Imagine if a country passed a law saying Facebook or Google had to sell to a non-US owner or it would be banned.
The ban isn’t because TikTok is a threat to US privacy or whatever, but because it threatens the global market share of US tech and by extension the geopolitical power of the US state.
@parismarx An issue I'd have with that argument is that the current bill is FINE if they sell TikTok to another non-China country. It's not about US tech marketshare, it's about Chinese control of data and influence inside US.
@parismarx I wrote some months ago how it is based on ignorance and censorship more than anything else. Moreover, it actually reduces security rather than improve it. https://robertvanwey.substack.com/p/weaponizing-xenophobia
@parismarx in principle, yes, us politicians are hypocrites, I get it. But I am sure there is a way to point that out without defending TikTok of all places.
@parismarx There's SIGINT that TikTok is actively being used as a platform to manipulate public sentiment. Try posting about Uyghur genocide and see how much traction your post gets.
@parismarx many (US and non-US) services are in fact banned im China
@parismarx Re: Social Media Bans.~ Uncensored Google is banned in China.
@parismarx You don’t see the problem with a highly algorithmic short video platform, controlled by a rather hostile dictatorship as a relevant propaganda risk for every Western nation?
I want it to be banned in the EU too!
@frumble @parismarx Instagram is also a highly algorithmic short video platform controlled by a small group of investors dedicated to driving capitalist thought and influencing politics toward making more money. Regulation of these companies should be based on the mechanisms of the product (recommendation algorithms) instead of owners' citizenship.
@sixohsix @parismarx Meta isn’t setting up secret police stations across the globe, Meta isn’t actively trying to extinguish an ethnicity, and Meta has no interest in hybrid warfare à la Russia’s decades long running political dividing strategies in the West. Meta is controllable and if you insist on this comparison, you are no serious conversational partner. #TikTok
If you think YouTube, Meta, and Twitter/X aren't propaganda platforms controlled by oligarchs hostile to representative democracy, you haven't been paying attention.
If the US government cared about user privacy and hidden propaganda, they would pass privacy protection laws and require all media recommendation and censoring algorithms in all social media to be publicly disclosed.
Then it wouldn't matter if the hottest social media application was run by Putin himself.
This isn't about eliminating propaganda against US citizens. It's about our propaganda versus theirs.
@firebreathingduck @parismarx You really don’t get it. You would really trust a "publicly disclosed censoring algorithm" to be exactly the same as running on the platform, which is under control of the systemic enemy? This is so naive.
Also, stopping TikTok, banning TikTok and regulating TikTok will be harder each year its user base grows further.
@frumble @parismarx if the algorithm isn't specified in a way that's reproducible, it doesn't qualify.
And again, this isn't heroic free companies vs Chinese propaganda, it's two sets of propaganda machines with different but equally evil agendas.
@parismarx In a nutshell, TikTok is a psy-op. It’s highly manipulative. It is indeed one of today’s highly relevant threats to our societies.
@calisti @parismarx But no more so than its US-based competitors.
@fivetonsflax @calisti @parismarx I'm confused. So you're supporting the ban? (since its US based competitors are banned in China.)
@alper @calisti @parismarx I don’t think domestic manipulation tastes any better than the imported stuff.
@fivetonsflax @alper @parismarx Choose your oppressor wisely.
@parismarx What? You mean like China does?
@parismarx que Estados Unidos quiera prohibir tiktok por ser un peligro para la privacidad es comprensible y ojalá aquí también. Que permitan que la plataforma siga operando si la dueña es una empresa estadounidense es que simplemente quieren que esos datos los tenga Estados Unidos y no China y que la privacidad realmente nunca importó
@MascarellDiego ¿Dónde está la novedad? Estados Unidos querría hacer exactamente lo mismo que China, pero disfrazado de democracia y todo eso. De hecho, no para de demostrarlo cada día con la chulería de alguien que lo tiene todo para someter por las buenas o por las malas a todo aquel que se cruce por delante.
@AbsluteBeginner novedad ninguna, lo único es que la libertad empresarial parece que es estupenda si el dueño de la empresa es usonano o amigo pero si es de China ya tal
@AbsluteBeginner que China tampoco debería, dejémoslo cristalino, pero que si "lo que antes ser muy mal permanecer todo igual y resultar excelente, ¡Hombre blanco hablar con lengua de serpiente!"
@parismarx And racism, don't forget that.