this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago (5 children)

once again - not a ban, a seizure. Steve Mnuchin is heading a group of government insiders who want to buy TikTok, and this bill bans it if and only if they don't sell. The government has decided that TikTok is a dangerous propaganda and espionage network and intends to steal it and run it themselves. Even if you think that TikTok is that dangerous you have to ask yourself: why is it legal for everyone else and why does our government want so badly to do it themselves?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

Yup. And the precedent this sets is horrifying. Even monopolies get due process. Being able to declare a company as a foreign enemy and force them to leave the market or be bought out is a ridiculous measure in a supposedly free society.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

If China really is using TikTok for psyops, then they will refused to sell, flood TikTok with anti-government sentiment for its remaining days, and then direct people to just use the TikTok website hosted in China (is our government going to start blocking access to websites too?).

One silver line here is "the youths" will learn, in an unusually clear way, that the government effects their lives and can screw up their lives.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

(is our government going to start blocking access to websites too?).

I can't imagine why they wouldn't. The movie industry is already lobbying for it

[–] [email protected] -4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You know TikTok is global right?

But yeah Biden is just over here casually giving Trump better chances.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If ByteDance doesn't divest of TikTok 9 months, then it will be blocked from being distributed from App Stores. Nothing will be blocked before the election, so it's not really something which will affect the typical voter who isn't following the news, causing them to change their vote.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

It's major news. We're not that dumb.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Because then Facebook will pay for your reelection campaign?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

so they can do the death penalty on a company, they have a model

they just don't do it to Exxon or Facebook or Monsanto or...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

First off, source? Second, the npr interview I heard mentioned specifically that China has to approve the sale because the algorithm is proprietary to a Chinese company. So anyone "buying TikTok" is buying a name and none of the actual bones of the social media platform

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not who you were replying to, and not an interview, but here's an NPR article that explains that the content-recommendation algorithms would be difficult to sell

Chinese officials have placed content-recommendation algorithms on what is known as an export-control list, meaning the government has additional say over how the technology is ever sold.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Aren't the bones the cheap part now? Think truth social for instance, why was it supposedly worth so much if anyone can spin up a Mastadon instance and make it the same restrictions over the weekend. The userbase numbers are all that mattered there I assume. Why is reddit worth more than Lemmy? Is it because the bones are expensive? Or is it that they have access to a large userbase already.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

the reason truth social was so highly valued is probably related to trumps chronic addiction to over valuing his assets by about 10-100x the original value of them.

you would think the userbase of truth social would be big, it's not. It's several orders of magnitude smaller than twitter, and it's value is theorized to be heavily independent of the actual user count, the board of truth literally said as much. I.E. basically fucking bullshit.