Man people really set up the strawmen here. Congress has literally said it’s about foreign influence, not about protecting children. It has absolutely nothing to do with kids. It has to do with China influencing the citizens of the United States to do things that are beneficial to China, against the interests of the US government.
It’s not a ban, if China gives up control of the app to a United States entity then there’s no problem. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children.
Congress has literally said it’s about foreign influence
Which is also a lie. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and Google are just as beholden to foreign governments such as the fascist regimes of India, Israel, Myanmar and others. They pay the people in Congress a lot more in legal bribes, though, so they can basically get away with anything.
It’s not a ban, if China gives up control of the app to a United States entity then there’s no problem.
Imagine the uproar if China demanded that Google stopped being a US military contractor…
What the whole thing is about is empty symbolic rhetoric and xenophobia in an election year and oppressive measures to go with it.
Google was blocked in China in 2014 for refusing to censor search results. Now search results are censored and must go through their Hong Kong subsiduary. The last part is what the US Government is asking for TikTok to do right?
China already bans and censors loads of apps and websites already so I don’t think looking at what they do in this instance is a good idea.
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it’s adults, that’s almost more insulting, they think we don’t deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction. We may as well dispense with free expression entirely at that point because the government can just say “you’re too stupid to read this and we’re worried you’ll be influenced, so you can only read the books we’ve pre-approved for you”
It is every American’s right to think freely, to speak those thoughts to others, and to have others have the opportunity to hear those thoughts whether or not they are “good influences” according to govt. It is wild how easily people are willing to throw that right away for fears of “foreign influence”. What’s next, banning TV shows from foreign countries because they might “corrupt our culture”? Banning books with subversive topics because they will “give people bad ideas”?. This is how the road to fascism begins.
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it’s adults, that’s almost more insulting, they think we don’t deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction.
Yeah fam, you and me are definitely way too smart to ever be manipulated by military units whose sole job is to effectively manipulate large swaths of the population.
The answer is everyone. They’re worried about anyone and everyone, because they do it also.
The problem that many people have with this argument that “China is going to influence us” isn’t that we are immune to influence, its that the argument sounds extremely hallow when our own native social media manipulates the absolute shit out of us already… like what is China going to do that our own country isn’t already doing.
This is the argument you hear from people on tiktok about why they don’t care about the governments concern.
Well that and how its kind of disgusting how completely unified the house is in this bill, but couldn’t give a shit about wealth inequality, corporate ownership of residential housing, rampant inflation, rising homelessness, school shootings.
Americans are so racist that they can’t accept the fact that non-American companies can be successful.
1
China doesn’t claim to be liberal, so no
Short answer: No
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooo
Its worth adding, TikTok in China (it’s called something else, I’m blanking) is entirely controlled on the state and there is absolutely no way that it would be permitted to host any political discussion or advocate mass action not approved by the state. Their “Hey call your congressman” stunt was the most idiotic PR move ever, because they demonstrated that this company is willing and able to leverage the userbase in the US in ways that would never be permitted in “West Taiwan”.
I was with you until you childishly suggested that the rightful rulers of China are an imperial dynasty rather than the will of the people. It’s like calling America West England and claiming Charles is the rightful ruler because you disagree with the Vietnam War.
But yeah china would never allow free expression on their version of tiktok but let’s ban free expression because china does is a bad argument. Let’s make choices based entirely on merit and circumstance.
No. But that’s not the point. America’s government allows foreign aid interests to buy land and other property in America. Should they ban all of it, even if it crashes the economy?
So we’re no different? Is that your argument? If so we’re saying the same thing. This paves the way for more bans in the future.
So the goal is to make laws like China does?
Fuck TikTok, but I’m sick of hearing “BUT THE KIDS!!!” As an excuse for constantly trampling everyone’s freedoms
The way .ml cries everyday about TikTok being banned you’d think it was an actual real life crises for all of you.
Multiple counties have already banned the app (as well as other ccp government apps) years before the US started trying to. Where was all the out cry then?
TBH the comments are always filled with “Fuck TikTok” so it doesn’t feel like an organic trend of posts to me.
In .ml? Lol no it’s all weirdos complaining how bad the US is.
Yes but Lemmy isn’t as bad as Hexbear, a very large number of us still think the CCP is even worse.
Oh definitely, hexbear is a special kind of special
can’t find any western countries that have it banned for the general public
Afghanistan.
Australia.
Belgium.
Canada.
Denmark.
European Union.
France.
India.
Lativa.
Netherlands.
New Zealand.
Norway.
Pakistan.
Taiwan.
United Kingdom.All have banned the app either from government employees to a nationwide ban.
This is a bit dishonest. Only Afghanistan and India have banned TikTok from citizens and neither of them are western countires. In every other country you listed it’s just about government devices.
What in the tankie fuck am i reading
Lemmy being lemmy.
You can take the Redditor out of Reddit but not the Reddit out of the Redditor, it would seem.
“Can you do something so that any given incel can’t shoot 30 of us while we hide under our desk.” - kids
“Literally go fuck yourself also no tik tok because it could be dangerous.” - government
Relax nobody is taking away your TikToks
Lemmy is mostly children isn’t it
- Are different, unrelated things
- Involve different parts of government
- Involve different people in charge
- Is smoothbrain understanding of criminal investigations
- Is smoothbrain understanding of due process
I’m starting to fly down some ‘conspiracy hole’ about this shit: I can’t trust or even hope that the avalanche of memes like these aren’t Chinese (or Russian? they love stirring our shit up for the lulz) in origin. This paranoia reinforces itself in a loop
