this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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The difference is the US government believes that TikTok is beholden to the Chinese government. When a corporation acts this way it is an invasion of privacy. When a foreign government acts this way it is espionage.
If TikTok is sold to an entity the US government thinks is sufficiently independent from a foreign government, then they can continue spying on users.
Alternatively, they may be able to registers under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I don't know how that would impact TikTok's ability to operate though.
The US government believes its hegemony over global surveillance and propaganda is dying. And it has to ban apps as an act of coping over their failures. They expect their puppet states around the world to follow suit.
FTFY
Honestly, Fvck em' both.
Finally someone who understands the nuance here.
Not just another country, but a hostile foreign country. If France owned TikTok no one would care. But to the US government, China is in the top 5 of most hostile nations and is definitely the top of hostile nations in terms of world power and reach. It's essentially giving out a LOT of info to what they see as "the enemy". And also it has a lot of potential use to track US government employees like diplomats and high-level military leaders. Even if those people don't have TikTok installed, their kids might.
But if Facebook/Instagram, X, reddit, whoever sell their data to a data broker who has Chinese clients/partners I doubt anyone gives half a shit, otherwise those same safeguards could be employed against TikTok without the need for new federal legislation.
Hostile meaning "not beholden to the American imperialist empire"?
Hah, I would assume they mean not beholden to a government that tracks its citizens with facial recognition, data mines its citizens' personal communications to arrest them before they can even organize a protest, and is run by a dictator who literally made it illegal to call him Pooh Bear.
The sphere that America exerts control over is not without its issues and is surely corrupt. But it is nowhere near as corrupt, oppressive, and lacking in individual freedom as China and the other contender for world domination. Unlike China, America has no social credit score enforced by an all-seeing mass surveillance mechanism where VPN's and other attempts to hide from it are strictly illegal. And while many Americans might be racist toward Muslims, the American government does not dehumanize them and force them into labor camps.
Your whataboutism is clearly just a Chinese troll, but I'll leave this comment as a reminder to others reading that there is zero equivalence.
The thing is, the Chinese Government has some serious real aspirations for world domination. They literally want to supplant the US as THE world power. And tik tok is very open exposing US citizens to propaganda if nothing else. On top of that Tik Tok literally admitted that their algorithm was used to try to spy on journalists and track down their sources. They claim it was a lapse of judgement. But that alone has terrifying implications. I don't use tik tok but my understanding is it still has data on me and other people like me because I know several people who use it.
All the other tech companies who are gathering data like this on their users are a problem. And the number of algorithms used by theses companies and their effect on the mental health of the users are also a problem. But the only reason the US government is going after tik tok is specifically because of its ties to the CCP.
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2023/03/24/what-tiktok-knows-you-should-know-tiktok/
The thing is, its only good when the US Government is doing it. no need to tip-toe the actual reason. We know.
Ban it or not. it doesn't matter to the world outside. It's hilariously funny seeing it happen to the accuser what it has been doing for last decade around the world.
God speed.
I don't think anyone in this thread thinks it's good for any government to be spying on everyone. But if we can cut off that flow of data to at least one government, great. Especially since that government is oppressive and authoritarian.
Maybe one day the US government will be cut off from mass surveillance as well.
In terms of reciprocity, the TikTok ban is long overdue. The US government's most valuable mass surveillance tools – Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc – aren't allowed there.
Lol Did you know India banned tik tok?
China bans Facebook, Google, etc.
Millions of Americans walking around with spying devices for the Chinese government seems like something to be concerned about.
Fuck em, hegemony is cringe and America can go fuck itself with whatever it wants to call "enemy states"
What's bad for the goose is bad for the gander.
The line between corporations and governments is not so clear when it comes to what's in a citizens best interests.
It’s very clear tbh. The US corporations are beholden to a government that at least some of the time does what’s in the best interests of citizens, because it itself is at least somewhat beholden to the desires of its citizens. The exact degree to which those things are true can be blurry, and have at different points in history been more or less accurate.
A hostile foreign government on the other hand definitely, 100% confirmed in every case does not have your interests at heart. There is no one, not a single person in the Chinese government who has your best interests at heart, at any point in time. You have instead of distressingly little power over them, absolutely zero power over them.
So you’d rather the entity that never has and never will have your best interests at heart over the one that to an extent does? An interesting position to take.
The electoral college provides people significant representation in federal government as grouped by state. The. Each state gives people representation in their states government. It would only make sense to get rid of the electoral college after dissolving the 50 states and unifying under 1 federal government, which isn’t something that I think literally any American wants.
Everyone representing themselves is an extreme example but hopefully clearly shows how more representatives are better at representing a group than fewer. Compare a voting result of 50% A, 25% B, 25% C with a system that gives you 1 representative (from A) with a system that gives you 5 representatives (3 from A, 1 from B, 1 from C).
Electoral college permit states to choose electors who can cast their vote in a way that doesn't reflect how people in their state voted for. If a critical amount of states agree they can choose to make the overall result better represent nationwide what all Americans voted for (an election of an election results in a bigger misrepresentation error).
Why would ditching the electoral college require dismantling state governments? That makes no sense.
It wouldn’t require it. But it makes less than no sense to ditch it while we are still a 50 state union. The entire point of the United States is that you can choose a state to live in with an independent regional government that governs the place where you and your family live and work. A place where you have more control as a voter in how it’s run. Then you have a federal government which can when institute needed laws that apply to every state, which is a lot of power over the state you live in. Thus you want each independent state to have a vote in who’s running the country.
To get rid of the electoral college would mean handing over control of the entire federal government, a government that has the power to overrule laws in your state, to effectively four or five states.
But that’s already the case? Swing states get to decide national policy far more than other states. Giving proportional representation would at least ensure that the states with a bigger voice have more citizens. Citizens in small states would still have an equal voice, unlike the current system.
I think universal equality in political power is far more compatible with federalism than the current system.
It is not already the case. Without an electoral college, a single voter in North Dakota has effectively no voice at all. In fact, the states entire population would mean little more than a rounding error. With no electoral college the cumulative voting power of the entire state is 0.23%. With the electoral college they’re bumped up to over 1%
…no? A swing state is just a state that that has enough voters from each major party that they could go either way. They don’t have any more power than any other state.