Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline
(cnbc.com)892 points by kjhughes 20 hours ago
892 points by kjhughes 20 hours ago
From a geopolitical perspective, this issue about 3 items:
1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans.
2) Data- TikTok collects massive amounts of data on 100s of millions of Americans. Opens many avenues for spying, extortion of influence, etc.
3) Reciprocity- Foreign tech companies are essentially banned from operating in China. Much like with other industries, China is not playing fair, they’re playing to win.
Insofar as TikTok has offered a “superior” product, this might be a story of social media and its double edge. But this far more a story of geopolitics.
> 1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans.
There is no credible argument that the CCP doesn't directly control the alg as it's actively being used for just that in tawain/etc.
Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to influence 170m americans, an entire generation - completely unfettered? Incredible national security implications. Bot farms can influence X/Meta/etc, but they can be at least be fought. TikTok itself is the influence engine as currently constructed.
> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to [...] americans
Apparently, American users want this? Approximately 700k users have joined RedNote, a Chinese platform. It's out of the frying pan and into the fire for Americans.
> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to influence 170m americans, an entire generation - completely unfettered?
As the SCOTUS said itself:
“At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC
1) to be honest, when I see how russia, Iran and other states influence all other networks (especially when it comes to voting), not sure how tiktok is worse than all of them - just think of Facebook & Cambridge Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
2) yes, that is an issue.
3) fair point.
Cambridge Analytica had zero effect on the 2016 elections. It was the mother of all nothingburgers. I encourage all who see this comment to dig into the truth of that case.
The huge difference is that while foreign adversaries run influence networks on other social media platforms (and are opposed and combatted by those platforms) TikTok (the platform itself) is controlled by the foreign adversary (the CCP).
It was more a proof of concept. If that could be done on a small scale, why not a large one?
And elections are decided by margins, pushing them even slightly has massive, irrevocable consequences.
> 1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans
More to the point: it removes the ability of the existing American establishment to monopolise the viewpoints presented to Americans.
Americans are already quite free to seek a broad range of domestic and foreign viewpoints. Chinese citizens, on the other hand, are not. At all.
The key point here is that an algorithm can invisibly nudge those viewpoints, and a foreign adversary controls the algorithm.
Insofar as your claim is that powerful people and institutions care most about power, I agree. It’s very telling that TikTok would shutdown instead of divest. (Meanwhile, U.S. companies have routinely taken the other side of the deal in China: minority stake joint ventures in which “technology transfer” is mandated. AKA intellectual property plundering.)
> More to the point: it removes the ability of the existing American establishment to monopolise the viewpoints presented to Americans.
There is no evidence this exists.
It doesn't have to be either /or. You should be skeptical of US spy agency behavior, and still recognize the threat of Chinese influence via psyops algorithm to the United States.
0) Protectionism- TikTok is eating Meta's lunch. Meta can't make a social app as good as TikTok in the same way GM can't make a car as good a value as BYD.
Much like Google was eating the lunch of everything in China and the CCP, in response, made it essentially impossible for them to operate.
This is not new behavior between the two countries, the only thing new is the direction. US is finally waking up to the foreign soft power being exercised inside our own country, and it isn't benefiting us.
This is just a different bias on point 3, reciprocity. BYD benefits from state subsidies and state sponsored intellectual property theft on an industrial scale. See again, point 3.
That certainly plays some role in why domestic social media companies haven't stirred up resistance to the ban, but is more like #50 in terms of geopolitical strategy.
The domestic companies lost some attention share to TikTok sure, and a ban or domestic sale would generally be in their interests, but it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies -- presently and in forecasts -- even while it was "eating their lunch"
> it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies
It hasn't been an overnight switch, but the trajectory did not look good for US companies. TikTok was even eating into TV viewing time. There's a fixed amount of attention and TikTok was vacuuming it up from everywhere.
I won’t say that isn’t relevant; when you’re building a coalition you don’t say no to allies. But it was a cherry on top of a well-baked pie. Not a foundational motivation.
>Meta can't make a psyop as dangerous
We should treat social media as the addictive, mind altering drug it is, and stop acting like a free market saturation of them is a good thing.
China having their more potent mind control app pointed at the brains of hundreds of millions of people is not something to celebrate.
It's not even about them:
> If, for example, a user allows TikTok access to the user’s phone contact list to connect with others on the platform, TikTok can access “any data stored in the user’s contact list,” including names, contact information, contact photos, job titles, and notes. 2 id., at 659. Access to such detailed information about U. S. users, the Government worries, may enable “China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf
It seems farcically ridiculous to me to ban the app because it somehow could let china blackmail CEOs.
They have had legit unintentional problems with apps like Strava: https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f...
What ZTE were up to was way more nefarious, but couldn't be done with just apps.
It has blown my mind how "free Palestine" has become a meme. That war started with a bunch of terrorists kidnapping/raping/murdering college-age kids at a music festival, and college kids around the world started marching _in support of_ the perpetrators.
At some point, I realized that I avoid social media apps, and the people in those marches certainly don't.
I know that there's more to the Israel:Palestine situation than the attack on the music festival, but the fundamental contradiction that the side that brutalized innocent young people seems to have the popular support of young people is hard to ignore. I wonder to what degree it's algorithmically driven.
In response, Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, 80% civilians, 70% women and children, have destroyed more than half of their buildings residential or otherwise, displaced millions, refuse aid. Disproportionate does not begin to cover it
It looks like you are comparing a specific terrorist group to Israel as a society. Be aware that there is a large propaganda machine which uses this tactic to dehumanize Palestinians in order to justify a genocide against them.
Now if you wanted to compare atrocities—which honestly you shouldn’t—you would compare the Palestinian children that were brutalized both in the Gaza genocide, and in any one of the number of IDF incursions into Gaza and the West Bank before and after oct 7. That is compare victims to one side, to the victims of the other side.
But people generally don’t pick sides like that. They don‘t evaluate the atrocities committed by one armed group to the atrocities committed by the other and favor one over the other. And they certainly don‘t favor one civilian group over another based on the actions of their armed groups. People much more simply react to atrocities as they happen. And Israel has committed enough atrocities during the Gaza genocide that social media will be reacting—both in anger and horror—for a long time to come.
Nail in the head with reciprocity. I think the US honored its end of the bargain over the past four plus decades since China started manufacturing goods for US companies. China clearly benefited since they are now the second largest economy. Along the way China grew ambitious which is fine but they made an idiotic policy error in timing. They should’ve waited a couple more decades to show teeth.
1. Is there any real evidence of the CCP using TikTok for anything?
3. Then what is Microsoft doing in China? What is Apple doing in China? Etc. No tech company is banned from China, the only companies that choose not to operate in China are those that do not agree to follow Chinese laws.
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
Source? I could only find this.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069527/china-ti...
> That same year, Douyin imposed a 40-minute daily limit for users under 14. Last year, Chinese regulators introduced a rule that would limit children under age 18 to two hours of smartphone screen time each day.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111...
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111...
Anecdotally, I have heard from people who lived in China at the time that there was a significant shift in content a few years back.
The whole country had a shift though, they implemented gaming and entertainment regulations and video sites like bilibili went from $153 to a low of $8 a share.
The entire app is banned. They use a different one called Douyin.
I dont think tiktok app is banned because of algorithm, because bytedance created and maintains both Doyin and Tiktok.
I think it is form of compartmentalizing Internet and social networks, to keep Chinese internet and social media separate from the US.
the red book app, where tiktok refugees are flocking to right now, also want to introduce geofence and compartmentalize Chinese users and US users separately
https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...
"It’s almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,”
> The actual senators that created the ban
I worked on some language in the bill for my Senator. The unifying concern—and my and their concern—was China.
I know when you have a pet war you tend to see everything through its lens, but most Americans—including electeds—couldn’t care less about what’s going on in Gaza or Ukraine.
> Israel is why we can’t have nice things in America.
I wouldn't say TikTok is a "nice thing" ..
Indeed, it's all protectionism. They want the money to go to American companies instead. Why do you think the EU, which is generally far more aggressive about these things, has not yet banned TikTok? It's also the same reason Huawei are thriving elsewhere but banned in the US. It's all just trying to protect their big companies with deep pockets.
EU is always slow. They felt browser choice was an issue 0 years after it stopped being one, and then freaked out about cookies also 10 more more years later when it wasn't really an issue. Data tracking is an issue, sure. Not cookies though, not anymore.
It wouldn't be the same algorithm, it would suppress pro-Palestine content more aggressively as Meta does. The US's problem is with the algorithm
The government doesn't care about addictive anything, this is about control and access. If they cared about life or citizens in general they would fix healthcare and maybe introduce any kind of gun control. This is the same government that was slanging cocaine in the 1980's...
When I come to such conclusions about governments, I feel sad.
Multiple reps publicly said TikTok needed to be banned because they couldn't control the narrative around Gaza as easily. TikTok is the only platform I regularly see content about Gaza fed from the algorithm.
You mean people are waking up to these atrocities and are displeased? Sounds like freedom of press to me...
TikTok itself is banned in mainland china. Do you need much more of a source?
Yes, you could say Douyin is available in place of TikTok, but have you asked yourself why they have 2 separate apps? One for mainland China, and another for everyone else?
Another source (see the section "How is Douyin different from TikTok?"): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/business/china-tiktok-dou...
So is Wikipedia. Otherwise Chinese people just cannot stop reading all those wiki pages about that fungi that only grow on a certain volcano in French New Guinea. How addictive!
Isn't this comment quite reductive?
There are many reasons why there are two separate apps and not necessarily related to how addictive the algorithm is. The "source" you linked gives one such reason:
> Like other social media services in China, Douyin follows the censorship rules of the Chinese Communist Party. It conscientiously removes video pertaining to topics deemed sensitive or inflammatory by the party, although it has proved a little harder than text-based social media to control.
Also have you used Douyin? It's really feels like basically the same thing.
You could substitute anything you don't like (gambling, alcohol, gacha games, convenience foods, televised sports, reality TV) for "social media" in the above and it makes as much sense.
"anything you don't like (gambling, alcohol, gacha games, convenience foods, televised sports, reality TV)"
Respectively, heavily regulated, heavily regulated, poorly regulated but really has to toe the line to not fall into the first bucket, fairly regulated (with shifting attitudes about what they should be, but definitely not unregulated), probably only a problem because this is "gambling" again lately and has been regulated in the past and I suspect may well be more heavily regulated in the near future, and people probably would not generally agree this belongs in the list.
One way could be age limits and more stringent verification of age for all social media platforms.
Another way could be limiting feed algorithms to chronological order only.
Another could be limiting what data can be collected from users on these platforms. Or limiting what data could be provided to other entities.
Who knows if these are the best ways to regulate social media, but they would like help mitigate some of the clear harms.
The GP's statement doesn't work with reality TV or televised sports. Both of those are produced with a lot of human effort, and the cycle time for new content is way too large to form addictions.
Gambling, alcohol, and gacha games are clearly addictive and frequently are not set up to be in the best interests of the users.
“ Gambling, alcohol, and gacha games are clearly addictive “
There are billions of casual drinkers / gamblers / gamers who do not show any sign of addiction. I’m really tired to hear the same nonsense repeated again and again. Do a pyschology study of any casino employee that spends 40 hours a week in a gaming venue, or any manufacturer of gaming devices that professionally play games 40 hours a week, and none of these employees exposed to so much gambling / drinking are addicted.
Psychology studies have not established that these items are “addictive”, because if they were, they would be banned all over the world. Nowhere in the western world are they banned, ghey are regulated for “fairness”. There are some individuals that throw the word addiction around without justification, please dont be one of them.
> doesn't work with reality TV or televised sports. Both of those are produced with a lot of human effort
Those two types of content are about the cheapest TV to produce. Per second of video produced (counting all the unpopular content), short videos might be more expensive, but the costs are very distributed.
> TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive gambling app ever created.
> Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that gambling is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Not really. TikTok isn't a gambling app.
The comparison here is a slot machine: you pay a a few to play, you pull the lever to play, you win a prize.
Here, the payment is your attention, you swipe to the next video to play the game, and the prize if you land on a good video is a small hit of dopamine.
Everyone's losing their collective mind about people watching videos on a platform not approved by our oligarchs, while there's an epidemic of people racking up gambling debt from the sudden prevalence of DraftKings and other mobile sports betting apps.
I love to drink. Absolutely adore it. Putting on a great recors, open 2 bottles of wine and call 10 different people during the span of 4 hours. I wouldn't trade it for social media any day of the week. I am drinking right now actually
Note that the Supreme Court decided the argument based on national security grounds, not content manipulation grounds.
Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence specifically commended the court for doing so, believing that a content manipulation argument could run afoul of first amendment rights.
He said that "One man's covert content manipulation is another's editorial discretion".
Be that as it may, I think a large percentage of the opposition don't buy this natsec reasoning at all. You could use that excuse for anything, like mass surveillance via the Patriot Act...
EFF's stance is that SCOTUS's decision based on national security ignores the First Amendment scrutiny that is required.
> The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. The ban or forced sale of one social media app will do virtually nothing to protect Americans' data privacy – only comprehensive consumer privacy legislation can achieve that goal. Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally.
I don't buy it either. Entire generations are growing up without expectations of digital privacy. Our data leaks everywhere, all the time, intentionally and otherwise.
I think it's more about the fact that users of platform are able to connect and share their experiences and potential action for resolving class inequality. There's an entire narrative that is outside of US govt/corp/media control, and that's a problem (to them).
Maybe it was just a genuine outlet for interconnected entertainment compared to other platforms. American's have always sought similar entertainment since the dawn of the 'couch potato.' Now we can go back to consuming curated narratives/influence on our good ole traditional grams and tubes.
China doesn't need Tiktok for opium. They have the real thing as well.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-fentanyl-pipeline-and...
The fentanyl pipeline is what came to my mind as well; another thing exported from China to the US to disastrous effect on the well-being of many Americans.
To be fair, trying to consider the other way around, I wonder what Chinese people could point to as disastrous stuff (in terms of the well-being of their population) coming from the US.
"Too addictive" is such a nonsensical way of saying "accurate".
Nicotine being legal but TikTok is not tells you everything you need to know about government wanting to control the "addictiveness" of social media.
What needs to happen is that all of these platforms need to be straight up banned. TikTok is getting picked on because of its ties to China, but why is it better for Zuckerberg or Musk to have the capabilities that are so frightening in the hands of the CCP?
The US social media billionaire class is ostensibly accountable to the law, but they're also perfectly capable of using their influence over these platforms to write the law.
One plausible theory for why the politicians talk about fears of spying instead of the real fears of algorithmic manipulation is because they don't want to draw too much attention to how capable these media platforms are of manipulating voters, because they rely on those capabilities to get into and stay in power.
Because if Zuck or Musk does something bad with said power, we can do something about it.
We can't really jail the CCP. Additionally, Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda. We shouldn't let foreign powers own the means of broadcast...
Who is we, though? I can't do anything about it. Can you?
The people who can do something about it are the people who are already in power in the US. They understandably don't want to share with the CCP, but most of them came to power by manipulating enough voters into voting for them. They stay in power by ensuring that enough voters continue to want to vote for them. Which means that someone like Zuckerberg or Musk has an insanely inordinate amount of influence over whether these people who are in power stay in power.
Yes, I think it's marginally better that that influence remain out of the hands of the CCP, but I would rather that that influence not exist at all. It's too dangerous and too prone to corruption.
> Because if Zuck or Musk does something bad with said power, we can do something about it.
We can? Like what? What's the chance of that happening?
> Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda.
I'd like to note the seating arrangements published for the upcoming presidentia inauguration ceremony.
Under what reasoning should these be banned?
I, personally, have views that would lean towards being labeled by HN users as supporting a “nanny state” (at least far departure from younger libertarian phase), but even I struggle with a “why” on banning these platforms in general.
> beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
I think the government could fix it with a screen time limit. 30 mins for under 18's, and 1 hour for everyone else, per day.
Maybe allow you to carry over some.
After that, it's emergency calls only.
It's still weird to me to see tech website comments calling for extreme government restrictions on technology use. Limiting adults to 1 hour of screen time per day across social apps? That's a call for an insane level of government intrusion into our lives that is virtually unheard of outside of extremely controlling governments.
The symmetry for opium is fentanyl which China senda to the US by the ton.
I'm with you except for the last sentence.
What's happening to TikTok is not a good proxy for the trajectory of social media companies in the US, esp Meta. They've got plenty of tailwind.
Does anyone have any link to some docs explaining how it works?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-alg...
Like Facebook, the "algorithm" is nothing special. TikTok made some smart design decisions that collect more interaction data that legacy social sites like Instagram and YouTube. They use that data to effectively recommend content.
> Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Come on. We all know that TikTok was banned because the US regime couldn't control it.
If they really wanted to ban vice, they would have banned Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and their kin a long ago.
> TikTok was banned because the US regime couldn't control it
The law is fine with TikTok being owned by a Nigerian.
If it was owned by a Nigerian tomorrow and kept the same CEO, board, employees and algorithm, do you honestly think it wouldn't immediately be banned again?
I disagree that social media is a vice. There's nothing inherently wrong with better communication. Although it's hard for me to see the value (or appeal) in TikTok.
Just on Facebook I can see what all of my old high school friends are up to. I can instantly send anyone a message. I can find things buy that people are selling. I have a community of people who are into the same obscure hobby. That's just off the top of my head.
> I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice
I don't think this is true. Everyone that is reading this forum might even be too strong. The majority of people happily eating the pablum up as the users of TikTok can't even tell the blatantly false content from just the silly dancing videos.
I think that’s besides the point given the entity that is banning it. It’s because it’s Chinese. An equally addictive Western-made app would not have been banned.
And generally speaking as a culture we are too liberal to ban things for being too addictive. Again, showing that it is not relevant in this case since it will not inspire bans of other addictive (pseudo) substances on those grounds.
That might be true but it's irrelevant. Why? Because that's not the issue the government tackled. Arguing "national security" with (quite literally) secret evidence is laughable. Data protection too is a smokescreen or the government would've passed a comprehensive Federal data protection act, which they'd never do.
It's hard to see how the government would tackle algorithmic addiction within running afoul of First Amendment issues. Such an effort should also apply to Meta and Google too if it were attempted.
IMHO reciprocal market access was the most defensible position but wasn't the argument the government made.
That being said, the government did make a strictly commerce-based argument to avoid free speech issues. As came up in oral arguments (and maybe the opinion?) this is functionally no different to the restrictions on foreign ownership of US media outlets.
Americans have faced so little strife domestically that they're unironically comparing social media addiction to the Opium Wars
I wish it were a reckoning for social media, but reading here shows there's plenty of people here who are passionate about "China bad" and see this only through that one lens. And they seem to think it is strictly about TikTok.
As an European citizen I'm very uneasy with US-based services having my data and I nuked everything from ages bar LinkedIn and HN.
The hard part is de-googling.
even harder is finding a payment system that is not US-based and broadly accepted (no, not crypto).
I do have some hopes for a digital euro and, maybe, maybe, even Wero. But i fear it will never take off because too many players are involved and there is no clear marketing strategy to get it to people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
> this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
I think politicians have scrutinized american social media and they're 100% fine with the misery they induce so long as they are personally enriched by them.
> There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China
TikTok isn't anywhere near as destructive as opium was. Hell, purely in terms of "mis/disinformation" surely facebook and twitter are many times worse than TikTok.
Surely the appropriate modern parallel is fentanyl.
I think TikTok and social media in general is much more insidious than opium, because it is hard to know if you are using an addictive product, or what product you’re even being sold (like if you are being sold a subtly manipulated information diet). For example, it just came out that TikTok staff (in the US) were forced to take oaths of loyalty to not disrupt the “national honor” of China or undermine “ethnic unity” in China and so on. TikTok executives are required to sign an agreement with ByteDance subsidiary Douyin (the China version of TikTok) that polices speech and demands compliance with China’s socialist system. That’s deeply disturbing but also undetectable. It came out now because of a lawsuit.
See this for more https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42739855
EDIT: the link above doesn’t work for others for reason, so here is the source story: https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...
> this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Could not be more wrong. "Society" is not deciding anything here. The ban is entirely because of idelogical and geopolical reasons. They have already allowed the good big tech companies to get people hooked as much as they want. If you think you are going to see regulation for public good you will probably be disappointed.
The US gov will do nothing to regulate US owned social networks because they're doing for free the work that the government wants to do itself: collect as much data as possible from each individual. The separation between Meta's collected data and government is just one judicial request away. That's why the US gov hates other countries having this power.
The Tik Tok divestment law was passed by overwhelmingly by both houses of the duly elected Congress. At the time, a majority of Americans polled supported the law, while a minority opposed it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/more-support-than-oppose-tik....
In a democracy, this is how "society decides" what's in the "public good." This is not a case where legislators are going behind the public's back, hiding something they know they public would oppose. Proponents of the law have been clear in public about what the law would do and what the motivations for the law are. There is nothing closer to "society decides" than Congress overwhelmingly passing a law after making a public case for what the law would do.
Yes, they're doing it for "ideological and geopolitical reasons"--but those things are important to society! Americans are perfectly within their rights to enact legislation, through their duly elected representatives, simply on the basis of "fuck China."
This may in some ways be technically correct, but it is also true that in a democracy, the elite make decisions with the support of the people through manufactured consent. This process involves the manipulation of the populace through mass media, to intentionally misinform and influence them.
One could take the position that this process is so flawed as to be illegitimate. In this case it would be a valid position to believe that society had not fairly decided these things, and they were instead decided by a certain class of people and pushed on to the rest of us.
See: A Propaganda Model, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky: https://chomsky.info/consent01/
100% agreed, unfortunately. There is truth in sayings like "the customer doesn't know what's best for them"... I think because they are often simply not informed or intelligent enough.
It can still be both- in the sense that once a precedent is set using the these additional ideological and geopolitical motivations as momentum, maybe there will be an appetite for further algorithm regulations.
As a tech person who already understood the system, it's refreshing that I now often see the comment "I need to change my algorithm"- meaning, I can shape the parameters of what X/Twitter / Instagram/ YouTube / TikTok shows me in my feed.
I think there's growing meta-awareness (that I see as comments within these platforms) that there is "healthy" content and that the apps themselves manipulate their user's behavior patterns.
Hopefully there's momentum building that people perceive this as a public health issue.
These bans done for political purposes toward public consent for genocide (ie see ADL/AIPAC's "We have a big TikTok problem" leaked audio, and members of our own congress stating that this is what motivates the regulations) won't lead to greater freedoms over algorithms. It is the opposite direction - more state control over which algorithms its citizens are allowed to see
The mental health angle of support for the bans is a way the change gets accepted by the public, which posters here are doing free work toward generating, not a motivating goal or direction for these or next regulations
Yeah, the ban is interesting because it’s happened before (company being forced to sell or leave), but never to a product used at this scale. There are allegedly 120M daily active users in the US alone. That’s more than a third of Americans using it every day.
While many have a love hate relationship with it, there are many who love it. I know people who aren’t too sad, because it’ll break their addiction, and others who are making really decent money as content creators on it. So generally, you’re exactly right. “Society” is not lashing back at TikTok. Maybe some are lashing back at American social media companies (eg some folks leaving Twitter and meta products).
But if we wanted to actually protect our citizens, we’d enact strong data privacy laws, where companies don’t own your data — you do. And can’t spy on you or use that data without your permission. This would solve part of the problem with TikTok.
While data privacy laws would be good, I don’t see how it would help with TikTok since they have no reason to actually follow the laws when CCP comes calling.
That's because "being hooked" is not why it is being banned. It's banned because people are hooked on it and an adversarial foreign power has the ability to use it for their own gain.
Which is why a viable solution for TikTok was selling it to a US company. If it was just about the population "being hooked", a sale would not be an acceptable outcome.
> They have already allowed the good big tech companies to get people hooked as much as they want
To sell you shoes. Not for whatever nightmarish future application of this technology and relationship between private sector and the state represents: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/15/documents...
More specifically the ban is because of the platform being used to support Palestine. There are public recordings of congressmen openly and plainly saying so.
Many other platforms have been used for that for even longer, and none of them are in danger of being banned. I don't think this is the real reason, if there is even a singular reason.
agree, it was just a shakedown and money grab.
some US oligarchs wanted to buy tiktok at deep discount while it was private, and make money off of making it public company
Why would it be sold at a deep discount?
About 45% of the US population uses TikTok and 63% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using TikTok, with 57% of them using the app daily
Hell of a product, there would be a crazy bidding war for that kind of engagement
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
Apparently?
What's the obvious about it?
I don't understand the argument here, Tik Tok would maximize their monetization in US but not in other markets?
I don't buy it.
Think of it like consumer protection laws - Ford has higher safety requirements for the vehicles they sell domestically than they do for those sold in Mexico. Thus, it could be argued that they are not maximizing their monetization of the US market by cutting out expensive safety features that consumers don't pay extra for.
China is wise to have such laws to protect their citizens.
I am a farmer, I grow tomatoes. The ones I sell to large markets, I use pesticides, herbicides, petrochemical fertilizers, etc etc. The ones I grow for my own consumption and for sale at the local market -- those get organic compost and no chemical treatments.
This presumes that:
1) I sell to you my special and cherished resource. You may live in the fever dream of "market rules all", but a cold surprise may come that not everyone does.
2) You can afford what I sell - especially if political winds blow so that your benevolent rulers choose to impose 1000% tariffs on my good tomatoes
3) That you even _know_ there's a difference, and that tomatoes come from a farm and not the store or a can.
Where is TikTok not maximizing monetization? If you mean the GP's comment on China's ban on the algorithm originally used then you are missing a critical aspect of that: It wasn't TikTok's choice to stop or decrease monetization there.
Also, even if they were differently monetizing by region, you are also missing the non-monetary reasons this might happen: Manipulation & propaganda. Even aside from any formal policy by the Chinese govermnent self-censorship by businesses and individuals for anything the Party might not like is very common. Also common is the government dictating the actions a Chinese company may take abroad for these same efforts in influencing foreign opinions.
Corporations in China all operate at the behest of "the people" (aka the party). If the government thinks a product is damaging or harmful to society, it can be taken off the market without any legal mechanisms necessary.
Unlike in America where... they say it's a national security threat and vote to remove it?
Frankly, I’m not sure what these comments even mean. Douyin (Chinese TikTok) has the same level of brainrot content, except with some restrictions (political and societal level stuff). Chinese kids are as much addicted to it as Western kids to TikTok/IG, from what I’ve seen.
> TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created.
What nonsense.
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
"Apparently"? Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok.
> There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction.
There is no historic symmetry. Unless china invades the US and forces americans to use tiktok. Like britain invaded china ( opium wars ) and forced opium on china's population.
What's with all the same propaganda in every tiktok/china related thread? The same talking points on every single thread for the past few years.
"Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok."
You're talking about Propaganda but you are spreading straight up fake news.
ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016. ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017.
There was no "split", let alone one "forced by the US".
> There was no "split", let alone one "forced by the US".
There was no split? You wrote: "ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016. ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017."
You say there was no split while explicitly proving that there was split? You're not that stupid are you?
Why do you think "tiktok" was created in 2017 when bytedance already had douyin( aka tiktok ) in 2016?
Why is there a "tiktok" for china and a "tiktok" for everyone else? Because the "tiktok in china ( duoyin ) was influenced by the chinese government and to appease the US, bytedance branched off tiktok from "douyin".
> Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok
No. TikTok was forced to put its data on American servers [1].
Douyin was launched in 2016 as musical.ly, and is unrelated to U.S. pressure. (EDIT: Douyin was launched in 2016, TikTok in 2017. Musical.ly was acquired in 2017 and merged into/basically became TikTok. TikTok has never been in China.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-moves-us-user-data...
Musical.ly was not China only and I knew musical.ly before it was the predecessor of tiktok. From how I recall it, it had mostly American users. Was the split during the rebranding?
> Was the split during the rebranding?
Musical.ly was acquired by Bytedance in 2017 and merged into TikTok in 2018 [1]. TikTok itself “was launched internationally in 2017” [2].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20191005154207/https://beebom.co...
What viewpoint is your use of “da ccp” supposed to disparage?
I think people (Americans) who view China as a geopolitical rival/enemy of the United States?
> > TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created.
> What nonsense.
Obviously experiences will vary, but I think this is actually pretty well-established.
Not many studies, but here's one: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9486470/
I don't know if you are just ignorant about history and unwilling to Google, or if you are making the point that of course British did not force feed opium to the people.
What is very well established is that the british fought a war , literally called the opium war by Western historians themselves with the main objective of keeping their opium distribution into China open after the emperor banned it
Their action was akin to if some majority owner of Purdue pharma invades US and forces US government to "keep the oxy market open" while letting "people make their own decision".
>> Like britain invaded china ( opium wars ) and forced opium on china's population.
> how did Britain force the Chinese population to consume Opium?
I'm not saying Britain didn't do something _against the will of the goverment_. I'm just questioning OP's nonsense that individuals were forced to consume Opium vs not forced to consume TikTok - in both cases, clearly nobody was forced. And in both cases, it's products made to be addictive.
TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created. The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction.
Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.