Earn mana by posting a comment with your own insight on the TikTok Ban/Forced Sale legislation which has passed the House and is now waiting on the Senate.
What you could write about:
Do you think TikTok should be banned under its current ownership?
Do you think the Senate will pass a ban, and that it will survive any legal challenges?
If the legislation becomes law, do you think TikTok will sell or just shut down in the US?
This is a new type of bounty that pays out every hour based on the number of likes your comments get. Try to post something insightful that maximizes the number of users hitting the heart icon on your comment! Most of the bounty will be paid out within 48 hours. Please don't do any like harvesting schemes, just honest competition of ideas.
The main market on the subject is currently at 55%:
I'm curious if this bounty will be able to convince people to buy Yes or No!
1,000
3.00Why ban:
Reciprocity: China does not give equal/free access to Twitter, Meta, Google or other US owned social media. China government employees are not allowed to use iPhones. The government has also said they will not buy INTC, AMD, MU etc. Micron in particular is almost completely banned.
Foreign Influence: As long as TikTok is owned/controlled by China, it is subject to Chinese state mandates and the default assumption should be that China will be able to influence US elections, policy and culture in ways that are hard to detect and regulate.
Why I think it will not happen:
Both the above have been known for years. Trump initially wanted to ban Tiktok (while in office) but is now not in favor of a ban. The Biden admin & congress have held multiple hearings but haven't taken any decisive action. That feels like delaying to me. The incentive for congress-members is to just do nothing (any action could provoke a reaction, Tiktok is popular and creators would be upset). There is no clear incentive to act, since the wider public is not convinced that a ban is good (and therefore would be a vote winner).
China is an adversary. Idk if they’re doing anything to manipulate domestic politics via TikTok right now, but they have that capability. It’s a card in their hand.
Detailed scenarios feel compelling so check this out.
Sometime in the next few years Chinese leaders determine that they’re at peak strength vis a vis Taiwan & allies considering that the latter are rearming. The Chinese don’t know whether the US will intervene, but they can’t take that risk. Preemptive strikes on US assets in the first & second island chains would protect the invasion, at the cost of bringing NATO into a long, unpredictable, and possibly nuclear war. They hope they’ve found a way out: preemptive strikes on US forces while fomenting an anti war protest movement via Tiktok.
The main reason US intelligence wants TikTok banned is that yes, social media apps spy on you and collect tons of data that is useful for tracking people and can be used to tie together many other activities that are tracked online into a profile of an individual.
But US intelligence doesn't actually care about you being tracked as a US citizen, the NSA already harvests an order of magnitude more data on every US citizen than a single social media app can manage - they just hate that the app can't be used by them to harvest even more of your private information.
The TikTok ban makes sense if you understand that the US government really cares about maintaining a monopoly on its ability to spy on every single aspect of your life, however much politicians try to spin other narratives.
TikTok should not be banned in the US. Our Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. This should only be abridged when the government can actually PROVE the speech they want to ban is harmful. There has been a lot of conjecture, but I have seen no proof offered that the US government has actually found interference or spying by the company. A previous response said the TikTok terms of service explicitly state they can give your data to the Chinese government but I did not see that in either their TOS or privacy policy. Historically the United States has been quick to trample rights and then repent at leisure. I think we should skip the trampling rights part. People still enjoyed alcohol during prohibition. We will still use TikTok if it's banned. Virtual Private Networks are easy to find and use.
I don't think Congress will ban TikTok because currently Trump seems to be on the side of not banning so his followers will vote against it.
The evidence suggesting tiktok unabashedly censors and suppresses speech that is inconvenient for the Communist Party (Uighurs, Tiananmen Square, etc.) seems fairly straightforward. While principles of free speech are valuable and important, they probably shouldn't be unlimited, and tiktok as an unambiguous propaganda arm of an aggressive authoritarian state seems like a fairly obvious bad faith actor in the broader media landscape.
Should it be banned, considering this context? It seems reasonable enough to me - the CCP always tries to use whatever levers it has access to to better pursue its interests, and its interests include dominating the liberal democracies in its region. Tiktok is a fairly large lever to pull due to its large userbase, and has plenty of potential to influence the populations of democracies in ways that assist it in this bad behaviour. The fact of the matter is that it already openly does this, so this isn't even a hypothetical. Why let it continue to operate?
To my mind not banning tiktok is like refusing to take a gun away from someone because so far they've only used it to blow off your pinkie. They claim they're not going to shoot you somewhere more vital next and that it would be ridiculous of them to do that, while simultaneously buying up lots of ammunition and practicing their aim on a training dummy that looks suspiciously like you. Actually, considering the #dontbantiktok campaign perhaps the analogy would be more accurate if we were to say that this person is desperately unloading their mags in your direction at the same time that they are saying they would never shoot you. Very unconvincing. While maybe in general someone could support the right of people to own guns, I don't think it makes sense to extend that support to this person even as they are currently shooting at you.
From what evidence I have been receiving from both parties, TicToc should be banned in the U.S for three primary reasons.
One: the history of the app itself. Everyone should know that tic toc has been used maliciously as a spy tool for a fair portion of it's life from what reliable sources I can trust. Not only that, but it's encouragement of short form media, and only short term media, has created a piranha type swamp to any to set their foot inside. Without a decent was to search, influences are constantly against the grain at their fellow creator's encouraging destructive behavior that could otherwise be avoided. Now youtube suffers from this as well, but not nearly at the scale of tic toc due to it's reliable search engine, allowing for a more flexible situation, and it's long video production provide a sense of variety and exploration beyond the death scroll.
Two: the death scroll. We all have suffered through the death scroll from short term media, wheaten its a social or videos. What makes tic toc so susceptible to this is the lack of any meaty media. If all you do is snack for a day, your going to feel unsatisfied all day because you lack a hearty meal. Tic toc is like that because all you can do is snack, and when that is your main source of media, you have to skip to the next video and the next just to feel satisfied. Now there is some ways to prevent this by giving yourself regulations, but not many people can properly regulate such tools.
Third: the degradation of content. Over the years toc toc has slowest lost original and taste. What was a platform full of interesting and original ideas turned into a feed of half thrown together videos with little thought in them. Now, there are still good prices of media on the platform, but the amount of trash surrounding them makes them a diamond in the rough.
In summary, tic toc has created a toxic investment the creates unsatisfying and un fulfilling videos in such a way that makes this platform unusable. To all who still prosper through their original ideas, this isn't for you. This is for every half cobbled dance routine and every hater video on it. To whoever reads this, have a nice day.
I think there’s some deception on the pro-ban side. No one is actually afraid of Chinese disinformation. If you’ve used TikTok for more than 5 minutes you’ll know that there isn’t much information being disseminated on the platform either for against the ccp. Rather TikTok is full of brain rotting content and I personally don’t think this is a ploy by the Chinese to make us all into fat, unproductive, dopamine addicted, porn addicts. I hold this opinion because the content of American content platforms is equally degenerate. I think it’s just the nature of these algorithms to tend towards that type of content. Now the deception on the informed pro-ban side is that they just think that TikToks content is unhealthy and it’s good to reduce access to such unhealthy stimulus. This noble reason is masked with bumph about Chinese propaganda. If we want to regulate the internet for the harmful affects it can have on young people’s brains, now is a great time to do it. It is out of character for America to be so authoritarian but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Will it pass? I think likely not. It would be a step in a direction that the US system is as far I can tell set up to make difficult.
Should it pass? Probably not. I think this is both too extreme and not extreme enough.
How will TT respond? Let’s say it’s a deliberate propaganda data harvesting tool. The data harvesting is already happening while most of the company is unaware. If it is a tool of the ccp I don’t understand why they wouldn’t sell it while keeping their tentacles throughout the company. However, my money is on the ccp being much more concerned with controlling its sibling app in China and just refusing to allow the sale just to make the US look bad. This will further intensify china-US hostility with US companies who operate in china taking the brunt of the losses.
ByteDance is privately held MAJORITY (~60%) owned by global institutional investors inc US based Blackrock, Susquehanna, other US private equity firms…etc. So, there’s no “Chinese ownership” in a capitalistic sense. It’s current domicile & executive leadership structure make it difficult for US to control & dictate; unlike FACEBOOK, X, Google, AMD, ASML, Nvidia..etc. The banned has NOTHING to do with privacy, data harvesting, or “China”, it has to do w protecting FACEBOOK’s Dominance and continuation of US’ proven track record of privacy invasion, data mining, and controlled propaganda. Why would a divestiture solve the “can be misused” problem unless it restack the deck to allow US Govt direct influence. Likened to “hold free election” so the CIA can get to work & bring forth a “western friendly” regime.
It’s not the banned that’s troublesome, albeit incredibly hypocritical, it’s the fabrication of bogeyman scare tactic that’s particularly pathetic and irk-inspiring.