TikTok being banned is good. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter should be banned as well. Closed, source, manipulative and harmful algorithms should be banned and these apps all use dark patterns in their design.
The fediverse and open social networks where the algorithms are open source and well understood and the user is allowed to choose their own algorithms is the only safe way to use social media.
Honestly I think it’s a terrible precedent to set. Now the government can just say they don’t like XYZ website and are banning it. That wasn’t really something they did 10 years ago. Unless of course it was illegal activity. But I don’t think this is a net win for the internet. Regardless of what decision has been made, freedoms were removed and citizens’ rights were sidestepped for political means. I think it shouldn’t be the government’s job to protect us from ourselves.
I was totally onboard with banning tiktok on government computers and I was completely on board with the government publicly expressing concerns over the motives of tiktok as a business. That’s where I personally believe this should have stopped. Inform the people of the danger and then let them decide what to do with that information.
The problem with that idea though, is that nation-wide, citizens’ trust in the government is at an all-time low. So even if the government said tiktok is bad and you shouldn’t use it, people already don’t trust the government. Maybe they should work on regaining the trust their people had for them 65 years ago before it tries to get people to behave how they think we should.
Trump may even welcome that, considering that Truth Social is just Mastodon.
isn’t it a mastodon fork?
and considering it’s probably blocked by like 98% of the fediverse, i don’t think he likes it very much
Non-American here. This actually goes a long way in helping me to avoid US-centric news and content for the next 4 years. So, there’s that.
That’s an interesting perspective. Please enjoy having our stupid bullshit slightly further away from your face for a while! My only option is sticking my head in this hole in the ground.
I know! I’m so happy!
enjoy not having FREEDOM though /s
why not have better data protection laws instead
I’m really surprised they’re not pushing the web version, which can operate in a way not covered by this ban.
This is all theater.
trump is going to “save” tik tok after starting the initial push to ban it (for the wrong reasons) to pretend he did something for you. Worst part is that all of the no/low info voters and non voters will eat it up.
It’s the equivalent of a person pushing you into the middle of the street and at the very last second, that same person tells the drivers to all stop. “Wow, I owe you my life!”
And now, this adds two layers:
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You think trump and the Supreme Court are colluding? now they get to say, nah uh!!! Even though again, this is all convoluted.
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trump gets to look “stronger” than the “highest court in the land” to help delude the next generation of low info tiktok folks.
P.s. The Chinese “protest” apps are going to mine the FUCK out of these millions of phones in the brief window they have them. Also, when the kids inevitably move back to tiktok, majority of them will leave these other apps installed on their phones, dormant and collecting in the background.
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TikTok’s fate in the U.S. now lies in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who originally favored a TikTok ban during his first administration
…
Trump began to speak more favorably of TikTok after he met in February with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass. Yass is a major ByteDance investor who also owns a stake in the owner of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform.
Stop the ban or we’ll burn your own platform to the ground.
Do it. Do a flip!
i don’t understand why everyone wants to push trump, who already doesn’t care for the constitution, to just unilaterally decide not to obey laws passed by congress? like what are we doing?
As an Indian, welcome to the party.
Right, but things rarely happen ‘for the good of humanity’, they just happen, and like mass production or the newspaper or even writing and language itself, it appears, we make use of it, we stumble and eventually we figure out where it really fits into the world. It will always be taken advantage of by those with the means to do so, but my point is that there is a period where we truly don’t know how to approach it as a society and there is a learning curve and we are in that adolescent or teenage year type curve for the Internet, and probably toddler stage for ai, and we will learn, but we’re not there yet.
Further, whether we learn enough quickly enough, or whether those with enough power and foresight will truly steal that opportunity from society remains to be seen. It may seem like it will be obvious right now, while we’re in the thick of things, but only history will tell if it’s an obvious eventuality or whether it is comical that they think they are smart enough to actually control it. Maybe it contains the seeds of their own undoing.
Unanimous?! Makes you wonder what they know that we might not.
I think it’s more there is a precedence of the government blocking software they think is a threat - https://cmmcinfo.org/list-of-hardware-software-and-services-banned-by-us-government/
We give the government a lot of leeway when it comes to “national security”
Also, we’re not the first country to ban it - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/heres-what-happened-when-india-banned-tiktok
There’s a history of the US putting people in prison too. It’s still unconstitutional for Congress to pass a law requiring someone to go to prison just because the law they passed named them.
Most of them[1] know a whole lot more about constitutional law than the average lemming.
When things are working correctly, the Supreme Court’s role is usually not very concerned with the facts of the case; its role is to resolve questions of law. Congress considered the facts including some classified briefings, decided that American app stores should be forbidden from distributing TikTok to American users, and made a law. The court was asked whether Congress has the authority to make laws like that, and the court decided that it does.
[1] Maybe not Clarence Thomas
Then they should be fired. The Constitution, in plain English, bans the practice of naming a person or group in a law specifically to punish them. That’s the domain of courts. These judges are either illiterate or corrupt.
This is correct, but the law doesn’t do that. It mentions TikTok in the title, but the text describes what is banned in terms of user count and control by a foreign adversary. It would apply to a future product made by a Russian company, for example.
No. It literally says TikTok in the text of the bill. It also has a super broad description of other covered companies. But then also bans TikTok by name. The law is Public Law 118-50. The stuff in Congress is not the end of a bill. It has to go through reconciliation, where it can change, and then it goes to the desk of the president.
Foreign adversary controlled application.—The term “foreign adversary controlled application” means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok; …
If you care to find it in the statutes at large or USC then have at it. But this is what Biden signed.
I missed that part. Thanks for the correction.
Looking at the court’s opinion (PDF), it appears this case did not raise that issue. I think it’s unlikely it would be considered a bill of attainder because what it does is technically not punishment, but that’s a question for people who know more about law than I do.
A forced sale below market value is absolutely punishment. And being banned is 100% punitive.
Nothing. The arguments were public. They obliterated the first amendment rights of 170 million Americans because the government said National Security. If the government can use magic words to make your rights disappear, then you don’t have those rights.
