So TikTok is sending out app notifications that they are at risk of being shut down and urging their users to call their representatives right now. They are not going down without a fight.
The 165 days time limit would land the deadline in August-ish, right before the most intense phase of election season in the States, and I do think TikTok would be a very influential part of the election strategy this year.
Many users called lawmakers’ offices to complain, congressional staffers told Politico. “It’s so so bad. Our phones have not stopped ringing. They’re teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app and we can’t take it away,” one House GOP staffer was quoted as saying.
and they still voted 50-0. really tells you something about how much these politicians are willing to listen to their constituents.
It was a 50-0 to pass the commission and then go to the House floor for a vote and then the Senate for a vote and finally signed into law by the president unless he vetoes it, which is possible imo.
Honestly, teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves, I might just call in to my local representative to voice my support of forced sale, operating restrictions, or even outright ban.
EDIT: I sent him an email.
Nanny State.
“Mr. Legislator I am 84 and I need my Heroin but the federal government keeps cracking down on my supplier, please stop taking away all my Heroin Mr. Legislator. Also, force my bank to let me transfer 85,000 USD to India, it’s really important that I do that before the 27th.”
Yes. This is called Nanny State.
Rather than educate the populace, take away the tools. Of course, another tool will just rise to the surface but it will make a lot of people feel really good that they did something.
I do appreciate all of the reactionary statements. I don’t use TikTok but I do believe in freedom. Reducing freedoms, no matter how well intentioned does not solve societies problems.
You can’t educate dementia away. You can educate youth away, but that takes years, which would effectively be a ban for them. TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation and by extension their associated foreign dictatorship.
Absolute freedom should not extend to harming each other.
TikTok is not a tool for its users, it is a tool for a for profit corporation
That pretty much describes every corporation in existence.
Some of them provide utility and some don’t, which is why we don’t allow children to drink, smoke, or gamble. If a company providing those goods and services targets those demographics it gets political action.
Welcome to the nuance of society and the modern world.
It’s not just teenagers and old people. That’s just some bullshit rhetoric that you ate right up without question. Because of course you did. Millennials/middle age folk are abundant on TikTok as well as young adults.
The audacity of some of you to jump into action just to spite “teenagers and old people” is shameful. So easily manipulated.
Right, sorry, it’s fine to let teenagers and old people be harmed as long as the company can continue to profit off consenting adults as well. /sarcasm
How are they being harmed? Why was it so easy for them to make you believe this? Also, who asked you to protect anyone with your one petty little email lmao
Yeah honestly if a bunch of addicted teens and old people were calling me screaming that I can’t take away their drug of choice when that’s not even what’s happening, and it’s not being taken away just moved to where there can be more control on quality… Then I would be really considering the damage this is doing to them.
I don’t know if supporting the junkies being taken advantage of is the altruistic take that these “absolute freedom” supporters think it is.
The fact that you guys just ate up that rhetoric without any hesitation… Like, you just happily believe it’s a bunch of “addicted old people and teenagers”? Is this reddit? Did I make a wrong turn at common sense and critical thinking?
Uh dude… I know people addicted that got the email to message their representative. They will stop talking in a conversation and pull out their phone and just scroll through a few videos.
I struggle to believe so many would be messaging just out of laziness but don’t question that being the age groups that would respond most to that kind of targeted messaging into action.
teenagers and old people are the sorts of folks that need to be protected from themselves
Please, big daddy government, protect me from the freedom of choice. I cannot be trusted to consume without your permission.
LMAO pay attention in school, kid, you seem like the type who is going to need it.
They should really educate people about foreign threats like the CCP and Kremlin.
Me when I find out that it’s illegal to sell your organs for profit
what are you even trying to say here? that it’s okay for politicians to ignore entire demographics? or that it’s only okay for them to ignore entire demographics if, ultimately, it’s left up to a different group of politicians to pass the law?
i don’t use tiktok or have any interest in the app itself, but it’s still very alarming to see a vote go through 50-0 despite a “nonstop” flood of calls opposing it.
Ignore them? Gosh no. Protect them. Literally what I said.
“protect them from themselves” is what you said. which carries the connotation that they don’t know what’s best for themselves and aren’t qualified to make judgments about those things. this is different from simply “protecting them”.
To be fair, a big part of a functioning society is a government with proper regulations in place so that people are not expected to be experts in literally every field before making a purchase or performing some kind of action. Obviously, calling it “protect[ing] them from themselves,” is dismissive and patronizing, but it’s pretty much why we need government in the first place.
For example, the EPA recently issued a recall for ground cinnamon from certain specific (dollar store) brands due to unacceptably high levels of lead. Without the career scientists (and yes, bureaucrats) working for that regulatory agency, millions of people would have continued consuming the product and feeding it to their kids (low-income folks too in this case, given the brands) literally indefinitely.
Without the EPA, every person who buys cinnamon is what, expected to use mass spectrometry to determine the exact molecular make-up of every spice (or in the case of the EPA, literally any food or prescription drugs you may ever consume) before using?
If they didn’t do their cinnamon research, then they deserved it, and the government should have no involvement? What happens in cases where companies hide dangerous issues in their products to avoid losing profits?
What if there’s literally no way for anyone but a scientist, with extensive lab access and at least 4+ years of university to know that there is an issue with a product (or a construction site, or a drug, or water treatment, etc)? They’re the only ones who should be able to properly avoid using a product that may kill them and their children? And even then, only when it’s a product they’re an expert in?
Not saying you’re a libertarian, just like pointing out the obvious things that make it so so stupid.
Ok, sure. Show me what research you or they have done to justify “protecting them from themselves”. Already they’re telling lies by insinuating that only teenagers and old people are calling. And you all just believe it? Wild how biased people can be when presented with information they want to believe.
i agree with everything you’ve said here. and i liked the EPA example. sorry if what i said came across as libertarian, that was not my intention.
i was just trying to push back against the “young people don’t know what’s best for themselves” mentality in the other post.
although, to be clear, i think the current state of social media does have quite a few problems that need addressing, and more regulation on that would certainly be welcome.
Would love to see the science or other expert opinions that is being used to justify this ban then.
I haven’t heard anything except politicians making vague references to spying or other things we allow from domestic services.
It’s just politics.
You’re not doing it to protect people. It’s ridiculous that you’d even pretend to be.
What other reason could I possibly have? You think there is some massive anti-tiktok cabal out there trying to profit by… uh… fucking how?
By banning anything except the few 'murican tech giants doing the exact same shit as TikTok. Even a blind person can see how cancerous american companies are, yet this does nothing to address that.
Actually, they’re not doing that at all, they’re forcing a compromised unethical American to sell to a different unethical American to do exactly the same thing. At no point was a ban even discussed. So, literally everything you just said was wrong.
Are they “taking it away” though? Do normal people care about who owns it? Are they just worried about an unlikely ban?
you’re taking it as a given that bytedance will sell the app if this law passes. there is a chance that they won’t want to sell and then the app will be banned. (but i think this unlikely.)
also, if i’m understanding things correctly, there’s the possibility that they do sell and the app still gets banned. the article says
An app would be allowed to stay in the US market after a divestiture if the president determines that the sale “would result in the relevant covered company no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”
depending on who the next president is, there’s no guarantee that they’ll say any sale will result in the company not being controlled by a foreign adversary. (although this past is just speculation.)
anyways. this bill will certainly raise the chances that the app will be banned in the US. (and it opens the door for other apps to get banned if the US doesn’t like the country they were developed in.)
I also just noticed in the article:
TikTok urged its users to protest the bill, sending a notification that said, “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok… Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
Also from a BBC article about the same thing:
Earlier, users of the app had received a notification urging them to act to “stop a TikTok shutdown.”
So they were literally sending out misleading notifications (because a forced sale is not a total ban), and then the users wrote to Congress based on that…
The probability that they will sell seems really high to me, as the same thing almost happened back in 2020.
They also claimed that it was only “old people and teenagers” who were calling in and objecting which wasn’t true. One rep stood up and straight up lied claiming that TikTok users were “forced” to call. How would that even work? TikTok possibly being banned isn’t a lie but all that other shit sure was. It was just a popup offering to help locate local reps to call and make their voices heard. The fact that any of you are pretending that people taking this democratic action is a bad thing is appalling and your bias is blatantly obvious. The absolute ego on all of you to act like you just know better than all of those other people because… Reasons? Ridiculous.
Do you have the full text of the notification that you could post here? Kinda hard discussing the specifics otherwise.
If it really contains the quote “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok”, I do consider that misleading.
People here are often making a lot of noise about disinformation campaigns on sites like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube (and that’s just from user-posted content that the sites fail to moderate, not posted by the sites themselves), so I don’t see why this would get a pass.
From what I read, the calls actually evaporated opposition to the bill.
Which, I’m NGL, if you’re worried about an app being used by a foreign adversary to encourage anti-social behavior in your youth, a bunch of people calling in acting like drug addicts getting their drugs taken away is only going to erase doubts.
It doesn’t help that they’d even be more justified when it’s known that it was caused by users getting pushed notified by Tik Tok to do it.
Encouraging people to contact their representatives and demand action? Congress clearly can’t have this. How will they do their jobs if they are constantly forced to engage with their constituents?
Call to action from, say, activist groups is very different from call to action from a billion-dollar company. This does make me really worried about how much influencer TikTok has on people ngl
Ah yes let’s only allow political activism from the people who already has the power and influence rather than the common man
The world police is scared about the competition lmao, “only us should violate worldwide privacy!”
Even if China has access to my data, that’s way less scary than Zuck, musk, Bezos or any other tech bro.
Bold move. Who are they going to blame all the online privacy issues once they cant yell about the Chinese? Or are we going to start pretending everythings fine then?
Why do you think that they give a shit about online privacy? This isn’t a privacy bill, it’s a bill stopping another government from doing exactly the same shit that the US government does through domestic apps. They aren’t looking out for people, they’re afraid of the competition.
This is exactly the take I find the most interesting.
This is what the US has been doing everywhere for a decade+ now and suddenly it’s not ok? It’s because the grip is loosening and the sense of control and power is absolutely slipping and while it’s late to be grasping to get it back, it’s not unwarranted.I actually don’t think it’s a bad idea cause seriously creating an addiction that can only be served by other countries is not good for a healthy and good local populace. Is it a bit karma sure but I’d rather not live it as the same non addict if we can help it.
Tik Tok pushes so much toxic content towards children and teenagers it should be shut down in my opinion.
The can very easily apply to every single social media.
Yes but unlike Facebook and other platforms, Tik Tok is aimed at and consumed by minors specifically.
Unlike? I think you mean they’re JEALOUS of TikTok’s appeal to minors…
I think people forget that Meta owns Instagram which is known to have a very young user base.
They are even currently Suing the FTC because they want to monetize minors more
What I mean is that Facebook for example is aimed at and consumed by older adults in the first place. Most young people in fact see it as a boomer platform.
When I was a kid and Facebook was new, I remember everyone wanting an account. The way I see it, Facebook just kept those users who wanted it when it was new. Who’s to say that the same won’t be true of TikTok later?
How?
By design. Especially the format (short video clips) and the optimization for being used on phones (not computers) makes it attractive for kids.
63% of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 used TikTok on a weekly basis
Report Estimates One-Third of TikTok Users Are Children Age 14 and Under
A Third of TikTok’s U.S. Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions
I tried googling, can’t find anything that supports these claims
Seriously? it took me one google search to find an endless list of such articles. Also, did you not notice all the kids outside filming Tik Tok dances with their phones, it has been going on for many years now, how is it possible you did not notice it?
Kids using tiktok and tiktok specifically targeting children to use their platform are distinctly different. Just because kids use tiktok doesn’t mean it’s because they were lured there. Those metrics only identify that tiktok is popular among youth, which is not an indication of malice whatsoever.
I appreciate your opinion, but short video clips on Mobile devices are nothing inherent to children. Now if tiktok was giving you pokemon for signing up or posting of their platform, then there’d be a valid argument that they’re targeting children. (I feel like there was a pokeball collaboration with tiktok once, but I can’t find a source to support it)
Getting back to the original context - the argument that Tiktok should be shut down because “it’s short videos on mobile platforms that’s popular among teens” is lunacy. Everyone is throwing shade at me and not realizing how absurd their argument is.
I’m not acting in bad faith either. I don’t care about the fate of tiktok, but I’m seeing a trend of vilification without proper logical discourse. It’s disconcerting to say the least.
I respect your opinion and don’t think you are arguing in bad faith. However, I think you are missing the central point. Which -in my opinion- is that a social media platform that turns out to have extremely negative effects on society and especially kids, should get shut down. If it happens with intent or without is not particularly relevant as far as I see it. I apologize if my initial comments were phrased in any misleading way, I am not a native speaker so I sometimes miss the finer nuances of certain formulations.
No need to apologize, you’re the first person to actually calmly and willingly discuss the topic without completely dismissing being disagreed with.
I know you’re not the originally comment I was replying to, but you conveniently moved the goal posts. The context of the entire conversation is whether TikTok specifically should be shut down because it targets children for it’s own gain. You’re now arguing that social media in general has negative impact on society and children, which I agree with, but is completely skewing the conversation and was, in no way, the central point of the discussion.
So your opinion is that all social media platforms that deem to have negative affects on society should be shut down? Do you not see what’s wrong with that? You’re saying humans can’t decide whether or not they want to use social media. You should understand how absolutely absurd that is - that is a completely dystopian totalitarian dictatorship idea. It sounds like a chapter in 1984.
Advertising.
Source? Examples?
I tried googling, can’t find anything that supports these claims
Edit: third party advertisers abusing tiktoks advertising algorithms is not on topic to the original comment that tiktok itself specifically targets children, and tiktok has addressed these issues.
You can downvote all you want, but I’ve still not been provided any proof that tiktok specifically targets or intends their platform to be for children.
I’m not dismissing the original claim. I’m genuinely curious, but I need logical discourse, not users with mental illness going off on complete tangents.
If you have any cognitive thought or opinionated source that tiktok is a bad faith actor towards the safety or health of children, I’d love to read it. My company builds software, so knowing the failings of tiktok to protect children is in my interest.
Unrelated to original comment
https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-slammed-in-europe-over-hidden-advertising-to-kid-1846277642
Are you a GOP candidate? You seriously couldn’t find any of these links?? I didn’t even use Google.
Unrelated
Should I keep finding relevant links for you or do you feel sufficiently foolish enough?
The comment was
Yes but UNLIKE Facebook and other platforms, Tik Tok is aimed at and consumed by minors specifically.
That study shows the opposite. YouTube benefited from minors over 2.5 times more than TikTok. And it shows every other platform is benefiting similar amounts. In fact, Snapchat has half the number of monthly users as tiktok but has almost identical ad revenue from minors. All the major social media platforms suck and are trying to take advantage of us, especially kids
The only social platform that doesn’t try to actively censor Pro-Palestinian voices. What a coincidence that it’s suddenly a security risk.
Big ups to Rathbone https://www.tiktok.com/@rathbonemakesmusic/video/7289906736847129902
Suddenly? It’s been labeled Chinese spyware since day one.
And Twitter, Instagram and others are American spyware. The timing is very interesting since TikTok was the only platform not censoring Palestinians into oblivion especially at the start of the Genocide. Even now you can see a drastic difference in recommended content between TikTok and American based platforms. Which is a major reason that the youth reacts a lot different than boomers.
Full control of social media must be held. Free speech btw
others are American spyware
The M.O. of American business has always been clear: The internet exists to enrich the already-powerful. All Internet systems must be considered a possible vector for mission-critical business communication. As such, EVERY message sent over the internet must be viewable by those who might benefit from seeing it. Every phone call must be interceptable and traceable. Every new business idea must be known. Every new competitor must be stifled or bought out. Every piece of information which could be used to coerce or force compliance / silence must be gathered. If there is insufficient leverage then leverage must be manufactured.
Yes this sounds like paranoid hyperbole. but it explains pretty much everything.The classic “Freedom of speech except for platforms that say mean things about us”.
At least China is open about their censorship
Ya, the site being abused by Iran, China and Russia isn’t a problem. Nope not at all
I feel there’s a lot of China influence in this thread. I wonder why that is…
sinophobia
Can the US Lawmakers do anything about the US companies harvesting my data and selling it off… please?
Yes, they can make more money from it.
Can they? Completely wrong question.
“Will they” is what you wanted to ask but the answer is still firmly no
High school nerds pay attention. This is how you can make some money and have an excuse to talk to the hot girls…by installing a vpn on their phones so they can still have their tik tok.
Get one popular girls phone set up and every girl in the school will be hitting you up within a week.
They won’t want TikTok once the chumps who follow them stop using it. They’ll have to do something other than dancing for strangers to bolster their self-esteem.
And the cycle of infantalizing women continues…
Everything will keep going as planned /s
Lemmy does draw a certain crowd unfortunately.
That’s mainly the internet, not just Lemmy
Highschooler here, everyone already uses vpn’s to bypass the school firewall to view blocked sites and stuff while on school wifi.
The kids are gonna be alright
And why do you assume everyone including hot girls & popular girls aren’t already capable of installing their own VPNs? Unless of course you mean the high school nerd is going to pay for our VPN service, then come on over!
I’m sure some do. I haven’t talked to many high school girls lately.
If this goes through and this happened when I was in school…that’d be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’d probably never even think of it then. I’d probably luck into it by telling the rest of the nerd table at lunch, jock overheard, sell him my services, and then word of mouth from there.
That happening now…probably be the inspiration for the gen Z’s “American Pie”. Or “Superbad”.
Are you kidding? There isn’t a phone owning high schooler that doesn’t know how to vpn past their high school’s nanny software. You’re out of touch.
aren’t already capable
Anyone who can read and follow directions is capable
Most people can’t install a VPN, including hot or cold girls
It’s more like most people are unwilling to find or read directions. Most people can do most things nowadays. They’re just unwilling to try.
Most people can’t install a VPN,
My guy, do YOU know how to set up a VPN?
This shit is like saying most people can’t connect to wifi. It’s not exactly rocket science.
Bytedance needs to figure out which congresspeople Meta has been bribing.
Good. Fuck them and all social media controlled by any big mega corp. But fuck the CCP especially.
This insinuates that the CPC owns TikTok lmao
Well the CCP does exert considerable control over TikToks parent company ByteDance. The CCP has already utilized data from TikTok to track protestors and other “dissidents”
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-china-bytedance-user-data-d257d98125f69ac80f983e6067a84911
No the CCP does not own Tik Tok but it might as well own it.
Unfortunately this situation is not unlike what the US government likely does. However, hopefully this precedence building policy recognizes that data privacy from 3rd party entities is needed. Will that standard be applied to US companies? Not likely any time soon but I’m optimistic.
It’s fucked that an authoritarian government would use social media to track and arrest protestors. I’d love to believe that this is a move toward transparency and protecting people but I think it’s a lot more likely to be a “nobody exploits social media to manipulate and repress my citizenry except me, and maybe the boy” situation.
The fucked up thing is they don’t seem to have a problem with rich 1%ers owning and manipulating millions of people. Only when it’s the Chinese. Facebook, Twitter, instagram are just as harmful. Although the delivery method of the content isn’t exactly “tailored” on those services like TikTok. I dunno how I feel about this. I mean, I think all social media services should die out. This just seems like an uneven hand.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
This is a really great way of putting it. I’d never heard that before, but it’s a truly apt way of summarizing one of the biggest problems I have with fellow leftists. However, I think I’d argue this is a slightly different situation.
Yeah, it’s a start toward something good. But it’s still sticky in its spirit.
It’s sort of similar to the complaint against incrementalism. It’s true, incrementalism is not a healthy solution to the problems we face. But fighting against good steps forward because you’re against the concept of incrementalism is…foolish…right? Or is it? Because sinking our efforts into incrementalism takes away effort from broad advancement. And incrementalism has been our MO since forever. And it’s only brought us further down the road to ruin.
But, again, fighting good incremental changes is nonsense. I dunno, it’s a nuanced issue and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. It’s interesting. And as someone who doesn’t use the more “standard” social media and never has, I’m all for erasing social media from existence. I’ve seen what it did to everyone in my life, and I was the perfect age for every step of social media’s growth: xanga/livejournal in middle school, MySpace in middle school/early high school, and then Facebook came about in my senior year, instagram in college and while i traveled in my early 20s…but I was an anti-anything-popular emo kid and goddamn I’m glad I was. But I also saw first hand how much social media changed my interactions with everyone in my life. It wasn’t pretty. People were addicted, constantly being just floored that I wasn’t on FB, countless people threatening to make me a Facebook page? It was severely strange behavior. And now tiktok is like all of that on goddamn super steroids. But it’s less people shoving it down my throat, and more just completely sucked in by it. Which is honestly scarier.
This was a committee vote. The bill now must advance to the floor, pass a vote there, then go through the same process in the Senate.
Many bills are passed out of committee but are never given an actual vote.
Especially in the least productive congress in US history, the odds of any actual vote are low.
Technically, while that might have been true at the end of 2023, the US House of Representatives of the 118th congress have voted 796 times with 126 items passed, according to Govtrack.us with at least ten vetoes by the POTUS.
So not really the worst by any measure.
I don’t see why users would even have a problem with this. Same services, more competitive market, and with less ties to an evil dictatorship should be celebrated, right?
It depends. I’ve heard second hand accounts that TikTok can push pro-Chinese propaganda, and whenever I pointed out that China isn’t some lefty paradise to some people in my life they were either shocked or fell into the “you’re falling in line with the Western Propaganda, I see 😏”
TikTok is banned in China because they don’t have enough ownership to censor it but ok. I’m sure it’s whatever you just made up too because China bad and reasons.
TikTok is banned in China
That remains unproven:
“TikTok has never been available in China, as the country has its own version of the app, called Douyin. Both apps are owned by the same Chinese company, ByteDance. Thus far, we’ve been unable to find definitive proof that TikTok is or is not officially banned in China.”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-tiktok-banned-in-china/
Doesnt tiktok have a personalized feed for China that promotes healthy habits and everywhere else it’s more likely to morph into brain dead content spirale?
Personalized feed? What? I’ve never heard of anything like that
I’m much less concerned with what they’re giving than what they’re taking with the app. It’s been shown to collect message history and photo library data, that alone is a threat to us all.
I agree! Both are issues, but I was giving a different context where a TikTok user may not care about it being under the thumb of the CCP.
Why would I care? Is it somehow better for google or facebook to profit off of my data? China doesn’t even solely own the app. They don’t even own enough of the app to censor it and so it’s banned in China lmao
They don’t even own enough of the app to censor it and so it’s banned in China lmao
Why do you keep repeating that all over this post? It’s not even true (unproven):
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-tiktok-banned-in-china/
So when do they plan to do something about those domestic businesses trying to manipulate citizens of America?
I mean, the domestic businesses are the ones who own Congress and are using it to get rid of a competitor.
Capitalism abusing citizens? Just fine.
“Communism” abusing citizens? Avengers, assemble!
They’re prospective communists. Supposedly they’re going to get there by 2050, but they just built a new massive luxury tower for their ultra wealthy so…
It’s just like Marx said: “If you do an oppressive oligarchy for 100 years, it magically transforms into communism”
If that were true then the United States would have been communist by now
While you’re not wrong about double standards, anything that discourages the use of vapid social media platforms is a win in my book. Use whatever backwards logic you like to make it happen so long as it’s effective.
He says, on a social media platform
Lemmy is a message board, not social media. Like fark or something awful. You have no idea who the duck i am. How is that social?
My tiktok account is also anonymous.
No it isn’t.
When you download the app you let them have the following information/data about you:
Purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers (!!), diagnostics, financial info, contact info, user content, browsing history, and usage data.
Please tell us how any of that is “anonymous”.
Cool dude, you’ve identified that big corporations data farm.
Random bloke user with a vendetta still doesn’t know who I am, and that’s who I’m more worried about on the personal scale.
Cool dude. Well you said your account is anonymous, and it isn’t. Words mean things.
Your Lemmy account can likely be used to identify you, given a big enough data set.
Undoubtedly, especially since I haven’t taken particular steps to obfuscate my identity here.
But as I said in a comment below, I’m more worried about some unhinged nutbag online randomly targeting me than being a person of interest by any nefarious groups or organizations.
