this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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So they can't talk to people about it because they're not technical experts, but they also have the authority to make decisions despite not being experts.
They can talk about it if they want to, but we shouldn’t be using them as our only source of information. Curious on why politicians voted X instead of Y? Look it up! See what experts in the field are saying.
You shouldn’t rely on them to tell you why TikTok is a threat the same way we shouldn’t rely on them to inform us on why weakening EPA standards is good for the environment, why taxing foreign trucks is good for the economy, or why drawing voting maps to concentrate demographics is good for democracy.
These politicians probably know enough to make an informed decision if they care to seek out information. They don’t always have the time or desire to do this. If you believe this to be true even one in a hundred times, that covers a handful of politicians for every single piece of legislation that comes out, every single time.
The same way you may care about many things but only know a lot about a few subjects, they legislate everything and people act like they are the experts. Why assume they know what they’re talking about for every single topic?
Because I would hope they know what they're talking about when they write the legislation. Or at least can explain their reasoning for voting a certain way. Especially when nobody has made the case that TikTok is any more dangerous than Facebook or Twitter.
They largely don’t write the legislation. Lobby groups draft the materials and if we’re lucky, the congressional aides make a pass and clean things up.
You can search for why TikTok is dangerous. There are plenty of examples of how the application and platform are not being forthright with how they collect your identifiers and weaponize them for information operations campaigns.
As I mentioned earlier, the powers that be aren’t as worried about Facebook and the like because they’re US-based and have working relationships with law enforcement. Facebook has been used for the very campaigns that TikTok is being used for now, but a large difference is that another nation has near complete control over the platform.
Yes but they should at least be able to explain why they voted a certain way on that legislation, right?
I agree that social media is dangerous for all the reasons mentioned, but I don't see why Zuckerberg and Musk still get to do all those things.
I'm not arguing against them explaining their rationale. I originally argued that they shouldn't be taken as experts.
Zuckerberg and Musk "get" to do these things because they are in the US, with majority US-based workers, running off US-based infrastructure. If any of these platforms are being used to facilitate attacks against the US, the government can choose any number of methods to step in and enforce compliance to mitigate the threat. That's it. This is about free speech in that not all speech is protected. If somebody uses TikTok to perform the digital equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater, the government sees a need to control it.
If Facebook was run and operated out of Tunisia, I'd expect these same conversations to be happening with them as well.
Except Facebook and Twitter are being used to attack the US and spread disinformation and the government isn't doing anything.
But I guess that's what I should expect from a government that cares more about national security than the privacy of its citizens.
The US government has been caught doing the same thing... poorly. You probably aren't going to find a lot of sources showing that the US is fighting these fights on Facebook and twitter, but you can read between the lines with interviews. In general, these kinds of things aren't performed out in the open.
Agree with you though. National security has trumped privacy. 9/11 changed a lot of things in a bad way.