TikTok’s bid to overturn a law which would see it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected.
The social media company had hoped a federal appeals court would agree with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users.
But the court upheld the law, which it said “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.
[…]
The court agreed the law was “carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”
This is nyot goob.
Ya tiktok bad, but this is about ensuring america has a monopoly over local social media. If this really were about safety, Facebook would also be fucked
@sleepybisexual @tardigrada It’s also about the rich people of the world stopping anything the non-rich use to organize.
Ban Twitter too, if you ban Tik Tok. Don’t do half ass job if you are taking away users choice.
I mean the issue with TikTok is that they give the data and videos over to the Chinese government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on the US government.
Meanwhile Twitter/X is totally different in that they give the data and videos over the US government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on US citizens.
They don’t have a problem with what is being done, just who are the ones doing it.
…and nothing of value was lost
While the justification for this is primarily based on TikTok being a privacy and data security risk due to it being owned by a Chinese State Organ/Corporation… which is hilarious bullshit because the US does exactly the same thing with all the net data that goes through US corporate social media…
Brainrot is a real thing.
Shortform video platforms are addictive the same way cigarretes or heroin is, extended use ruins your cognitive ability, ruins your attention span, increases depression and anxiety, and fhe format promotes an absurdly fake, narcissistic culture, scams, and mis or disinformation.
Algorithmic profiling is definitely not unique to TikTok, but it is used by the app, and this often pigeonholes the user into content/advertisements that often becomes more and more extreme, manipulative and exploitative of the user.
Though this is being done mostly for stupid reasons, and it isn’t stoping US Corpo brainrot inducing social media platforms, I’ll take what I can get.
I’m with you. Tiktok is about as “healthy” as vaping. There are other just as bad (if not worse) apps out there, and the reasoning is stupid and has some first amendment concerns. But I won’t die on the protecting Tiktok hill.
Again. Not a TikTok ban. A ByteDance ban.
If BytDance sells, TikTok stays.But the free market is free, guys! Look at this freedom!
Truly free markets suck. The inevitably become dominated by a small number of monopolies, who fuck over everyone else as hard as possible every day …
It helps to think before you type.
The free market is free if and when you play by the same -democratic- rules. Look at Romania, just to name an actual example. Tiktok is much worse than Facebook and (most) others, and being worse is not an easy task here.
Tik Tok is not much worse than Facebook. The only reason is because Facebook cooperates with the US agencies, while they don’t get the information from Tik Tok. US does not like that citizen data is going to China instead being able to collect it themselves. From privacy standpoint of the end user, it does not matter who has the data; lost privacy is lost privacy.
From a national security standpoint of the government, it absolutely does matter who has the data.
I think Tiktok is much worse. It’s about a foreign country whose government is pursuing a dictatorial policy trying to interfere in foreign elections (again, look at Romania, for example).
The argument of FB collaborating with the US gov is true I guess, but isn’t valid here. China is doing the same, the Chinese government is banning the Western version of Tiktok, too, let alone all other non-Chinese apps. So the ‘free market’-argument doesn’t make any sense here, it’d be even hypocritical.
Yeah China sure is scary. Centralized social media owned by American billionaires on the other hand can totally be trusted never to interfere in elections.
Dude, the US based social media platforms are no better than TikTok. Its all rotten to the core. X is a great example of this.
Except all the social media are doing the exact same thing. This is pointless political posturing
Not quite. TikTok has been shown to tweak their algorithm against criticism of China. That’s the real reason for the concern. Their ability and willingness to purposefully manipulate people.
Honestly? Good.
I don’t really see this as a free speech issue. TikTok isn’t being banned because of the kind of speech that’s on there, it’s being banned because it’s a predatory app created as a means of soft power by a hostile foreign nation. Does that mean we should also shut down Twitter? Yeah. Probably.
This isn’t some newspaper with dissenting opinions, is a foreign intelligence operation that simultaneously interferes with the normal operation of our democracy, puts our citizens in danger, massively inflates narcissism, and collects our user data to hand to a country that literally is actively spying on us.
Frankly, I’d be okay with tossing any similar social media with obfuscated engagement algorithms anyway. Make YouTube and Facebook bring all that shit above board while we’re at it. All this is is corporate regulation, and I fully support it. Fuck TikTok.
I hate TikTok but I hate even more that the ban seems to have been successful this time because of Israel. Lots of people (Romney, etc) have said that TikTok must be banned because it’s the reason why young people don’t support Israel’s genocide.
I don’t like CCP propaganda being fed to Americans, but let’s be real, CCP propaganda about Israel is way more honest than domestic American propaganda.
While I’m on the subject, Facebook, Google, etc, are pretty near equally as evil.
Is there a workaround for the people who are in the US when and if this happens?
I can imagine sideloading(?) but how about the less tech-savvy people?
Don’t use tiktok
How does this functionally work?
the primary source of this is annoyingly hard to track down for legislation that passed Congress and was signed by the President.
it turns out that’s because it was part of H.R.815 - “Making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes.”
if you want to read the actual text of the law, this PDF starting on page 61.
the gist is that it’s illegal to:
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.
everyone calls this a “ban on TikTok” and it kinda annoys the shit out of me, because as far as I can tell, the website tiktok.com is probably still going to be available in the US.
what this law actually does is require Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores, for US-based users. and makes them subject to a fine of $5000 per user if they don’t comply.
I’m generally in favor of more regulation of tech companies…but this is a really fucking stupid way to do it.
My friends and family are trying to find ways to get around it like vpning and changing region lock app stores to china or something to access it.
You can take the people away from brainrot but can’t take the brainrot from the people.
changing region lock app stores to china
This wouldn’t work, given that TikTok isn’t allowed in China. This cyberweapon is only meant to be used against foreigners. Either way, don’t help them and instead actively dissuade them from trying to keep their addiction alive.
While technically correct, they do have it in China itself, it’s a modified version called Douyin. It is more restricted, censored and tightly controlled.
I agree that it is a cyberweapon, but don’t think that it’s only used against foreigners, they use it just as much to observe and influence their own population.
Finally, I would like to point out that to a lesser extent this is also the case for a lot of USA owned social media and tech companies. Edward Snowden’s revelations for example indicate this. While the extent of government control and influence is much larger in China, I wouldn’t underestimate the influences of Meta, Google and Microsoft for example.
