But you can’t charge me with murder! That guy committed it too!
US can’t ban TikTok for security reasons while ignoring Temu, other apps, TikTok argues
Submitted 2 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
potentiallynotfelix@lemdro.id 2 months ago
Fedizen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
selective enforcement of the law is a real issue. One of the reasons Donald Trump will likely never go to jail is the failure to prosecute nixon, reagan (iran contra, iran hostage crisis meddling), and Bush/Cheney(wmd fiasco)
Petter1@lemm.ee 2 months ago
And one of the reasons POC are more likely go to jail (or even gets shot) for something a white man would be let free with only a warning… At least in the “free” land.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I hate Reagan with all my heart, but in his defence there is little to no evidence Reagan knew what his subordinates were doing with Iran Contra.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The argument here is more along the lines of, “you can’t make a law that defines something as murder only when I do it.”
WldFyre@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Good thing that’s not what’s happening, then.
Ilandar@aussie.zone 2 months ago
I’m surprised so many people think this is a good argument. TikTok is a social media platform. Temu is an online marketplace. The potential to cause disruption within US society is completely different.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Legally it is a very good argument. A law targeting a single company in name or effect is literally unconstitutional. It’s called a “Bill of Attainder”.
The counter argument is indicting Facebook because they never stopped selling information directly to the CCP.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Cool, let’s ban Temu then. Nothing of value will be lost.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A US Citizen might be protected by Article 1 Section 9, but courts have adopted a three-part test to determine if a law functions as a bill of attainder:
- The law inflicts punishment.
- The law targets specific named or identifiable individuals or groups.
- Those individuals or groups would otherwise have judicial protections.
And unfortunately for the CCP they fail #3 unless the Chinese owners divest and all Chinese centralization for the company gets shut down.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Not environmentally…
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I thought we like disruption.
x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
“Good point, we’ll ban all of them”
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
“Thanks for bringing it to our attention. You are now banned as well”
aaaaace@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
It’s time to start taxing the acquisition, retention, and selling/trading of personal data.
Actually, that time was 40 years ago.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Google and Microsoft would be scrambling to pay off every single person associated with that before it ever hit the first courtroom floor.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 months ago
GDPR is a start, but we need to actually ban it, not just annoy people until they click Accept at the 20th popup of that tantalising offer to share your details with 1473 trusted data partners.
dan@upvote.au 1 month ago
You can just click deny instead. The law says the site must make it easy to do so.
Cataphract@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
ohhh data collection taxation, I like it. You would think it would be a no-brainer but look at marijuana taxation and the continued resistance to rake in all that public funding. Would make most of the controversy around AI disappear if they tax it’s collection.
squid_slime@lemm.ee 2 months ago
America selectively caring about privacy.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
It’s because this isn’t about privacy at all, it’s about a popular social media platform being outside the control of domestic intelligence agencies. The US is unable to control the narrative on TikTok the way they do on American social media, which allowed pro-palestinian sentiment to spread there unhindered. It had a huge effect on the politics of the younger generation (IMO a positive one) by showing them news and first hand accounts they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
They care about companies they have less control over and a foreign adversary has more control over invading privacy, for reasons unrelated to seeing privacy as a good in itself.
Rob200@lemmy.autism.place 2 months ago
This is a good point actually. That’s almost like trying to ban Naruto because it’s Japanese, but not banning Dragonball Z. We’l see where this goes. If they would enforce these law equally it wouldn’t be as much of a concern. Overall, whether they ban TikTok or not, if as a user you don’t like a said platform, just don’t use it.
revv@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Yes and no. Without endorsing them, the arguments for banning Tik Tok are subtler than Chinese = security risk. The fears, however reasonable you may find them, are largely that it presents a danger of foreign information gathering of detailed behavioral/location/interest/social network information on a huge swath of the U.S. population which can be used either for intelligence purposes or targeted influence/psyops campaigns within the U.S. When you look at the history of how even relatively benign data from sources not controlled by foreign adversaries has been used for intelligence gathering, e.g. Strava runs disclosing the locations of classified military installations, these fears make a certain amount of sense.
Temu, et al., on the other hand are shopping apps that don’t really lend themselves to influence campaigns in the same way (though, if they are sucking up data like all the other apps, I wouldn’t be surprised if folks in the U.S. security apparatus are concerned about those as well.
Ultimately, I think the argument fails because it assumes an obligation for Congress to solve every tangentially related ill all at once where no such obligation exists.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
They desperately need to do something about car software before China starts being really relevant here in EVs too.
I absolutely support massively restricting what anyone can gather, not just China, (and the same for social media/ad networks/retailers), but it’s fundamentally not the same threat as data vacuums controlled by an enemy state.
Fedizen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
pretty sure china can just buy all the info they want from facebook, twitter
Lyre@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Extremely well said, thank you.
stoly@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I generally think that TikTok sucks but do agree with this argument. It’s silly to say that domestic companies can be evil but foreign ones no.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
That’s not a silly argument if your argument is about national security. For the exact same reason, China blocks almost all western apps. It gives a potential route for whatever nation is considered hostile to influence your population, and TikTok has actually activated this influence at least once directly. They tried to activate their users to protest congress from passing laws restricting them.
Basically, they have the ability to influence users, and they also have the will to do so as they’ve already shown. In what world eould they not be a national security threat? It’s also really hard for me to accept this argument from a Chinese company when China has the great firewall to “protect” it’d citizens from outside influence.
You can argue that it is not to benefit the citizens and rather just the state, which is fair. You can’t reasonably argue that the state has nothing to fear.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Laws don’t exist to protect the state, they exist to protect the people.
Also, what another country decides to do shouldn’t really impact what we decide to do. If China blocks our apps, fine, their loss I guess. But if we start blocking their apps in retribution, that doesn’t make us any better than them. We should be fighting disinformation with information. This means better education and transparent government-funded research and information. But when the US government is secretive and frequently caught spreading its own disinformation, it makes it hard for me to agree to block other countries doing the same.
TikTok should be allowed to offer its services here, but US companies shouldn’t be obligated to host them on their services, and the government should publicize the negative information it has about them so journalists can help the public digest it.
Syntha@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
The argument isn’t that they’re “evil”, it’s that they could be used as tools by strategic rivals.
JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Tiktok is probably used 10 times as much though (users x time on the app) and Temu isn’t spreading messages in quite the same way. Comparing apples and gerbils, whataboutism, etc.
charonn0@startrek.website 2 months ago
If social media companies exist to collect massive troves of personal info from users–and they do–then there is a valid national security concern over social media controlled by an adversary. This is distinct from the individual privacy concerns towards domestically-controlled social media.
SteveDinn@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
TikTok is correct. Ban them all.
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 2 months ago
While i dislike tiktok as much as the next one, please do temu first. Temu might actually be the downfall of our planet that is already falling down the stairs pretty hard.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I knew someone who got caught up in their
pyramidmarketing scheme. The prizes were some low quality shit. The watch they won got badly scratched the same day from regular use. It was pretty funny watching it disintegrate in real time.
noxy@yiffit.net 2 months ago
US tech companies too, you fucking cowards.
Facebook paid kids to install a VPN client on their smartphones so they could intercept AND DECRYPT traffic between competing services (like Snapchat, Amazon, Youtube)
facebook and any other company they acquire (or however they try to rebrand) are not only untrustworthy but active adversaries against common decency and basic privacy
Etterra@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They’re right, we should regulate or ban then too.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Technically, the second partof that bill bans sending user data to China for all companies, so it’s foreseeabke that they get fined into the dirt if nothing else.
I hope the Facebook multi-billion dollar fines act as precedent.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
it’s foreseeabke that they get fined into the dirt if nothing else.
Or they just route the sale of traffic through a domestic data broker and buy “analysis” on the Chinese side of the legal fence. There are so many badly policed and underregulated aspects of the data business that this shit never amounts to more than publicity stunts.
American trade with China only ever increases year-to-year, despite all the noise about a Trade War. Chinese based drop-shipping schemes only ever eat into our domestic market share, because American incomes are falling into line with the global average and that’s the kind of trade good international middle class workers can afford. And all this shit is getting blended together - Indian and Chinese businesses outsource to Indochina and Malaysia and Indonesia where labor is cheaper. Everything gets routed and flagged through Singapore anyway, so the real origin of a good is obscured by the time it lands on your doorstep. And nobody in the business of making money wants to pay a politician to do anything about this in practice.
Nobody is getting fined, much less into-the-dirt.
twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
So ban them too
YeetPics@mander.xyz 2 months ago
Is tiktok saying that all Chinese apps that steal our data are also stealing our data because they were designed to steal our data?!
I am SHOCKED.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You don’t even need the word Chinese
YeetPics@mander.xyz 2 months ago
Lol, what domestic social media apps are the US government trying to ban?
What’s that? None of them? Ah okay.
The concern is international espionage, there are really only 2 big players in that space. One of them is the US, can you guess the other?
EatATaco@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Simply reading the article would reveal how ludicrously incorrect your argument is.
YeetPics@mander.xyz 1 month ago
I don’t recall making any *arguments", can you elaborate?
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Like Temu?
You mean like facebook and twitter.
TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
No, they love those, since that data goes to the US government instead of to the CCP
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
that data goes to the US government instead of to the CCP
Going to blow people’s minds when they find out Temu data also goes to the US government and Facebook data also goes to the CCP.
This shit is just a commodity. It’s auctioned off at the bid rate. The NSA doesn’t just lay claim to this data, it buys it. And these Big Data companies are only handing it over because of the absurd margins NSA (and MI5 and the rest of the Five Eyes) directors are willing to pay.
Your data isn’t any safer because the parent company is owned by a foreign plutocrat. This is a big club and you ain’t in it.
kelargo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Cambridge analytics
TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
TheFrirish@jlai.lu 2 months ago
Please ban them, I beg of you, please…
djsoren19@yiffit.net 2 months ago
Temu isn’t a social media network that has been known to boost specific narratives with their algorithm. The U.S. isn’t saying that China can’t sell and market to the American audience, just that they’ll need a supervisor if they want to mess with media.
Letme@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fine then, ban all the Chinese spy apps
aesthelete@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’d rather they just ban spy apps in general…but that’s a “dream a little dream, it’s never gonna happen” type of thing.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 months ago
And all the CIA ones.
And then block all cookies and tracking.
YeetPics@mander.xyz 1 month ago
And all the CIA ones.
Let’s hear some of those app names, you seem to have a few ready to fire off on a whim.
NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”
MataVatnik@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I mean. Why not?
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Now do Facebook and Amazon
huzzahunimpressively@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What about Lenovo, Aliexpress, Xiaomi, Didi (It’s famous in latam), BYD, NIO?
archomrade@midwest.social 2 months ago
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit…
Contravariant@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Lenovo definitely deserved to be banned after that shit they pulled with the malicious root certificates.
dan@upvote.au 1 month ago
Didi is very popular in Australia too.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Fisher said that Americans have a “fundamental interest” in working with the publisher or editor of their choice
Bruh. Did you really just throw away all of your Section 230 protections?
Game on, motherfucker.
radiohead37@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
What’s temu?
don@lemm.ee 2 months ago
A Chinese-owned fast fashion hazwaste app
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 2 months ago
AliExpress clone but you can only use it after installing their app on your phone.
lobut@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Oh I use the website on my phone. Keeps asking me to spin Some stupid wheel though.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
It’s an emulator for the Nintendo GameTube
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Good call. Let’s ban them both.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
They’re gonna ban anything that reveals the genocidal reality of zionism. RT, TikTok, every honest/uncensorable app…
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
RT
Russia and Israel are deeply in bed together. RT has been as cagey about Israeli malfeasance as any NY/DC based publication.
AJ
Americans aren’t going to ban the Qatari Paper of Record, even if it does occasionally get one of its Palestinian journalists fed into an Israeli meat grinder. The Qataris lobby our Congress almost as hard as the Israelis do.
TikTok
China Bad. Ban it.
YeetPics@mander.xyz 1 month ago
I don’t think you’ve commented in this thread enough.
/s
Objection@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
This thread has made me realize that while I was watching the hearings on it purely for comedy aspect, there were actually people out there being like, “Yeah that makes sense.”
Love it when the government takes away our stuff. Please, take away more of our stuff. Love me that security theater.
If you don’t like the app, just don’t use it. Nationalism is a hell of a drug.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You can’t spy on our citizens, that’s our (and our corporations’) job!
- The US Government
spark947@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Ban them too.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Bet.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Oh no, now we have to ban them all?? What a shame!
/s