this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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[–] themurphy 53 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Are we acting like the US isn't the biggest surveillance state existing in all history?

So because there's one app they don't control the data on, we need to ban it? Sounds like the free market to me.

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[–] Delphia 46 points 6 months ago (15 children)

Yes, and?

Does anyone think that China is just full of the warm fuzzies and wants us all to hold hands, make smores and sing kumbaya? They are every bit after power as the US is to hold onto it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Yeah it's sort of like accusing a presidential campaign of being "all about gaining political power". Of course that's the goal. That's not the metric by which you should judge its actions.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 months ago

Large centralised social media platform should all be banned. I miss the times when all you had was forums hosted in someone's basement, the Internet was a better place. Short form video content is the worst of the bunch though.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)

I don't use TikTok and I don't think anyone really should but if we're going to ban TikTok for data collection then there are a lot of platforms that need to be banned. ~~We know the 2016 election was fucked with through Facebook and not a damn thing has been done~~

[–] Anticorp 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We definitely need to legislate the way that they operate and make the majority of the corporate surveillance that is happening now illegal. Facebook should face consequences, as should Google, Reddit, and all the others. That doesn't mean that we ignore TikTok though. We should address problematic companies both domestic and foreign. But only one of those companies is partially owned and heavily influenced by an oppressive foreign government.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

It's one thing to regulate foreign corporations and you don't see me making a case against the EU for regulating Apple or Google. You see me saying this isn't about data collection like they say, it's about preserving US power in the software space. The US is completely within it's rights to block TikTok but you don't need to lie to me and say it's for security. The servers are located in the US, there's no real evidence China has done anything illegal and if Google did the same thing and sold the data to China it would be fine. This whole issue is a bunch of individuals sucking on billionaire tech giant toes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It didn't but you're still correct about the rest of your comment.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

Democrats have convinced themselves taking over TikTok is the solution to their problems, but the reality is that if Joe Biden signs this bill into law when he is already tanking in the polls, particularly with young voters, he will hand the election to Trump. The youth will not forgive a party that was so extreme it banned or hijacked their favourite platform to censor them in order to keep a genocide going.

Best line is at the end

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

They didn't care about it being China owned

They didn't care about data sharing

Share info on the platform the US can't censor though and then it's ban time 😂

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

Yikes, what a flawed set of premises.

" What if Canada did the same thing to the US? They did!"

No, they didn't. Canada tried to boost Canadian media presence on American streaming platforms.

Making sure gooby gets an international viewing is very different from transmitting information to an overtly hostile government known for cyber attacks on its international peers.

"The platform isn't a national security threat".

It's a fact that the app TikTok is based off of, Douyin, sends the private data of every user straight to bytedance, owned in powerful minority stake by the Chinese government and that tiktok did the same thing with US user data until they promised they stopped a couple years ago.

As of January 2024 however, whoops, US citizen data(names, birthdates, location) is still being sent back to bytedance: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-pledged-to-protect-u-s-data-1-5-billion-later-its-still-struggling-cbccf203?mod=followamazon

It's not some baseless concern, it's a national security consequence against data disclosures that were already carried out and have continued to this year despite assurances 2 years ago that data leaks to bytedance are not happening.

"Instrument of soft power"

Marvel movies becoming super popular internationally is an example of soft power. Gathering the personal information of users with a continuing precedent attacking US digital infrastructures and democratic institutions is not soft power, it is hostile statecraft.

I am not a proponent of monolithic tech companies nor am I particularly aligned against international competition in tech supremacy, but this ban isn't about theoretical cultural competition.

This tiktok ban is about the recent gathering of personal information that can be used to assess and attack digital infrastructures and electoral behaviors by entities that are continually attacking digital infrastructures and electoral processes, entities focused on consolidating power not within some international free market of soft cultural influence but by gathering and consolidating power and using that power to forward state ambitions.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (8 children)

Yes, I too would love the US president to decide which social media platforms I am allowed to legally use and who I can legally communicate with. I'm so scared China is going to, checks notes, influence my opinion that I'm willing to sacrifice my free speech rights in the process. Regulate me harder, daddy! 😍

[–] maryjayjay 6 points 6 months ago

It's actually Congress

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The probability of a war between the US and China is very high as judged by the US military. Prominently over the Taiwan situation. Having service members with tiktok on their devices would be terrible for opsec. To me this confirms that we are continuing to track on that train of thought. With that line of thinking this seems to an increased likelihood. Be careful out there folks.

Just my thoughts...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I thought government employees were already banned from having TikTok on their devices. Does that not also apply to military personnel?

[–] ZapBeebz_ 9 points 6 months ago

TikTok is banned from official devices, i.e. and phone provided by the DoD, etc. There is no ban on it being on a personal phone; just a strong recommendation against having the app.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Bans can be bypassed, but my concern is if the new law makes it criminal to use tiktok. If so, the media should stop saying "tiktok ban" and instead say "new law makes it a crime to use tiktok"

[–] gorgori 4 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It's a hosting ban on US servers and app stores. People already downloaded the app will continue to be able to use it.

That is if Bytedance doesn't sell.

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