this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Ok, China is a bad example, except as what not to do.
As you pointed out yourself, this bill is Congress acting like the oppressive Chinese government rather than the liberal democracy the US likes to pretend to be.
Preventing an oppressive government from exerting undue influence on another sovereign nation’s citizenry is an oppressive act itself?
Dude. Tiktok is a social media platform that happens to be owned by a company with Chinese government connections.
It's not a nefarious conspiracy to control Americans. That would be Facebook and the Republican party platform
Agreed on the Republican party bit.
If Facebook could be considered a nefarious conspiracy (or at least subservient to the powers engaging in said conspiracy), why is it unbelievable that TikTok could also be?
Because Facebook has been PROVEN to knowingly allow widespread coordinated election tampering (Cambridge Analytica, for example) and steering users towards far right pages and groups,
Tiktok is only SUSPECTED based on association with China and furthermore has a much smaller user base and therefore less impact if they DO run election influence campaigns like Facebook does.
The US could, if there was the political will, hold Facebook accountable for this because Meta is an American company. The US would not be able to hold a non-American company accountable in the same way. I do not see a conflict between wanting Meta held accountable for allowing things like Cambridge Analytica to occur and not minding the US taking proactive action on TikTok.
So which is it?
Is the US unable to hold Tiktok accountable or is it/should it be allowed to dictate the ownership of Tiktok?
I'd argue it's neither. The US is perfectly within their rights to enforce US laws within the US, including towards companies not based in the US. That's literally what being a sovereign nation means.
As for forcing the change of ownership of a company that hasn't been found guilty of anything but SUSPICION based on ASSOCIATION, that's some banana republic demagoguery nonsense designed to make right wing voters think that politicians up for re-election are "tough on China" and centrists think they're "standing up for democracy".
It's not "proactive", it's oppressive and unjustified.
I was wrong, TikTok has a US subsidiary, so accountability can been enforced. I was under the mistaken impression they didn’t, so operating on the assumption that any accountability action would be functionally unenforceable.