Comment on House panel unanimously approves bill that could ban TikTok

• CeeBee@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Facebook being sued for giving data to Chinese companies with tighter relationships to the CCP than Bytedance is literally headline news right now.

  I looked it up, and you’re right that there’s an issue there. But that’s an issue with an American owned company giving data to an adversarial country (two actually, China and Russia). It’s 100% absurd and shouldn’t be allowed with heavy penalties. But that’s still a different issue than the one we’re talking about.

  The fact is you’re bending over backwards to defend an unconstitutional law with unprecedented powers

  Two things: I’m not American, and it’s not unconstitutional anyways. There’s nothing in the bill that says no one is allowed to use it. And the first and preferred option of the bill is to sell ownership of TikTok to an American firm, essentially to divorce control and influence of China from the largely American userbase. If, and only if, the transfer of ownership is not possible then the app is to be delisted from all app stores.

  That means that it’s still possible for existing users to use the app and it’s still possible to install the app through official means without either thing being illegal.

  reuters.com/…/proposed-us-tiktok-ban-not-fair-chi…

  Another interesting thing is that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said it will protect its rights and national security interests (paraphrased). What on earth does TikTok, an app that’s Chinese owned and banned in the very country that owns it, have to do with Chinese National security?

  That a very telling thing to say.

  Make it illegal on pain of ban to give, or sell American data to a sensitive country; or otherwise cause American data in your company’s control to come into their possession.

  I can agree with this, but the TikTok bill has nothing to do with xenophobia. If China wasn’t an adversarial country actively bullying and threatening other countries with war and annihilation then it wouldn’t be an issue.

  In fact, let’s go a step further and implement sweeping data protection laws so that our data can’t be sold for any reason.

  The question of what’s the difference isn’t some cute gotcha thing.

  No, it’s not a “cute gotcha thing”. It’s pointing out the difference between passive data collection and active control to influence content.

  And you need to look up targeted advertising.

  I know very well what it is. I work in the tech sector (IT/programming) adjacent to cyber security.

  It’s literally creating a custom algorithm on everything from Reddit to Facebook to Google Search. Which is why it was used by the Russians to impact our 2016 elections via Facebook.

  Right, so if you think targeted advertising is bad when company A sells data to company B, who then builds algorithms to target people for political party C, imagine how bad it is when that entire process is vertically integrated and directly controlled by a foreign adversary. And to add to that, we’re not even just dealing with ads anymore, we’re dealing with grassroots-like influencer content with talking points from the CCP.

  You gave me an example of one really bad thing and said it’s the same thing as a different and extremely bad thing.

  Both of them are bad need to be addressed. But with TikTok being run by a CCP-influenced company in a country that laughs at American laws, there’s little recourse to deal with it.

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You get a pass on this because you’re not an American and most Americans don’t know what a Bill of Attainder is. But it’s a law that targets a single person or organization. And the Constitution outright bans it.

    SCOTUS has also historically been very unhappy with attempts to weasel word around the Constitution. Their position has consistently been if the effect is to do something that would be unconstitutional then it is unconstitutional.

    That said. There’s no reason to target a single company when we can regulate the industry just as easily. Unless the actual intent is to force a private sale for the benefit of American billionaires.

    But with your response to an actual bill and over a decade of American data vendors selling everything to China; I can see that you don’t care about regulating the industry. You just want to punish China. Nobody is refuting the horribleness of China. But there isn’t any evidence they’ve even tried to do anything to the international version of TikTok. Or that the Singaporean company that runs TikTok would listen to them

    So yeah I’m against giving the US government powers it’s called corrupt in every country that’s used them. Especially in response to xenophobic jingoism. This is being done the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.

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    • CeeBee@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I can see that you don’t care about regulating the industry.

      Right, because me saying that Facebook and other social media selling our data even just for advertising is not ok and we should introduce laws for strong data and privacy protection equates to me “not caring about regulating the industry”.

      Sure there, bud.

      You just want to punish China.

      Nonsense.

      But it’s a law that targets a single person or organization. And the Constitution outright bans it.

      Ok, I get this, but it gets murky when the “organisation” being targeted is a corporate office of a government party.

      I’m not claiming to have the answer, but as a non-American I can’t get upset at such a bill. Simply because it would push back against a country that lately had been getting away with everything and causing severe and deliberate harm in other countries, including mine and yours.

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