TikTok is taking the US government to court.
Every negative thing about Tiktok is also true about Instagram and Twitter.
TikTok is solely responsible for that AI voice. Instagram and Twitter have never done anything that compares to the pain and suffering that has caused to humanity.
Except the most relevant part: it is owned by a hostile foreign government.
To be fair, so is League of Legends and every product made by Tencent and their subsidiaries. If they’re going to go ahead with a ban, they should at least keep it consistent.
The real question you are asking is whether inaction is worse than inconsistency. Should we not put out a fire unless we can put out all fires? What you are suggesting is to let something burn for the sake of consistency.
Except the part about the authoritarian regime, the US has many problems but it’s still a democracy.
Edit: I’m glad you downvote me because you never had to learn what living in a dictatorship is like, I didn’t, but my parents generation still did and I can tell you it looks nothing like the US of today. Women were only allowed to be housewives, groups of more than 2 people couldn’t talk openly in the street because that can lead to dangerous ideas spreading out, you would have to be careful what you said even at home because your neighbour could be listening to sell you out, all pieces of art and media would go through an government office to get censored, and so on, so yes, I stand with what I said, the US is a free democratic country even if you have been spoiled enough to think it is not.
Y’know Orwell wrote about how warping definitions was a tool of authoritarianism. Typical ML behavior, tbh.
Hey I was born in a country with a military dictatorship and my parents grew up under it.
That’s exactly why I believe in freedom and liberty. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association. We need to uphold these principles so that the US doesn’t slowly slip into authoritarianism like most democracies tend to do over the long term.
That’s exactly why I oppose this TikTok ban with every fiber of my being. If a citizen wants to communicate on a Chinese platform, he has every right to do so under our laws. He can make the executive decision for himself about the potential risks or benefits.
That’s what it means to live in a free society. You are advocating for authoritarianism while you rail against authoritarianism. Reminds me of 1984. War is peace, right?
Not everything that’s not a dictatorship is a democracy. You’re using a strawman to argue your point.
A democracy stops when there is a severe imbalance in influence on legislation between voters and lobbyists / corporations / or voters depending on income / colour of skin.
There’s also a quasi oligarchy with freedom of speech, that’s about where western Europe is at. In the US, by now, a large part of the population has been deprived of basic human rights, as shown in unpunished police brutality and murders, and vigilante killings of people for their beliefs, opinions or identity.
Neither still qualifies for democracy. We would have to unite about two thirds of the voters behind a new party to even hope to change anything that matters (hello climate change), and that’s assuming that a hypothetical party that would actually act in the interest of restoring democratic mechanisms would be persecuted or otherwise hindered by authorities.
the US has many problems but it’s still a democracy
Given the choice between hot shit and cold shit still ends with you being covered in shit. Heads or tails between two very similar parties hardly counts as a true democracy.
This is incredibly disingenuous. The US might not be a true democracy, but it’s not an authoritarian regime. Xi and putin disappear people who have an opinion on whether they should be forever-rulers.
The fact that independent parties exist and hold seats at all three levels of government mean you are fundamentally wrong in saying there are only two choices.
The US is a flawed democracy. That’s still better than an authoritarian regime.
While the US might be hot shit, it’s still our OWN shit. Keep your cold shit on your side of the pond.
And What does that have to do with anything? We aren’t dealing with China, we’re dealing with a corporation.
The fact that the company that manages TikTok is insisting on maintaining the power structure that allows for influence by the CCP makes that claim incredibly suspicious.
According to former head engineer for US locations of TikTok, their services are centralized in China to the extent that it probably cannot even run off the US locations alone, and the Chinese owners ByteDance had complete access to everything on the platform including user data and if you believe security experts: your photo library, text message history, contacts list, and information of nearby wireless devices that you’ve so much as passed by. Also, they’re a military partner in China.
That’s not a US Corporation in any way, shape, or form. That is espionage. The fact that they announced they won’t sell shows that they were never a business operating for profit, it was always about control.
Doesn’t really matter unless you live under it. Instagram and Twitter or more dangerous to U.S. citizens.
They’re saying that the US is a democracy and the other country is an authoritarian regime. Can you guess which other country is involved with TikTok other than the USA? I’ll give you a hint: Hundred Acre Woods.
You got downvoted so much that I had to check if we were on ml or hexbear. Those CCP shills really operating in broad daylight on this post, they must have gotten board of the echo rooms filled with bots on their home instance.
I just have to stop by and voice that I do not appreciate your attitude. This is exactly the kind of toxicity I escaped reddit from.
TikTok blocks all access from Hong Kong. Can I sue them?
Wait, I’m in HK right now for business and can open it just fine from my hotel wifi. The website that is, I don’t care about the platform and wouldn’t use the app.
I could play videos just fine without login though. Anything I’m missing?
Really? It just redirects me to https://www.tiktok.com/hk/notfound
Good. The ban is censorship dressed up as national security.
I have a question for you. What is the difference between Google being banned in China and Tik Tok being banned in the US?
Can I ban NSA from spying on me? I’m not even on fReEeDoOoOoM land, I should be entitled to some amount of privacy
And if someone chooses to watch that, that’s their business. Not nanny government’s. Not saying I do. But none of us have any business telling someone else what they can and cannot watch. That’s part of living in a supposedly “free” country. We aren’t China. You want a “great firewall”, then move there.
In our zeal to shun everything China-related, we must not become them.
Which is any different than YouTube, Lemmy or anything else?
I think people should have a right to shoot themselves in the foot if they choose.
What would give them standing? They’d have to be an entity protected by the constitution to claim that protection was harmed. Is it this (Wikipedia)?
TikTok Ltd was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and is based in both Singapore and Los Angeles. source
I guess I’ve never thought about what makes an entity have rights here. Buckingham Palace couldn’t just open shop here and start suing our government, right?
The case is essentially “hey you kinda passed a bill that’s against your own constitution? You’re kinda supposed to follow that…”
Does the US constitution apply for rights of businesses, or is it just people?
Not being snarky I actually don’t know
Important rights of businesses in the US constitution include
Important note regarding a business’s right to regulate free speech: The rules of the Constitution are meant to regulate Congress, not businesses or citizens. Therefore, the right to free speech means Congress cannot restrict someone from speaking his or her mind, but a business may be able to.
For example, a radio show has the right to not allow a certain person to speak on its program or to say certain things. Ultimately, such issues are decided by the Supreme Court, and there may be some exceptions, depending on the circumstances.
List of companies incorporated in the Cayman Islands: https://capedge.com/company/by/incState/E9/active/true?sort=latestQuote.marketCap
Mostly obscure to me, but I looked up GlobalFoundries. Originally divested from AMD, bought IBM’s chip business, got a contract from US Department of Defense in 2023 for manufacturing military chips
I imagine you wouldn’t object to GlobalFoundries suing the US government
Something important to note here is that there are various exceptions to freedom of speech protections from various time periods, one such exception is Incitement – If a person has the intention of inciting the violations of laws that is imminent and likely, while directing this incitement at a person or groups of persons, their speech will not be protected under the First Amendment. This test was created by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
This is relevant because alongside the TikTok forced sale they also passed a law against sending sensitive data including personal details and photographs to adversarial nations including Russia, China, Iran, etc. That means that Incitement could be used to describe TikTok operating in any capacity without completely centralizing to the USA, and therefor they would have no protections by the first amendment.
grabs popcorn
