TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday
(reuters.com)682 points by xnhbx 4 days ago
682 points by xnhbx 4 days ago
That's mostly true and it's a good thing for the US to prevent hostile, autocratic, foreign powers from gaining undue cultural power.
It would be nice if they could also prevent hostile autocratic domestic(ish) powers from leveraging their current cultural power. But they didn't, so naturally those in power are going to build their moat to maintain it.
I have been coming around to the idea that we should ban all* algorithmic content surfacing.
It's taken a while, but the longer we go down this path, the more clear it seems that it is impossible to design a content algorithm that does not have significant negative cultural side effects. This is not to say that content algorithms don't have benefits; they do. It's just that they can't be useful (i.e., designed to optimize for some profitable metric) without causing harm.
I think something like asbestos is a good metaphor: Extremely useful, but the long-term risks outweigh any possible gains.
I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us.
Don't believe me, we've got lots of data correlating the rise of social media and mental health crisis. As time moves on the evidence linking the two continues to become stronger.
I guess the counterpoint here is that we have lots of data how external actors (e.g. Russia) is influencing large parts of the political landscape in Europe right now.
> having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us
Dogs kill more Americans than lions, but that doesn't mean that we should be letting people have lions as pets.
I'd personally be happy to see something like Australia's recent restriction of teen use of social media in the US, but bringing that up now is just a whataboutism.
uh... "... worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us"... yet. this is only true because we find ourselves in an unprecedented situation-- up to now, the U.S. has had a monopoloy on social media giants and the like. it is absolutely not guaranteed that this will hold true, and there are many reasons to suspect that it won't be true. given how china views about U.S. sovereignty when it comes to setting up their own (secret) de facto government, police state, etc. on U.S. soil, it would be shocking if they didn't put their thumb on the scale.
and none of that is to say that i agree with the ban-- i think the mere fact of how unamerican, frankly, taking possession of foreign assets for american gain at others' expense is as blatant a signal as possible that we shouldn't be doing it. if we are trying to protect america, western values, etc., if we don't act in accordance with those values, what are we even protecting? the way to protect the american way of life is not through becoming more "unamerican".
in my personal opinion, the so-called "decline of western values", or whatever, has nothing to do with imperialism, nor to do with those values being short-sighted or wrong. it is because of our collective crisis of confidence in these values because of the (many) mistakes we have made along the way. the moral compass still points essentially in the same direction; it's just that for whatever reason we seem to have convinced ourselves that we don't want to go North after all, and instead prefer to just wander around the map aimlessly (all the while shitting on how the compass isn't taking us where we want to go). and so now we have people who unironically defend organizations like Hamas at the expense of the United States as though believing in universal freedom and equality of opportunity is merely a "cultural" value, rather than an absolute one. and, more insanely, that these values are somehow subordinate to the political issue du jour. these values don't give anyone carte blanche to coerce others who don't share them, but the idea that they are somehow subjective or relative-- that they are negotiable-- is the height of insanity.
how would you describe musk's control of twitter, or Zuckerberg's over facebook and instagram?
there's no democracy involved in the running of social media websites. the rules are what the boss says. sometimes the autocrat is benevolent, sometimes not. the CCP has been more better social media autocrat than musk has, and there is at least more people involved in decision making
> I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us.
That's pure, shameless whataboutism, and one that desperately tries to hide the fact that totalitarian regimes are using social media service as a tool to control you and your opinions.
You can bring up any bogeyman you'd like, but you are failing to address the fact that these totalitarian regimes clearly are manipulating you to act against your own best interests.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. A foreign enemy keeps us from focusing on our own domestic policies. Turns out, if you look into it, we're the baddies.
In addition to widespread data collection and social manipulation, we also intentionally shove our culture down the throats of other nations in order to maintain cultural supremacy.
> A foreign enemy keeps us from focusing on our own domestic policies.
The nice thing about fiction is that you can make anything sound plausible. Ironically, what people consider the most prosperous time of America happened to be the time when America was opposing a vague foreign adversary. If anything, nihilist platitudes like this that have created a void in civic engagement that megacorporations and malicious actors are happy to fill in.
The US is a hostile autocratic power with undue cultural power on our own citizens, so even if it's a given that TikTok is mostly a propaganda platform (which I completely, categorically disagree with), wouldn't it be better to at least have a choice? Or be able to compare between them? You are speaking as if US citizens don't deserve/ aren't capable of making their own decisions which is about as autocratic as it gets.
"You are speaking as if US citizens don't deserve/ aren't capable of making their own decisions" - the overwhelming majority of HN users would support U.K style ISP blocking of websites and apps deemed hostile to the government.
Endless comments about reciprocity, as if the American citizen doesn't have freedom of expression rights vastly different than Chinese citizens.
Yeah I think you're right. Unfortunately I'm coming to appreciate that many of the users here are heavily pro-censorship / "protect the children" types. Never thought I would see it happen. Feel like I'm waking up from a coma realizing everything's changed. It's so antithetical to the HN I knew and loved.
i would argue, if it’s that powerful, it should be illegal for anyone to have that sort of power. from china to musk to zuckerberg to religions.
we really should ask ourselves why we’re continuing to allow some to continue these abuses…. there should be laws in place to stop all of them.
The type of power China has is very different than Zuck's. You aren't going to get taken to a black site for talking about Tianamen Square on Facebook. (or something like the Tusla Race Massacre may be a better example, since that is embarrassing to the US similarly to Tianamen Square in China)
We should return the favor then and shut down the psyops divisions like this (and these are just the public ones):
https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/sp...
The US censorship of Chinese social media apps on these grounds sure makes it look like China was completely justified in doing it first.
???
Isn't it the reverse? China has censored/banned many US apps and websites for a long time, surely turnabout is fair play?
Hell, TikTok itself is already banned in China, irony of ironies.
China didn’t ban U.S. apps. it maintains a policy that sets a high bar for foreign operators, such as requiring domestic servers, domestic partners legally responsible for operations, content access and moderation to meet local standards, etc.
U.S. apps and websites simply choose not to operate there due to these requirements.
The U.S. has been complaining about this for years, advocating for a free internet without censorship in the Chinese market. But now that Chinese apps have access to American data, we’ve begun implementing the same measures.
Could you elaborate on that? I have no clue how the US banning TikTok for granting the CCP the ability to algorithmically influence the views of Americans somehow justifies the decade plus of the GFW, blocking Western social media, rampant censorship, etc.
I think the OP is saying that both nations are banning software because of the risks of the software/data collection posing risks to the political stability of each nation. You can obviously say "our reason is better because X", but the outcomes being the same means that there is justification.
Both sides say it's worth banning "Tiktok/Google for granting the CCP/USA the ability to algorithmically influence the views of Chinese/Americans".
Data sovereignty — the idea that every country should protect and prevent its citizens’ data from foreign entities.
We never discussed this seriously before because we held a monopoly on it. For decades, other countries provided us with a direct feed of their data. Only recently have they begun to grasp the ramifications of that.
China never bought into that narrative. They have consistently upheld their data sovereignty policy, requiring foreign entities to host servers within their borders to operate, and that looks like the direction the rest of the world is heading.
I wish for an open world where data & communication flows freely, but it's unclear who can be trusted to wield that power.
The US government has never provided any direct evidence of their claims of CCP puppet-mastery, the whole thing is generally some combination of "Trust me bro" and "Well obviously China's government is gonna control a Chinese company."
Meanwhile China's reasoning for blocking US companies has been eerily similar arguments the entire time. Hard to prove them wrong when we have the major aristocrats of US tech companies completely prostrating themselves at Mar-a-Lago, offering bribes (er, sorry, the going term is "funding inauguration parties") to the incoming administration in broad daylight, staffing themselves with party officials, etc.
Arguably both are right, and it's a shame because the general working class people of both nations have more in common with each other than they do with their ruling classes. I think the thing that terrifies those in authority the most is the idea that the citizenry might realize this if there's enough communication.
The difference being American citizens used to have the final say while the Chinese never did.
Congratulations, you turned the U.S into an authoritarian clone of China.
It demonstrates Western weakness. Remember, during the Cold war the "iron curtain" was meant to prevent Soviets from seeing Western culture, political points of views.
The United States does not feel confident in its ability to persuade Americans that it's model, culture and political ideals are superior to global alternatives. Hence a Western Iron Curtain.
Simple exposure to culture, propaganda and points of view is child’s play compared to the modern strategy of inciting discord by amplifying existing differences and mass scale disinformation.
Don’t forget that part of the reason there’s a compartmentalization between Douyin and Tiktok is China’s own concerns about their nationals being exposed to outside influence in a manner far greater than what the US dictates the other way.
I really enjoyed TikTok and will miss it, but it’s hard to argue that it didn’t at least provide the potential for the CCP to more directly have an intentionally negative influence on western audiences.
You fundamentally misunderstand the rights American citizens have that are being violated. The government doesn't get to decide where it's citizens get their information from. We're supposed to be free to come to our own conclusions even if presented with propaganda and disinformation.
Once the government decides it has the right to curate what media it's citizens are exposed to you are living in a n authoritarian state.
These actions make me more hostile to my country.
I made no assertions as to whether or not this was an appropriate trade-off.
The issue at hand, however, is not about any particular media content being censored but about the manipulation of how that media is presented or suppressed by a foreign source. I think people should be given the freedom to choose what to view, but I am also not naive enough to think that we as a whole are not susceptible to influence, often without even being aware of how we are influenced.
To the end that the US has a national security interest here: We have other laws on foreign political influence like FARA and the Logan Act that have similar tradeoffs around free speech and free association, but these elicit much less controversy. There’s a fundamental question: should the ideals of free speech be allowed to undermine the framework that allows that free speech to exist? To some, saying yes to that question is like arguing the US Constitution is a death pact.
> Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion.
Religion is distributed through churches, synagogues, mosques etc, the medieval equivalent of a digital social platform. A social media platform is kinda like the Vatican but x10000000.
Repeating my other comment:
Here's my big concern: If every big social media provider has to bake American policy position into its algorithm, what's going to happen to approaches like Bluesky or Mastodon/ActivityPub which allow users to choose their own algorithm?
From here on out, are only US government collaborating social media apps going to be allowed to scale? If so that is a chilling effect on speech. I want to use my own algorithm. I don't need China nor the USG to tell me what I want to watch. I'm perfectly willing to write my own feed algorithm to do it, I tinker with several on Bluesky right now. Will this be banned?
Is there even a single phone that doesn't have a component that's derived from China? It's never been about security. I agree, the US wants access and they can't make a foreign company comply, even trying exposes the US.
Other countries have rules, make rules, the reality is they don't want to make rules because that might persuade foreign companies from not doing business here. Why make rules when you can get a warrant from a fisa court preventing any and all public scrutiny and getting everything you want?
> it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification
...but it wasn't. It was clearly and explicitly about national security.
> Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion.
There is no evidence for this belief. Really for either religion or for "social networking platforms".
You could maybe make the claim that this is true in terms of reach, but the implication here is that "these mediums can be used deliberately to influence people in a chosen direction", and this is just kind of silly. It's fun to imagine that some nefarious powers (or benificent powers) have some magical insight into how to make people believe things but this just isn't true and I think intuitively we all understand that.
To make the case that this is true you would have to do an examination of all attempts to spread messages, not just look at successful cases where messages catch on. Nobody has the power to do this on demand through some principled approach, or else they would be emperor of the world.
I don't recall legacy media spreading tourettes-like tics...
Are you implying that this was a deliberate attempt by an agent to create tourettes-like tics? Are you also asserting that this hypothetical boogieman can do similar attacks on demand because of their understanding of social contagion [1]?
The idea of social networking (or other broadcast or widely disseminated media) being able to influence beliefs or behavior is kind of inarguable. In specific cases there might be causal confusion - whether the media was effective because of existing trends or piggybacked on other phenomena vs. creating the effect directly. But this is a far cry from claiming that it can be deliberately weaponized, or that it is more effective for this purpose than other means of information dissemination.
[1] Social contagion, a phenomenon that long predates the internet
Given that (as the article mentions) the ban essentially only directs Google/Apple to remove the app from their US stores, what's the rationale on ByteDance's part to immediately revoke existing US users' access? My naive assumption was they'd want to keep it going and support the current dead version of the app for as long as possible to continue squeezing US revenue for at least a few more months until that becomes untenable. Are they instead hoping to rally the user base into mass protests and pressure lawmakers into reversing the ban?
As far as I know there's no real calculation, it would just be for revenge.
ByteDance is very pissed about how they are being treated and so they would rather burn it all down than hand it over to some American.
It is endlessly fascinating to me that people ascribe emotions that individuals experience to organizations, companies, nation-states, etc.
As the article says ByteDance is a massive company with thousands of employees in the US alone. It’s ridiculous to think a corporation of that size operates as if it was a singular (and extremely petty) individual, especially to the detriment of its own self interests.
There’s a dozen potential motivations for pursuing this strategy and none of them boil down to being “pissed”.
I was surprised by that too. I assumed we would see a sudden interest in android and iphone jailbreaking.
Congress shall make no law respecting ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble ...
unless they mumble 'national security', and then screw the constitution ...
It makes no sense to me how this is an argument of free speech.
I assume you are saying this is curtailing the creators speech? However the creators can move to any other platform, they are not being restricted in what they can say or produce.
So perhaps the concern is about TikTok's free speech; which, thank god the constitution does not protect a foreign adversaries right to free speech.
Not free speech. INHO its about free assembly. 140M of us assembled there, and now that meeting place is being distroyed, and we are being dispersed, without any actual harm being in evidence. If the government can do that here, it can do it anywhere.
This is completely untrue, there are unlimited examples of speech that exists out there that you have absolutely no inherent right to hear, and in fact many existing laws explicitly support restrictions on your ability to hear the speech. Just a few examples off the top of my head; do I have the right to hear:
* A comedian at a paid event when I haven't paid
* Private conversations between you and your significant other
* DMs between other people on social media
* Podcasts published exclusively on Spotify when I don't have a membership
* Speech in walled gardens (FB, Insta, X, etc) where I don't have an account
I agree, though not when broadcast by a foreign adversary (per the 1934 law).
Forcing a sale to a US company also enables that to continue. Additionally, it does not protect the right for users to receive/hear speech from EVERY outlet, this same speech is permissible on any other platform - simply not one mediated by an adversary.
I'm very curious about this case, actually. My top questions
- difference between actually broadcast and potentially broadcast. Can the government suspend someone for potentially doing something?
- More on the right to hear speech -- you're saying that I cannot receive speech from foreign adversaries if I choose to do so myself? IMO this is well within my rights
- Do platform effects (e.g. recommendation) count as speech? For example, I may choose to post on TikTok bc it circulates in 24h to a specific audience - if TT got changed, does this mean that my speech got curtailed? (right to assemble, etc)
It is a balancing act for sure, but is it 'right' to have all those choices, but only as long as they sufficiently support governing body overall worldview?
There are still a million places online people can organize and assemble so I don't really see how this right is being meaningfully infringed here. It definitely doesn't seem clear to me that this clause means the government needs to maintain every avenue of assembly to the point this is a constitutional issue.
Its the fact that 140 million of us chose to assemble in this place ( app ) that IMHO should have weighed much higher as a concern, over speculative spoooky dangers. No actual harm to the country was shown, just supposition, which equates to us trusting the government when it strips out constitutional rights away.
Foreign corporations do not have free speech rights.
The real answer is that no corporations should have free speech rights in and of themselves - by obtaining a government granted liability shield a corporation (/LLC) is not merely a group of individuals, but rather a highly scaled governmentesque entity running on its own subbureaucracy. That liability shield is an explicit government creation for specific public policy goals, and when the outcome is at odds with the individual freedom the arrangement can and should be modified.
I wonder if this will have an effect on iPhone sales vs Android. On android the app can easily be side loaded while on iPhone (in the US) it's incredibly difficult for the average user.
What if any practical effect will this have on American users if 150M of them already have the app downloaded? A pop-up that doesn't block use of the app?
Haven't seen anything about an IP ban/block (ahem, great firewall), nothing's going to block anyone from business as usual on Sunday right?
There's no 'shut down'. And other than a bunch of misinformed users jumping over to RedNote briefly or whatever, the only difference will be an oddly American-free app for the rest of the world?
According to the article, they are voluntarily shutting down in the USA despite that not being required by the law. So yes, there is a potential shut down. Time will tell is they really do it.
The one source of true, lasting happiness in life is the love of others.
All of this stuff - TikTok, Instagram, etc - are entertainment, distraction, and that's fine, but taken to excess is unbalanced, and no matter what, cannot bring true, lasting happiness because they are not the love of another person.
I'm not assigning a cause, but US culture, these days, seems to encourage folks to treat others as "NPCs," and that can have rather bad consequences.
It's always been an issue (sort of human nature), but it seems (to this battered old warhorse), that it's a lot more prevalent, these days, than it was, just twenty years ago.
Just that we consider "others," (with the exception of a close entourage) to be "non-player characters." Basically, shallow simulacrums, with no feelings, standalone, not connected with others, and that can be "disposed of," or "forgotten," with no personal consequences.
We don't have to allow anyone other than ourselves, any agency or consideration.
That makes it very easy to reduce everyone else into one-dimensional caricatures, easy to attack, dismiss or neglect.
Like I said, this has always been a feature of normal human tribalism, but it seems to have gotten a shot of steroids, sometime recently.
I have found, for myself, that closely interacting with as many others as possible; especially ones that challenge me, has helped me to avoid that.
A semi-related term to the "NPC" thing is "main character syndrome." It's usually used derogatorily, but it's the idea that someone thinks they're the "main character" of the world; the people they care about are side characters who matter less, and people they don't care about (or know) don't matter at all. "The self as the center of the universe" is another way to phrase it.
Not sure entirely how that's connected to this thread's topic, but it is relevant in social media in general (and maybe TikTok moreso because of its "great" algorithm?)
Because neither government wants a well-educated, knowledgeable population. Carlin was trying to teach us that for decades and it still rings true.
Someone tell me what data TikTok is collecting, that is making it such a national security threat. I guess it knows what videos you like. Awesome, so does every other social media company out there. Its not like the sign up form is asking for upload of SSN and DL.
I guess the US is afraid of manipulation of the video feed by China, that may influence elections. There might be a kernel of truth there, so I d be curious to hear anecdotes of something like that actually happening.
its not about their official data collection. It is a safe assumption that TikTok app is used to spy on targeted users and their surroundings, just google it.
Ok but both Android and iOS have a good permission system where location and other data access can be highly controlled. Isn't it more prudent that the app be restricted by the OS to not have permissions it does not require? Surely the US can enforce something like that.
You don't need to directly tap that information from the phone if you have enough variety of video and an algorithm that will identify and converge on micro-genres of video based on watch time, likes, and shares.
Aside from that, Tik-Tok Shop is also a thing. So elements of the application exist where you volunteer data like location.
I was surprised most by the general publics ignorance regarding possible work arounds. Nobody I spoke to on large Tik Tok lives believed it was even possible to download and install apps from somewhere other than the Play Store. Apple users believed their ability to install apps was identical to Android users
In the future I think the government can force the public to do things simply because the public is unaware of the options they have.
The good news is Rednote seems to be a potential replacement, which is also Chinese owned.
Here's the lesson: We need our social media platforms to be distributed and out of the hands of any government to promote sharing knowledge and creating peace.
When the mass Tiktok exodus tsent Red Book [1] to the top of the App store, it was the first time in history that American citizens started talking directly to Chinese citizens in mass. I've heard all sorts of stories of both sides learning a lot about each other, including the lies and propaganda each others government places in the media, but mostly more positive things like art, fashion, cooking, food, healthcare and -- probably the most important, each other's different humor.
Video, and an AI algorithm to drive the For You page, is probably the most difficult part. We have some good ideas on privacy[2], and I can imagine some sort of crypto ledger system paired with AI learning, but video expensive to store/stream and at such a high volume of streaming, I don't know what kind of end points would really work to keep quality up.
Then there's the problem of policing such a system, and who the police would be. There's some dark places on the internet that I think everyone but a handful of people think should never be allowed on such a network, but more generally there's questions on politeness, stalking, harassment, "facts", memes, and other culture differences that would need to be ironed out.
Who's building this? We need it by Jan 19th, 2025.
[1] Not to be confused with SF's Redbook: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/redbook/
[2] Tim has been making the rounds about his Solid project: https://www.inrupt.com/
I don't believe the super addictive, antidemocratic backdoor into US citizens lives is actually getting TKO'd. Crisis is their (misquoted) word for new opportunities[1], and the value of the spy tool is too damn high for it to simply go dark.
At some point SCOTUS will have to revisit the massive deference they give the other branches on natsec issues. We are days away from a new president applying blanket tariffs to everything on the same grounds. What isn't national security in that light? They might as well start with this case and send an early message. Otherwise they'll be fielding all manner of lawsuits over ridiculous overreach for the foreseeable future.
Any guesses on how this will actually work? The apps will be definitely be removed from app stores. Will existing apps work? Will the website still work? Will the death of the app come from "creators" not getting paid? What if users continue to use tikok, but there are no longer professional creators or ads? Would a social network like that be the most radical of all?
A few months ago I'd have cheered on this news but now that Zuckerberg has made his coming out and basically promised to turn Instagram and Facebook into yet more MAGA echo chambers, I feel... conflicted.
I do still think the world would be better with less social media, but the only words in my mind right now are "not like this".
noahpinion has a great post [1] on this today and he points out the interesting observations we can make: 1. because it's "Beijing" who is tasked with deciding whether or not TikTok can be sold makes it extremely clear Bytedance is not an independent private company the way it would be the case in the US. They are legally required to obey CCP directives [2] 2. Beijing had every opportunity to sell the application off, and in fact they did just that with another app called Grindr some years back [3] without any fanfare. 3. That Beijing would rather close TikTok entirely, rather than sell it, shows how deeply important it is to Beijing that TikTok does not come under the control of another nation, including the US. it's well established that the government censors speech on TikTok including the speech of US citizens [4]
noah bangs on the "the government of China is really trying to weaken or destroy the economic capacity of the US" drum pretty hard and it's hard to disagree with the many books and arguments he cites. The current rush to Rednote has a lot of TikTokers making the argument that "See? Chinese people are great!" which is where they are confusing sentiment about the citizens of China with that of the Chinese government itself. It actually is great if there's a big cultural interplay between young US and Chinese citizens (not sure w/ Rednote though), so that we would be able to counteract a key propaganda point from Beijing which is that the TikTok forced sale is some kind of strike against the Chinese people. It's important that the point be made that this is about the hostility of the Chinese government itself, which is pretty clearly a hostile adversary to the US.
[1] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/tiktok-is-just-the-beginning
[2] https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/experts-agree-byte-da...
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21168079/grindr-sold-chine...
[4] https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...
>Bytedance is not an independent private company
PRC banned exporting Bytedance algo. By that logic, no US companies are independent private companies due to US export controls. And TBH both points are true.
>Grindr
Grindr was foreign company acquired by PRC, and sale was reversed by CFIUS. Selling an acquired foreign company is geo/politically different than having your domestic company nationalized/appropriated by another. Which is quite literally a strike against Chinese people. Even PRC has never forced a US company from divesting US ownership, because that's a retarded tier of "hostility" only US hubris can imagine. And it's particularly retarded tier analysis from Noahpinion who thinks Chinese people won't view divestment requirement a PRC company as hostile against Chinese entrepreners, who are Chinese people.
> PRC banned exporting Bytedance algo. By that logic, no US companies are independent private companies due to US export controls. And TBH both points are true.
Chinese state control over private companies is far more pervasive, and less bound by rule-of-law, than that of the U.S. Export controls are not even the H2O molecule at the tip of the iceberg.
> Even PRC has never forced a US company from divesting US ownership
Bytedance is not being forced to divest; they can leave the market, just like Google and many others had to leave China.
>more pervasive
US spectrum export controls have been every bit as pervasive as PRC ones, pretending muh "rule of law" is a distinction without difference at this point. It's functionally the same.
>forced to divest
If US law is forced divestiture, then Bytedance is "force" to leave, because having US nationalize a PRC company is obviously a nonstarter except for the terminally stupid like noahopinion. Unlike Google + western platforms who "chose" (read: not banned) to leave because they "chose" not to comply with PRC laws that applies to all companies, including domestic PRC ones. The difference is US has no equitable law, i.e. some sort of data privacy law, that enables Bytedance to operate in US... while following the same laws that US companies do, as if Bytedance wasn't already bending backwards following additional requirements that US platforms do not have to follow (i.e. functionally Oracle JV).
Like fine, Bytedance needs to follow US laws, except US laws is designed specifically to prevent PRC companies from operating, vs PRC laws is designed to allow everyone to operate, just said operation is onerous - see retarded reciprocal argument that US companies should operate in PRC without abiding by PRC censorship laws that domestic platforms has to abide by. There's a reason FB and Google had internal programs to re-enter PRC market compliant with PRC laws (before being axed by internal dissent), because it's still feasble for US platforms to operate in PRC while being US (or at least JV) owned. So let's not pretend what US is doing is the same thing - PRC is more rule of law, US rule by law in this comparison. But again, functionally that hardly matters.
Surely the value of the TikTok user base is >$0 even without the algorithm. Why not sell that part of it?
A forced sale would essentially gut them of their proprietary algo, which is leagues ahead of anything YT or Insta has. This algo and the associated TikTok assets can still be used a billion different ways around the world and in other apps.
Why would they ever want to help create an international competitor that could compete with them? I don't think any business would want to do that. Obviously the CCP has a level of access if they want it to data hosted in China, that's how it works with every company that has a physical location there.
that is exactly noah's point, that TikTok is an extremely potent application. Except it's not "a business" deciding this it's "a government", and China does not want to pass off this much capability to shape public opinion to the US while losing it themselves.
noahpinion is generally very insightful but I don't think his analysis holds water here. ByteDance is a major Chinese company -- if the EU tried to force the sale of Google you can sure as shit expect "Washington" to have strong feelings about this. The implication that Beijing controls ByteDance is not really supported by this evidence.
Some Japanese tried to buy one the these supposedly perfectly "independent private compan[ies]", and the US president said no, but that's completely different I'm sure.
> That Beijing would rather close TikTok entirely, rather than sell it, shows how deeply important it is to Beijing that TikTok does not come under the control of another nation, including the US
I don't think it is important because of how 'powerful' a tool it is. I think it is more than being forced to sell it would be losing face and a humiliation (a la 19th century's Inequal Treaties). Also, they don't have to sell it altogether as the issue is only with the US.
So they just shut it down in the US and can say that they don't give in to blackmail while pointing out how hypocritical the US are ("free speech but only if controlled by the US" sort of angle).
The two cases are just very different, why are you even comparing the case of an investment company buying a stake in an existing app with the original creator being banned from owning what they created?
This is an absolutely ridiculous line of reasoning. Tiktok has over a billion users, and about 150 million of those are American. It would be downright stupid to sell all of it just for the US market and it would set an absolutely disastrous precedent.
A social media site is not like a company that makes widgets. The latter's profits scale linearly with the number of widgets sold. A website's costs do not scale linearly (at least, not in the same way) with the number of users; much of the infrastructure cost is the same whether 500 million or one billion users are on the site.
It's entirely possible that a TikTok without US users is unprofitable. Especially given that US creators are 21 of the top 50 TikTok users with the most followers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...>
PS - That you seriously believe that tens of millions of iPhone-using Americans will buy, carry around, and constantly switch to an Android phone just to sideload TikTok boggles the mind.
Tiktok is an offshoot of Douyin, I don't think Douyin needs the US to be profitable, and software has a low marginal cost.
> PS - That you seriously believe that tens of millions of iPhone-using Americans will buy, carry around, and constantly switch to an Android phone just to sideload TikTok boggles the mind.
I never said so, I said I wouldn't be surprised if a significant number did. Having grown up in this environment I've seen people literally buy 4 year old iPhones just for iMessage. American teenagers are very weird about social media and this kind of behavior wouldn't be out of character.
So they want to ban only the mobile app, but the Tiktok website would still work from the mobile browsers? Huh... I guess they can get less user data from the website than an app, but the content manipulation and the usage data collection could still happen that way if that's the real fear of the US...
This part is unclear to me. I know the article says "app," but this is general news reporting, and the term "web app" for stuff in the browser is acceptable terminology anyway. It also says that opening the app will redirect people to a page with information about the ban, not to the main page of the website. Prior to this discussion, I thought a ban at the ISP or CDN level was part of the plan, so a VPN would be required to circumvent it. No?
[I made the same comment elsewhere, but I'm putting it here too because I'm really puzzled by this.]
TikTok is ostensibly a commercial product meant to earn revenue that offset costs, and those costs are tremendous.
Meanwhile, the ban will make it impossible for them to (a) enter into trade relationships with the advertisers and other partners that bring in revenu, and (b) share that revenue with monetized users.
Continuing to run it at scale as a website without ads or monetization payouts (and without any legal protections) would pretty well blow the cover of it being a legitimate international business.
That amounts to the same thing and ByteDance would present it as the same thing in their PR effort, so nothing material would be different.
Meanwhile, the kind of law that would allow a business to "operate" but disallow it from making money is probably close to unprecedented and would look like even more peculiar targeting. It doesn't really even make sense as operating a business naturally implies participating in commerce.
Why can't the decentralized social media be made? What are the technical obstacles for this? Why cant it run in your browser, users could store their content on their own devices and share it P2P. Noone knows whats being shared, no problems with censorships, regulations, laws...
Primal.net and yakihonne.com speak nostr protocol and are both pretty slick implementations.
Primal recently launched “build your own algorithm” along with a feed marketplace.
P2P doesn’t work for social, see SecureScuttleButt. Rabble has moved pretty firmly into the Nostr camp. He’s one of the top minds thinking about decentralized social media. Study nostr and don’t dismiss the relay model lightly.
It's just ease of use. I tried to make a mastodon account early into the xitter takeover. I spent probably half an hour trying to make a account before I decided if it was gonna take me this long that there was no way it would ever catch on anyway so I should just give up.
It can. https://loops.video/
If it becomes too popular, though, Congress will probably pass a law to force you to use some oligarch-approved alternative.
The Reuters article says
> Users who have downloaded TikTok would theoretically still be able to use the app, except that the law also bars U.S. companies starting Sunday from providing services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of it.
Are you sure that the website and the native mobile app use different CDNs, or a CDN which won't be affected by the ban?
Still they'd need networking in the USA. For example they have 11 peerings (100G or 200G) with Equinix. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/19428
Let's remember this when the discussion again centers around the US' immense commercial success.
It is easy when you have been placed at an advantageous place and use all the tricks in the book against competition.
I have some concerns about TikTok, as well as with a shutdown, but if I can imagine a silver lining of a TikTok shutdown, it would be if huge numbers of teens are inspired to learn the tools and awarenesses to not be total b-words of Big Tech.
In this fantasy, initially it would just be to get onto a particular Big Tech (but Chinese) thing that "grownups" don't want them doing. But then they'd start to realize they're also being exploited there, and also by many of the people who are pitching circumventions. And eventually they'd figure out and create genuine empowerment. And rediscover better conventions for society, where everyone isn't either exploiting or being dumb. And it would just be the grownups who are hopelessly b-words of Big Tech, and the teens just have to roll their eyes and be patient with them. Then those teens become grownups and have kids, and raise them to not be airhead b-words. And those kids teach their kids, etc.
Of course, within several generations, the lessons would be diluted and then forgotten, and people would get dumb and shitty again. But society would have improved enough that at least there's room for people to backslide, and fritter away what their great-grandparents achieved. :)
That would be amazing, honestly. Big Tech needs to get the fuck out of our lives...
Again I note the distinctive lack of self-awareness from the demographic that is moving away from TikTok to a communist country value harboring app like RedNote
The Rednote or "Xiaohongshu" in Chinese is literally referring to the Mao Zedong's propaganda book the modern counterpart being "Xi's Book of Thoughts"
It's frightening how much young Americans hate their own country and the values that have allowed them this much freedom.
Do you think mayyybeeee this hate stems from how young americans are treated and a complete lack of representation? Red note censors stuff about Chinese politics, they are surprisingly accepting of LGBTQ etc, and it's nice to talk with people from other countries you don't normally have interactions with. It's really not that hard to understand.
"communist country"
I didn't realize China had eliminated class and that companies were worker owned.
The two reasons behind the TikTok ban:
1. Domestic big tech lobby
2. Domestic Israeli Lobby [1]
The China data is just a scapegoat. The risk is very minor. The US is banning TikTok because is a domestic big tech competition, and because lawmakers cant control it.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-ban-israel-palest...
This is very welcome as a parent in the USA. It is also sound legally, and was a long time coming. Nothing of great value is being lost and in a year users will have moved on to something else.
There are two positive effects here: 1. A company that is meaningfully foreign is losing control of a mass media asset. 2. Children and young adults are losing access to a product that is not good for them.
A country should not allow foreign powers to control platforms with so much reach--full stop. We do not allow foreign entities to own radio stations... Imagine how much deeper these platforms penetrate a person's mind, and how much larger their audiences are. We should all be MUCH more concerned about how these apps are stretching the social fabric (throughout the world) and how every society's ability to function is effected. I challenge anyone voicing discontent at this result to question whose interests they are voicing.
American manipulation of American minds... Yea! That's the point. I'd rather have someone with interests as aligned as possible with mine working for, owning and ultimately making business decisions at these companies. Regulation as appropriate to further align them.
Which leads me into my next point: I think that everyone here would argue that TikTok is in a class of its own with regard to very engaging short form content and rapid feedback feed training. I would argue that these attributes make it necessarily vapid and reactionary, providing little to no net benefit to either the individual or society to begin with.
If you disagree, what is the value of this product to the user and to society? Does it make people's lives better? I think that when the harms are considered, the answer to both is ultimately no. There are very well-documented negative effects on focus, happiness, and anxiety in children, which persist into adulthood from social media[1]. I don't think it can be argued that something that makes you feel good and connected in the moment but disconnects you from your immediate neighbors and friends and is highly correlated with mental illness is good.
Social platforms (TikTok included) are putting our children at a disadvantage mentally compared to previous generations and need to be more regulated. If these platforms (TikTok and other short-form rapid feedback products most of all) are of dubious value to begin with, what is the harm being done here?
Finally, I conjecture that we've only gotten a taste so far of how power can be wielded through these instruments. Even if Elon decides NOT wield his asset overtly during this administration, I believe we'll see more overt demonstrations of the power of social media sites in the next few years if relations with China continue to deteriorate and Russia becomes more desperate, with Meta clearly becoming less scrupulous.
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For years people have dogged on North Korea, Iran, China and Russia talking about how the government controls information by banning apps and by creating firewalls blocking access to parts of the internet. Now when the US introduces censorship people like you welcome it with open arms. Something of value is lost, our ability to access information freely
Think of it like Oreos:
- Text-based blogging platforms: regular Oreos
- Image-based blogging platforms: Double Stuff Oreos
- Short-form video blogging platforms: Mega Stuff Oreos
There are still plenty of high-quality and addictive ways to share information without Tik-tok.
Everyone will be better off without Mega Stuff Oreos, they were an abomination to begin with
Tiktok is obviously a massive national security risk, and I find it funny people don't see that.
It is extremely well established that propaganda has great value, and so allowing a foreign adversary the capacity to potentially control the information your citizens receive in a clandestine way is insanely dangerous.
Yes, we should also forbid books published by Chinese publishing companies because the CPC might pressure those companies to put propaganda in the books.
We should also forbid Hollywood from selling movies in China, because as we've already seen that means the movies are being adjusted to get approval in China.
We should also forbid Chinese citizens talking to Americans, because they might convince Americans on a topic we don't can't allow American minds to be changed about.
The first two don't apply because they don't share the hyper personalized nature of social media. No two people see the same thing so it's impossible to react to foreign propaganda. Books and movies don't work that way.
Third example is irrelevant because it's impossible to achieve the efficiency (reach) that social media has.
I don't really see your point. Tiktok is a video library. With the exception of private videos, anything hosted on the app can be viewed by anyone. Whether or not the app provides a personalized algorithmic selection of videos does not have any bearing on the more fundamental question of whether American's have the right to access foreign media.
The popular vote for president would like a word. And, yes, I know Trump won that too, but the point still stands that it doesn't matter.
> It is extremely well established that propaganda has great value, and so allowing a foreign adversary the capacity to potentially control the information your citizens receive in a clandestine way is insanely dangerous.
I would say that allowing a ~foreign adversary~ anyone the capacity to potentially control the information your citizens receive in a clandestine way is insanely dangerous. Why do we let domestic ones do it? We're seeing what they're doing to our societies.
It would have been farcically easy to legislate that any large social media company have to expose their algorithm to a regulator, with a capacity for spot checks and immense sanctions if they fail to comply.
If your argument is "we can't allow any foreign owned social media to operate in the US", then how can you possible argue that the rest of the world should allow American applications?
>If your argument is "we can't allow any foreign owned social media to operate in the US", then how can you possible argue that the rest of the world should allow American applications?
Are they not free to ban it if they wish? But they won't because contrary to what some people would like to push, the CCP in fact is alot more sinister than the US Government, and foreigners do recognize that in genuine security analysis.
I disagree. While I think there are definitely biases on Reddit, there is a difference between users, individual moderators, or even established sub policies having a political leaning versus an algorithmically masked propaganda machine like TikTok.
Call me old fashion, but I put more faith in a profit seeking US company (recently public) with light government oversight than a foreign owned black box.
you may be right that there is a, "significant amount of bots on Reddit pushing certain agendas". However, Reddit is fundamentally designed to incentivize authentic engagement and to punish bots. If it wasn't the case before is certainly is now given the fact that they are now extracting value from the authenticity of data on their platform via AI Training data sales. Reddit is fiduciarily encouraged to tamp down bots and spam because they are financially incentivized to have the most genuine data.
All of that aside it is irrelevant because we are talking about third parties (users/bots) pushing propaganda vs the platform owner itself pushing propaganda.
I'd vouch for fake-ness of political Reddit as well
it's easier to see phrasing and logical inconsistencies when you don't share the opinion that gets forced, sadly
You disagree - try this. Go to the "popular" feed and take a scroll.
I compel you to find one single positive post about capitalism or the west. Count the number of anti-capitalist or blatant pro-ccp content posts.
One such - "Luigis game is about to be multiplayer" (reference to the recent murder of the insurance company ceo) with a video with the label "y'all look how the chinese are living" (compared to usa)
You also say you put faith in a profit seeking US company. Reddit is not a USA owned company.
Can you, someone, anyone in this toxic wasteland of a thread please point out what propaganda you're talking about? Point to an actual thing that justifies banning something 140M Americans use daily and don't just expound upon your vague national security paranoia.
"Where are the examples" is a straw man. Imagine the ways a political enemy might exploit limitless access to the attention of 140M Americans. The calculus seems to be that a false negative will be much more catastrophic than a false positive.
I understand what you're saying but that argument I don't think should apply here. Having some kind of evidence to back up a drastic action like this is not something that should be argued for, it should be a given. I've asked at least 5 different times for people to point to anything material, and no one has come up with anything. I'm not saying there is no threat, I could be wrong and there could be a massive threat, but if there is one shouldn't we be able to point to something more than "it could happen" and being paranoid about it? I'm being asked to have faith in institutions/politicians that have a long, long, long proven track record of not having my best interests at heart and I can't accept that when they have clear conflicting interests / motives.
National security risk to which nation? The kids on TikTok seem to understand pretty well why it all the sudden was wrongthink.
"The internet is obviously a massive national security risk, and I find it funny people don't see that"
"Libraries are obviously a massive national security risk, and I find it funny people don't see that."
the problem is that similar efforts in other countries have been criticized as "internet censorship"
either Russia and Indonesia are in the right - or US is in the wrong
小红书 (pronounced Xiaohongshu) is the Chinese version of TikTok by Bytedance (EDIT: I’m wrong, it’s a different company, see below). It’s currently #1 on the USA App Store.
The people on there are super kind and accommodating to all the “American TikTok refugees” today! Lots of little Mandarin 101 classes, UI tutorials, and co-commiserating about government overreach.
I have a negative view of all of social media, but I think banning it is extremely politically unwise. Appreciate the hospitality of these users inviting us into their platform for a bit
Has anyone written up exactly how TikTok is a distinct national security risk?
The best I’ve heard is “they get your data”, which is something they surely can buy from Facebook through an intermediary, “they influence content”, which is a moderation decision that every social media app does, and “there’s a part of the report to congress that’s redacted”, that could be a recipe for tuna casserole for all I know.
Edit: I’m assuming the downvotes are a way of saying “no”? I would assume that “national security threat” would involve some sort of concrete standard of harm or risk that could be communicated beyond “just trust us”. I haven’t even seen concrete examples of what content they influence, just people assuring everyone that it happens and it’s Bad.
This isn't a 'great firewall' solution. It just prevents google/apple from hosting it in their app stores. If tiktok wanted to they could still host it from outside the USA and let people access it via the web (or sideload the apk on android). Having said that tiktok has announced if the ban does occur they will shut down service on Sunday.
Can anyone enlighten me as to what this TikTok ban is supposed to be about? It feels a bit satanic panic from a distance.
Yes! In fact the US court system does a great job of things like that.
https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2024/12/24-111...
I recommend you start reading on Page 33 if you are impatient.
In extremely short. The PRC is an extremely active cyber threat, hacking things all over the US, in large part to gain access do gain access to datasets about U.S. people. Including hacks of the Goverment's Office of Personnel Management, of a credit reporting agency, a health insurance provider.
The PRC has a strategy and laws of using its relationship with Chinese companies, and through them their subsidiaries, to carry out it's intelligence activities.They specifically point to the National Security Law of 2015 and the Cybersecurity law of 2017 which require full co-operation with Chinese authorities and full access to the data.
So one half of their justification is the significant risk of China using TikTok to conduct espionage in the form of gathering a huge dataset on Americans.
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Another half of the risk is, as everyone else here is already saying, their ability to influence Americans.
This is not an entirely theoretical concern as TikTok would like you to believe, the Government reports that “ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to PRC demands to censor content outside of China”.
And all evidence is that it would happen in the US the second the PRC decided to ask for it.
If they wanted our datasets they could just buy it lol,
Remember Cambridge Analytica?
It's not about getting our data. The TikTok algorithm is already being used to sow discord by showing stuff the PRC wants impressionable Americans to see. This ability of an adversarial foreign nation to surgically push individualized propaganda to consumers in another country is pretty unparalleled in human history. TikTok is the ultimate propaganda machine.
They do just buy it. The opinion mentions that. It turns out they want even more data and also do things like hacking to steal it.
> The PRC’s methods for collecting data include using “its relationships with Chinese companies,” making “strategic investments in foreign companies,” and “purchasing large data sets.” For example [...]
In fact it treats the Chinese investment into TikTok as basically a form of "just buying it" with regards to the information gathering justification for banning it.
It's generally not wise to let your geopolitical rival have extensive influence over your populace, which is why CCP doesn't let American companies like Meta operate in China.
Turnabout is fair play.
Yes, but then we also need to realise that pretty much the whole world outside of China is 'controlled' by American tech companies (both hardware and software/apps)
So if the US think it is not OK to have something like Tiktok owned by a Chinese company the rest of the world might wonder if it is OK for them to have everything owned by American companies...
The usual story, it is OK for the Americans to have military bases all around the world, much less so when it comes to any other countries.
Well the alternative, in realpolitik terms, is having everything owned by Chinese companies.
I suppose they're free to pick.
Absent any of these conversations is, in my experience, any notion of what exactly China aims to achieve with TikTok that is so sinister? I'm not even arguing, I wouldn't doubt China has plans or another that involve America, specifically that wouldn't be too great for America, I'm just struggling to connect TikTok to any of them, and any discussion seems to take it as granted that the shifty Chinese government is up to something with it.
So it's several things. Bear with me because finding news reports that I remember is difficult now because search results are flooded with stuff about the ban so I can't find what I'm looking for.
One concern is a general one that the Chinese government is directing the recommendation algorithms to act as propaganda. So subtly shifting user's opinions in favor of things that suit it and away from things that don't.
Another is that it is using TikTok to surveil journalists, emigres, and other persons of interest who are using TikTok. My understanding is there are credible reports of journalists being targeted by the Chinese government, where they used TikTok to find their personal details, location, etc.
There's also been increasing reports of the Chinese government operating detention centers in the US and other countries, where they bring kidnapped Chinese nationals. Basically arresting nationals on foreign soil. In some of these cases at least TikTok has been implicated as the method of locating them etc.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/764194/intelligence-officials...
Discussion of this has all been out there over the years, but the way it's been covered has admittedly been weird. Maybe this is yet another sign of a fractured media landscape, but I think some of it has to do with the US not doing a great job of publicizing some things, possibly because it involves intelligence services.
I'm generally very in favor of unfettered freedom of speech, but have mixed feelings about this case. I guess I still side on that, and am skeptical about a ban, but this is getting into different territory and also don't feel strongly about it. I think the effects of foreign (and domestic) propaganda in social networks are very real, and although I generally think censorship is a very bad idea, I'm not sure I can blame a country for wanting an app banned if there's solid information that another country is using it in this way; it seems to be in this gray area of espionage versus free speech which is kind of an unusual territory to be in. Also, I'm fully aware that the US probably does similar things, but two wrongs don't really make a right to me, and if China produced solid evidence of the US doing something similar I wouldn't blame them for banning something either on similar grounds.
To me this all just maybe speaks to the need for a shift to open decentralized social network platforms. I realize that's easier said than done, but there's so many examples in the last few years of problems with control of centralized platforms (by private, government, or private-government combinations) leading to huge problems, either in reality or in appearance (which can sometimes be almost as equally concerning).
Oh, you could probably make some effective arguments that they're using it to influence American thought in a way that's designed to diminish the US as a world power through internal strife.
Israel/Hamas would probably be an example.
Social disruption. That's plainly clear given that Douyin is prevented from having the destructive content that proliferates on TikTok. Keep your competition mired in anti-inellectualism for a generation and it accelerates the rot.
It's taken for granted that the shifty [any] government is up to something because they always are, 100% of the time. Why would you expect the evil overlords to not be up to something with the big evil brainwashing program that has access to almost everyone on earth?
This but unironically.
Seriously, given all the crazy shit that's been uncovered in the last 20 years — PRISM, Five Eyes, Cambridge Analytica — why would an influence campaign run over one of the world's biggest social networks controlled by the actual, real life authoritarian Big Brother state be the one scenario that crosses the line from plausible to fantasy for you?
I don't necessarily buy the argument that we should play the same game as a communist dictatorship in the name of fairness. If we eat our own dogfood then we ought to conclude that suppression of speech in fact marks a critical weakness of their system. Why not take the free real estate, then, and leave our system's open nature unmolested?
This guy gets it. They don't care about anyone's privacy, save their own. This is yet more coddling of American industry, bought and paid for by generous political donations to keep the scaaaary Chinese apps from stealing honest, hard working red-blooded American's data... so that American apps can steal honest, hard working, red-blooded American's data.
Except people may be migrating to Rednote (which you have heard, is Chinese).
Government intervention at its finest.
According to the people gunning for it seems to be mostly about controlling what content Americans can see in order to keep public opinions in line with foreign policy goals. (i.e. pro Israel)
>While data security issues are paramount, less often discussed is TikTok’s power to radically distort the world-picture that America’s young people encounter. Israel’s unfolding war with Hamas is a crucial test case. According to one poll, 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believe that Hamas’s murder of civilians was justified—a statistic notably different from other age cohorts. Analysts have attributed this disparity to the ubiquity of anti-Israel content on TikTok, where most young internet users get their information about the world
from:
https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/Ha...
I think there's an important distinction between "keeping public opinions [pro Israel]," as you claim, and discouraging the dissemination of content that radicalizes (for lack of a better word) viewers enough to justify and support the murder of innocent civilians by a terrorist organization, as the Senator claims.
It's far more complex than that. TikTok is a Chinese company with immense reach and influence that can shape American public discourse. A global superpower cannot allow another global superpower to influence its population so significantly through social media (which is also why Facebook is banned in China).
I hope this doesn’t sound overly cynical or conspiratorial. My sense is that there’s panic about unfettered access to what’s happening in Gaza on TikTok, which is shaping Gen Z’s perceptions in a way that isn’t deemed acceptable by the political establishment. US-based companies seem to have processes in place - direct or indirect - to suppress the reach of such content.
^^^^^^
Same reason they passed the nonprofit killing bill bipartisanly, for whatever reason this seems to be a huge deal for the people in government right now.
This is overly conspiratorial, because the timeline doesn't line up. Gaza has only been in the news since October 7th 2023.
The government first started talking about banning TikTok in 2018 (under Trump). Ordered them to divest of US interests and prohibited transactions with them in 2020 (under Trump). The latter of which was overturned by the courts.
The current administration took over in 2021, and in 2021 labelled the PRC as a foreign adversary. Discussed the threat to the US through the PRCs control of software applications and teh vasts swaths of information available from their users, directed agencies to find risk mitigation measures, and started a long process of negotiating with TikTok over how exactly it continued to operate.
The act ordering divestment is the inevitable consequence of those talks failing... those talks failed sometime late 2022 or early 2023 (the last proposal under them was in August 2022).
The sudden resurgence of the years-dormant campaign to ban TikTok, and its rapid legislative success this time around, were directly because of Israel and Gaza. From the mouths of senators: "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down (potentially) TikTok...if you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts, so I know that's of real interest..." (https://x.com/wideofthepost/status/1787104142982283587)
Jacob Helberg, a member of a congressional research and advisory panel called the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, has been working on building a bipartisan, bicoastal alliance of China hawks, united in part by their desire to ban TikTok. Over the past year, he says, he has met with more than 100 members of Congress, and brought up TikTok with all of them.
[...]
It was slow going until Oct. 7. The attack that day in Israel by Hamas and the ensuing conflict in Gaza became a turning point in the push against TikTok, Helberg said. People who historically hadn’t taken a position on TikTok became concerned with how Israel was portrayed in the videos and what they saw as an increase in antisemitic content posted to the app.
The push for the TikTok ban only went bipartisan after October 7. It was stalled out before that.
It might be pretty simple, if it's just a protest banner and an information website as Reuters said. You can't see TikTok's issue tracker but you can read the Wikimedia Foundation's tasks to implement the Wikipedia campaigns about SOPA and the 2019 EU copyright directive.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T203095
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_...
Let’s be clear about one thing: it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification.
Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion.
The U.S. has held a monopoly on this power, leveraging it to gather data on citizens worldwide and projecting our value systems onto others.
Banning TikTok is simply an effort by us to maintain that monopoly, and making sure a foreign adversary do not wield such power.