Comment on US lawmakers vote 50-0 to force sale of TikTok despite angry calls from users
Hildegarde@lemmy.world 6 months agoDid you read the article? The bill bans tiktok for being foreign. There is nothing in this article that describes a bill that outlaws any practices, conventions, or actions that tiktok has done.
Being afraid of foreigners for being foreign is not effective regulation.
Trantarius@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
The bill itself says, more or less, “any foreign adversary controlled app is banned. Also, TikTok is a foreign adversary controlled app”. So it doesn’t apply exclusively to TikTok, but it does explicitly include them.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 6 months ago
The point is that companies like Google and Facebook do the same data harvesting and manipulation but aren’t being held to the same standard. The law is clearly written to benefit the US government not the citizens, while the justification is stated to be ‘for the benefit of the citizens.’ It’s like buying your wife a lawn tractor for her birthday even though you know she has no interest in using one. You’re claiming it’s for her but it’s really for you.
dumpsterlid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The lawn tractor was for my wife’s boyfriend actually, but thanks for just assuming I was being selfish.
ICastFist@programming.dev 6 months ago
Interesting wording there, “foreign adversary controlled”, goes a long way to protect all the companies that are based in tax havens, or controlled by foreign allies, like Saudi Arabia or Israel
dumpsterlid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
In a democracy one of the very most important choices that must be made by citizens is what other nations are considered allies or an enemies.
The funny thing is that US citizens have absolutely zero control over who the government decides is our enemy or ally. That aspect of government is entirely partitioned off as separate from the “democracy”, as if the foreign policy element of our government was itself a foreign nation we have no control over.
While we are on the topic, fuck the government of Saudi Arabia.
Liz@midwest.social 6 months ago
I think most of us here are concerned with foreign adversary interference as much as we are concerned with corporate interference and espionage. The law seems to only address the surface level issue (ownership) and none of the actual problems (action).