ of this country lives in
Truth is absolutely _not_ subjective.. a person is either alive or dead, the earth is either flat or not flat, e = mc2 is either true or false, .. I could go on,
I can agree with you on this point but when someone is standing on the earth they can prove it is flat. Then you zoom out and prove it is not. The flat earth person will just say: "that's not what I meant."
Zoom out to the cosmos and think about the truth available to different observers. This same principle holds across the board. You have to reconcile with each observer, and until you do truth is subjective.
I just have trouble stating that my objective truth is also someone else's objective truth. What if my information is "the Bible." You can split hairs with these people until you die of old age and they can technically be wrong but their truth can work for them.
Just like we have all kinds of wild unintuitive math proofs that are very enlightening once they are communicated to all observers. Newtonian physics are true until they aren't, the same as those Bible "truths."
Given the infinite probabilities of the universe I have trouble declaring a set of objective truths that are immutable and try to give people a pass on what they hold as true. Can anything be known? We settle on some truths that work for us in the little time we have.
If you're so interested in philosophy, you should really study it. This kind of belief should have been beaten out of you in PHIL 101.
> people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions
The problem is that people aren't ideal rational agents. Our collective reasoning tends to be heavily biased by the environment, and that there are actors who abuse this (by injecting ideas that indirectly help their agendas) for their personal gains. And in China's case, they want to undermine freedoms, including freedom of speech.
We can consider ourselves as "rational, critical thinkers" all we want, but we aren't as there are myriads of ways we're gullible in one way or another. Plenty of examples in our history books.
Still, I think that free speech is still more important, as it's the only way for a society to recover. With freedom of speech, an antidote (for a lack of better term) can eventually be found and injected into the public discourse, without it the future looks bleak.
The way I see it, we need to encourage improvement of education on social sciences, human psychology, game theory and so on, encourage critical thinking but forewarn of all possible fallacies, and hope that it will be enough and that the inevitable counter-reaction won't prevail and undermine the effort.
I think there is also a lot to say that your speech is hardly free if you are drowning in tons of bot created content regardless of who is generating that content. I feel there is not to many good compromises that can be made it :*(
Sowing discord is the well-known age-tested strategy. It doesn't remove freedom of speech per se, but it drowns it in the noise.
The very goal of this attack on the freedom of speech is to make people lean towards the easiest and "naturally occurring" pseudo-solution to make those bots shut up. Then abuse the same censorship mechanisms to control the discourse.
Sadly, I don't know how to solve this. Censoring speech is a non-solution. Building web of trusts will inevitably create even stronger information bubbles (making it easier to divide and conquer - we're seeing this happening).
Okay, but why is Chinese influence any worse than that of some Australian billionaire who owns the biggest right-wing media conglomerate that broadcasts an absolute firehouse of damaging, divisive, and self-serving lies?
If TikTok is harmful to democracy, Fox News is more than an order of magnitude worse. A large portion of the electorate watches its insanity like a full-time job.
Most enemies of democracy, when measured by impact are 'domestic' and 'western', not some Chinese boogieman.
My personal opinion? It's not significantly different. Or maybe it is, but, at least, I don't see a need (and a meaningful way) to develop a scale of maliciousness.
Malicious agents have no nationality, race or some single origin. All they share is the mindset and some values, willing to abuse the system for personal gains or flawed misbeliefs (for a lack of better word - beliefs that are known to contradict our collective scientific understanding of the world).
> I don't see a need (and a meaningful way) to develop a scale of maliciousness.
I’m constantly amazed by how easily even smart people will retreat into whataboutism, and this is the most polite way I’ve ever seen to call them on it.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I can see how my poor choice of words possibly led to this interpretation.
I wanted to say that I believe it doesn’t matter who does something, only what they’re doing. So the same standards should be applied uniformly, irregardless of the actors’ identity.
Ideally, by no means entity X doing something we consider negative should absolve or justify entity Y’s negative (similarly or different) actions.
Certainly. I get that, I'm just saying you are remarkably patient to be willing to actually explain this to other people. Maybe you're not familiar with the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Personally I'm inclined to be more blunt and impatient. Whataboutism is intellectually lazy in the best case, in the worst case it means the interlocuter is manipulative or just actually operating at the emotional level of a 5 year old. Good people just don't like bad behaviour.. they won't wait around to find out which team committed the bad behaviour, and they won't refuse to fix 1 evil until another 2nd evil is addressed first, etc. Also relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poisoned_Arrow
> some Australian billionaire
I think you mean Rupert Murdoch. He was born in Australia but naturalized as an American citizen, due to restrictions on foreign control of broadcast media.
If TikTok moved to control by an American citizen born in China, then that would comply with the PAFACA. If the people already controlling TikTok naturalized as American citizens then that would also comply (though that's obviously not going to happen).
Restrictions on foreign control of the highest-reach media are nothing new. The PAFACA simply updates them to reflect new viewing habits. "Foreign" continues to be defined by citizenship, not birthplace.
One is the sworn enemy of the western democratic system, and one depends on it.
Alt-right billionaires don't depend on democracy, all other things being equal, they'd much prefer an oligarchy with them and their friends at the top, and it's why many of them want to steer towards it.
Throughout history, big business and the mega-rich have regularly backed coups and authoritarians, compared to their democratic alternatives. It's a much better system for them than one where each person gets one vote, because there's a lot more of us than there are of them[1].
As for sworn enemies of democracy, I think the guy who launched a coup, as part of a broader conspiracy to steal the election when he lost would be towards the top of the list.
---
[1] When times get tough, in a democracy, it becomes difficult for them to justify why they get to take three quarters of the pie, while the rest of us fight over scraps.
> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing
Because people are not capable of being informed on every topic in the world.
Especially in a world that is increasingly more complex and nuanced.
And this ignorance has been demonstrated to be exploitable in order to tear apart societies.
Easy: reach the future electorate when they’re pre-teens and feed them influences that eschew critical thinking as a core value.
If you can believe that lead pipes contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire… well, let’s just say the Internet is a series of tubes.
The concerns about TikTok merely as a propaganda platform are naïve and almost quaint when considering what might actually be happening.
You just described the corporate propaganda that generations of Americans have been bathed in.
You make a good point. A crucial difference, however, is the types of entities and their motives.
A conventional U.S. corporation's motive is to generate profits. Efforts stemming from that motive have not always been in the public interest, and such cases are worthy of regulatory attention, but they typically do not present national security risks. In odd cases where pursuing profits could create national security risks, Congress has sometimes intervened, such as when Nvidia was banned from selling certain processors to certain countries.
A geopolitical entity is not a profit-motivated corporation, so the risk model is different, with national security factors being more salient.
Does everyone think critically and rationally? If not how many don't (especially during key election periods) and can this group cast an oversized influence on election results or public opinion?
Having the choice of two options at the ballot box, and social media meaning many people now form political opinions from anonymous accounts online does not fill me with confidence.
Exactly. To the degree elections are not rooted in a competition of ideas and individual agency, but rather are downstream of elite power and influence, then there are other more direct means of controlling populations, all of which tend to be a lot bloodier. All of this strikes me as a really dangerous path.
Are lies ideas? In a competition of "ideas", if one side lies, is it still a fair competition, or are they cheating? Should it be a fair competition?
That angle would work if there wasn't so much disagreement about what constitutes lies. After the last few years, I am definitely not interested in having government actors decide for me what amounts to the truth. Personally, I suppose I much prefer a competition of ideas -- and the ability to decide for myself.
I think there's a reasonable argument that part of that disagreement is a result of the hybrid warfare that is being fought over the information and opinions of citizens in many countries. We know about a few of these where hyper-partisan influencers were paid by Russia (or entities closely connected to the Russian government, if you insist on nuances) to spread Russia's viewpoints and attack social cohesion in the US. Is that a competition of ideas?
Facebook and Twitter have in the past banned networks of account for inauthentic behavior. In other words: individuals (and you can probably narrows this to residents or citizens) are allowed to speak their mind and try to convince others of whatever they believe, but it has to be them, they cannot use bots, multiple accounts etc. It's not an easy thing to filter, of course. But pretend that it was, would you agree with that approach?
> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing.
It would be less of a problem if US platforms were allowed into China to influence the Chinese too.
Read some books. 1984 would be a good start.
That was a story to reach simple minds. No one in this forum needs 1984 to inform them of the methods and outcomes of propaganda.
Don’t worry, chomskys manufacturing consent is also mentioned as relevant reading elsewhere in this thread, and then rejected, naturally on the grounds that learning stuff about propaganda might be propaganda
I read some, including 1984. What's your point? 1984 portrays exactly the kind of world I’d want to avoid - one where the government controls access to information and rigidly suppresses foreign influence.
plenty of dangers, but considering what people actually do and care about on TikTok, I wouldn't really compare this to Facebook.
>People who advocate for censoring foreign sources of influence are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically.
Tbf, America did spend decades tearing down education to help support that conclusion.
You could ban every non-ethnically Chinese channel to push Chinese superiority. That would be bad, right?
And before you say, “but they’re not doing that”, remember that we’re discussing how this theoretically could be a bad thing.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
I take the view that the reason freedom of speech is important at all, is that people can be convinced to act in certain ways by speech — if it couldn't lead to action, no dictator would fear it.
We, all of us, take things on trust. We have to. It's not like anyone, let alone everyone, has the capacity — time or skill — to personally verify every claim we encounter.
Everywhere in the world handles this issue differently: the USA is free-speech-maximalism; the UK has rules about what you can say in elections[0] (and in normal ads), was famously a jurisdiction of choice for people who wanted to sue others for libel[1], and has very low campaign spending limits[2]; Germany has laws banning parties that are a threat to the constitution[3].
I doubt there is any perfect solution here, I think all only last for as long as the people themselves are vigilant.
[0] https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
[2] https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-spending-and-pr...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68029232
> …aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
…yes? Is that even slightly controversial? If it wasn’t the case, why would propaganda even exist?
Theres an implication that The Internet meant we have a commons connecting the world that no one country can completely restrict. But a commons too important to all modern societies to blanket ban. In theory we should be less susceptible to propoganda than ever since we can see multiple viewpoints and interpretations in minutes. As opposed to being beholden to maybe 3-4 mainstream news programs on television.
Human nature proves to fall quite short of that ideal, though.
People CAN see multiple viewpoints in minutes, and some do, problem is hundreds of millions more prefer to let TikTok select what views to see.
And TikTok has immense data available about what series of reels sway what subpopulation in what direction. Only question is of they make use of it.
My opinion is that if they wanted to sway an election anywhere in the world they definitely could.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Yes, it is. Always has been.
> threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process
> then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power
You'd have to have fallen hook, line, and sinker with America's propaganda to actually believe that democracy is NOT a cover for retaining control over a population.
The US has been playing this game in other countries for a while now, to keep a check on who comes to power and who does not (always using support for democracy as an excuse). Gautemala, the arab spring, bangladesh - these are just some of the examples. And it's become very blatant of late.
Why is illegal to put false stuff on products label, like food or medicine? Where is the free speech to lie and manipulate the user? With your point of view the EACH user should somehow find the skills to analyze and review each product each time they user or trust some other persons word.
The algorithm is not a person to have free speech, my issue is with the algorithm, I am OK with the village drunk to post his faked documents but I am not O with state actors falsifing documents then same state owned actors abusing the algorithm to spread that false stuff. So no free spech for bot farms and algorithms, they are not people (yet)
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda
Part of the reason Western democracies are failing is we forgot that pure democracy doesn’t work. The founders described this amply in the Federalist Papers. Democracy tends towards tearing itself apart with partisanship and mob rule.
It’s why successful republics have mechanisms to cool off public sentiment, letting time tax emotions to reveal actual thoughts underneath (see: the Swiss versus Californian referendum models); bodies to protect minorities from the majority (independent courts); et cetera.
You act as if individuals and a mob are mutually exclusive. Who do you think makes up a mob?
> By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Well, we don't know what was said in the classified meetings, but yes, we know that propaganda works.
Excuse my European ignorance, but in what way is a system a "democracy" where one person can overrule actual democratic structures? The power centralized into one person is unheard of in what I would call "democracies".
I do find people's faith in Democracy, as opposed to Authoritarianism, somewhat exasperating. Two candidates, pre-selected by the powers that be to lead the nation, compete in inane televised debates, wave flags and make promises that everyone knows they are going to break. This everyone debates hotly, and then lines up to register one bit of Holy Democratic Choice, to be averaged with a hundred million similar bits to determine, by a margin of a few percent, the one and only legitimate Government of the People, by the People, for the People. My Ass.
In the end, "democracy" is about power and control, just like any other form of government, and the TikTok ban is just another power-play, however it may be justified publicly. Not that I'm overly sorry to see it banned, by the way :)
Until very recently, "Democracy" was a dirty way to describe a government. It was in the same class of failed government models as tyranny, the rule of the mindless mob.
Maybe, but my point is that democracy is not even the rule of a mindless mob, more like mob rule theater. Ruling implies receiving information and performing complex actions and giving many and nontrivial orders. From a purely information-theoretical perspective, it requires a lot of entropy flowing from the decision maker to subordinates. On the other hand, national elections collect a tiny pool of entropy from the supposed root source of power and legitimacy, the people. This is not enough to rule a country, by many orders of magnitude. The country is instead ruled by ambitious individuals, who seize power in various ways - connections, backroom deals, backstabbing. Some participate in the election theater.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
If you want to view it that way, sure. But I could also just say you and I are both sacks of blood filled flesh.
> Rather than tackle the narratives substantively,
Meta (et al) are just AS guilty as TikTok. The difference is substantial and subtle - the US government could conceivably sanction a US-based entity to the point of them not existing. A chinese based one doesnt have to play by the rules. Fine them? No problem, their gov has an immeasurable amount of money. The only option is to simply not let them play at all.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
I invite you to consider the possibility that this is true. That at the population level, propaganda actually works. This would support the fact that it's been a key tool used by regimes (including ours) since before the printing press was invented.
I don't really know for certain whether this is accurate, but it's hard for me to look around the world at global politics and determine that it isn't.
This is the fundamental problem with American democracy and democracies all over the world.
It only works if the voters are well informed, educated, and generally competent. Otherwise it’s just a manipulation game where someone can lie and lie and lie and be elected president. And at that late stage phase of democracy, who gets to manipulate these people better is who holds power.
That shouldn't be a problem, though. All it takes is to make sure that voters are informed, educated, and generally competent.
On a side note, the same holds for market economy. Markets only work if consumers are informed, educated, and generally competent.
Isn’t that the premise of the Enlightenment? That’s everyone will be well educated, or, if they’re not, at least they were the ones in control of their destiny?
i.e. “You crazy, translating the bible to the plebs? What happens if stupid people get to choose for themselves?”
I assume you are speaking about establishment politicians over the last 40-2000 years, but I suspect you are actually miming talking points about manipulation aimed at 1 very recent election where the established propaganda cycle failed to manipulate enough people and a different brand of manipulation brought in a different set of manipulators. Evidence of your own manipulated belief structures going without serious enough introspection to be held as a competent free agent
Allegedly, the biggest concern this time around was the economy. Millions of people complaining about inflation and the cost of goods voted for a guy promising to raise tariffs, and a party that historically caters to big business. The same big business that has moved a lot of jobs overseas, and has lobbied to relax restrictions on visas to hire more foreign workers for onshore jobs.
To me, this looks a lot like people voting against their own interests. I think that when people vote against their own interests, it's usually because they don't understand what they're voting for, i.e. it's an education issue. And it's not surprising that other people would be perplexed and frustrated by this.
But maybe I've just been misled by the wrong propaganda. I guess we'll find out.
Are you trying to argue that (many) democrats and republicans voters in the recent elections were not generally manipulated by their respective sides? I don't think this holds water.
Examples could be democrats control over Biden's health messaging or republicans repeating the message that the democrats are stealing the elections or democrat's messaging about if their side loses it's the end of democracy or republicans messaging about immigration, crime etc. Generally engaging at a shallow level with the goal of influencing people's emotions.
I don't think this is a 40-2000 years phenomena. It's certainly become a lot worse since Trump ran for president the first time. I remember turning on TV in my hotel room during a visit to the US maybe 8 years ago and switching between CNN and Fox, each of these channels were basically about endless bashing of the opposite side. I wouldn't call the content anything other than brainwashing and propaganda. CNN didn't use to be like that. With social media since every user gets their own view we don't even know what the "hidden hand" is pushing. It's much worse and a lot more dangerous.
No my point was that both sides are frequently manipulated, but I see comments on the Internet EVERY DAY to the effect of 'the other side is being manipulated', apparently oblivious to their own manipulated opinions.
And CNN has ALWAYS been a propaganda wing, they just didn't have a serious competitor during the era when both parties were controlled by the same group. (Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama)
Sort of?
I think it's definitely the case that the group of voters in 1789 was much smaller and more homogeneous than it is today.
I also think the nature of propaganda has changed a little as well. Today, messages can be delivered cheaply to everyone, everywhere, from anywhere, nearly instantaneously. There is far less of a propagation delay, and far less of a natural check on the rate and volume of propaganda.
Maybe not, but it strikes me as a really dangerous path. If we don't believe the electorate acts from a position of moral authority, but rather are downstream of elite power and influence, then there are other more direct ways of controlling populations. And they tend to be a lot more bloody.
It's the path we've been on for a long time and one that is made a lot more dangerous in the era of social media. Today more than ever people live in echo chambers and believe what they want to or what they think they need to so they can conform with their group identity. More than ever a few wealthy people or state actors have direct control over the reality people see without even the pretense of being "unbiased" media or any sort of ethical guidelines which in the past used to semi-exist for the traditional media/news etc.
Propaganda's job is to influence those people who think they're acting from a position of moral authority but lack the education, or critical thinking skills, or access to information, to be able to see through the manipulation.
I'm not sure what's the answer but I am sure this is not what the proponents of free speech had in mind.
The reason the more direct ways are more bloody is why we want to stick with democracy. Democracy is supposed to be based on an exchange of ideas in an open discourse. This is why it’s important to not let any one party have too much control over the discourse. That is also why freedom of speech exists. Somewhat paradoXically, banning a foreign-controlled platform can serve the same purpose as defending freedom of speech.
It was always like that.
Yep, it basically amounts to agreeing 100% with the Chinese justification for their great firewall, which is that a free internet is subversive to their national interest and to their citizens. But Americans will argue that it's somewhat different, since when they do it it's not dystopian or something
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Yes, exactly.
A symbiotic view of life: we have never been individuals https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235518850_A_Symbiot...
I have it on personal experience that DARPA seems to be enthusiastically funding more digital twin and collective intelligence projects than ever. Simulated virtual publics are going to become more common in both war and politics. Collectives are going to be the driving force of the coming century, and the sooner the American public evolves beyond fetishizing the individual, the better.
By resorting to walled gardens that by definition have to provide a filtered experience via algorithms rather than raw experience of older internet forums and image boards, haven't many of these voters already made that choice of being wanting to be manipulated?
> Honestly, maybe there's some truth to that, but it sure flies in the face of the sanctity of voting and "democracy."
Although some choose or have to squawk loudly about it, the sanctity of “democracy” is not universally or even widely accepted.
To extend the Winston Churchill quote, it’s mostly a charade but it’s the best one we have (in my opinion).
At least someone has to (currently) manipulate the voters into voting a specific way, instead of just ‘voting for them’, or threatening them at gunpoint.
> voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
That is true, yet it's not incompatible with democracy. In the US Horace Mann established the foundational link between education and democracy. It's why civics and other forms of intellectual self-defence are essential.
The problem with social media (and BigTech lazy "convenient" non-thought) is not that it's a propaganda conduit as much as that it's antithetical to critical thinking. It's more complex than simply the content, it's the form too.
The US gov has just made the case for banning US owned social networks around the world, because they truly believe that social networks is a way for a foreign agents to interfere in local politics.
This is misleading. Most of the places that might want to ban US social networks were already doing so.
> By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Did you already forgot about the episode about Haitians eating everyone's pets? Based on that episode alone, what's you observation?
> I sometimes cannot believe it's those who so loudly cry about threats to "democracy" that simultaneously take such a cynical view of the democratic process.
You should take a minute to think about the underlying issue.
Propaganda is a massive threat against democracy and freedom in general. If a bad actor invests enough resources pushing lies and false promises that manages to convince enough people to vote on their agent, do you expect to be represented and see your best interests defended by your elected representatives?
Also, you should pay attention to the actual problem. Propaganda isn't something that affects the left end of the bell curve. Propaganda determines which information you have access to. You make your decisions based on the information you have, regardless of being facts or fiction. If you are faced with a relentless barrage of bullshit, how can you make an educated decision or even guess on what's the best outcome? You cannot. The one that controls the information you can access will also control to a great degree your decision process. That's the power of disinformation and propaganda, and the risk that China's control of TikTok poses to the US in particular but the free world in general.
> By saying China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy," aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Yep. Same thing as the people arguing to reverse the Citizens United ruling. Lots of lip service is paid to "democracy" by people who have no faith in the electorate to actually exercise democratic sovereignty.
I'd argue that Democracy cannot be exercised by the electorate when > 36% of the voting population did not vote (90m / 245m https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-1...).
You're dealing with 64% of the voting population, who inherently lean one way or the other so a small nudge can be the difference between one side or the other winning.
e.g. Candidate swapping might bring votes from minority groups or Women.
Imagine a scenario when even 5% more people voted, suddenly the margins are much wider and the results hold stronger validity.
> 36% of the voting population did not vote
If those people are eligible to vote but choose not to, than that is their vote. It's not appropriate to second-guess people who abstain any more than it is to second-guess the ballots of those who do vote. There's only a problem if people who want to vote, and are eligible to, are being prevented from doing so.
If you're trying to engineer the process to contrive specific outcomes, that itself is anti-democratic.
If TikTok was only targeted at voters then I think there would be less of a concern. My issue is more with what it shows to children. Science and law recognize that children aren't yet fully individual agents and are more susceptible to propaganda than most adults. Thus legislators and courts have been more willing to restrict commercial speech targeting children.
If that is truly your primary concern, you should be more worried about Instagram. TikTok is much better in that regard. It has parental controls, a restricted mode, screen time limits, etc.
We should be worried about all of them. But a hostile totalitarian foreign government could have motivations that are a hell of a lot worse than maximizing engagement/profits.
If the goal is to cause harm to the population (ala fentanyl distribution) rather than just to make as much money as possible, I’d say parents are right to be correspondingly more concerned.
I feel this is way too optimistic about the typical adult. Adults are most definitely affected by propaganda.
Problem is reality is so complex and usually all sides of a topic are right at the same time, in some way.
For any viewpoint A, there will be reels made by people in any demographic group who cares deeply about it for excellent and solid reasons. The same will be the case for anti-A.
Both of them will be convincing and TikTok can just choose which one of them to subtly nudge.
Your comment made me realize that politicians stopped "think of the children" along with the rise of social media. Before the rise of big tech they would routinely slam their fist on the podium demanding that we think of the children.
> aren't we really saying voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda?
Like we've been saying since the founding of the country? yeah
"The body of people ... do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest errors by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise." -Hamilton
The founders did not think that electoral college was a good idea, senators should be appointed and not elected, and only a few citizens should be able to vote generally, because they were feeling mean. They did so because they thought these things and the act of voting itself were simply instruments to produce good government. They rejected a democracy, and favored a republic, for this reason.
>voters are not individual agents but rather a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda
That has nothing to do with China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Yes. But we're talking about children too - not just adult voters.
And the app collects every click, every face photo, all contacts, every keypress on external links, everything. The full social graph, shaping the trends of the younger generation.
We do have laws around elections like the equal time rule. Should we remove that too?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
Of course propaganda works. That's why companies spent tons of money on ads.
Of course it also works on politics, especially if people don't trust "traditional" media, but arbitrary publishers (there's room for a guiding which is more trustworthy)
History over and over has shown that a public can be led into their own demise, including brutal war.
How much active influence China takes I don't know (and I never used tiktok) but we are certainly in a time of massive disinformation and denial of facts. Globally.
Of course voters are subject to propaganda.
YOU are subject to propaganda. Yes, you.
The existence of democratic sociopolitical structures does not preclude the existence of targeted mass propaganda, or the weaknesses of the human psyche. Nor vice versa.
Why do you think The Rule of Law exists? Large groups of angry people often make bad decisions with long term consequences. We have known this forever.
The winner of the election is often the party that spent more money on political advertising, so I'm sure this is a well known phenomenon.
I enjoy seeing HN independently rederive much of NRX thought via this situation.
In unrelated news, anyone see that NYT interview with Yarvin yesterday?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
The one where Curtis made a fool of himself and his poor understanding of history?
> China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy"
And has there ever been an example for that or is it just a hypothetical scenario?
No one can possibly know. They just have all the power to do it very efficiently, without anyone noticing.
That’s sort of the ironic bit. IMHO it’s been this way for awhile, but because it was pretty much as you described (“the elite”) with the reigns we pushed the argument that voters were individual agents.
The genius in strategies enemies are using are leveraging the exact same levers already being leveraged against be populous: free speech as a roadway for propaganda, misinformation/disinformation, and widespread social manipulation.
There was a time when it was more difficult to scale these sorts of strategies so there may have been an illusion of agency. Also, a hundred years ago issues were a bit less complicated/nuanced so your voters could probably wrangle ideas intelligently more independently.
I also suspect the corporate undermining of the general population for their own wealth grab has weakened the country as a whole, including the voter base. We want to undermine education at every turn and stability of your average citizen so they can be more easily manipulated. That comes at a cost because once we’re in that position, whose to say youll (the US elite) will be the ones with the reigns? By weakening the population for your own gain, you open up foreign adversaries to do the same and they’re doing just that.
We should focus on improving general education and the populations overall stability/livelihood. That has to do with pushing back on some of the power grab the ultra wealthy have taken, at the populations expense. These are of course just my unsubstantiated opinions.
This sounds like an emotional appeal rather than anything based on science and fact.
That's the entire reason for representative democracy over direct democracy
I'm not sure it is- even if you think the electorate are educated and competent, it still makes sense to delegate the specific decisions to a smaller set of individuals who are given the time and resources to get into the detail. It just scales better.
"a mob subject to manipulation by propaganda"
Yes, that is correct.
Why is that so hard to believe?
For more than a century now the advertising industry has perfected mass psychological manipulation that aims to separate the masses from their dollar. These tactics as pioneered by the likes of Edward Bernays were plucked straight from the propaganda rule books, which has been successfully used for at least a century before that. We know that both propaganda and advertising are highly effective at influencing how people think and which products they consume. It's a small step then to extrapolate those techniques to get vast amounts of people to think and act however one wants. All it requires is sufficient interest, a relatively minor amount of resources, and using the same tools that millions of people already give their undivided attention to, which were designed to be as addictive as possible. We've already seen how this can work in the Cambridge Analytica exposé, which is surely considered legacy tech by now.
I'm honestly surprised that people are in desbelief that this can and does happen. These are not some wildly speculative conspiracy theories. People are easily influenceable. When tools that can be used to spread disinformation and gaslight people into believing any version of reality are widely available to anyone, it would be surprising if they were _not_ used for this purpose.
> If that's your view of the electorate, then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power.
Always has been. It's just that now that we've perfected the tools used to sway public opinion, and made them available to anyone, including our enemies, the effects are much more palpable.
I hope Zuckerberg and friends, and everyone who's worked on these platforms, some of which frequent this very forum, realize that they've contributed to the breakdown of civilization. It's past time for these people to stop selling us snake oil promises of a connected world, and start being accountable for their actions.
Really? It is the most base fact that people can be manipulated by the ideas of others. Creatures trying to convince other creatures of one thing over another is just part of being a living animal. But the idea that people want to control who says what is wild to you? It flies in the face of the sanctity of "democracy"? Don't you think that's a bit of a hyperbole?
> If that's your view of the electorate, then the whole "democracy" thing is just a cover for elite power.
yeah. They don't necessarily want nor care to inform of the truth. they want that sort of manipulation as much as any other billionaire. Heck there's a good amount of people who simply want to be told what to do so they don't have to worry about the big stuff.
There's a reason many almost always choose convinience over anything else when working in practice.
Just google Salt Typhoon, (I'll wait), and then tell me you want the TikTok app on 102M+ US citizens devices.
I see nothing Israel hasn’t done yet we give them billions of dollars in aid.
If China had America by the balls half as bad as Israel does, we'd be watching Biden and Trump take turns kissing Xi Jinping's feet on live television right now. It's besides the point and doesn't contribute to better foreign policy choices, just gives justification to the wrong ones.
This is a valid point, and reminds me of those appalling scenes when Netanyahu received a standing ovation from the sycophantic US Congress, in the middle of his genocide of the Palestinian people [0]. And that scene in turn reminds me of old footage of Adolf Hitler being applauded by crowds.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/a-standing-ovatio...
On the phones of Trump and Vance, according to Wikipedia. Let's compose a Trump tweet on the issue:
"I was told that China had Salt Typhoon on my phone. I have always loved Salt Typhoon, it's a good thing. I talked to Elon, he'll fix it by merging TikTok with X paid in X shares. Let's focus now on making America great again."
You're saying that this Chinese app has a US government mandated back door that the Chinese could use?
Some 4D chess there, not sure who is playing whom at this point
“Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX), the author of the bill to ban TikTok, owns hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Meta, one of TikTok's chief rivals. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) bought up to $50,000 worth of Meta stock last January before voting to ban TikTok in April."
Exhibit 1. https://www.capitoltrades.com/issuers/431610?page=2
Couldn’t find recent info but back in 2014, Michael McCaul’s net worth was in the hundreds of millions. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in meta stock doesn’t seem like much for someone worth 1000 times that amount over a decade ago…
Markeayne Mullin’s net worth was ~$50 million a few years ago. $50k is 1/1000th of that networth also…
That’s not to say congress shouldn’t be banned from trading stocks like every other profession that might potentially have insider info. They absolutely should.
> Hundreds of thousands of dollars in meta stock doesn’t seem like much for someone worth 1000 times that amount over a decade ago…
That fact that it was a drop in the bucket for them makes it that much more outrageous, not less. It would have cost virtually nothing for them to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and yet they didn't. And why should they? There was no consequence. They are taunting us.
If you or I trade off anything close to insider information, we'd be in jail and lose most of our (ostensibly much more limited) assets.
“That fact that it was a drop in the bucket for them makes it that much more outrageous, not less”
I disagree. I get the point that you’re making. That they could have more easily NOT done it. But I would be a lot more ensconced if these people were putting up 50% of their net worth on these bets.
And again, I fully agree that they shouldn’t be able to trade individual stocks. In my past I was a dev at a private wealth management company. While working there I was completely barred from trading individual stocks because it’s possible that I could have come across nonpublic info in the company because they would do internal audits for some entities. It made sense. Congress is an even bigger deal because they literally write the rules of companies that can affect stock prices. I was barred because I could have passively found nonpublic info, but they can actively cause the situations that cause price movement.
And in fact, currently 2.5% of the sp500 is meta. So if these guys just have 100% of their net worth in the sp500, they’d have more META than these two transactions.
McCaul's net worth is estimated $294 million. His positions are a rounding error. That he owns so little Meta is impressive.
Mullin's net worth is 20-75 million. So up to 0.25% of his net worth if we use the low estimate is a Meta acquisition? Who cares?
> His net worth was estimated at $294 million, up from $74 million the previous year. In 2004, the same publication estimated his net worth at $12 million. His wealth increase was due to large monetary transfers from his wife's family.
You do realize these people have friends and family.
> Who cares?
Insider trading deprives _all other_ legitimate participants of the market. That the trade is small relative to this individual net worth is meaningless. That is value that should have been captured by someone else taking a genuine risk. It's a thumb on the scale of the market and it is morally repugnant.
But it's not insider trading at this level, that's the whole point. This is a freakishly small amount of stock. At these levels he would own a lot more META if he just bought QQQ (META is 3.3% of composition) with a fraction of his net worth
> not insider trading at this level
The definition of insider trading does not take into consideration "levels."
> This is a freakishly small amount of stock.
That he personally purchased. I don't know what private and public entities he may have shared the information with or what other purchases traded on his information.
> At these levels he would own a lot more META if he just bought QQQ (META is 3.3% of composition) with a fraction of his net worth
At the level of an individual game a card counter is mathematically not a huge problem. They're just shifting the odds by 1 or 2% in their favor. I wonder why casinos bother to kick them out? They'd stand to win a lot more if they just flopped everything on roulette anyways.
I think you're letting the imputed scope interfere with your evaluation and mistaking net worth for liquid assets.
Another:
- Markwayne Mullin (R Oklahoma) purchased $15-$50k Meta stock on 01/02/2024 [0]
A nice list: https://www.capitoltrades.com/issuers/431610
[0] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/3-politician...
A lot of people have some Meta shares. It's a widely owned stock.
You may believe no member of congress should own equity in any company, but that's a separate issue
I think it's the 'bought shares', then voted to ban a competitor that may be the issue.
But you could also make money on Meta tanking if you had prior knowledge.
Surely they are doing this to preserve free speech and for the security of hard-working freedom-loving god-fearing americans, and not for their own selfish interests.
I think they are doing it so the CCP doesn't have direct propaganda line into the home of most Americans. imagine how easy it would be to tip the algorithm scales to show, for example, stolen election conspiracy videos.
that’s like 300 shares at most.
What does the absolute number of shares tell you?
It's still mind-boggling to me that those in Congress can be shareholders.
Here's a video from March 14, 2024 on how Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who sponsored the H.R.7521 - Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, accepted his largest campaign contributions from Palantir, Google, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC):
https://www.tiktok.com/@iancarrollshow/video/734642717587849...
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4jA_k8Pn12 (in case of censorship)
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/mike-gallagh...
Looks like Steven Mnuchin, David Friedman and Yossi Cohen were also involved. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said that "we really have a TikTok problem", since it's acting to alchemize the left-right political divide into a young-old one.
The video says that pro-Palestine content is some of the most censored content there is, but despite that, a large number of TikTok users are supporting Palestine and questioning Israel's authority to continue hostilities. It suggests that silencing these objections to the Israel-Palestine conflict by preventing their discussion and spread is one of the primary motives for banning TikTok.
I'm deeply disappointed in members of the Democratic Party who voted for the TikTok ban, whose actions call into question the integrity of their party and its priorities. I'm not as surprised by the actions of the Republican Party, which historically has sided with the establishment (Meta and other social networks under US jurisdiction), but openly voting for censorship in the face of calls to protect free speech from Donald Trump and Elon Musk is suspect.
And I'm profoundly troubled by antisemitism and how whataboutism is clouding journalistic integrity. With derogatory comments about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and wokeism becoming more prevalent, we should be mindful of the slippery slope from oppressed to oppressor. This is why we must always call out injustice in all forms, even when it's inconvenient to do so, or risk sacrificing our principles and eventually our freedoms.
I'm reminded of the Paradox of Intolerance, that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
To be fair they're all inside trading and most of them are corrupt. Time to wake up America
Suppose I wake up and discover that all congresspeople are insider trading. What do I do next?
Well, you either join them [0, 1] (no affiliation to either) or support people trying to fight them? [2]
[0] https://www.joinautopilot.com/
[1] https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/pennsylvania-l...
Shame that there’s often a delay of 1-2 months between the trades and when they’re disclosed, so the first option likely isn’t going to work.
Pray for something very destructive to happen to Capitol Hill during a full session of Congress.
Tell everybody else about it, because most Americans are simply unaware at how blatant the insider trading is and how it works.
That kind of comment has the opposite effect, it keeps people asleep with lazy (and corrupt) misinformation. Whenever people say 'they are all the same', they help cover for the actual bad behavior - it's now hidden among all the other behavior and not worth examining or pursuing, and rationalized.
They are certainly not all the same. If you don't distinguish them, you cut down the people actually fighting on the front lines. It's friendly fire. They are shot in the back.
At some point you have to wonder if they're just not allowed to exist to allow plausible deniability...
Either way it's clearly not going in the right direction when you have a guy selling cans of fucking beans from the oval office and launching crypto rug pulls
they aren't all corrupt. and for those that are insider trading, few are beating the market.
That is a good point, the nance and kruz etfs aren't doing badly, but they aren't rockstars either.
Anyway, how many TRUMP coins did this cost them?
It's so awesome to see the executive branch, in a move for clout, decide to ignore a law passed by bipartisan action in Congress, almost by dictorial fiat.
Don't forget that it was also unanimously upheld by the supreme court!
Maybe this will be the hill he dies on. I can't bring myself to believe that he'll be allowed to literally become the day 1 dictator he that he promised he would.
m8 the only hill he'll die on is one of gold. The stooges have officially fallen in line in all of the places that matter: Congress, state houses, and federal courts.
Everyone using the bipartisan consensus after classified briefings as evidence why the ban is a good idea is too young to remember 2003.
“The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.” — George Carlin
Clearly US lawmakers were convinced they could easily force ByteDance to divest by issuing an ultimatum. They were never prepared to actually see a ban of TikTok
So the person who’s not currently president saved a service turning off that didn’t need to be turned off… sounds like marketing more than anything.
I feel like the free speech enthusiasts are missing some imagination and failing to see the situation we are in post-algorithms.
By now -- people have used their free speech to make reels for every possibly viewpoint convincing any possible demography about anything. The trail of reels needed to convert a mountain biker to a racist, or a Lego builder to an LBTQ ally, is out there. Making the free speech isn't the issue in 2025.
The question is: Who sees what, and whose opinions are shifted in what direction.
The big social networks controls the algorithms. Controlling who sees what is the new "speak", where you directly influence peoples minds simply by showing the right reels at the right moments.
We have always had propaganda and media leaning in different directions. But people would know they are looking at Fox News or The Daily Show or Pravda. With TikTo... you find that people's opinion change very gradually and without perception over the course of half a year. Never seeing "TikTok" -- only seeing "people like you" (which can be a function of time, and evolve) sharing their heartfelt opinions.
Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction.
TikTok has the means to do it -- all the data about what reels cause what effect on what demographic, if they just wanted to.
If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it?
I am not saying this is definitely happening. But any discussion that isn't treating all the social networks as weapons of mass propaganda that CAN be used is awfully naive.
And focusing on the "speech" thing seems so misplaced. It's all about who is heard and seen, and that is today all about power and algorithms.
> With TikTo... you find that people's opinion change very gradually and without perception over the course of half a year. Never seeing "TikTok" -- only seeing "people like you" (which can be a function of time, and evolve) sharing their heartfelt opinions.
> Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction.
> TikTok has the means to do it -- all the data about what reels cause what effect on what demographic, if they just wanted to.
> If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it?
> I am not saying this is definitely happening. But any discussion that isn't treating all the social networks as weapons of mass propaganda that CAN be used is awfully naive.
Sure. But that's something that applies to every social network. Do you think e.g. Instagram doesn't subtly adjust which videos it shows you? They openly acknowledge that they limit the spread of videos that they consider "hate speech", and of course which videos they classify as hate speech is a politically dependent question. Or maybe you think Zuckerberg's interests are more aligned with what's good for you personally than the CCP's?
Like with your examples of Fox News or The Daily Show or Pravda, if I can see all the networks then I at least can compare and consider. Closing my eyes to one of them makes me worse off, especially when it's the only one that's not run by a handful of very similar people with very similar interests.
I am not sure why you think I think Instagram etc. are innocent. For all I care all social media could be shut down.
My point was that the free speech discourse around this is naive. The "speech" in question is providing ammunition for the owners of the algorithms, who are doing the most important expression through how those algorithms are tuned.
My point was that social media should be discussed more like nuclear weapons are discussed.
It makes strategically sense for US to not have Chinese nuclear weapons/social media deployed on its soil/in the heads of its citizens; regardless of whether US nuclear weapons/social media is morally superior.
> The "speech" in question is providing ammunition for the owners of the algorithms, who are doing the most important expression through how those algorithms are tuned.
Maybe. Or maybe the algorithmic nudges are small (because if they're any bigger they get noticed and become counterproductive), and most of the real signal gets through. Maybe the actual speech matters more.
> It makes strategically sense for US to not have Chinese nuclear weapons/social media deployed on its soil/in the heads of its citizens; regardless of whether US nuclear weapons/social media is morally superior.
At first-order yes. But I think the US has a lot more to lose from a worldwide atomisation of social media. If this kind of thing is normalised then the EU etc. practically have to kick out US social media and we'll end up with everyone having their own great firewall, and that will hurt the US more than it hurts China.
I think it's funny that it's going online because the new President told people to just ignore the law. Interestingly, he is a convicted criminal so it kinda makes sense he would just tell folk to ignore the law. And even more interestingly, the back the blue/law and order type folks will be thinking this is a great move.
Is TikTok currently available in the US App Store and PlayStore?
I can maybe understand ByteDance breaking the rules on a promise from the president elect that it will be alright.
I would, however, never expect Apple or Google to take that liability (while not getting much out of it).
edit: It seems that the TikTok app has indeed not been reinstated in the stores yet.
Not only that but will American advertisers take the risk of allowing their ads to continue showing to American audiences, or for us based payment processors handle in app payments
Embarrassing.
Entertaining. But then, I'm European far away from this orange man.
Nobody is far enough, not with that actual power. Everything is connected and ripple effects travel far.
Plus our european politicians are weak and largely clueless, we will fold in front of China and let them roll over our automotive industry. There is war at our doorstep and enemy who repeatedly claimed he will wipe out half of our population, yet our reaction is next to 0, both immediate and long term.
It's entertaining in the US too.
Yeah you say that, but I just saw Elonia Musk stirring the pot by calling for MEGA “Make Europe Great Again”, so it seems he’s trying to spread his cancerous views into your political systems now too.
The average Maga got the attention span of a braindamaged goldfish so obviously this is long forgotten.
Seems I spoke too soon about the US taking a good decision for once when it comes to cyber and civil security. Well... I wonder what muskov will come up with now that twitter is still at large inaccessible in China but tiktok is welcome in the US.
TikTok is still blocked in China.
Douyin is the Chinese TikTok equivalent. China isn't opposed to the concept of short form video, they just want to segregate Chinese users into their own app
Douyin also doesn't allow nearly as much brainrot as you see on tiktok, and definitely doesn't allow anything that challenges the CCP.
I heard they opened Douyin registration recently
Yes, but it's irrelevant - Apple and Google refuse to allow Douyin on the iOS and Google Play stores, as of writing (and I do not see this changing)
Sounds like it's a good time to break app store duopoly
Did the US president just told a private company to go ahead and break the law?
Sounds like a great PR success.
People love being on the in circle of something "naughty".
That is so embarrassing for the Democrats. Trump comes out that he wants to ban it, Biden finally does on like, the last week of his presidency, just so Trump can come in and save it. Now the millions of people who make their living on TikTok and everyone else who simply likes the app are now thanking Trump for bringing back the app he wanted to ban in the first place.
Just staggering incompetence.
Does anyone know what the actual bill that got signed was. All I can find is a bill that was passed by the house but stuck in the senate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...
It passed in the House 352-65, and in the Senate 79-18, both in April 2024.
USA politics is pretty much a joke or reality tv these days so anything can happen. Not a presidential crypto rug pull though, tHaT wIlL nEvEr HaPeN.
Least surprising outcome of 2025.
Truth be told, I did expect Trump to suck up to Putin first...
It’s still unavailable in the Apple App Store.
That didn't take long. Can we now roll back the bill that gave presidents the authority to unilaterally ban a service in the first place?
The president didn't ban it. Congress did, and the Supreme Court upheld their right to.
I am opposed to the ban fwiw, but being able to overrule it is a pretty big power grab for the president
Didn't the law passed by Congress give the president the power to deem a service owned in part by foreign entities as a national security threat?
I may very well have horribly misunderstood the situation, but I though Congress here only allowed the president to decide.
No, there was a similar one letting the president declare nonprofits a terrorist organization though.
The TikTok one doesn't have input from the president, its all apps of a certain size owned by a country we dont like. Hence, Marvel Snap got banned too in the crossfire
My bad, its both actually. The law lists some criteria, unambiguously including TikTok and Bytedance by name, and then says the president can add more if they want, though this power has not been used yet.
It sucks so hard how the Dems keep expanding the powers of the Pres right before handing it to Trump
It sucks that they're expanding the powers at all. It doesn't matter who has the power today, it matters what the next person may do. Both parties are bad about expanding federal powers, it isn't the fault of one side.
Gotta turn it off long enough for people to notice, but not long enough for people to find another platform.
Correct me if I'm wrong but TikTok was never forced to shut down for US users, it was just going to be removed from the stores and unable to be updated.
Is it back on the stores or not? Because if not, nothing about the ban has changed, it's only that TikTok undid the decision that THEY took to shut down.
Yes, this is correct -- TikTok's own "shutdown" was never required by law. I'm not in the US so I can't check for myself, but from googling it still seems to be removed from both the Apple and Google stores.
If Apple/Google don't change their minds, TikTok won't be able to get any new US users, and won't be able to distribute updates to current US users. To continue using it in the current state, US users will have to keep the same phone and TikTok will have to continue supporting whatever last version(s) they're on indefinitely. (Modulo the few that might jump through VPN and app store locale setting hoops.)
And I don't see how Apple/Google could change their minds: the ban bill comes with a 5 year statute of limitations, so regardless of how convincing the Trump administration is in their promise not to enforce the law, the next administration inaugurated in January 2029 would still be able to impose the penalties on Apple/Google for 4 years of non-compliance. Those penalties would be cripplingly massive even for the world's largest companies (I'm reading an estimate of $850B [0]).
As far as I can tell, the only events that could end this are (1) TikTok finding and agreeing to sell to a US buyer or (2) Congress overturning the ban.
It's odd that people are talking as though the saga is over now...
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/19/24347325/tiktok-service-p...
Trump should launch a Tiktok clone on Truth Social in 90 days when the reprieve expires. I'm surprised there wasn't a new platform ready to pounce on new users. Absolutely nuts that one of the biggest refugee destinations is literally named after a Mao-era propaganda tool.
But in all seriousness, there's 3 branches of government and 2 of spoken. Trump's voice should be moot. Hopefully he's put in his place by our institutions and shamed for attempting to subvert the system of checks and balances described by our constitution.
Chinese here, sorry for my poor English.
I want you to know that the name of the app is '小红书' (小 little 红 red 书 book), and the name of the propaganda tool is '红宝书' (红 red 宝 treasure 书 book).
I don't think there is such a "name after" thing. There are a lot of mixed reviews on Cultual Revolution, a "name after" would bring a lot of risks during the growth of the app.
Thank you for clarifying!
The english translations are similar enough that I assumed a connection.
He for sure pitched this, but his team does not have the skills to create this.
>supreme court says that tiktok might be a threat to national security
>yeah, let's just ignore that. Dance videos on tiktok are more important than security
That's so f-in absurd. I can't even wrap my head around why anyone would literally protest against the ban. I just hope that germany, or rather europe, will have such a ban, too, and that it get enforced properly.
National security is a load of crap. How can you still believe anything they say when the entire security establishment literally bold-faced lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction to justify a completely unnecessary war?
Right out of the KGB and FSB playbook: feed them so much lies from all directions they stop trusting anything at all.
The legislators who voted to ban it based on national security better stand up next week. Biden and Trump both look incredibly weak. America looks weak. Democracy looks weak.
The US government lies according to plays out of the KGB playbook? How would that benefit it?
Curious to see if this ends up increasing the userbase and TikTok's foothold in American culture.
Is it too conspiracy-theorist to notice that the timeline for this matches the $TRUMP grift that added significant $billions to our new president’s net worth?
Somebody invested $6 billion in Trump’s meme coin. There should be an investigation.
Nobody cares any more. We’re a long way from making Carter sell his farm. We’re a long way from the integrity of Nixon. We’re a long way from the fidelity of Clinton.
This is what the American people wanted.
Trump and team may be the biggest public relations masterminds of all time. They realize that the populous is fickle and easily won over with obvious stunts. Define the villains and play the hero. It keeps working for him over and over and over. Truly incredible.
It is easy to confuse a mastermind with somebody who is simply willing to break the law.
> Define the villains and play the hero.
There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick".
Trump to a T.
> There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick".
Four quotes that capture the essence of not letting others define your reality or exert control over your perception:
1. “He who defines the terms wins the argument.” - various thinkers.
2. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “Until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” - Chinua Achebe
4. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
WWE President
I really hate Trump, but the guy is a media (read: not political) genius. I doubt there will ever be someone like him in the Republican, or any party again.
Calling him a genius isn’t quite accurate. He’s not a genius anything. But he does have orbiters who know what they’re doing. He’s mostly just a puppet.
A little over 100 years ago the massively popular party enemy #1 T.R. was running roughshod over the republican convention.
Also a fan of executive action over congressional consent. And the son of a wealthy father in new york.
And opposed by a Democratic party which was very much controlled (to a fault) by its machine.
That's roughly where the similarities end though. I think they'd have strongly diverged on key points such as a man's duty to his country in war, presidential pardons, and right in the *****.
Ha, I guess Trump is the pro business president after all since he's so transparently open for business himself. At least as of now it seems Bytedance outsmarted the detractors.
That shoutout has the vibe of some Banana Republic corruption…
GOP in the US has constantly been fear mongering about social media bias, but what they really mean is they want their own ideas / bias and nobody else.
From China's perspective, I wonder if there's a workaround to sell 50% of TikTok to a US public company, and then through a few intermediaries purchase a large enough holding in _that_ company to give them a board seat or two.
I believe that they are required to have no more than 20% ownership by "foreign adversaries"
Keeping this up and we might need to start introducing version management tools to the U.S. government.
This whole charade has had me laughing since yesterday.
The Caesars of Rome often played these public games to make themselves look magnanimous, while at the same time consolidating power and control.
Julius Caesar's rise to power is one example.
So Tiktok is the slave that got the thumbs up?
sources?
meh. i always thought the real reason for the ban was EVERYONE in the states who has had to deal with ByteDance walks away from the experience thinking they've been dicked. Or at least everyone I've talked with. In my own experience, we signed a deal with US/TikTok and started spending money on things to uphold our part of the bargain. Then ByteDance steps in and says "no. we're canceling this contract," and we point out, "uh... hey bevis... we just spent money on your behalf," and their response is "sucks to be you." The case has been in California courts for about 5 years. We may get our money back before TikTok/US goes out of business.
Are they going to do this daily from now on? Turn off turn on, turn off turn on…
Enjoy your CCP dripfeed while it lasts. This crap is going byebye.
I suspect the U.S. will end up getting its way and TikTok will be divested of foreign ownership by the time this all shakes out.
The TikTok ban is worse for national security. It's trading in an imagined threat for a real threat. Though Xiaohongshu is having a cute little cultural exchange between Chinese people and Americans, there's so much more Chinese propaganda on that platform. I got recommended a few videos talking about Chinese/American wargames and how Americans were done for due to ultrasonic missiles and naval capabilities. You never see anything like that on TikTok. And the only reason Americans are exploring that platform is because of the TikTok ban.
> I got recommended a few videos talking about Chinese/American wargames and how Americans were done for due to ultrasonic missiles and naval capabilities.
You get those on youtube as well, for every combination of large power, I'm not sure why that its own should be a red flag.
"But what about!?!?"
If a significant number of users were to join another foreign-owned platform with similar issues, it is likely that such platform would be banned as well, if it is not already banned under FACAA.
TikTok is an issue in large part due to its popularity.
There are probably x10 America's propaganda on every social media sites, counting right-wing conservative politics alone.
exactly. This is typical western hypocrisy.
It's only propaganda because it's "them".
> typical western hypocrisy
How is it typical of Western countries, and how is it hypocrisy? US companies already do strange things to comply with China's requirements of them, for example.
Trumo also had thr option to kill Huawai and didnt. He stopped the sanctions just before the company bankrupted.
Now they know to make own OS
On today, the 19th, Trump isn't president yet and can't issue executive orders.
Ed: to be clear, the original title specifically mentioned an executive order.
Timezones are always the doom of programmers.
It's not yet the 20th anywhere in North America.
It is in China though...
One person got the joke ...
you might read that as a signal about the quality of the ‘joke’
Variants of this have been around for a century.
Russian Prime Minister Medvedev comes to President Putin and nervously tells him to abolish these time zones.
- Why, Putin asks him?
- Ah, I can't find myself with these times:
- I fly to another city, call home and everyone is asleep,
- I last woke you up at 4 in the morning, but I thought it was only evening,
- I call Angela Merkel to congratulate her on her birthday and she tells me she had it yesterday,
- I wish the Chinese President a happy New Year, and he says it will be tomorrow.
- Well, these are just minor awkwardness, Putin answered him
- Do you remember when that Polish plane crashed with the president? I called them to express my condolences, but the plane hadn't taken off yet !!
I live in Virginia.
But developers of TikTok live in Shanghai
Trump still has to do the inauguration. Even a reptile should understand the basic procedures of office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ina...
this is on the edge of becoming a shitshow...
The US has already jumped head first into the shit can.
All those ideals of democracy I learned about growing up in the US - checks and balances, the rule of law, land of opportunity. It's all become a massive joke.
Well it needed people to enforce those things and it needed people to vote. Both those things didn’t happen.
People voted.
Wait till you see US troops on the ground in Ukraine working hand in hand with russians, killing Ukrainians because Zelensky refused Trump "just give up" deal.
Where does this leave US federal privacy regulations? What can an app do with the data of US users?
That was never the issue, if it was, the US would simply force certain privacy legislation upon companies, like the EU did.
It's about the global monopoly on tech products that the US has, which is obviously threatened by Chinese competitors. You saw the exact same thing with Huawei.
Even if you think this is about protectionism rather than state sponsored espionage (I don't think many would agree with you) your comment makes little sense. Because if you wanted to enforce that kind of protectionism you would still do it under the guise of privacy or security. Meaning you would simply impose such laws that would make it impossible for TikTok to operate, while at the same time being good for privacy.
>Because if you wanted to enforce that kind of protectionism you would still do it under the guise of privacy or security. Meaning you would simply impose such laws that would make it impossible for TikTok to operate, while at the same time being good for privacy.
Well that's exactly what happened. Except it's just a pretense that it's about security or privacy, which is a very easy thing to do.
So Ericsson was banned together with Huawei I take it, and some non-Chinese apps are being investigated similar to TikTok?
No. This whole ”it’s just protectionism” doesn’t hold water for one second. Huawei has been banned in other places as well, and no other companies in the telecom were simultaneously banned. It’s just not good policy to build critical infrastructure using hardware from a Chinese company.
Executive orders cannot supersede or go against the law. The courts would quite rightly shut him down.
Yes, but the president is the head of the executive branch, which includes the DoJ. He can simply instruct them not to prosecute.
That does leave companies like Oracle, who TikTok uses to host their content, in a weird position where they could be fined by future administrations for continuing to provide them service now.
However, the law does give the president the ability to give them a one-time 90 day stay of execution. So, theoretically, they could repeal the law in the next 3 months.
The only thing I would have respected Trump for was the TikTok ban and now I don't have any. Trump loves fake news and brain rot, I was naive to think he would keep TikTok banned.
Through this law, Trump will consolidate control over social media.
Facebook and Instagram, via Mark Zuckerberg, and X/Twitter via Elon Musk, are already in Trump's camp and are helping him.
This law gives Trump leverage over TikTok - their access to the US market will likely depend on serving Trump's interests. Like X and Meta (and other SV companies) operating in other countries, they will comply with local oppression. It's incredible that the Democrats keep handing victory after victory to their opponents.
(Trump also is gaining extreme influence over professional news media, including Fox News and the WSJ, of course, but also ABC News, possibly CBS News, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the LA Times, and many more. It may be time to stop the lazy criticism of the NY Times and start taking them seriously; they could be the only island left in the storm, and will be subject to extreme attacks.)
So to put it bluntly, sweet talking a president-elect can overturn a Supreme Court decision? Interesting political culture.
Hardly. A delay on the ban isn't tantamount to undoing the Supreme Court's decision.
It's good to be precise with terminology and facts, especially in legal matters.
explain how he (a private citizen) can give a 90 day extension on a deadline that is passed with criteria that can not be certified and had to have been already given to congress? Please be precise with terminology and facts in these legal matters.
He's not just any private citizen, he's the president elect who will be inaugurated in a day. I'm sure his word carries way more weight than mine.
I'm not privy to the specific words that were exchanged, so it's hard to be precise. But I imagine it was some form of Trump saying "by tomorrow, I will give you a 90-day extension. I have a gentleman's agreement with the current government that if you do not stop your services in the 24 hours between now and my inauguration, you won't face any issues, so please carry on and we will clean this mess up later".
If you want a private citizen analogy, it's similar to someone saying they won't press charges despite a third-party being in flagrant illegal behavior. In this case, it's the US government saying they won't press charges. Both Biden and Trump have said as much, if my understanding of the case is correct, and one can assume they have discussed this with the appropriate branches of government.
Trump does not have the authority to give a 90 day extension by the language in the law from my understanding. There was a provision for a single use 90 day extension that would require the president to certify 3 things (which currently has not been met and can not be met within days) and have that delivered to congress prior to the ban taking affect. The law gives no mechanism to provide an extension after the ban according to republican legislators.
He must simply _claim_ that the 3 requirements have been met according to his own interpretation of the facts on the ground. It doesn't mean that his interpretation must be correct; He has the discretion to provide the extension per the law.
If someone challenges his interpretation of the 3 requirements in court, then presumably he'd have to explain why he believed that to be the case[1], but he does not have to prove this certainty ex ante in order for the 90-day extension to be valid.
--------
[1]: IANAL but whether he can successfully prove it or not is also ultimately irrelevant given the SCOTUS recent interpretation of presidential power. If he's found "guilty" of making a bad interpretation of the certainty of the 3 requirements, what is really going to be his punishment? There's really nothing you can do against a sitting president with regards to the exercise of their executive power...
He does not need to simply _claim_, he must certify. And one of those is:
“there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension."
This is a binary thing. No such legal agreement seems to exist. You also ignored the other parts of my comment about him missing the deadline in the law to apply the extension.
Johnson himself said they will enforce the law. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...
"Certify" does not mean the same as prove with evidence. I don't think there's a specific threshold that has to be met there other than the parties agreeing it has been certified. It can even come down to as much as "trust me bro" from the president.
The definition of certify is literally "attest or confirm in a formal statement"
Besides, there's no process through which Congress would question or investigate whether the president really can or cannot certify whatever he claims about this matter.
Large corporations blackmailing countries seems to be becoming more common. There was probably some of it going on throughout history (oil companies?, pharma?) but recently we've seen AT&T, Pornhub, TikTok, Google, Meta and others threaten to or actually stop services in areas that try to regulate them. There has been no legal reaction to this so far, rather companies "voluntarily" leave. Might we see large corporations seized in the future for blackmail?
Private companies are not obligated to offer services, and in the US the government cannot compel private companies to do so (except rare circumstances). "We will stop offering services if X does not happen" is not coercive, it's an ultimatum. Companies should not be expected to operate in a market hostile to them.
What about privatized utilities then? What prevents e.g. electricity or phone companies from shutting down when they don't like some rules? It's a little more nuanced than "all or nothing".
Good point. Nationalise essential services
Losing TikTok for a few hours or a day is perhaps going to make TikTok users more angry at the government than TikTok.
Losing electricity or phone service for a day is going to make people more angry at the utility or phone company, regardless of why the shutdown has happened.
And if a utility threatened to shut down service instead of complying with a new government regulation, you can bet the government would immediately jail anyone involved in that decision.
Covered under "except rare circumstances". Regulations for utilities, telecommunications, transportation, and financial services are the exception and not the rule.
But TikTok is an entertainment, not utility, company
Because it's endlessly profitable and very low risk to run a utility, the company's board is... unlikely to ever decide to do a stunt. For what payoff?
In cases like AT&T where they provide telecommunications infrastructure for much of the country, threatening a shutdown is coercive.
Maybe it's time we have a global government that can have more power than global corporations?
I'm torn on this, though, because it's not really the companies blackmailing the countries. It's the companies telling their users, "hey, your country is doing this, and if you don't want them to do this, make some political noise".
Sure, if that message is dishonest or manipulative, that's dangerous, but TikTok telling their US users that they're going to lose access to TikTok if they don't "do something" seems like a pretty reasonable use of free speech.
But at the same time, I don't like that companies have the clout to influence politics to the degree they do. But they have far more (and IMO often better) levers they can pull than what TikTok has done here, and I think those levers (campaign contributions, for one) are much more dangerous to democracy than stuff like this.
(For the record, I am loosely in favor of a TikTok divestiture or ban, though not for the reasons touted by the US government.)
Have we reached the point where we use gatorade to water our crops yet?
Worse. We have plastics in our blood from drinking gatorade.
This operation seems a bargain for buying Tiktok, nothing more. The main contradiction is preventing competition and being a monopoly. The government is trying to prevent more competition and create more confort zones for monopolies. They don't care about free speech. Finally, they are part of this business.
So America really is for sale, and there are no exceptions.
Trump is definitely for sale.
This satisfies my curiosity about why TikTok didn't try to push app users to the website, which is not so easy to ban. They were always hoping to cozy up to Trump by offering him the opportunity to "save" TikTok.
It's only for 90 days though, unless Trump decides to completely ignore his duty to enforce the law (a distinct possibility).
Couldn't the web version still pretty essily be enforceable via ISPs, etc.
My reading of the law does not require ISPs to block customers from accessing TikTok. US-based CDNs would be unable to provide hosting, but that just makes it less efficient, not inaccessible.
The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech.
We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced.
Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
- "Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived."
The outcome is *exactly* as anyone with a modicum of sense expected.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"—often paraphrased (sensibly!) as "deserve neither and *will lose both*." As you say: we've lost both—who could have predicted that? Yeah; well.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
There's nothing really novel about the instant situation. It's a classic, on repeat.
Not free speech. Amplification of speech and to an extent freedom of association. Speech is not being criminalized -- you can say the exact same things on a different forum. And the entity being constrained is a foreign actor [edit] with likely state security apparatus ties.
Free speech is satisfied in every country, then, because you can sit at home alone and scream whatever you want at your wall without consequences.
To respond to a comment which has now been deleted:
I don't care about the First Amendment specifically. The US constitution is not magical divinely inspired scripture. I care about the underlying principles of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of association, regardless of how well or poorly those are reflected by a specific written law.
You can literally go to any other competing platform and shout the same thing from the rooftops.
No, you can't. TikTok was the only mainstream platform where pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral.
Allowed or encouraged?
This is the problem.
We can't be certain that a foreign actor couldn't destabilize our faith in our government by pushing pro-palestinian content.
A small push on a platform can snowball since creators take the stances that don't get them cancelled or want to mimic the popular opinion
I'm a 50+ average Joe who only watches Australian state media (ABC) and I've seen plenty of content that I find shocking from both Israel and Hamas and I came away with sympathy for the Palestinians caught in the middle.
Does that count as pro-Palestinian?
Lol where do you even get something so easily disproven like this? I care for neither Israel nor Palestine, but I see more or less equal coverage of both sides (not so much my side, funnily enough) on every platform.
Reddit is both anti-Israel and anti-Palestine depending on the sub. News channels will be one or the other depending on the slant and there's plenty on both sides. Most of instagram is people from both sides shouting at each other about how the other gets more representation/are more evil. Same with facebook. I don't use Twitter or any Twitter clones, but I assume Mastodon has a Palestinian slant while Twitter probably has a slight Israeli slant (shitposting aside). Even on HackerNews you'll see both stances often. I guess 4chan would have my stance, since they hate Israel because antisemitism but also hate Arabs.
Do people just make shit up like this for a laugh? I really don't get it, yet see it so often espoused.
> No, you can't. TikTok was the only mainstream platform where pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral.
Reddit shows pro-palestinian/anti-israel propaganda in the front page on a daily basis.
Also, the fact that Israel's invasion of Palestinian territories was an anti-Biden propaganda point that was boosted pretty hard doesn't exactly prove that the likes of China aren't pushing propaganda to destabilize the US. There was clearly a coordinated effort to force-fed the idea that Biden was pro-genocide and a warmonger, and Trump was the only possible candidate to push peace in Ukraine and Palestine.
If your loud agreement with a lie is disseminated far more widely than your loud agreement with a truth, does it feel like you have free speech?
> And the entity being constrained is a foreign actor
Genuine question from a non-American: does the 1st amendment only apply to US citizens?
The US constitution does not apply to citizens - it applies to the government.
Citizens in the US are implicitly allowed to do whatever they like, subject to laws that the government enacts. The constitution describes those areas where the government is allowed to pass laws. All other areas are off limits to the government, and left for the people to do as they like. To emphasize the point, the amendments specify certain areas that the government is extra-especially-not-allowed to create any laws about, like speech.
The extent to which this is observed today is quite dubious. There are lots of laws that the US government passes which have little to do with anything the constitution allows them to do - but they kinda hand-wave around that and gesture toward something, like the "commerce clause" or whatnot as justification.
But in theory - for any law passed - it is unconstitutional unless you can say exactly where in the constitution it is explicitly allowed.
* Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
In other words, states have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it?
No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
Federal laws are distinct from the Constitution.
No, those aren't other words for the GP's statement.
The Constitution, its Amendments, and decisions of the Supreme Court are not 'federal laws'.
It's not just US citizens, but per the supreme court "foreign organizations operating abroad possess no rights under the U. S. Constitution". In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society International specifically with regards to the first amendment.
---
However TikTok US here is a domestic organization operating domestically merely controlled by a foreign organization operating abroad, which complicates matters. It has rights.
Courts and laws don't need to stop their analysis at "is it a corporation registered in the US." It is a foreign-controlled organization, therefore it is treated as a foreign organization. If you have ever dealt with the defense contracting apparatus, you will know this is how it works.
By its wording, no, because it applies to "Congress". Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
A later amendment is held to have "incorporated" this prohibition against the state governments as well, though that amendment doesn't actually specify anything in particular. ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.")
It is frequently argued that some act of the government violates the free speech rights of foreigners living abroad, which is to say that whatever it was the government did fell into the class of behaviors prohibited by the first amendment. People tend to find that argument weird; I don't know what its batting average is.
Summing up, nothing extends rights to foreigners, but since the first amendment is a prohibition on the government rather than a grant of rights to certain protected people, foreigners arguably enjoy equal protection.
The First Amendment enjoins only the US government.
So, usually in a representative democracy (republic or not), the judiciary power is supposed to check and limit the other two (to avoid a tyranny of the majority). You can have that done in two way: with "case law", the only way in some countries (like the UK): basically if a law is enforced against a minority, it will be enforced against the majority. Other countries added a consitution. Its use is to limit the executive and legislative power of the government: the legislative power is supposed to prevent the law/executive order from existing or being executed, and base that decision on the constitution.
TL:DR: no, it doesn't even apply to US citizen, only to US government.
PS: "tyranny of the majority" for some is a definition fascism, i disagree, to me it isn't even proto-fascism, it lack a weird mythos about internal enemies and a few other mythos. It's closer bonapartism, or cesarism at worst. To be clear i think it is a precondition to have fascism (I.E as long as your case law/consitution is enforced for everybody the same way, you aren't a fascist state).
The 1st Amendment applies to US citizens' freedom to read/receive communications from non-US citizens (or i.e. read books by non-American authors). That's not under dispute: the current SCOTUS ruling both acknowledges, and sidesteps, that.
Emphasis on US citizens
Even if it did, that doesn't matter here, since it's American TikTok users whose speech is being suppressed.
> Speech is not being criminalized -- you can say the exact same things on a different forum.
Yes, it's being suppressed. Criminalization is just one of the many coercive ways to censor something, but states have many tools in the box...
> Speech is not being criminalized -- you can say the exact same things on a different forum.
s/criminalized/supressed/ and message still holds true. You can still say the exact same things on a different forum.
It only holds true if you ignore the substance of the right, the message holds true even if no one can hear you in that other forum!
That may be why freedom of the press is also guaranteed.
Code is speech. By saying you can't distribute a particular app in the United States you're restricting speech.
"Code is speech" is absurdly reductionist in most cases.
Yes, the government censoring Tiktok's source code on Github would be a freedom of speech violation, but that's not what this is about, is it? See also: Tornado Cash. Publishing code facilitating money laundering is fine (you'll find the code still on Github!); running said code to facilitate money laundering isn't.
Or to go with an even more extreme example: Writing code for a self-aiming and firing gun is speech [1], running said code on a gun in your driveway isn't.
The fact that we are still debating such basics of the First Amendment here is baffling. This is almost as trivial as the other well-known limitations in my view (shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater etc.)
[1] At least at the moment, and as far as I know; I think we might see this type of speech being restricted in the same way that some facts about the construction of nuclear weapons are "innate state secrets".
I think it is largely about this.
American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans. That seems like the real 1st amendment issue to me and I was quite surprised to learn that ByteDance only claimed that their own 1st amendment rights were being infringed on (which personally I find to be flimsier).
EDIT: Tornado cash was taken down from GitHub though, so you don't have a point here
The code isn’t the main issue here, it’s the online platform. The apps were only banned as a means to access the platform, not fir the code they contain. The code would be largely useless without the platform infrastructure and data storage behind it.
Huh? It's up as a public archive on tornadocash/tornado-core as we speak.
> American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans.
Yes, in the same way that American companies and individuals are routinely prohibited by the government from distributing other binaries to Americans, most notably anything that circumvents DRMs as regulated by the DMCA.
I really don't think the people that drafted the First Amendment had apps in mind when they thought of "speech", and would probably consider them something more like machinery (a printing press, a radio (not a radio station!) etc.) Interpreting Tiktok as a type of newspaper (which are widely protected even in democracies without an equivalent to the First Amendment) is much less of a leap of faith compared to considering an iOS executable speech.
Interesting, I didn't follow the tornado cash case super closely, but I do recall it being taken off GitHub for a short time.
So I would also argue that restricting DRM bypassing software is a violation of the 1st amendment and, more importantly, that it's a bad thing to restrict.
We'll never know what they would have thought, but I'll add that actual plans for machinery are definitely speech. We certainly do restrict these plans, with ITAR most notably, and I think it's reasonable to draw that line somewhere.
Note that I never said banning TikTok was as bad idea, just that it restricted speech by way of limiting distribution (which oddly looks unconsidered in the supreme court case), which it absolutely does. I'm uncomfortable with this level of power being granted to the government, but given that TikTok is obviously a spying/malware delivery tool by a foreign borderline hostile government I think it's probably warranted.
I think not being somewhat disturbed by the United States government restricting distribution of an application is a bit weird TBH. That's a huge power to have and can definitely be abused, especially if it's made easier to do so in the future.
Does this apply for malware? Trojans? Websites that host child pornography?
Or does it just apply to the brainrotting addiction machine that shoves 800 videos a minute at teenagers?
Note that I didn't say I thought the ban was unwarranted
The liberty in that example being raising enough taxes to properly fund our government so people can just go about their lives.
You can no more riase taxes to properly fund government than you can fill a bucket with no bottom.
One only need to look at the Harris campaign to see that the political class in the us is fundamentally innumerate as well as incapable of making a cost benefit analysis.
One only needs look at any administration after 1980.
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306#t...
The only presidential administration that produced a non-deficit budget was Bill Clinton's second term (~97-00).
Probably because Ross Perot mostly self-funded a third party campaign centered around the national debt and had received 8% of the vote (and 19% in the previous election).
You are missing the point. Benjamin Franklin's quote is about taxation (well at least some people argue):
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
People quote it in the wrong context.
There's a metaculus prediction of whether TikTok will be lawfully banned on 1/20, and they were 99.9% confident it would be in effect. (https://www.metaculus.com/questions/31247/tiktok-ban-in-effe...)
I personally picked 40% because I couldn't image a change of this sort being consistent with today's political reality.
That said, the fine print of that prediction can be interpreted that the ban is "in effect" even if it not enforced and has no legal liability. I doubt all the predictors were hanging their hat on that fine print when they predicted, though.
I've never understood that quote. Is it ok to give up essential liberty to gain a large, permanent safety? If so, how large and how permanent does it have to be to qualify?
I'm also a little unclear on which liberties are essential, versus those that are merely nice to have. We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
I also find it comical that banning TikTok is the red line for folks when the NSA and other government agencies have been acting with impunity when it comes to harvesting data for decades now.
People don't care about most things because there are a practically infinite number of things one could care about.
But when you ban something 9 figures of people happily use, with some small chunk of that even being people making a living off of it, people will care about that because it directly and visibly affects them.
Bread and circus.
If I were an US citizen this would be the most worrying aspect to me.
Are the congressmen so incompetent that they didn't see this coming? This backfired horribly for them in multiple ways... unless this was somehow part of a master plan my simple mind can't comprehend?
Did it somehow not backfire and I'm just being led to believe so?
It’s literally pay to play with the new administration which is why it doesn’t feel coherent. He’s being courted by Meta to ban and TikTok to not ban.
The elite have always known the value of media and propaganda. TikTok could easily sway electorate decision making in the same way as Meta, X, and YouTube. The US oligarchs have no control over a sizable social media platform. The data security and privacy concerns are theater. The very same logic we use for TikTok applies to our own apps and social media. The only distinction is the false premise they have our interests in mind.
Are congressmen this incompetent? Yes. Are they bought by adversaries? Yes. Are they just humans who are as equally manipulated as you? Yes.
Did Trump get more money? Yes. Plan success.
when the NSA and other government agencies
Because, and I hate to say it, they're our snooping government agencies. I'd rather it be them that have access to all my data than the CCP apparatus.
The assumption (whether right or wrong) is that the NSA and other government agencies are at least doing it to keep Americans safe. And I think there's an assumption (again, whether right or wrong) in the general public that the NSA doesn't harvest the data of Americans themselves – or if they are harvesting the data of Americans, then they're Americans who are up to no good.
I would say moreso it’s that the NSA is at least on some level beholden to the will of the U.S electorate.
Foreign governments not so much.
That's a great point, I'd agree with that.
The issue isn’t data harvesting, and it’s unclear to me why people getting this wrong.
The issue is a foreign government having access to that data, to installed software on millions of phones, and foreign control of the primary information source for tens of millions of Americans.
You're analogizing the freedom to access the internet to driving on the wrong side of the road?
The point of the analogy wasn't to say those two things are the same. It was reductio ad absurdum, a totally valid proof technique in math and logic.
If person A says "X implies Y", then person B points out that X would also imply obvious nonsense Z, it doesn't mean that B is saying Y and Z are the same, or even that Y isn't true. They're just pointing out that X is too general to possibly be true.
The context here was Indian raids. Some rich land owner wanted to pay a one time fee. Benjamin Franklin was saying a 1 time fee wasn't enough - and it would only offer temporary safety rather than ongoing safety higher taxes would offer.
This essential liberty was freedom from being killed. Pretty fucking essential.
That's quite interesting. I'd expect a lot of people to say "the freedom to keep my money" is absolutely essential.
We give up that right in exchange for the permanent safety that a government is supposed to grant. Life is presumably more fundamental than money, but if it's the only truly essential liberty, there is a lot of room to give up others.
On the broadest strokes it makes sense. We gave up the liberty of truly owning the land so the government can build houses on them. From there we more or less are rented the land and almost everyone pays a tax for it.
Homeowners have some power. But if the government really needs to (modern example includes building a new railway), They can elect to forcibly pay you and seize it (eminent domain).
>We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
Auto transportation was never a right to begin with. As inconvenient as it is, you are free to walk wherever you want without trespassing. Even across a road. But there's a line when you start to simply endanger others by say, walking on a road at 5 mph.
The free speech argument is ridiculous to me. The content wasn’t at issue; the ownership of the platform was.
You can legally the same content anywhere else, and Tik Tok would not be under fire if it were not owned by one of a handful of countries.
>The content wasn’t at issue
You sure about that one? (https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...)
Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content, and implicitly the fact that if a Chinese company owns it, the US has no control over it. Opinion making in the US is always implicitly enforced, not explicitly.
There's a great bit of an old interview with Noam Chomsky talking to an American reporter in which the reporter asks Chomsky: "You think I'm lying to you, pushing a US agenda?" and he responds: "No I think you're perfectly honest, but if you held any other beliefs than you do you wouldn't be sitting in that chair talking to me"
this is the platform version of that concept.
Frankly, I’m not taking seriously an Axios article.
The content wasn’t not outlawed; the platform was not outlawed.
Some aspect of the platform’s ownership has been outlawedd. That’s pretty different.
You didn't even engage with what I said. You dismiss statements of a US senator because of the paper that reports them?
Please address the actual argument, namely that in the US, when you hand platforms to people like Zuckerberg, you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration the way other people change T-Shirts. That is the point of the sale, anybody who is not utterly gullible can see it from a mile away.
On a Chinese owned TikTok Americans get information presented to them, whether intentionally or authentically, that the US powers that be do not like. There is no other security argument, data was already managed by Oracle in the US, the app was technically separated from its Chinese equivalent Douyin.
I engaged directly with what you said. Namely,
>Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content
I’m struggling to see why you say I didn’t.
> you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration
I think this is blatantly not true. Instagram, reddit, and others host a TON of anti-current-administration content.
Now, I’d like to discuss your assertion that there is no other security argument with a series of questions. I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
Do you think it is likely that CCP has access to the data obtained by Tik Tok on US phones?
Do you think the US government warnings and security audit results were based on real concerns and findings?
Do you think it is a national security risk for millions of Americans to run CCP controlled code on their phones?
Do you think CCP is able to control the Tik Tok recommendation algorithms to promote their interests, possibly at the expense of American interests?
> I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
The only one I wouldn't uniformly answer "no" to is the last one as there's no real evidence for the first two and that one is at least in principle possible but what's important is that private American citizens running entertainment apps on their personal phones isn't a "national security issue".
Running TikTok on government phones in Langley probably is so banning an app like this from government devices is fair enough, but the interest of any individual American is that they have free access to services, domestic or foreign, even if it's literal propaganda because they're the ones who are supposed to make that judgement. Hell even if it's Red Star OS from North Korea and they want to run it on their personal computer, they should be able to.
American interest isn't a synonym for interest of the state department, because if that's the case you're living in a security state (ironically like China) and not a free country.
You didn't respond to the point at all and just repeated your original point.
I responded directly to this
> Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content
Perhaps I should have quoted it so that it was clear.
I just took the liberty to delete TikTok and remove it from my life regardless if it comes back.
Thats funny, I took a look at publicly available harms from various social media apps and deleted Meta apps.
¿Por Qué No Los Dos?
Why stop at two? X seems to just be crazy person x says crazy thing y, so no problem adding that to my dns blacklist, fb and insta are as you say, just as obvious as tiktok. SEO results are dominated by AI vomit blogs, nothing to see there so searech engines are useless. LLMs seem to be mostly ok for finding things right now, I'm sure they will figure out how to mess that up soon enough though. YouTube is really useful for figuring out how to fix my <insert thing broken in my house>. But other than that is just the prototype the other stuff was based on. For news I look at news sources that cost money, wsj, economist etc. because then there is at least a chance that I myself am not the product. For finding music I ask local musicians who they like and follow those referrals a few deep. For seeing funny pet antics I look at my pets. To learn more about tech I come here and follow links.
Unlike TikTok, X is an American social media platform. By default, It is protected under free speech rights. TikTok is Chinese and doesn't get to play that card. End of story.
That doesn't keep them off my dns blacklist though. Seems like whatever card tiktok played was good enough to get tomorrow's administration to change course.
If the Democrats field a candidate that is willing to debase themselves with a stupid dance that goes viral, I feel there may be a change of heart. Assuming Trump doesn't manage to run for a third term.
That quote was about making the state stronger and able to demand more from citizends.
I think that potential EU legislation can and should take this as a cautionary tale.
The EU has the advantage that their politicians don't all own gigantic shares in any social media companies (because the EU doesn't have any), so they are afforded the rare luxury of actually voting for the good of the people. That's why the EU has decent data privacy laws.
The TikTok ban would've been far less problematic if they had created legislation for all companies that curtailed data trading and increased user privacy. But that was never the goal.
How so?
I was thinking:
1. Banning media based on alleged (or real) foreign interference is a very thin line
2. Banning and "unbanning" media based on vague accusations can be exploited for self-serving economical or political interests, which long-term hurts any kind of credibility of media as a whole. And, like it or not: we depend on media. We're not living in self-sufficient communes, at least most of us don't.
3. What made TikTok an issue in the first place: foreign interference (see 1) and problematic content, the policy causes for this probably include insufficient moderation and lack of court accountability. Then there's the question of algorithmic bias: I think this is not a simple question, e.g. is Instagram Reels technically the same or if not, what are the most important differences between their recommendation algorithms?
Banning foreign tech can be massively unpopular and give a huge tailwind to populists who promise to unban it.
Except that no one voted to give up this liberty nor purchase this "safety". The oligarchs determined that they wanted to purchase power and "elected" to take our liberty.
That quote has to do with taxation.
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
and is relevant for more than original intent.
censorship, and similar constraints on free speech, just hide the problems of society so you are unable to act on possible threats as a policymaker.
Different outcome if Harris wins the election though.
Is it possible that TikTok solved their problem by purchasing $6 billion worth of Trump’s meme coin?
He's making tens of millions of Americans (especially including those who may not have otherwise been political) quite fond of him, bringing back a platform that has definitely been a net positive for him overall, undoing one of his predecessors 'achievements', and so on.
He came out against a ban on TikTok long ago (after initially being in support) and made it clear he'd work to reverse it the second the ban bill started gaining momentum.
Did he not start this entire process during his own presidency? It’s spectacle for the masses and real tv scripts being played out in the White House.
So he can make a call and cancel a border security bill, but can't make the same call to cancel the TikTok portion of the spending bill before it passed?
That could simply be a side benefit and not worth Trump making a "deal" to rescue TikTok from an existential threat. Icing on the cake.
B I N G O
> Is it possible that TikTok solved their problem by purchasing $6 billion worth of Trump’s meme coin?
Yep
Soldiers were already sharing videos of aircraft carriers on Rednote which hasn't gone through the whole shenanigans of paying Larry Ellison to host it on Oracle Cloud and so on. The national security risk is the US military apparently not being able to convince its own soldiers to be thoughtful about cybersecurity.
This is why Blackberry used to sell phones without cameras and microphone switches, and enterprise-centric OS images. Crazy that regular iOS/Android phones leaking data 24/7 to a million 'partners' are freely allowed at military locations. Pictures and video uploaded to social media include EXIF data with geolocation!
How does it matter where those videos were shared? Material is either classified or unclassified, it doesn't matter if the WarThunder forums (for example) are moderated by US nationals or not.
It's not about where the videos are posted, it's about having apps that collect exact GPS position of smartphones that soldiers carry while the position of the ships they are on is classified. The fact that there's videos is just the "proof" that they have installed such apps that exfiltrate things like their location, for example.
Famously, soldiers wanted to use strava in secret military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
If you want to secure sailors' phones you are going to have to do a lot more, and at the same time much less, than ban or transfer the ownership of one single app that happens to be used by over a hundred million civilians.
GasBuddy (and Life360) just sold that same location data to brokers, which Allstate bought and used to adjust premiums. Practically every app that is given access to location info is selling it, and it's widely available to anyone with the money to buy.
Maybe we should have some sort of General Data Protection Regulation law instead of hand-wringing about social media.
GasBuddy, at least, said that they could (read: would) sell the location data that they collected after opt-in. It was part of the agreement.
I can't imagine a world where it would be illegal for two parties to agree to sell the location data that one of them generates.
That’s the world we live in today. Under many countries’ privacy laws, it’s not legal to sell PII to a third party that you collected for a specific other purpose (e.g., fulfilling the primary purpose of the app). The problem is that they do it anyways.
What problem?
If I agree to let FantasyCorp sell my location data, and then they follow through with our agreement and actually sell it, then there's no problem here that I can see.
Why are soldiers allowed to bring GPS-enable consumer smartphones along with them on top-secret deployments in the first place?
It’s not top secret deployments, it’s any deployments. All deployments need to maintain a level of operational security. Also if you expect a bunch of people in the 18-29 age range to go without internet for 9 months to 2 years, you’re kidding yourself. The tradeoff is between operational security and morale and if you’re in military leadership, you really don’t want unhappy troops on your hands.
I mean, I do completely expect deployed military personnel to adhere to rules and limitations that are much more rigorous than those they'd experience in civilian life.
I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security simply because that's what people in their broad demographic category are accustomed to.
I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories, without regard for the capacities and attitudes of the specific individuals seeking to join. I know for a fact that people are rejected for enlistment for all sorts of reasons.
And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Of this we are in 100% agreement. It’s totally doable, but I am observing that today it is not a solved problem in the US military.
> I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
I’m a little confused about the wording of this but I am reading this as saying that the military should be able to apply its own standards that are stricter than what civilians are accustomed to. I agree, and it does. But I’m suggesting that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that enforcement is never perfect. A blanket ban on personal devices (I’m positive this has been tried before) would both be unpopular and difficult to enforce. It would be a mistake to discount the cost of poor morale. And it would be a mistake to ignore the outsized effect that poor morale has on middle management — the ones who are responsible for enforcing said rules.
I hope it’s clear that my commentary is entirely descriptive and not prescriptive. Full disclosure: I’m former US military enlisted and also currently working in a space adjacent to improving operational security.
You're constructing a straw man without being curious about the things you yourself are missing.
Or in HNism, you're "Why don't they just..." without considering the reasons those solutions might be more challenging than they first appear.
I suggest you read parent comment about balance and tradeoffs inherent in forward deployment again.
> You're constructing a straw man without being curious about the things you yourself are missing.
Could you point out the straw man in question? I feel like everything I posted above is a direct response to arguments I gleaned from your previous comment, and certainly didn't intentionally attribute any argument to you that I didn't think you were actually making.
> I suggest you read parent comment about balance and tradeoffs inherent in forward deployment again.
I've reread it a couple of times, and I'm afraid I'm not seeing any hidden propositions in it that I missed the first time around. Could you be more explicit about what you're getting at?
My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff, and my point about the absurdity of trying to make that tradeoff for society as a whole in a scenario where you imply the military can't make it for its own operations still seems to apply here.
> Could you point out the straw man in question?
>> I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security
The post you were replying to didn't suggest anything about total freedom. You're exaggerating their words to make your argument easier.
>> I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories
Given initial enlistment age ranges between 17 and 30/40 [0], you get cohorts from specific generations.
Kids who are 17 now were born ~2008, which is just starting to be kids with smartphones and mobile devices their entire lives.
No cross-sectioning required: just upper and lower age limits.
>> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight
I'm going to assume you're honestly ignorant of military networks and field device management at scale.
The military runs segregated networks. Secure networks require approved devices; those devices are extremely locked down. There are often also public internet networks for MWR reasons. Unmanaged devices can be used on those networks. Furthermore, in most non-naval deployments, terrestrial cellular data networks are also accessible.
>> for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Military IT is already overloaded managing the vast number of secure devices and networks, so having them manage consumer devices in any way is a non-starter.
For scale context, the DoD PKI includes ~4 million active CAC cards. [1]
Unmanaged consumer devices + CAC are also often used for less-privileged interaction with the military (e.g. HR functions).
> My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff
And the responses that you're getting are that these are non-trivial problems for real-world reasons.
Furthermore, you seem to have a lack of understanding about how much it sucks to be stuck in a forward base, and how important maintaining morale is to command authority and force effectiveness.
PS: Also, look at user names. I'm not the author of the original comment you replied to.
[0] https://www.usa.gov/military-requirements
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card
Because consumer smartphones are a cheap and logistics-light way to improve morale on deployments.
It's not easy to put a McDonald's in the middle of the desert.
I'm sure there are many other cheap and easy ways to improve morale on deployments, but that many of those options are eschewed and/or only offered with oversight because they would otherwise risk operational security.
I'm not sure what to make of the argument that the military is unable to find any alternative to consumer smartphones without even RMM implemented as a means of providing for troop morale, therefore the government should regulate social media for the entirety of society as a means to ensure the security of military maneuvers. This just sounds nuts to me.
I'm going to try to put this in as few words as possible.
>> Why are soldiers allowed to bring GPS-enable consumer smartphones along with them on top-secret deployments in the first place?
That was your original question.
It wasn't 'Should we ban TikTok to enhance military security?'
When people answered your original question with relevant points, you reached back to banning TikTok.
This entire conversation is about the TikTok ban. My question about why deployed troops are allowed to use social media apps on consumer devices was in response to preceding comments insinuating that banning TikTok is justifiable in light of its potential to damage operational security if military personnel are using it in the field, and was targeted at understanding the implied premise that the problem couldn't be solved by much more proximate, narrowly tailored approaches.
You probably should have phrased your question differently, then.
It sounded like you just didn't understand why soldiers are allowed to bring GPS-enable consumer smartphones along with them on deployments.
Are ship locations classified? I doubt China has difficulty keeping track. They have satellites too.
Generally, no. Specifically, yes.
https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker
The more valuable signal from app data would likely be op tempo and what phase of a deployment / mission a ship is in.
Aside from inferred reasons for changes in patterns of behavior, one going emcon and suddenly dropping all users off an app means something.
Also, modern satellites are great, but even carrier battle groups are really small in the Pacific.
App usage not only leaks location, but number of troops; something which is not readily detectable by satellite.
Wouldn’t the crew of a ship be pretty constant though, for this example?
The crew would be relatively constant, but ships also carry attachments that are based on the types of missions they are going to complete. So the actual number of passengers would vary.
The Onion Router was invented by the Navy to make ship location tracking hard with visibility of some of the network, so it's classified at times. More importantly, just because you have satellites doesn't mean that it's easy to pick all of that out all the time or to be entirely certain of which ship/which mission, etc. Making it harder is better even if it can't be made impossible outside of subs.
They almost certainly are while on deployment, despite it being really obvious where a ship is.
Oceans are vast, sometimes there are clouds and storms.
Clouds and storms don’t really help you with a SAR satellite.
Plus these apps track you everywhere so the Chinese have your GPS and you're on the aircraft carrier. No need for fancy satellites they can just have that data and track the military and other government employees 24/7. I guarantee you no American company can track Chinese military or Chinese employees 24/7 wherever they're at this is a one-way deal it's not good for the US.
> The national security risk is the US military apparently not being able to convince its own soldiers to be thoughtful about cybersecurity.
That's not really a new problem. The problem is as old as time, even before the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_lips_sink_ships
When I was deployed in 2011 we didn't carry cell phones because:
1. Jammers will render your antenna unusable or potentially damage your device.
2. The country that controls the infrastructure now has the inside scoop on who you are, what you're doing, and where you are. Even if they country is an ally, it only takes a few individuals to start mass exfiltration.
TikTok was turning into infrastructure for social dialogue except that it had a new capability compared to the cell phones of 2011: it could be manipulated at scale, and quickly with the combination of algorithms and outrage culture.
By that measure they should ban the war thunder forum before tiktok
It's hopeless to expect every member of the military to be thoughtful about cybersecurity. If they'll openly share nuclear secrets & base protocols publicly, anything is fair game.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
This isn’t the only risk. There is also the problem of radicalising people. This has been a big problem in Europe.
> The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech
And now about how the sitting president can profit from brokering it
There's something in this argument about national security, that if taken to its logical conclusion, would result in a world most people would consider upside-down:
If social media owned by foreign companies is a national security threat, then wouldn't that essentially make FB, X, YouTube a threat to like every other nation? Why not throw wikipedia in too? So now any nation can legitimately see any other source or collector of information as a national security threat and ban it at will? Taken to the logical conclusion, every nation should be enveloped by its own digital borders.
To me, it's the popular sentiment alone, for example people feeling sad and upset TikTok's gone and feeling happy that it's back, that's preventing this dismal future, otherwise governments would block apps on a whim. And this I'd say is a win.
This isn't about free speech. Tiktok's statement actually provides all of the necessary context. China pays influencers. The tiktok ban is not about what you are allowed to say, but who is allowed to pay you to say it. This is a very different question.
Can someone please explain how the law tramples free speech? Isn’t it completely legal to shut down a stadium or arena?
Additionally, why have we all forgotten that China does not allow any of our social media companies within their borders?
If we’re in the business of free trade, there’s no reason to let them operate a social media company in the US until they’ve opened their market to us.
It's an absolute win for the content creators who relied on TikTok for their livelihoods and the small businesses who relied on it for marketing. And for Gen Z, for whom content creation is one of the few viable ways to earn a good income now that tech grad hiring has completely collapsed.
It’s kind-of not. A ban would have given them all the opportunity to go wherever their audience went. The demand for their content wouldn’t simply disappear, it’d just be displaced to some other platform. And said other platform would almost certainly be less capricious and better for creators than TikTok.
> This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
This is the maximally stupid outcome, so I suppose we should have seen it coming. I guess the conclusion is going to involve Trump taking an ownership stake in TikTok, possibly by swapping it for $TRUMP cryptocurrency or Truth Social shares something.
I think people are not quite ready for the level of klept we’re about to see.
On the contrary, we've even following the Pelosy trading scheme for quite a while.
This would go way above insider trading for mere millions.
Try billions. Pelosy alone is worth around half a billion.
If Trump walks away from all this as a single-digits billionaire, I'll consider this all to have been business as usual.
I'll go ahead and take the doomsaying with a grain of salt and expect, roughly, the exact same thing as last time.
Spare me the, "but this time it's different" without any good reason to expect it.
I genuinely hope you’re right.
The klept will probably escalate until a fellow billionaire gets hit. It's going to get really weird.
We can blame the state of New York for this, who convicted Trump of falsifying business records and then handed him a sentence of .. nothing.
> then handed him a sentence of .. nothing.
Nothing yet: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr72m57e1jo
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr72m57e1jo
Which is why he is never going to voluntarily step down, and has made it clear he is never going to voluntarily step down.
There would literally be an instant revolution by 50% of the US upon such an act. Let's please avoid the inflammatory rhetoric.
Have you not listened to what he has clearly said? Including plans to pardon folks for Jan 6th?
Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be some kind of ‘emergency’ this time.
There was no ‘instant revolution’ on Jan 6th. Near as I can tell, if that capital police officer hadn’t shot the woman climbing the barricade…
But then I watched it live on CSPAN, so I got to see it for myself instead of being able to be told afterwards that I didn’t see what I saw.
This despite the brilliant defense argument of “that wasn’t fraud because everyone should have known I was lying”…which was also the Fox News defense…and is presumably how the executive branch officially works as of tomorrow.
> The klept will probably escalate until a fellow billionaire gets hit.
The klept will not spare the billionaires. There’s a reason Meta’s entire public posture has changed since Nov 6, there’s a reason the WaPo didn’t publish an endorsement. This isn’t a class thing - Trump is not a billionaire defending his fellow billionaires, he’s a mob boss in charge of the state.
He's a jester in a royal court peopled by billionaires.
What should be the penalty for mislabeling a payment to a pornstar in the records of your own family owned company?
Nothing unless you’re running for public office. The rules are understandably different when you’re beholden to the people. Personally I’m ok with this distinction. Politicians should have to give up some rights that private citizens have and be held to a higher bar to guard against the tendency towards corruption that comes with greater influence and power.
He wasn’t running for public office at the time.
And maybe we should have a law that punishes politicians for paying money to cover up affairs. But we don't have that. Trump's prosecution was, instead, a triple bank shot combining three different vaguely written laws in a combination that makes the Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich look straightforward.[1]
As CNN's head legal analyst Elie Honig explained: "The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
Yes he was. The payment in question happened after he launched his campaign -- in late October of 2016.
[EDIT to respond a bit to the now-expanded parent, which was only a single sentence when I replied]: I do totally agree that the hush money prosecution was a bit of a stretch, and wouldn't have happened if Trump wasn't famous. You're just wrong about it applying to a time when he wasn't running for office.
Except the charges related to business records dated February 14-December 5, 2017.
My recollection is that the prosecution was a combination of the mis-labeling of the payments, and the mis-labeling being in service of concealing a (federal) crime. Said different crime being the original hush money payment, which happened during the campaign. I.e. if he hadn't done something illegal while running for public office, there'd be nothing to charge him with.
Now, it'd be better if he simply got prosecuted for the initial crime. Absolutely agree there. But I'm not sure that "I can avoid prosecution for campaign misdeeds by committing them and then waiting to pay people back until after the campaign" would be a great precedent.
Hush money payments are not illegal, even for candidates. Congress has an $18 million slush fund for settling claims of sexual harassment: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20240613/117426/HHRG.... Those all have NDAs.
The judge summarized the case for the jury as follows:
> The allegations reflect in substance, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, it is alleged that Donald Trump made or caused false business records to hide the true nature of payments made to Michael Cohen, by characterizing them as payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a retainer agreement. The People allege that in fact, the payments were intended to reimburse Michael Cohen for money he paid to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, in the weeks before the presidential election to prevent her from publicly revealing details about a past sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
That summary implies that paying off Stormy Daniels "to prevent her from publicly revealing details" about the affair was the unlawful act. But under what law? And why wasn't he just charged with that law directly?
The judge actually summarized it in vastly more detail than you say there. Take a look at the jury instructions if you want to see exactly what the theory was: https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People%20v.%2... (starting around page 29, or again around page 44)
Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means: violating federal campaign contribution limits, falsifying other business records, and violating state tax laws about how the reimbursement to Cohen was handled. The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
The reasons to not charge him for those separately would seem to be respectively: 1. that's the feds job, 2. statute of limitations expired for the non-felony falsifications during his presidency when he couldn't be charged with anything, and 3. Cohen directly committed the tax crime so all Trump's guilty of is conspiracy to commit a really niche bit of tax misrepresentation that didn't actually cost anything.
The unambiguous bit is that he definitely falsified business records, and so the squabble is over whether he's guilty of a misdemeanor or a felony. It was apparently persuasive to the jury that he did the felony version.
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means".
That just gets you back to the temporal problem we started with. As you say, the only "unambiguous bit" from the jury's implicit fact-finding "is that he definitely falsified business records." But he did that after he won the election. How can you influence an election through unlawful conduct that happened after the election was resolved?
Insofar as the case was framed as election manipulation, you need some conduct prior to the election. Which is why, as you observe, the prosecutor had to add a third layer of uncharged alleged crimes:
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means... The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
Putting aside that each of the predicate crimes is deeply flawed (e.g. federal prosecutors investigated and declined to bring the campaign finance charge), you can't rest your triple-layer cake felony theory on a base of uncharged predicate crimes and tell the jury they don't have to agree as to the predicate crimes: https://www.justsecurity.org/96654/trump-unanimous-verdict. This is exactly the sort of thing judges are supposed to keep from being submitted to the jury.
It's personally embarrassing that lawyers at my former firm helped architect this travesty. If this harebrained legal theory had been used to convict a sex trafficker or murderer, lawyers at that firm would be falling over themselves to represent the defendant on appeal pro bono.
>Also, the law that tramples free speech
I'm not sure how so many people misunderstand the difference between "free speech" and "app controlled by hostile foreign government".
The people speaking on TikTok have not lost their right to free speech, they still are free to use a multitude of other channels that amplify their speech. No speech was blocked, only the app controlled by a hostile foreign government was blocked, and there are no provisions in a any legal framework that says we can't stop a hostile foreign government from controlling what people in this country see.
Everybody loses? The fact that TikTok remains available to millions of users is a significant benefit, especially for those who rely on it for creative expression, community building, and small-business promotion.
I would say yes, everybody. TikTok is very bad for our society. It has had profound negative effects on people's ability to pay attention to things. I don't know that I'd say the solution is legalistic in nature, but the continued existence of that platform is a cancer on humanity.
He means net loss to the status quo in reference to the entire fiasco. I had TikTok before… I still have TikTok… what rights were trampled in the process of bringing about zero change to me using tiktok?
Tiktok now exists at the whim of the sitting president, whoever that may be. This means that the USA is one small step closer to a dictatorship.
That’s only true if Tik Tok remains operating in violation of the law.
This has nothing to do with tiktok and everything to do with shifting power in the US political system towards the executive.
That's true. Unfortunately, it is also highly addictive, esp. for kids and teens.
The us opium wars:
Where the fights isn't over selling opium to the us masses, but about who gets the profits from the sales.
Here, have my upvote.
I might not share your views but it is important to defend this side of the debate to get the full picture.
It’s easy to reduce TikTok to its negatives and forget that ton of people do get value from it. Obviously for content makers but even for watchers, entertainment and sense of community do have values.
I strongly dislike vertical video and find channel-flipping physically uncomfortable, and my life would probably be a little bit better if I didn't hear that around me all the time, but I will staunchly defend what I believe to be a violation of the first amendment.
I'm not sure why people seem to have more narrowly defined their idea of freedom of speech to be "the freedom to shout futilely into the void," when it's a two-way street. The government telling booksellers they can't sell a book to people isn't just a violation of the author's rights, but the right of other people to seek and acquire that book. (Hence the clauses in the amendment about anssociation and abridgment of press.)
The whole situation is very Fahrenheit 451. Which is kind of ironic, since Bradbury would have probably hated TikTok and assumed it would be the television-flavored precipice leading to books being destroyed.
Captain Beatty would be proud of all of the would-be firemen itching to torch everything they don't like, oblivious to the simple corollary that someone else doesn't like what they like.
It's interesting how most commenters seem to forget about TikTok users. Every interest is taken into account, China, USA, intelligence services, TikTok "competition". Users somehow never enter the picture for most people in any other way than as gullible idiots getting exploited by the aforementioned parties.
In this model, users are the consumers and therefore aren't under consideration for malfeasance by suppliers.
Are they irrelevant?
Well, they’re TikTok users. They only have a five-minute attention span, so they’ll forget about any consequences pretty quickly.
Because they aren't TikTok users, simple as that. If the Trump admin was going to ban Reddit for being partially Chinese owned, they'd be up in arms.
Aren't we all, to a large extent?
I mean, yeah, I would be slightly annoyed to lose ${social network}, but in truth, my life would be hardly impacted.
This seems not to be an opinion that other people hold, but I never saw social media as “free speech” given that some third party can decides which parts of what you say get promoted.
If you sent letters to people via a middleman who decided which of those to forward onwards, you’d see that as censorship. I appreciate that that’s an over-simplified example - it’s meant to be a reductio ad absurdum. But control of the algorithm effectively regulates free speech, IMO.
Also (for clarity) the fact that China happens to be involved is not relevant to my point!
… the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court
This law does not trample free speech. Your view of what free speech means as it pertains to U.S. law is wrong.
This is not an outcome. The legal process is but still well underway. In the United States, we abide by the rule of law.[1] That's really what separates us from China.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
What also bothers me is there's a simple solution to all this. Just pass comprehensive consumer data protection laws and regulations all companies operating in the US are required to follow. But you don't see anyone proposing that for some reason...
No there's going to be some obvious winners. Trump is going to force a 50% sale to a US based JV. That JV will be run by / benefit some of his biggest goons.
So Trump & his circle win !
I just don’t get how free speech translates as accessibility to post on a commercial platform.
This is exactly what all Europeans watching US politics expected. No more, no less.
> balance between national security and free speech.
This is an absurd framing. Free speech cannot implicate national security. If a social media platform controlled by a foreign government can manipulate the people so easily then you have a much larger and ignored problem.
> all of its national security risks
Which are zero. What you actually experience a risk from is the shabby way Google, Microsoft and Apple have put their platforms together. Designed to earn them money while utterly destroying your privacy.
> This outcome is worse
You're already in trouble. This outcome is a symptom of a much larger problem. The conversation around this is completely detached from reality.
Everyone lives and dies by the KING now.
It was never about that balance. It was always about populism.
“National security” is such a bs term for US govt to avoid transparency. It comes from the post 9/11 era of FISA courts, PATRIOT act to justify wide net domestic surveillance and wiretapping.
To me, the whole banning of TT is political theater aimed to divide the US while existing tech oligarchs consolidate power and money.
Just look at the message TT broadcasted. Blatant pandering of incoming administration.
I agree. This is a forced consolidation that will only strengthen American tech oligarchs and the new administration. It's also coup on the culture of the younger generations similar to what happened to Twitter.
"TikTok CEO attending Trump inauguration" - https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5089151-tiktok-ceo-don...
Chase Hughes:
"Manipulation Playbook: The 20 Indicators of Reality Control"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3AN2wY4qAM
The answer is to not use TikTok.
It's worse than that. The platform is now beholden to the president for its survival.
If you're wondering how Russia slipped from a flawed democracy into an aurocracy, it was because Yeltsin fixed the 1996 election, by holding an axe over the head of the press. He made it very clear that anybody who wants to keep their broadcast licenses will need to shill for him.
It's how a drunken autocrat with an 8% approval rating, credited for both hyperinflation and mass unemployment, who launched a coup (that killed a few hundred people and caused a constitutional crisis) ended up getting re-elected.
And then at the eleventh hour, after firing his cabinet, again, he declares Putin his successor and resigns over a $10,000 bribery scandal.
>Everybody loses.
Huh? Trump singlehandedly bringing TikTok back for tens of millions of malleable voters. Sounds like a pretty huge victory for him!
This 4 years gonna be good. Trump #1 was amateur time, this time they come prepared to bring havoc.
Plus Trump got all major social media in his pocket.
Trump wins, everyone loses.
Get used to it.
What outcome are you talking about comrade? Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Free speech?
Can you talk about the Tiananmen Square massacre on TikTok and show the few videos of people who were disappeared?
Are they accessible in the country that owns TikTok?
If I want to run what someone else has determined as "malware" on my computer, as far as I'm concerned, I should have the absolute right to do it. Same for spyware. Why? Because I don't want the government to make the determination for what is right or wrong for me on my own property. If the US government wants to block apps on their property, then they can go ahead and do that. But the moment it extends to my own property, it's quite ridiculous to think people are going to bend over backwards and comply with what's good for you. Especially in the context of some vague national security threat, why am I supposed to be subversive to the CIA?
How can you complain about the CCP banning foreign social media and censoring when you have your own government willing to do the same thing -- in the name of Protecting the Democracy?
It's not about privacy or data or whatever the facade is. The crime that we are committing is none other than allowing ourselves to be fed information that could threaten the United States. So, therefore, even according to the SCOTUS, if Congress plasters the magical words "national security" in their laws, then the Constitution takes a backseat and we too can be like China/Russia/Iran. Will we start banning VPNs next--which circumvent our new found love for censorship? I'd not be surprised.
> Can you talk about the Tiananmen Square massacre on TikTok and show the few videos of people who were disappeared?
Yes, see www.tiktok.com/channel/tiananmen-square . Or read https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/tiktok-us-ban-congress... . Or just go search for it.
That is hilarious! Did you even look at the Tiananmen Square channel before posting it? Or do you think that's what happened?
Can you be more specific about what you mean? The search summary for that page says:
> The Tiananmen Square Tank Man is an iconic image that emerged from the protests and subsequent military crackdown that occurred in Beijing, China, in 1989. The protests, primarily led by students demanding political reforms and greater freedoms, took place in Tiananmen Square, a prominent public space in the heart of the city.
I'm not a TikTok user, it was down earlier but clicking now I see the famous tank man video, an article about Chinese censorship of AI, etc. Do you get something different?
Totally fair point, my results could be different. To me, the salient point of Tiananmen Square is the massacre (and wider spread protests). That aspect has been suppressed. I see video clips talking about how the content is available, but no content. I also see many clips denying that anything happened.
"The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met"
Sounds like they're operating within the law
From the ruling:
"The Act permits the President to grant a one-time extension of no more than 90 days with respect to the prohibitions’ 270-day effective date if the President makes certain certifications to Congress regarding progress toward a qualified divestiture."
Sounds like he needs to work with Congress on at least a basic level for this to be within the law, not just make his own decision and declare all is good. And there is the small detail that he is not President, at least not today.
TikTok has already received multiple "interest to acquire" letters, including the one from Perplexity that would keep all existing investors fully intact.
Having that along with a republican majority in both the congress and the senate this isn't going to be difficult for Trump to fulfill the requirements of the law.
That is not enough to satisfy all 3 certification requirements as required by this law.
Do you get the impression that the incoming administration cares about the law?
As long as there is a fig leaf/smokescreen, and TikTok makes the right noises and contributions, they’ll be fine.
If anything, Keeping them technically in violation of the law is the leverage the administration will want to keep so they can squeeze TikTok whenever they want.
The law never required that they shut down, so in a tautological sense they are.
However, with regards to the absurd justification. The president (still Biden) hasn't granted any extensions, nor is the president even able to grant an extension without
> certif[ing] to Congress that-
> "(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
> "(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
> "(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
There is no evidence that Trump will be able to lawfully do any of those, and he has to do all, after he becomes president again.
> "(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
> There is no evidence that Trump will be able to lawfully do any of those once he becomes president,
He can buy or be gifted a partial ownership stake?
"Qualified divestiture" means "no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary."
Minority or even majority ownership change isn’t enough as long as the CCP still has control.
ByteDance has been rather vocal that they aren't interested in divesting like that. He could be, there is no evidence he will be, and it's not something he can cause to happen.
Isn't selective enforcement in general within any law in the United States? There are plenty of laws that get broken all the time and it's up to police & prosecutors/AGs to decide which cases they actually want to enforce.
He has to kinda gesture towards in-progress plans to comply with the law to grant that exception, but that's not a huge hurdle.
That's very sad news.
The US-shilling in this thread is unbelievable. It’s almost as if half of these people have never heard of who Snowden was and don’t believe the US has ever spied on foreign nationals :headslap;
Anyone that didn't see this coming is so naive- Trump only cares about optics. Look at the message when opening tiktok "Thanks to President Trump"... there is no way he didn't say "look, you HAVE TO PUT MY NAME OUT THERE or you are being banned".
But yet morons will be like "trump saved tiktok!!!"
TT playing both the public and politicians for their gain. Well played.
Biden admin wasn’t going to enforce ban but TT soft shutdown yesterday with message pandering to incoming admin (broadcasted to hundred millions of users).
High suspicion of political theater.
I wish ppl would see through this and realize this is yet another distraction to divide us via culture war.
Oh man. So much fuzz over a site that shares video snippets. Is it just me? I feel like I am witnessing some kind of end of US society.
Fear disseminated by politicians and social media (pick whatever we are supposed to be afraid of this week.) Paired with an addictive desire to be relieved and distracted from this fear, in part from the same politicians/social media.
>I feel like I am witnessing some kind of end of US society.
Have you been paying attention since covid? It's just terminal now.
"It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship."
That hit's different from Chinese company. lol
Words don't mean anything, they are just tools to win PR battles.
Couldn't agree more
Between this and the Gaza ceasefire the outgoing administration is laying up political wins for Trump before he even takes office. An embarrassment for an administration that has completely failed to play the political game properly for years. And Biden was such a savvy operator before.
> We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans
These are literally just promises from Trump that these companies are relying on, not an actual change to the law, just a promise that he won't enforce it against them? Sounds like an utterly insane business decision that they'll regret as soon as they fall out with him. Each to their own I suppose.
> The app was still unavailable for download from Apple’s and Google’s app stores.
I guess I wonder if that's going to change specifically. They strike me as the two companies that would be most insane to take Trump at his word here.
It’s not an insane business decision, but the easiest way to garner support for your preferred candidate. Anyone who is 24/7 on TikTok (there are a lot of them) will now say how Trump saved the app. And kinda, technically, they’re not wrong (if you ignore the history).
Sure, but Trump will have the threat to enforce this law hanging over any of these companies for his entire term. That’s a terrible position to put yourself in. I just can’t believe any of these companies are stupid enough to trust him.
The language surrounding this which basically heaps praise on Trump makes it seem like it was a condition he gave, that he must be given clear unambiguous credit, so he can go around saying he saved it, even though he was the one who signed an executive order in 2020 to ban it[0]. Anything to manipulate the American people’s perception of him. It feels like we’re living in Russia or North Korea with the stuff that goes on these days. Truly scary watching an oligarchy take shape realtime.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
My read is that the US government originally wanted to try to force TikTok to restructure its relationship with China so it wouldn't be under control of the party, either by leaving the country or more likely selling to a US-friendly owner. This was the argument when Trump toyed with the idea during his first mandate.
Occam's Razor suggests this was due to both a matter of national security from the perspective of the intelligence community and pressure from US companies who have struggled to outcompete TikTok. Basically an "everybody wins" move for the powers that be.[1]
China understandably didn't want to lose its influence, and ByteDance didn't want to give up this incredibly valuable asset, so they said "We'll call your bluff and fight you on the basis of the freedom of speech".
The US government then moved to get a law signed that carves out a very specific way to force ByteDance's hand. I'm sure there were lots of lawyers involved and maybe some back channel with the SCOTUS to make sure this was done in a constitutional manner so that it would survive a suit from TikTok which was all but guaranteed.[2]
That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally. This makes it better for the many, many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
But these buyers don't want the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero, so they must also be pressuring president-elect Trump to reinstate the app so that it can continue to be used by Americans and therefore remain valuable, so that when they actually get their money's worth when it inevitably changes hands.
Trump isn't restoring TikTok so that it can continue to operate as in the "status quo ante bellum negotii". He's restoring it so that {insert buyer} can claim the spoils in a few weeks.
---
[1]: We can debate whether "everybody wins" includes the US population, but I think they do, because Chinese influence over US culture is strictly worse than US influence over US culture, seeing as incentives are by definition irreconcilable and therefore always worse if under control of the CCP.
[2]: It stands to reason that all of the US government and the top echelons of business and finance is operating in concert here to drive the outcome they want, which is to remove the influence of the CCP over young American minds and to benefit from forcing the asset to be controlled by a US entity.
I had to scroll past too many "free speech" takes to finally get to this well-thought analysis of the saga.
It has nothing to do with free speech. The US was always going to wind up owning TikTok and influencing speech on the platform. The key issue was price, which is affected by leverage. The strict top-down, centralized control ideals behind CCP/ByteDance/TikTok (they're all the same) were once again outdone by the aforementioned "powers that be".
<< That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally.
I appreciate the analysis even if I disagree with it.
<< many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
It is mildly funny given that China is not selling it. It was defacto made a real geopolitical issue with 170m US users as pawns. They may well be buyers, but China is not in a position of weakness here. If anything, the past 48h showed that users can simply say 'fuck it' out of spite.
In short, from game theory perspective, even if they decided to sell, they can now extract heavy concessions. Yeah, US won so hard on this one.
As I may have mentioned in another post, individual players may have gained some ground, but that is it. US lost a lot in this exchange alone.
US came out way ahead here. They gain full control of TikTok. They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power. They gained even more respect from countries that hate China/russia/iran, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, etc. they now project power over countries that were trying to play both sides of US and China, such as Singapore, Malaysia. And of course, Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper, signaling it is really powerless against US
<< They gain full control of TikTok.
Well, did they? So far it is not that clear.
<< They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power.
Is that a good thing? If so, why?
<< They gained even more respect from countries
Heh, you honestly may want to reconsider this statement. It is not respect, when China openly effectively says 'nah' to sale and shutters the app instead..
<< Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper
Huh? Dude... where did you see a whimper. Allow me to revisit events.
1. Congress passes a law effectively banning TikTok 2. TikTok sues over free speech and loses appeal with SCOTUS 3. Rather than selling, it shuts down the app 4. Users go everywhere, but ( apparently ) US apps 5. Incoming administration gives assurances it won't actually enforce anything for now
I accept there are ways of looking at things, but this is something else.
Users didn't go anywhere. 500-700k of users downloading some app to protest because it's cool is hardly pressuring the government.
You know what? Lets agree to disagree. I am sure we will see the exciting conclusion of this saga 90 days from now.
The extension is for 90 days. If they don't sell, they are worth very little after those three months elapse. It's a life line and a fire sale.
Everyone already knew TikTok was valuable. This isn't new information. They have no concessions to extract here.
Users haven't said anything out of spite. Some people signing up for some other services was not what drove Trump to announce this executive action.
I am willing to put cash money in escrow on this bet, because I do not think it is about the money at this point; not anymore.
> Some people signing up for some other services was not what drove Trump to announce this executive action.
To me, there is a strong appearance of quid pro quo between ByteDance and Trump. In that case, there doesn't need to be a sale. Trump likely will require a simulation of restructuring which enables him to declare ByteDance in compliance, and the whole things goes away.
> But these buyers don't want the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero
Quick reminder: TikTok is available for most of the planet (except China), so a US ban does not make the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero.
It makes a sell-off very unlikely, but I doubt it's going to happen no matter what.
It's quite puzzling why ByteDance didn't bring up the idea of making a TikTok US in the same way TikTok CN (a.k.a. Douyin) works.
Great analysis! This comment should be the top post
What makes you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok? What’s important is what TikTok can do for him, not anything related to national security or ownership concerns.
> What makes you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok?
I'm not sure I follow as I didn't say Trump will require anything and I don't know what "meaningful" means in this sentence.
> What’s important is what TikTok can do for him, not anything related to national security or ownership concerns.
You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
> I'm not sure I follow as I didn't say Trump will require anything and I don't know what "meaningful" means in this sentence.
I thought you said that Trump would require TikTok to be sold. Did I misread? I was asking why you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok. More specifically, why do you think Trump would require TikTok to sell?
> You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
Is that any more valuable than the things which TikTok can give him?
1) Cash (purchase Trump's meme coin, stock grant, etc.)
2) Prominence on TikTok
This isn't about politics, just noting the facts and the hypocrisy...
The Trump administration (back in 2020) were the ones that set this in motion.
"Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok"
August 6, 2020
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...
For those saying there’s no executive order yet or that Trump is not president yet, the point is that they received confirmation that there will be an executive order, meaning they can rely on a 90 day extension of non-enforcement.
So while there is some irony with Trump having previously supported the ban, the practical reality is that he and Susquehanna and the Republicans all are winning big on this one, from a political/financial lens.
[meta] why is this the only comment I can't vote on?
The issue is Trump doesn’t have legal authority to issue an executive order delaying the ban, executive orders “execute” the law, delaying would be the opposite of the law, a law that was held up 9–0 as constitutional by the Supreme Court face palm
There is some precedent for doing this. State-level cannabis legalization rests on non-enforcement at the federal level, at which it remains scheduled.
Sure, but there’s no executive order saying we promise not to enforce it (I assume?), that would be counter to the law even if the absence of enforcement is a legal grey area
Either way it feels like there are games being played, and the country is watching because tik tok is so heavily used by so many people
As far as I can tell, what happened is this law was passed in the heat of the moment (Gaza war), but it turned out to be massively unpopular and ineffective at shoring up US support for the outgoing administration's foreign policy, and even after its moment had passed the combination of the arguments raised by the lawyers for ByteDance and the phrasing of the very unique, very specific bill got it through the Supreme Court, so now everyone's been stuck with trying to figure out how to get rid of it.
And notice how Marlboro didn’t start selling cannabis everywhere? Apple and Google(and their legal teams) have to decide if not following the law on the nonbinding word of a 77yr old man’s promise. The law itself allows companies to be held liable up to 5 years after each infraction.
He can just buy a sufficient stake to count as a "divestiture" under the law.
I was dumbfounded too, but NBC explains in this same article:
> "The law banning TikTok [...] allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met."
Those criteria have not been met and we are passed the deadline in which that extension could be applied.
Yes he does. Form the article:
> The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
and
> After the Supreme Court greenlit the law on Friday, the Biden administration issued a statement saying it would not enforce the ban, leaving that responsibility to Trump.
The criteria is; they must have a plan to sell.
The chance for the 90 day extension under the law goes away before Trump takes office. He can’t legally give them a 90 day extension.
That’s following the law. It doesn’t require an executive order. But the law requires proving to congress that the conditions for an extension are met
Trump wants 50% US ownership in a joint venture for Tiktok. Shouldn't be a problem since 60% of bytedance ownership is already non-China (probably a lot of it already US investors - General Atlantic/SIG)
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138556168486...
The ownership of the company is irrelevant, it's who has control of the algorithm and where the data flows. If Tiktok US licenses the algorithm from China (which seems likely) then none of the national security issues are addressed.
Doesn’t matter what he thinks. Executive cannot override legislative action.
The Supreme Court can always say that it can.
The law always allowed for divesting to US owners. It didn't specify who.
Executive Order
All this and it was only 40% Chinese-owned???
You seem to think percentage of ownership works the same way in China as in the West. That’s an understandable mistake
With the algorithm 100% Chinese-operated
Chinese government has a golden shares deal with Bytedance granting their 1% ownership the ability to nominate a board seat.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b...
That 1% golden share is in Douyin, the Chinese subsidiary of ByteDance, not ByteDance or Tiktok.
Sad
The CCP has a propaganda and spying tool in the hands of 170M Americans. Yet the new Administration is more interested in playing politics than taking necessary steps to secure us against our primary adversary.
It's not just Trump though. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats are taking the China threat seriously enough. The CCP must be destroyed.
Dang. Comments seem to be accumulating on this thread faster than they can be moderated. I'm not trying to call anyone names, but there seem to be A LOT of different political opinions and more than a few conspiracy theories. But who knows... maybe the conspiracy theorists are right... Just wanted to say thanks to the community for not being as flamey as one might expect for a comments section on the internet.
We've been saying for quite some time that large multi-national companies have more power than entire democracies. I guess now we have proof.
Republicans will see this as a political stunt that glorifies Donald Trump
Democrats will see this as a political stunt that glorifies Donald Trump.
China will see this as proof they have some control over the US citizenry.
Tiktok has been working for the last 40 minutes for me after going dark last night.
Some thoughts from Donald Trump: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138556168486...
Incredible.
Isn't ByteDance already owned 60% by international (mostly American) investors?
https://usds.tiktok.com/who-owns-tiktoks-parent-company-byte...
You need to drill deeper to figure out who really holds the money bag. Not to say I know anything, but this page doesn't really say much.
But again, I don't really care about the nationality of the elites.
Have a look at the golden shares part of that, 1% gets you a lot.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b...
Per the article, those shares are not in TikTok:
> The ByteDance unit that sold golden shares to China's government holds the licenses of Toutiao and Douyin to operate under local law.
So those shares don't mean much as far as TikTok's operations are concerned.
what about all the american apps that have no service in china
Interested. What about them?
I think the criticism is that China can buy a seat at our table through flattery, and likely other favours , but we can’t? So we’re potentially corrupted / compromised, and they aren’t.
Another opportunistic nothing burger victory and reason for further tech billionaire fealty. Sigh.
Do you mean the ban, or the removal of the ban? I'm confused. Because I'm pretty sure the ban is at least in part supported by Zuck, and that's why he gave $300M+ to elect a vegetable in 2020, and that's why Meta is spending more than ever on lobbying: https://readsludge.com/2024/04/23/meta-shatters-lobbying-rec...
Dr. T's reversal was at least partly due to the influence of David Yass, who owns a chunk of ByteDance and saved the TruthSocial IPO, making Trump's holding actually worth something. So he owes Yass bigly.
Presumably other wealthy friends stand to win. Steve Mnuchin wanted to buy it.
Word is Musk is offering to buy a controlling stake as well. The whole thing is a racket though: ByteDance is already 60% owned by global institutional investors, including firms such as Blackrock, Susquehanna International Group, Carlyle Group, and General Atlantic. Another 20% are owned by employees, and another 20% by co-founders. Given this, I'm not sure how ByteDance could "sell TikTok" to an US investor - they don't own 50% of it themselves.
Jeff Yass?
Do you think I'd look it up instead of going by my aging mushy memory?
I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I tend to believe most can be boiled down to power and/or stupidity. Which is what I see going on here, but if I were to attach a conspiracy theory to it- this was always the plan and now a portion of the voter base has been flipped. Well played by the Thiel, Musk, Zuck circle jerk.
Trump just issued a personal statement. Not even as president.
It is still a Law.
TikTok is still banned, the Supreme Court upheld it.
Foreign countries are already banned from owning TV stations in the United States so this is certainly not a speech issue. I dont think its clear that Trump can really save TikTok without passing a law through congress though.
Trump's proposed executive order just gives TikTok more time "so that a deal could be made." Honestly I don't understand how TikTok is able to restore service now before the executive order or even the inaugaration has occured.
There was no legal requirement they block service at all, only that other companies stop doing business with them (i.e. App Stores stop distributing, etc.)
Pretty sure Oracle had to turn off the servers. I feel like Oracle is now not complying with the law. Apple and Google appear to be as of writing this.
Securities fraud suit incoming I suppose. Shareholders will sue Oracle for not disclosing the risk and exposing company to the fine
This. It is not back in stores.
It’s back so couldn’t have been that hard.
Alright. Hundreds or thousands of Chinese trackers on every military base in the world. Perfect.
The US military independently banned Tiktok on all personnel devices half a decade ago.
How do they enforce the ban?
by dishonorably discharging :)
That's good. So it should be banned on military bases, why not elsewhere?
I'm not clear how Trump's assurances mean much in the face of a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. I guess we're already in an autocracy controlled by a person not even formally in power yet?
Strange to see the ACLU and Trump having common cause.
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i... https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok...
TikTok is coming back online after Trump pledged to restore it https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/19/tech/tiktok-ban/index.htm...
The ACLU tends to take pretty hard line civil liberty positions, including defending hateful folks if their civil liberties are impinged. They’re not strictly a progressive organization.
They don't really hold hard-line positions anymore. The ACLU would no longer defend the speech of a neo-nazi, for example.
Classic "Bootleggers and Baptists" situation [0], where both parties are in favor for self-serving reasons.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
What does the ACLU not understand..
The law does not ban TikTok.. it requires divestment from a foreign adversary..
Said foreign adversary refuses to divest, thus the company is shutting itself down
Not worth it going back to TT. Will just stay on RedNote
Just a quick reminder: Tik Tok (a service by a Chinese company) is still blocked in China.
But what about national security?? LMAO, political populism for the manipulable idiots.
The whole thing is starting to look like a circus.
when the state if the nation is so bad that you have homeless everywhere, healthcare, housing and education are something you have to fight for, prisons are a business, suddenly another perspective seems more alluring, a modern Nordic socialism? putting a brake to unhinged late stage capitalism? or on the darker side, a promise of better conditions in 'some ways'...this is no national security risk, people are getting simply fed up with appalling state of the nation.
excuse my ignorance..
AFAI-remember years ago Trump was "fired" out of presidency before end of mandate, AND banned in biggest social networks.
Now he is playing president before officially entering a mandate, AND around that those same social networks bosses are cringeing - just in case?
That's two things, one that the exact boundaries of period of the mandate doesn't seem to matter, and second, the social-media BS-dancing thing..
so who's in charge ?
As I expected China wins no matter what
This was basically a 12 year old's plan for making Trump seem like a "champion" - and it somehow seems to be working, even in this comment section (assuming half the comments aren't just bots which I wouldn't discount personally).
And then people in this thread apparently unironically don't see why banning foreign propaganda is a bad thing lol
It's quite fascinating to see a nation's televised descent into absurd cronyism and corruption like this. You've got the prez-elect singlehandedly overturning laws that have just been passed a mere 24 hours ago, making shitcoin scams and getting rich off it, aligning all the psychotic techbros into his corner because they fear what kind of insane bullshit he's gonna pull off on them...
> „China's using Tik Tok to subvert "democracy,"
This is grotesque. Israel is massively influencing US foreign and domestic policy via AIPAC and other lobby groups. AIPAC pays US politicians significant amounts of money, practically buys them. And they are not even registered as foreign entities, something JFK wanted to enforce before he was assassinated.
So who is really manipulating US policy.
And this is the exact group that put pressure on US universities to suppress free speech and on US policy makers to sent Israel weapons worth billions to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Now start your downvotes.
How does an executive order just pause a law passed by Congress? Does Trump think he really has that kind of authority?
>The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
Recent weeks frankly not a good show by US Judiciary.
The series of Trump indictments all fizzling out, because judges didn't want to indict an on coming president.
And on this particular matter, Supreme Court 'unsigned' opinion felt confused even though it is termed unanimous.
At places it seemed to complain of the paucity of time/scope to consider all parts of the matter more seriously, and at the end even expressed ambivalence about what is going to happen next even.
Frankly bit of shoddy-ness/confused signalling from Judiciary and Supreme Court.
Perhaps it would have been better to just delay the matter by issuing an interim extension and reconsider the issue taking into account the views of the new administration.
This was no urgent matter that a few days delay would have mattered.
We're watching the downfall live on stream. They were wrong, the revolution will not be televised is right, the fascist uprising happened in your social media instead.
People seem to misunderstand this metaphor. It’s not about what type of tech the revolution is broadcasted on, it’s about the fact that you’ll be sitting there watching the revolution from the comfort of wherever you are. You will not be doing anything to actually be apart of the revolution, making the revolution more for your entertainment than your detriment/benefit.
It's not really a revolution, moreso a slow downfall into mediocrity, irrationalism and hatred, wrapped in stars and stripes.
As long as this is the only place the fascist upraising happens… better than being forced out of your job, making all other political parties illegal, being beaten by mobs patrolling the streets while the police looks the other way, canceling elections ad vitam eternam on national security grounds, I mean stuff that proper fascists used to do back in the days.
In the mean time, if I wanted 30 seconds clips of cat videos I’m sure I could use a VPN. Let’s ban it. Teach people censorship is utter BS like every Chinese person knows by now. Sadly my attention span is slightly longer than 30s so I’m not even gonna bother
There was no executive order. Turning off Tiktok yesterday was a highly successful political stunt.
Everyone got played by what is effectively joint CCP/Trump propaganda and they’re cheering about it. Bleak, bleak, bleak.
Especially given that Trump initiated the push to ban TikTok in the first place.
Until he didn’t because a major donor to him has a 15% stake in it. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/14/trump-tiktok-billio...
spin working overtime
Bingo, bango, boingo. Just another way to help manipulate people into thinking Trump saved the day, once again. TikTok played the propaganda just right.
It's funny to imagine how, very deeply ironically, it turned out to be a national security risk after all.
- The Occupy Wall Street movement.
- A COINTELPRO-inspired diversion undermines the cause: during demonstrations, individuals wishing to speak must wait in line, while women, minorities, and other groups are prioritized.
- This method becomes widespread in media narratives over the next 15 years, fueling focus on these topics and deepening societal divisions while bankers slip under the radar.
- Initially driven by billionaires, the movement is soon co-opted by financial firms, corporations, and government entities.
- Ultimately, Trump is reinstated, while Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, and, to some extent, Altman align with Thiel and Musk, reversing their previous stances with a dramatic 180° shift.
The oligarchy endures.
There is, it's a few days old, and it's a non-enforcement from the Biden administration, according to the man himself and his staffers, he intends to let it be the next administration's problem. Whatever the next administration does when it takes power is yet to be seen.
The restrict act was written really strangely, and I assume Oracle required some assurance from someone to not just delete Bytedance's accounts and resources.
That wasn't an executive order, as far as I'm aware it was just a statement. It had no legal value, which was why TikTok asked for more assurance.
The fine to each company (Apple, Google, Oracle, TikTok) was in the order of around $5bn each if they kept the lights on, so I would be hesitant to keep it running too without something in writing.
If TikTok was concerned that Biden’s statement wouldn’t be honored, they wouldn’t have turned service back on today while Biden is still president. They’ve had months to work out some sort of deal with Trump, this whole show they’ve put on the past couple days is propaganda.
I have to agree with this. If they'd waited until Monday it would have been different, but legally nothing changed overnight except more puffery.
Right. The Legal teams at Apple and Google will follow the existing law as written.
No EO from Trump will change that.
The title was changed, it used to be "Trump's executive order..." something.
"Biden just signed a potential TikTok ban into law. Here’s what happens next" https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what...
"Biden Signs a Bill That Could Ban TikTok. Now Comes the Hard Part." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/bytedance-tikt...
"Biden signed a bill to force a sale of TikTok or ban it. What’s next?" https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/biden-signs-tiktok-...
"Biden signs a bill that could ban TikTok — after the 2024 election" https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/congress-biden-bil...
So not an executive order, but signing a bill that passed with a veto proof majority, and then saying he won't enforce it.
And to prove how much of a stunt this was from TikTok, they turned their services back on less than 24 hours later even though nothing had changed.
What does being veto-proof have to do with it? No president has to sign a bill just because Congress can override him if he doesn't. His signature is literally an endorsement.
> His signature is literally an endorsement
Yes, but we're not arguing about whether Biden agreed with the bill, but that turning it off was a stunt on TikTok's part.
Someone said there was an executive order, but there was not. He said he wouldn't enforce it, obviously signaling that it's up to the incoming administration.
The fact that TikTok turned off for only 12 hours makes it pretty obvious they wanted to have a good relationship with Trump by giving him some positive PR. Which is ironic considering banning it was primarily pushed by Trump to begin with, but people have obviously forgotten that.
Whether you support trump or not, the level of patronage that corporations seem to think is needed is disturbing. I've never seen companies stoking a presidents ego so publicly.
If there comes a day in the future where the header of every major website starts says "Long Live Donald Trump", we will all be worse off for it.
I've been extremely surprised how eagerly people have accepted this as a new normal. I can't imagine it's in the long term interest of billionaires to be labeled as oligarchs by half the country.
Utterly pathetic like that whole "new" country and it's government.
This is Trump playing chess. ByteDance, Greenland, The Gulf of Mexico, Panama Canal- All this, and he's not even President yet. It's all part of a bigger picture and a bigger plan with sizable levers. Some love this, others find it terrifying.
After they pumped $20B into Trump’s meme coin.
Well Dem and Biden already sealed their fate as the party that ban Bytedance universe (TikTok + Capcut), while Dear Leader Trump restored the services :).
Let's see what the zoomers and millenials will say for next elections
Amazing stunt: The establishment tried to limit freedom of speech and Trump saved the day. Probably a pre-agreed sequence of events.
Never mind that it was him who initially trued to ban it.
Nevertheless a positive development.
There was never a freedom of speech argument here, unless maybe you are china. There are endless similar platforms available to individuals to express themselves on. Ones that aren't owned and controlled by China... America's biggest technological rival.
<< Ones that aren't owned and controlled by China... America's biggest technological rival.
And, you forgot to add, do not allow expression of thoughts that are not culturally accepted in US.
There are people who think similar platforms exist and people who have used TikTok, unfortunately.
What do you mean? YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are very similar.
If there’s a genuine interest I’m happy to explain. Reels and shorts are severely different, even from a purely technical and feature-focused standpoint. They lack lack the ability to pause (I think YouTube allows it but reels no) or save to device, and (reels) lacks the wide music catalog that TikTok has. Neither product has a comprehensive video editing platform like TikTok does. Both lack the ability to push timely content and maintain freshness. Reels is fundamentally based on the social graph for recommendations, with some additional signals for things like hashtags. TikTok learns from content itself and recommends based on content. TikTok has a good mix of discovery content as well (I think it’s approximately 10% discovery? Meaning, pushing you things it has no signal on to see if you like it or not, rather than only showing you things you like). Sharing and interacting are incredibly smooth and easy. The ability to stitch videos and do face to face replies, or easily do a video reply to a comment, encourage more face to face two-way conversation.
Aside from the technical features and algorithmic superiority, the community on TikTok is completely different. Have you seen the comment sections on the apps you mention? TikTok has created a beautiful community, and it’s a community that cannot be reached on the other two apps, regardless of their feature set.
You think TikTok is beneficial or even neutral?
I think China is not a role model for freedoms, no one should follow their steps. Censorship is not going to solve your problems and you won’t become China in terms of industry by by banning apps. You will become China sans industry.
China's trade policies, unreciprocated, guarantees that all internet companies will be Chinese eventually, it's just a matter of when.
Simply, yes.
Yes, simply because there are mass number of people making a living there. Be a realist
This is such a fallacious, misdirecting argument. The speech itself was not targeted by the ban. It was the ownership. If the speech stayed the same then regulators would have been happy.
I don't think that's an accurate read. Everyone was playing chicken and the US won. TikTok will be up for sale again, except this time with way less leverage in negotiating a sale.
... I can't even. How did US win? OP effectively nailed all the facets in which it is overall the worst of all worlds. Few individual political players have won, but it certainly was not US or us.
The US won because TikTok will sell.
"The US won because <wild uncited guess about the future>."
Trump didn't overturn the Supreme Court's decision. He only gave TikTok a 90-day lifeline. They need a solution to be allowed to operate. Either they will have to cut ties with the CCP and operate truly independently—and provide assurances for that—or they will sell to someone and make billions.
I know which of the two I'd pick, but yeah, I guess you can say they might also restructure out of the CCP's control, which I think is unlikely because China then just gets paid $0.
Another alternative would be for lawmakers in this new congress to change the law they just passed but given the Republican majority is very narrow and there is plenty of support for the ban across the isle, I find it hard to believe they will be able to do so. But sure, that's also a possible scenario.
<< They need a solution to be allowed to operate.
You are assuming a lot in that one sentence seemingly without realizing it.
Nothing is real anymore.
This is a disgusting betrayal of America and a violation of our process, given Congress passed a law and it was then unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court. Unless Trump can show that Bytedance met the three conditions that permit an extension, this will backfire and alienate a portion of his base.
It’s a cult of personality. By definition it’s him they support and who informs their thinking. He can’t alienate his supporters, because they don’t have any framework to fall back on.
While jerking off Trump. We all know what's happening behind closed doors.
So laws don't matter now. That's a great trend to start on day 1.
Trump has clearly neutered both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Welcome to a unitary government, with one god-emperor and no checks nor balances. It's going to be a wild two (few?) years.
Correction: it appears there is a 90-day presidential delay written into the law, so we're not quite at god-emperor status yet...
If what you’re saying is true, why would there be a term limit at all?
Hence "few". Two if there are real elections in 2026, and the dems retake a majority. "few" if there aren't, or they don't -- in that case maybe 3-4 if term limits hold, or "who knows?" if as you say term limits don't apply, or Trump manages to put someone in place after him.
There is a cult following though, so even if the dems do well in 2026, I still think it's going to be hard to make sure the law is followed.
I also don't really see the Democratic party making any proper steps to do well in 2026. Maybe they won't have to do anything but let's see.
I'm curious to know how all of those pearl clutchers who got super mad about Twitter removing dick pics of Hunter Biden are doing.
The level of naiveté in this discussion is absolutely astonishing to me. People are seeming to forget that dysfunctional states (totalitarian, facist, the like) all are sprung from one common thread: control of the mind through propaganda. We already have evidence that the CCP or otherwise is manipulating Tiktok's algorithm to influence American minds [1]. This was one study, by one relatively small and underpowered organization. That's to say, there's probably a lot that we've yet to unearth about how the algorithm is manipulated; or how the CCP is planning to manipulate it to further their agenda at the expense of an American one.
It's simply unbelievable to me that a sophisticated community like HN is against a ban in the context of all of the meddling our biggest rival, China, has done in our country to our direct disadvantage. Russia and China's main M.O. has been to divide us; to sow discontent. And they've been pretty successful. Who knows if Trump would have been elected without the Russian election interference. Trump has been a divisive figure who has reveled in destroying social order and he has done so successfully; the amount of hate and distrust for one's opposing political party is at an all-time high in the US, and it shows. This is to say that China and Russia have already been very successful in their attempts. In China Xi likes to say that "The East is rising, the West is falling". This is completely his M.O. and part of his plan.
And now Trump, aware of all of this, is attempting to bring Tiktok back. Knowing everything he knows about it's use and potential future use of a propaganda machine. And knowing full-well that this is good for the East, and bad for domestic civil peace of mind and social order. And in the most Trumpian way possible, he doesn't care. And he's doing it for the most selfish reason possible--to feed his hero complex. Full. Fucking. Stop. This is such a glaring advertisement that he will do whatever he can to put his interests and reputation first over our country's and it's absolutely sickening.
And the fact that there is actual debate and discussion around this issue on HN is just such a shocker. Again, this community should know better about how dangerous propaganda is, amplified by the fact that it's propaganda from our most rapacious, unethical and conniving enemy. An enemy that is planning wars of conquest, who's starving and torturing parts of its population. You want that enemy deciding what your kid spends an hour a day watching on their phone, while you're not paying attention? Yeah, good luck with that.
https://networkcontagion.us/reports/the-ccps-digital-charm-o...
>propaganda
This word is incongruent with your use of this word:
>enemy
Especially in light of the fact that you consistently fail to identify which identity is doing this:
>An enemy that is planning wars of conquest, who's starving and torturing parts of its population.
Pop-quiz: which nations have been consistently at war since March, 2003? Which nations have established 1,000 torture dungeons around the globe? Which nations have portions of their populations, by design, living in desperate poverty, feeding a for-profit prison-industrial complex, every single day, with fresh meat?
The ability to identify propaganda is not as important as the ability to identify duplicity. One cannot have the former without the latter.
THANK YOU!
you articulated it perfectly
the issue is not that tiktok harvests user data, not free speech, not that China is refuses to let US counterparts operate in China - the issue is, TikTok is an insidious propaganda machine that influences our your people, and entire generation, to abandon their values and replace them with views favorable to the CCP
daily, hourly, and each minute young people interact with TikTok, they're influenced by a foreign adversary.
it's telling them Ukraine is the actual aggressor, that Putin is "based", that China is a paradise, that the West is falling, that China has a valid claim on all the maritime disputes, among other things that are non-truths
i owe the rise of antisemitism among young people to TikTok. young people who otherwise do not hold a negative opinion towards Israel suddenly became anti-Israel and hold hatred towards Jews
i have experienced the above first-hand. my account doesn't interact with any current affairs, yet I am bombarded with anti-Israel narratives. there are thousands - yes, thousands - of antisemitic comments and replies under each video. and young people read them and think it's normal - that it's normal to think this way and say such things at loud
i reported hundreds of such comments. all my reports, according to TikTok, did not violate their "community standards". instead, my replies to those comments were removed for violating their "community standards"
(to the people who'll say it's not true, i have data to back it up, and i can send a link to a huggingface repo that contains the dataset)
it is clear pro-CCP and CCP-aligned views are promoted while others are supressed.
i live in a country with tensions with China, and my TikTok FYP page is flooded with pro-CCP narratives and narratives that suggest my country is weak and hopeless
TikTok is a national security issue. it's not enough the TikTok divests from China. it must be banned for the sake of the next century.
Yes! Thank you for helping me affirm internally that I'm not crazy.
I agree all of these other arguments that people are fixating on are complete red herrings. The 'fairness' of letting them operate their companies here and not letting us operate there—totally non consequential argument and a red herring. The free speech thing is a blatant red herring and the Supreme Court agreed in a unanimous decision. If America is the sinking ship, then these arguments are the deck chairs.
Totally agree on the antisemitism points—the way that the platform is manipulating it's algorithm to shape opinions is very nefarious in that it's subtle and becomes difficult to prove directly. But researchers look deeper and deeper, they've been able to find evidentiary smoking guns. I would posit that there are many clues hiding in plain sight that have not been looked into yet.
Anyways, I would have expected a lot more discussion around the points that you and I bring up (points of actual consequence) rather than what I'm currently seeing on HN.
The Guardian and many other newspapers appear to be controlled by the CCP as well:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/23/israel...
The UN is controlled by the CCP:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157286
there's truth to your two statements. if not the CCP, then another foreign adversary.
The Guardian is notorious for being biased against Israel, along with other news organizations like the New York Times and even the BBC.
The UN and other organizations like Amnesty International are openly biased against Israel.
there are good people working in those organizations. and i genuinely believe people who work there want to do good in the world.
but there's no denying that those organizations they work for are compromised.
Right... so everyone is biased against Israel?
But you simply cannot be taken seriously when you claim that openly pro-Israel establishments like the NYT and BBC are biased against Israel - it's just utterly ludicrous, and demonstrably false.
> young people who otherwise do not hold a negative opinion towards Israel suddenly became anti-Israel
You're not seriously blaming TikTok for anti-Israel sentiment?! Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the genocide being carried out by the apartheid state of Israel?
i looked at your profile and just doing a ctrl + f on pages 1 and 2, there's 82 mentions of the word "Israel"
why are you so obsessed with the State of Israel? and i thought i was a superfan of Israel
do you seriously believe Israel is behind the TikTok ban (as you claimed in your other comment)?
and do you seriously believe there are Hasbara in HN? most people in HN are anti-Israel
> why are you so obsessed with the State of Israel?
Because my government has suffered from Israeli interference, and because my government is supporting the apartheid state of Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people - providing weapons, financial aid, political aid and manufacturing consent for genocide.
Because Israel is carrying out a modern day holocaust, all while constantly lying and fabricating evidence. Because I've seen/heard/read with my own eyes and ears the insane horrors the IDF is inflicting on the Palestinian people - just such incredible, unfathomable evil. I can never unsee what I've seen.
Because Zionists and their Hasbara lackeys spread hatred, racism and Islamophobia, and have smeared opponents with false claims of antisemitism.
> do you seriously believe there are Hasbara in HN?
Yes, there are all over all forms of social media [0] [1]. It would be stretching credulity to believe they weren't active here.
> most people in HN are anti-Israel
Haha, laughably false! This is the same kind of tired deflection that Hasbara use all the time.
[0] https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-art-of-deception-how-i... [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-2369589...
Hear, hear.
> this community should know better about how dangerous propaganda is
Bear in mind that a large part of this community is employed by the same companies that built the tools used to spread propaganda and disinformation. It wouldn't be in their interest to disclose that they're part of the problem, so it's easier to ignore that the problem even exists.
People seem to discount the way they are influenced by the media they are served. I’m seeing a lot of comments about “free agency” and how “people make up their own minds” rather than 1 to 1 believing what they read. This argument just ignores human nature. We evolved to catch onto ideas, good and bad, and be able to rationalize them in ways that often ignore the true outside state of the world. In this light we should strongly critique those who are the purveyors of information. Although I have many criticisms of even those who are serving information domestically, the idea that we’re going to trust a malicious foreign actor with molding the shape of our minds is just nonsensical.
Feels like they published this statement a day early as Trump is not yet president. Whoops.
What statement? This entire article recognizes that Trump is not president yet.
My comment was originally in another thread that was a statement from Tiktok on Twitter. It looks like this thread was merged with another one so my comment might not make sense now.
Big 1984 energy coming from this story.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
Human society is collapsing.
The stuff playing out on right now was science fiction when 1984 was written.
This whole charade has had me laughing since yesterday.
The Caesars of Rome often played these public games to make themselves look magnanimous, while at the same time consolidating power and control.
Sadly, Orwell was not hugely imaginative, he was just aware of things that happened in the Soviet Union.
It's worth remembering that Orwell was a socialist, a leftist, and was anti authoritarian not anti communist. (Which isn't opposed to your comment, the Soviet Union was authoritarian.)
It just gets brought up so often that because he was anti Soviet, he must be anti communist, which wasn't the case.
He was always socialist, but ended up as anti-communist after the Spanish civil war, during which while fighting for the Marxist POUM he had to flee a Stalinist purge.
(Americans love to flatten all left parties into "communist", ignoring the rich history of ideological differences and occasionally violent purges)
Huge fan of Orwell myself.
Anti communist or anti Stalinist? Or even anti Marxist-Leninist?
Homage is a complicated book to place because it's been interpreted so baby different ways across eras. But it's hard to imagine someone going and fighting for POUM and praising them post facto would ultimately be anti communist across all flavors of communism.
See: his memoir "Homage to Catalonia," wherein he worked with the Communist Party of Great Britain to get him into Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where he fought with the POUM, a Spanish anti-Stalinist communist party (though he would admit that this was mostly by chance, and he himself was more aligned with the anarchists).
He would say later, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
So human society has been collapsing since Roman times?
That's a particularly uncharitable take.
If we assume good intent, what OP was getting at is that we had that form of governance, it failed, we then slowly marched towards democracy, and now it looks like a backslide.
Many certainly collapsed, Romans including.
Distractions as usual for the minions.
It blows my mind how easily people are swayed and how ByteDance is playing everyone like a fiddle. I need to walk into the ocean because this life ain't for me.
After being a non-stop news and politics junkie the last 15+ years, I've gone beyond cold turkey.
I stopped reading all political, U.S., and even world news the day after the election. Zero. Dropped reddit politics. I don't know who are Trump's cabinet picks. I assume Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock will be on the cabinet, but I don't know and don't care.
On Nov 7 when I saw that not only did Trump win, but he won decisively, and I saw this is what the country wants, I decided that since I can't get rid of Trump's bullshit, I actually have full power to keep that bullshit from entering my personal reality. Whatever daily outrage and anger I would have felt since Nov 7, I don't have. My mind is relatively clear, and --surprise, surprise-- my life is unaffected.
I plan to keep this up for 4 years. I assume at some point, I'll go to get a flu shot and be told vaccines are illegal. And if I notice suddenly a bunch of ads for iodine pills, I'll withdraw as much cash I can and get canned food and water and gasoline. I'll deal with it then.
And in 2 years and 4 years I will go to the voting booth. But I'm powerless until then, except for what I allow into my life.
I'm debating trying to do this. I've seen it recommended by other people who I think are smart. Honestly, I tuned out most of the 2010s after being a political news junkie in the 2000s, and it was probably good for me. I couldn't sleep or concentrate on work for a couple days after this election.
> And in 2 years and 4 years I will go to the voting booth. But I'm powerless until then
What's really depressing is that I'm already happy with my representation in congress, and they'll probably win again comfortably in 2026 and 2028, but they're powerless too.
I've wanted to do this since 2016. It was November of 2015 when I first thought, "How long could I go not knowing if Hillary won or lost?" Eight years later, I've put it into effect, and my mind is so much clearer for it.
My whole life I've believed that "it's important to be informed." I now challenge that. I mean: yes, obviously before the next election I will read up on the candidates and propositions. But apart from that, me being informed has zero effect on the world.
Another forum that I frequent is bogleheads.org (about investing and personal finance), and one of the rules is that discussing politics and proposed legislation is off-limits. But obviously when a new law (e.g. on taxes) is actually passed then discussion of how we're personally affected becomes appropriate and necessary.
That might be a good model for generally striking an appropriate balance: be informed about new major legislation (or executive orders, court decisions, etc.) when they happen, but skip all the day-to-day drama about who said what on the House or Senate floor, or in an interview, or on X in between such things. I've seen it suggested many times that the Wikipedia current events portal is all that one should look at, and it would probably accomplish this.
I’ve not followed the news for about 7 years now. A niche benefit of WFH is that I don’t have to accidentally hear coworkers talking about it either.
Is there any way to still read all the political and world news while keeping your self from over-entertaining or internalizing it?
As I had the same feeling as you, I subscribed to a quarterly news magazine called delayed gratification. I feel it's a good balance between keeping up-to-date, while not letting the news interfere with my daily life and emotions.
Even 5 seconds of Trump is enough to cause rage. I'm powerless to change what he says and does, but I'm only empowered to keep it away from me.
My friend's house (and entire town) burned down, so I'm following that news. But even 2 minutes of reading Trump + Republicans saying the fires happened because the LAPD chief is a gay woman, and I had enough for the month.
I think reducing the amount of news one consumes at least slightly improves things. Unfortunately, my wife and many of my loved ones are targets of Trump and his minions, so I can't totally tune things out, but consuming less news media at least makes for less internalization.
I’ll challenge you: what action are you and your wife+family going to be taking based on the news? If that approximates zero, then you are only just stressing yourself.
It depends on who you are. If you're a straight white guy then completely zoning out might be the right answer. If you are an immigrant then knowing that ICE is raiding Chicago on Tuesday is very important information.
Good for you.
I also feel the concern over who is President is largely overrated. It’s as perverse as deeply worrying about who the next CEO of one’s employer will be — even they aren’t that concerned!
Frankly, we should be more concerned about school board and sheriff elections but society is too broken for that to happen or be meaningful.
People act like they know Congressional/Presidental candidates as well as their own relatives yet they cant even name the local office candidates.
I think you're very naive if you think worrying about the President is equal to worrying about who the next CEO will be.
All of this is really simple. Reasonable people know the CCP having full control of public opinion by having ultimate control of the algorithm that literally sets public opinion of everyone under 30… is problematic. When you consider that in a year or so they’re going to invade Taiwan and no doubt simultaneously get all of Gen Z and Alpha on their side with propaganda, this is horrible for anyone who doesn’t love dictatorships.
BUT, Trump wants Gen Z to like him and that’s all there is to it. So he’s just going to come in on a white horse and “Save TikTok” — handing President Xi a gift on a silver platter. Because he doesn’t actually give a fuck about anything besides being popular.
Congratulations to Trump to standing up for freedom and against all 9 Supreme Court justices that refused to enforce the First Amendment. People should be free to speak as much as they want on TikTok even though it's mostly useless chatter. In the Koramatsu decision of 1943, legalizing concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, there were 3 dissenting justices. I wish we had some this time.
Masterful PR move by Trump. Two ways to win, no way to lose: he gets control of the narrative there (if not TikTok itself, via one of his cronies), and he shows how totalitarian the "democrats" are.
> and he shows how totalitarian the "democrats" are.
and by that you are including the massive majority of republican legislators who also sit on intel committees also voted for it with resounding vigor?
Yes, they too would like to show how totalitarian the "democrats" are. Jokes aside, the buck stops with the guy who signs the bill into law. Too bad the guy signing the bill didn't even understand what he was signing this time due to his profound dementia.
So once again it took the incoming president-elect Trump and for Biden to lose to intervene and reverse this ban and give an extension to TikTok.
If Biden or Harris won the election, TikTok would have been completely banned with zero intervention at all as you have seen with how it went and Biden whilst still being president would have done nothing and it took Trump to stop it.
Seriously the Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation.
The ban had bi-partisan support. Trump was initially for the ban and then changed his mind. On Aug. 6, 2020, Trump signed Executive Order 13942, which sought to ban TikTok in response to national security concerns. Courts struck it down.
He expressed his changed opinion in 2024. Was it because he met with Jeff Yass who holds 7% of ByteDance (which owns TikTok) and is a major Republican donor? Who knows.
But what is clear is that this is again morphing into a talking point against the Democrats even though all of this started with Trump initially.
Trump literally originated it back then.
Trump is not a president yet.
Trump singed an EO that was reversed. Only one president showed interest in a law. Only one president whipped votes for that law. Only one president signed the law.
You realize that is even worse for the Democrats? So why didn't Biden stop it? He had plenty of time to do so and he did not and signed it.
Congress writes laws and the president is supposed to implement and enforce them. It’s like Americans have completely forgotten about this part.
The TikTok ban was upheld by the Supreme Court only days ago. If Americans don’t want this law, they should elect a different Congress.
It passed the Senate by the safely veto-proof margin 79–18
That does not excuse signing a bill into law. If the president opposes a bill, he should veto it even if Congress will override the veto. To do otherwise is to be complicit. So to the extent that you think this bill is bad and shouldn't have been passed, Biden is to blame regardless of how strong the congressional majority was.
The ban had bi-partisan support. So why should Biden stop it if he agrees with it? A major adversary (China) owns a main communication network in the US while the US and other Western countries are not allowed to operate such networks within China. You don’t have to agree with this of course but it’s not unprecedented for the US to restrict the reach of foreign governments. In the past radio waves were restricted in a similar sense.
> So why should Biden stop it if he agrees with it?
That is my point. The Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation and Biden did nothing and supported the bill anyway and just signed it.
In fact he replaced Trump's original EO with a worse one which includes still supporting the TikTok ban and Biden signed that last year which made it so that if the Democrats won the election, then TikTok would have been still completely banned with no reversal whatsoever.
In effect, those who voted for Biden or Harris also were voting for a TikTok ban, which that is beyond hilarious as everyone saw that he didn't halt the ban.
I don't understand why this makes Biden look bad if he was for this ban in the first place.