this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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I know that I heard (on the 538 podcast) that before voting on this, congress was given a security briefing about it, and after that there was wide bipartisan support for the ban (and we all know how rare bipartisan support is these days). It sounds like the security briefing was pretty compelling. If it's not just theoretical that Chinese gocernment could leverage tiktok to spy on Americans and influence them, and there's evidence that they are already doing it, I think it makes the case for the ban much stronger. But the information has not been made public.
I'll also note that they set the ban to not go into effect until after the election.
This seems to be the case, but congress is doing an awful job of communicating the danger to the public. There will likely be a lot of people angry at Biden when he signs this if there is no effort to justify the targeted action.
I feel like it isn't congress's job to do that. They don't have to share or repeat information that they are not experts on to the public. They can share their thought process and rationale for supporting legislation, but we shouldn't expect them to be perceived as technical experts. I bet that fewer than 10 congressional representatives can look at a portion of code and make an educated statement on what's going on and how authors may be performing abnormal operations or obfuscating other actions.
It's the job of the organization(s) that prepare the security briefing, and we've already been hearing this kind of thing in the cybersecurity field for years. Those in the know, know. Those not, tend to not believe it. Warnings about the potential for data harvesting and information operations via platforms like (and specifically) Tik Tok aren't new.
This is like public health information during COVID. Medical professionals have the training and experience to share their professional assessments, but large portions of the population were instead solely relying on politicians to deliver medical information.
So ban data harvesting? That seems pretty common sense. Instead we're giving our government autocratic powers pick winners in the market.
So they can't talk to people about it because they're not technical experts, but they also have the authority to make decisions despite not being experts.
They can talk about it if they want to, but we shouldn’t be using them as our only source of information. Curious on why politicians voted X instead of Y? Look it up! See what experts in the field are saying.
You shouldn’t rely on them to tell you why TikTok is a threat the same way we shouldn’t rely on them to inform us on why weakening EPA standards is good for the environment, why taxing foreign trucks is good for the economy, or why drawing voting maps to concentrate demographics is good for democracy.
These politicians probably know enough to make an informed decision if they care to seek out information. They don’t always have the time or desire to do this. If you believe this to be true even one in a hundred times, that covers a handful of politicians for every single piece of legislation that comes out, every single time.
The same way you may care about many things but only know a lot about a few subjects, they legislate everything and people act like they are the experts. Why assume they know what they’re talking about for every single topic?
Because I would hope they know what they're talking about when they write the legislation. Or at least can explain their reasoning for voting a certain way. Especially when nobody has made the case that TikTok is any more dangerous than Facebook or Twitter.
They largely don’t write the legislation. Lobby groups draft the materials and if we’re lucky, the congressional aides make a pass and clean things up.
You can search for why TikTok is dangerous. There are plenty of examples of how the application and platform are not being forthright with how they collect your identifiers and weaponize them for information operations campaigns.
As I mentioned earlier, the powers that be aren’t as worried about Facebook and the like because they’re US-based and have working relationships with law enforcement. Facebook has been used for the very campaigns that TikTok is being used for now, but a large difference is that another nation has near complete control over the platform.
Yes but they should at least be able to explain why they voted a certain way on that legislation, right?
I agree that social media is dangerous for all the reasons mentioned, but I don't see why Zuckerberg and Musk still get to do all those things.
I'm not arguing against them explaining their rationale. I originally argued that they shouldn't be taken as experts.
Zuckerberg and Musk "get" to do these things because they are in the US, with majority US-based workers, running off US-based infrastructure. If any of these platforms are being used to facilitate attacks against the US, the government can choose any number of methods to step in and enforce compliance to mitigate the threat. That's it. This is about free speech in that not all speech is protected. If somebody uses TikTok to perform the digital equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater, the government sees a need to control it.
If Facebook was run and operated out of Tunisia, I'd expect these same conversations to be happening with them as well.
Except Facebook and Twitter are being used to attack the US and spread disinformation and the government isn't doing anything.
But I guess that's what I should expect from a government that cares more about national security than the privacy of its citizens.
The US government has been caught doing the same thing... poorly. You probably aren't going to find a lot of sources showing that the US is fighting these fights on Facebook and twitter, but you can read between the lines with interviews. In general, these kinds of things aren't performed out in the open.
Agree with you though. National security has trumped privacy. 9/11 changed a lot of things in a bad way.
See https://lemmy.world/post/14643617
I'm sure it's just even more detail about the scope of that influence campaign (and possibly an extrapolation of effectiveness on public opinion).
The major thing is manipulation of the public's information pipeline by a hostile foreign power. There are already existing laws about foreign owned media (as cited by the New York Times this morning https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/tiktok-bill-foreign-influence/677806/).
Young people get a lot of their news and information from TikTok. The US government doesn't have their hands in TikTok like they do domestic social media platforms.
That's it. That's the ban.
Edit: A lot of people downvoting, but this is 100% about control. It isn't "oooo China spooky" national security stuff, it's "we have no power here, how can we change this?"
Bipartisan support is only rare when it comes to things like giving healthcare to the poor.
That hasn't been true at all post-2016.
If there is evidence then let's hear it in court. We are not an Autocracy.
Uhh, yeah, we're a representative democracy. This passed through both houses of congress and is on its way to be signed by the president. You know, the completely normal legislative process.
You can vote yourself out of a democracy at any time.
Only way you’re voting yourself out of the US is with your feet. There are no mechanisms to relinquish citizenship (and your vote, barring convictions) while remaining in the country permanently.
I didn't say vote yourself out of the US. I said what I meant.
The US isn’t a straight simple democracy, so you win I guess.
Okay you're obviously not getting it. If you vote for people who ignore the Constitution then you won't have any rights.
That hasn't been the case for 50 years. Your rights are inalienable as long as there's some enforcement mechanism. All three branches have walked back certain rights in various forms in modern times.
Be the change you want to see; work in Federal service, get yourself elected for any local or Federal positions, or draft policy for lawmakers
Dude, you made me snort chicken. Inalienable rights are a lot older than 50 years. Yeah 70 years ago a lot of people stood up to fight for them but that doesn't magically protect them now. Having rights in theory means nothing if we let the government give itself the power to ignore those rights.
I mean sure, if you pass a constitutional amendment, I guess? Which this is not.
"I don't like this law that our democratically elected representatives passed" does not mean that the law threatens democracy. You're allowed to not like it, of course. That's actually a big part of democracy.
Just because they were elected does not mean you've avoided autocracy. There isn't a magic shield. You need to make sure they are respecting the Constitution and our Rights. If they assign themselves autocratic powers then you're going to live in an autocracy. And make no mistake, giving the executive the power to just declare a corporation illegal is autocratic. It's literally out of the playbook.
This is why our Constitution repeatedly says the government must use due process and prove its case in court.