Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say
lud@lemm.ee 6 months agoWhy don’t they just sell TikTok to a US Citizen who happens to believe TikTok should remain the same?
Who? What USA citizen is prepared to buy something for the privilege of fighting the USA government with would obviously get mad and probably block the sale if byte Dance TikTok is still involved.
I don’t really follow USA politics but didn’t this law pass by quite large margins? They could obviously ban toktik.
Buttons@programming.dev 6 months ago
They can’t actually ban TikTok by name, it’s unconstitutional to make laws targeted at individuals.
The current law actually says “no company can operate in the US with over 20% owned by China, Iran, N. Korea, or Russia”, or something like that.
There’s a lot of people in the US and at least of few of them would be willing to run TikTok the same way, same algorithms, same content, and sell the users data on shadowy data markets (which China can surely get their hands on), etc. I’m repeating myself now.
Again, my point is there are a lot of people in the US and surely some of them can form a company willing to do what China wants, and isn’t that their right by our laws and morals of free speech? I know if things get heated enough laws and morals will be ignored (see Japanese internment camps).
And my even broader point is that this move against TikTok has ulterior motives. We should have created regulations that apply to all companies instead of targeting TikTok specifically (which we effectively did, even if not technically).
InternetUser2012@midwest.social 6 months ago
Our House of Representatives and Senate are more than 20% owned by Russia.
Buttons@programming.dev 6 months ago
They could even own a President. Unheard of! /s
lud@lemm.ee 6 months ago
If you help TikTok in that way you would absolutely get on the government’s hit list (literal or not).
It would probably be quite easy to just make a new law or revision that stops the theoretical loophole.